Galactic Civilization- storyline

[Samuel]

For those who don't know, Galactic Civilization is a game developed by Stardock, your basic 4x in space. A pretty decent game (I like it alot, but it gets a bit repetitive) that has one incredibly bad spot- its storyline. Specifically, it is written like a bad fan-fiction. It hits ALL the cliches, with humanity being special, prior powerful civilizations, super crystals, designed life, interstellar empires run on slavery, jihadists... in space, libertarians... in space, magic special powers and telepathy. Your job, if you wish to accept it, is to try to improve the back story or, failing that, give tips on how to avoid making something as cliched as it.

Obviously, the precursors are out.
The races currently are:
Terrans- love diplomacy and trade.
Krox- space libertarians
Thalans- insect hivemind from the future
Yor- robots
Altarians- alien humans... er, the Gods did it. No really!
Dregians- villainous slavers
Iconians- people who made the Yor and didn't listen to Starglider. See what happens?
Acrean- conservative warrior race
Torian- former slave race
Korath- genocidal maniacs
Krynn-jihadists in space who have seen the backstory.
Drath-sneaky dinosaurs in space.

[Stark]

Don't forget everyone else has been around for thousands of years OR ARE FROM THE FUCKING FUTURE but humans invented FTL.

Brad, stop writing stories, you're embarrassing yourself. We know you like Star Trek.

Anwyay, the easiest way to 'fix' a videogame storyline is to TOTALLY IGNORE all the ingame info and just run off the actual stats or performance. For instance, the drengin are just big tough guys ruled by aggressive government or attempting to recover from the critical loss of their slave population and not OMG TEH EVOL DOODS. The Iconians are an uberrace brought low, driven by desperation and pride to recapture their lost glory, etc.

[Sarevok]

Backstory in a 4X game ? This is not starcraft, backstory is whatever you make up. I will take my own fanboy interpretation of a long satisfying game of Galciv II over whatever back story supposedly exists.

[Shinova]

Weren't the Arceans and Drengin supposed to have been around for something like 40 to 400,000 or more years? As space-faring civilizations? And neither of them, especially the Drengin, ever developed the hyperdrive and it took the comparatively pathetically young Terrans to somehow cook it up? Mmmmmyeah.

[Stark]

Backstory in a 4X game ? This is not starcraft, backstory is whatever you make up. I will take my own fanboy interpretation of a long satisfying game of Galciv II over whatever back story supposedly exists.

And then in Arnor they gave the original races silent bonuses above and beyond any race you could ever create, thus making it far less 'sandboxy' and forcing the retarded story into what should be a story-less game. Cybermen win anyway, but it's fucking offensive.

Brad just needs to stop writing fanfiction.

That said, there are HONESTLY people who want a GalCiv campaign mode. Seriously. It makes no fucking sense but they want it anyway.

[RedImperator]

GalCiv's backstory is among the most hopeless in-game backstories I've ever seen. Mario is more coherent and believable. Fortunately, in a 4X game, you can just throw the whole story out on its ear. Which is good, because GalCiv's story is probably totally unsalvagable.

[Nephtys]

GalCiv also has ludicrously cheesy aliens to boot, which makes any attempt at backstory awful. at least MOO just had some generic types of alien (cat warriors, grey scientists, amorphous spies, disgusting fungi), and didn't spend ages trying to make them anything more than what you can assume from the type (IE, Cat Warriors probably are pretty warlike).

It's like those 500 pages of backstory for each race in Sword of the Stars, including popular dishes, entertainment, family analogues for each race... nobody cares. It's about my spaceships bombing those pathetic planets with neutronium bombs.

[Samuel]

Weren't the Arceans and Drengin supposed to have been around for something like 40 to 400,000 or more years? As space-faring civilizations? And neither of them, especially the Drengin, ever developed the hyperdrive and it took the comparatively pathetically young Terrans to somehow cook it up? Mmmmmyeah.

It gets better. The tech they needed to do so was... fusion

Pointing out the flaws is like shooting fish in a barrel full of fish.

GalCiv also has ludicrously cheesy aliens to boot, which makes any attempt at backstory awful. at least MOO just had some generic types of alien (cat warriors, grey scientists, amorphous spies, disgusting fungi), and didn't spend ages trying to make them anything more than what you can assume from the type (IE, Cat Warriors probably are pretty warlike).

It's like those 500 pages of backstory for each race in Sword of the Stars, including popular dishes, entertainment, family analogues for each race... nobody cares. It's about my spaceships bombing those pathetic planets with neutronium bombs.

You haven't read MoO 3s manual have you

[Stofsk]

Ah, Moo3's manual:

"Remember how you won the last game and defeated the Altarians? Yeah, funny story..."

[Crossroads Inc.]

along with

"Remember all the races you grew up playing and loving? We killed 90% of them and then pulled a bunch out our ass."

[Nephtys]

What's MoO3? There are only two Master of Orion games. Only two.

[Stark]

Maybe you missed the MoO3 and SC3 twin pack? They really added to the original stories, let me assure you.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Maybe you missed the MoO3 and SC3 twin pack? They really added to the original stories, let me assure you.

No no,.. I Think I understand.. there is NO moo3, just like there is NO BSG-1980

[Darth Onasi]

You haven't even pointed out the worst of it; specifically how the Arnor, the bestest super race in the universe are in fact humans who travelled in time to the distant past. This by the way explains the Altarians, as the Drath who originally occupied that planet were booted out by the Arnor and replaced with the Altarians made in their own image. Daft, but strangely hilarious to me.

This basically explains the hyperdrive thing by showing that all non-humans are in fact complete idiots who don't know anything about anything. Yay!

[Shinova]

You haven't even pointed out the worst of it; specifically how the Arnor, the bestest super race in the universe are in fact humans who travelled in time to the distant past. This by the way explains the Altarians, as the Drath who originally occupied that planet were booted out by the Arnor and replaced with the Altarians made in their own image. Daft, but strangely hilarious to me.

This basically explains the hyperdrive thing by showing that all non-humans are in fact complete idiots who don't know anything about anything. Yay!

What!? I assume this is all explained in Twilight of the Arnor?

That is daft. Really daft. Time paradoxes wheee! That and the whole humanity is the bestest, wheeee!!

[Darth Onasi]

You haven't even pointed out the worst of it; specifically how the Arnor, the bestest super race in the universe are in fact humans who travelled in time to the distant past. This by the way explains the Altarians, as the Drath who originally occupied that planet were booted out by the Arnor and replaced with the Altarians made in their own image. Daft, but strangely hilarious to me.

This basically explains the hyperdrive thing by showing that all non-humans are in fact complete idiots who don't know anything about anything. Yay!

What!? I assume this is all explained in Twilight of the Arnor?

That is daft. Really daft. Time paradoxes wheee! That and the whole humanity is the bestest, wheeee!!

No I believe this is all revealed in the 1st campaign, Dread Lords, where the commander of the Terran task force you play as goes back in time to become Draginol, the first Arnor or creator of the Arnor or some crap like that. I forget the exact storyline.

[Stark]

Now YOU forgot the best part.

Draginol = self-insertion fantasy from Brad.

That's a whole new level of fucking terrible.

Oh and the Thalans from the future? They suck compared to the Arnor.