Saturday I nailed down what's been bugging me about Galactic Civilizations II. One thing is probably just the nature of turn-based strategy games, which is that the pace seems glacial compared to RTS gameplay. That's really a personal problem, because I didn't really play a lot of TBS games back when the original Civilization or any of the SSI turn-based, hex-based wargames came out. (At that time, I was probably playing SSI's Gold Box games.) I've been playing RTS games since the days of Dark Legions and the original Warcraft. I'm familiar with that style of play, and it comes naturally to me. The idea of having to wait xx turns to research a single technology is just a bit alien. Nevertheless, I understand that I can't really fault the game for that.

No, my real problem is that I've been playing through the campaign, which is the first (and frequently the last) thing I do when I install any strategy game, and I've discovered something that really bothers me. I was playing a scenario where I'm allied with the Altarians against the Drengin and the Yor. The objective is to capture a Drengin-held planet where a resistance leader is being held by the Drengin. So I built a few ships with the techs I had and began researching and building up my economy. I sent a survey vessel to map out anomalies on its own and sent a few construction ships and a colony vessel into Altarian-owned space. Small Dread Lord ships came and went during this scenario. At one point, close to the end (although I didn't realize it at the time), a small fleet of DL ships wandered into the heart of my territory, destroyed the tiny armada I had constructed, and departed as abruptly as it had arrived. About this time, I received a message that the Yor had surrendered to the Drengin. Two turns later, the Drengin surrendered to me. The game then ended, with me victorious. I was completely befuddled, as I had not accomplished the primary objective of the mission. I hadn't even explored the area of the map where the Drengin-held planet was located, and my military was ranked 4th of 4 active factions (it had actually just been wiped out by the Dread Lords, but it wasn't that great before). The only rating I could see where I scored higher than the other participants was in the Social category (presumably because I had built a few Entertainment Centers on the three worlds I owned?). I have no idea how or why I won this scenario.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time that this has happened to me over the course of the campaign. Does anyone know whether this is an issue that I alone am experiencing and, if not, whether it persists throughout the campaign? It really takes away from the fun when the mission ends abruptly and for no obvious reason. Are the campaigns in Dark Avatar or the upcoming expansion any different? I would welcome hearing others' thoughts on this.