The year is 2178 and Earth has made limited contact with other civilizations. Space travel and communication between everyone was done via stargates. This technology was expensive and limited and resulted in only limited space exploration. This all changes when us humans invent the 'hyper drive' which makes affordable long distance travel a reality. In the belief that the 5 main alien races in the galaxy would come together in this new age of communication Earth shares this technology (doh!). Instead of the expected Age of Enlightenment, the Age of Expansion and Exploitation is born.

Within the game you can only play as the humans. At first glance this would appear to be rather restrictive, however at the beginning of the game you can fully customise them to suit your intended game strategy. This is done almost like a RPG with you expending points on various attributes such as technology, diplomacy, weapons, defence and trade. You quickly find that these early choices are vital. In making your choice you need to be clear about how you want to play the game. You can win the game through the traditional conquest option, by technology, political and cultural means. Each strategy will get a hefty head start depending on these early game choices.

You then get to set up the size of the playing galaxy and more importantly the opponents you will face. Their intelligence can be set to as sharp as a hammer right up to almost a super being. Like a RPG you can also set their alignment. All these choices are important as this largely set the tone of how the AI will work within the game.

Now to the AI. Brilliant is a word that immediately springs to mind. What they have done is rather than have the usual staple of making difficulty settings being around how much starting resource the opponent has or effectively letting the PC opponent cheat, the AI in this game is just that intelligent! To make matters worse there is effectively 6 of them! Each of the races have their own individual AI that has been designed from the ground up (not 6 copies of the same one). No matter how difficult the game everybody starts on equal footing. The AI does not just react to your play style but rather it starts the game with a long term plan in mind but one flexible enough to respond to events as the game unfolds. Consequently each game is different and very challenging. We have never seen an AI so well thought out and executed in a game before.

So once you have done all the setup work the game quickly generates a galaxy to play across. This is a simple 2D model however as they are quick to point out on the game site 3D would offer no great advantages to the game past the initial wow and show off factor. You start off with the Sol Galaxy on good old Earth with a pocket of dosh, a survey ship and a colony ship. The race initially is to claim as many habital planets as possible, together with special galaxy resources (each has specific advantages like quicker military development, or better trade benefits). To claim a planet you make a landing and create a colony while in the case of resources you need to build a starbase over them to reap their benefits. Once your colony is set up you can build both military units or social improvements or both through a very simple interface. The object is to expand while ensuring your capacity to defend and finance what you have.

The Starbase can only be built using a special constructor ship that is hellishly expensive to build and very slow. Grabbing these resources can be very important however as they have some real benefits to the civilisation who owns them. The AI is not slow to recognise this and the race is on pretty much from the word go to find these resources and develop them. By building further 'constructors' you can upgrade the Starbases with additional defences, repair facilities or increase their sphere of influence. All at a huge cost of course...