Masters of Orion has traditionally focused on the military aspect of empire building. Research specific component technologies, design ships and then send those fleets out and have them engage in combat where the components you chose are critical. GalCiv focuses much more at a strategic level (as opposed to tactical). Military engagements are done at a more macro level ala Civilization. Each capital ship in GalCiv is precious with its own experience level, ability to be named, etc. A lot of GalCiv's empire building is focused on creating star bases in your territory to modify your civilization's abilities locally.

Additionally, I think one of GalCiv's strengths is that you are really trying to build a civilization. That means you face ethical and moral decisions that affect what kind of society you are building. The technology tree is large enough where users have to take different paths that will affect the dozens of civilization abilities you have. And in addition to the United Planets Security Council, you have your own senate where you have to keep voters happy and deal with the pros and cons of the political party you chose to associate yourself with.

Overall, our goal is to make Galactic Civilizations feel like an epic. That you are in charge of the story of the human civilization.

What you want is for the later stages of the game to see feel fun and move decently rather than getting bogged down in micro management. Based on beta tester feedback, I think we've accomplished that.

But that's really just the tip of the ice berg. The really cool stuff really has to be experienced as it's hard to explain. A lot of the strategies in GalCiv take varying times to reach fruition. Very regularly when you think you're about to win, something will happen and the entire game will change. Maybe the Altarians will finally get their Terror Star constructed. Or maybe the Drengin star bases will gain access to new cultural magnification technologies. Or maybe a galactic recession will hit and seemingly invincible civilizations that are over stretched will come crashing down to be split into several new civilizations.

In short, if the game is really over, you won't have to mop up. The AI will simply surrender. But often times things can change and bring the game new life.

We also keep taking polls on GalCiv.com of the beta testers to find out what things we should focus on. What things we should add. For example, galactic resources were not in the original GalCiv design. This was suggested by beta testers. Galactic resources are special interstellar items that if you build a star base on them, you can mine them and they give your civilization a bonus. Through new technologies, you can keep building them up more and more. We didn't come up with that. Beta testers did. By having the beta open early enough, we could incorporate real suggestions into the game and focus on what they wanted throughout the project.