The game has a large and involved research tree that splits technologies into a number of different categories. When combined with the four available victory conditions the game can be played at least five different ways: war, diplomacy, trade, research or cultural expansion, although to achieve success in any of these fields the player must have some skill to varying degrees in each of the others. Also, no player will ever research the entirety of the research tree unless that is their specific intention, as in order to do so the player would already be powerful enough to win the game easily by war, diplomacy or conquest. This grants the feel of greater realism, with a game being characterised by an almost role-playing empire theme.

There are some flaws with the game, which almost keep it from scoring 5/5. When it was released it had numerous bugs that periodically caused the game to crash on some computers, ours included (although this can be seen as a finger to the pirating community, as you need a serial number to use the patch).

Also the interface was, and still is to a lesser extent, clumsy and counter-intuitive. This is also reflected in the game's steep learning curve, somewhat mitigated by the excellent tutorials it comes shipped with. However with the release of the 1.11 patch these issues have been largely resolved, and in fact by their absence further highlight the things this game does really well, like ship design and empire management.

The ground combat screen, while interesting, doesn't seem as epic and/or serious as it could have been (it's been almost a hundred years since the last armies marched towards each other firing on a level field of battle), but this fits in with the slightly comic overtones of the game (which is also shown in the many silly descriptions and diplomatic remarks throughout the interface and your interaction with the enemy).

The morality aspects of the empire, where the player is repeatedly asked to deal with situations which have a good, neutral and evil resolution, have a tendency to be repeated numerous times, especially when a large number of planets have been colonised. Once again, although the solutions presented at these intervals are quite amusing (including harvesting your people as an alien soft drink, or wiping out minor species because they look ugly), the repetition can be tiring.

The final notable absence is multiplayer play. Stardock had stated before the game was released that they were not planning on introducing any, which is unfortunate, as it would have been a great experience. However they do plan to release it (among other things) as a expansion pack in the near future for a nominal fee. On the website poll they initiated support for this was less than enthusiastic, but this seems to represent more of a flaw in Stardock's business strategy: their willingness to listen to the whiners on their forums.

In conclusion, GalCivII is a great game for any armchair generals out there, with its technical and gameplay excellence further enhance by its post patch shiny polish.

The games company behind seems to generally care about gamers (making them almost unique in this publisher dominated world) and as a further incentive if you are one of the growing movement of gamers that won't buy or play games with Starforce 'protection' on them then the dispute between Stardock and Starforce is legendary (in summary, Stardock said they didn't believe in copy protection; Starforce published links to where people could illegally download the game in spite (despite the fact that it takes less than 10 minutes to find any Starforce game on a torrent site) and the game industry reacted violently. Starforce has since apologised and taken down the links), so by buying this game you are joining the revolution, comrade!