Game #166: Imperium Galactum (1984)

When I started this project, my vision was that I would mostly deal with infantry, horsemen, tanks, ships and sometimes, elves, orcs and their ilk. I quickly found out, however, that for practical and cultural reasons early strategy gaming included a massive number of space games, starting of course with the seminal Star Trek. I am now happy to have moved away from that era, and I have enough games to cover that I could afford to aggressively cull from my list any game derivative of Star Trek or Galaxy. However, while Paul Murray’s Imperium Galactum is obviously derived from Reach for the Stars, I feel I have to cover this one: it is a full-fledged 4X, which I always intended to cover, and it is by SSI, which with Avalon Hill has a special status on this blog. Finally, I could not skip the game that kickstarted the proud tradition of butchering Latin in their titles – one that future space 4Xs would happily uphold, from Imperium Galactica to Pax Imperia and beyond!

I have to confess I have played Imperium Galactum a lot, and I got crushed systematically without ever being able to succesfully colonize a second planet: the AI is somewhat reluctant to attack your homeworld without an overwhelming advantage, but their main fleet will be on the move the minute one of your settlers tries to plant a flag on a new world. Therefore, my AAR is not about my first game, but about my fourth “final” game, aka the first game where I managed to survive and expand. As you will see, I needed a crutch – but more on this soon.

A. The Twin Planets (turns 1 – 7)

Imperium Galactum starts with a standard view for space strategy games: a large galaxy peppered by various dots which I will get to explore. I start in the Solar system and will have 3 AI-controlled competitors: the Data Driven, the Famished and the Addicts.

Zooming in on my homeworld, I immediately realized that this game was going to be the one: in addition to my own planet, my system also includes a friendly and wealthy independent civilization!

The economy in Imperium Galactum is more complex than in Reach for the Stars:

• the environment (ENVT) indicates the maximum Agriculture level (AG: max at ENVT – 50),
• Agriculture then feeds population (POP: max at AGx4),
• POP is used to make agriculture, mines and industries (IND) “active”.
• IND is what generates production points (IO for industrial output), but it is capped by the sum of the empire mine levels,
• The mine level of each planet is itself capped by the planet’s immutable resource (RSRC) level.

With 98 in Environment and 98 in Resource, my neighbours have an incredibly wealthy planet that they sadly don’t exploit to its full potential. If I negotiate an alliance with them – extremely likely given the “friendly” default relationship – then they will let me use its production capacity and I will effectively double my production every turn!

I open negotiations with my neighbours, which simply means rolling a die every turn and checking the result. I then build 6 light cruisers (CL). With their speed of 6 and their good resilience in combat, they are the perfect ship to explore the galaxy. After the building phase, the results of the negotiation are received, and my neighbours accept the alliance. Yeah!

At the end of the first turn, I have discovered another independent civilization in the top-left corner of the map. They are relatively poor and their stance is “neutral”, making them less likely to ally with me, but that’s a good find nonetheless.

My second priority after exploring is research: each tech level significantly increases the combat capacity and the speed of my starships. Additionally, at tech level 4, I can start improving planetory environmental (ENV) conditions, which really open up space colonization. Each tech level costs 350 production points, and each industry produces 3 production points, so the combined production of my planet and my neighbours allows me to almost increase by one tech level by turn (mines have a maintenance cost). With what was left from turn 1, I tech up in turn 2 already.

The rest of the turn goes smoothly:

• The independent world on Chronos also accepts to ally with me,
• I encounter enemy scouts here but my light cruisers resist the compulsory one round of combat,
• My ships find the first enemy homeworld on Paradise – though this time it costs me a light cruiser as this system is protected by around 40 ships of all sizes.

The game carries on like this: I upgrade my tech level and explore, eventually finding the Data Driven homeworld. Meanwhile, the Famished are active in my area, converting my reluctant ally from Chronos to their cause.

When I can’t tech up, I build starships and transports, allowing me turn 6 to send colonists and a heavy escort toward Artemis, where they arrive turn 7. That’s when all the other civilizations decide to rendezvous above my systems.

B. The sieges (turns 8 – 18)

Colonizing in Imperium Galactum is complicated. First, you obviously need transport ships and population. When your population arrives, it will not have agriculture, so you will need trader ships to transport the food surplus from your mature planets to the new one. Finally, something that has taken me some time to understand, you need to generate a surplus to export by capping the maximum population of your mature planets immediately after said population board the transport ships. If you don’t generate a surplus, the “home” planet will be fed first and the settlers will starve. And if you don’t cap the maximum population immediately after embarking settlers, then it will be too late because the population will have passed the cap and won’t roll back.

While their population grows, new colonies are defenceless: without industry they can’t build satellite defences (SDF). Moreover, as I said, the AI smells new colonies from thousands of parsecs away and will send fleets to squash them. In anticipation, I had sent a large fleet of escorts, paid in large parts by my friendly neighbours. As expected, the fleet orbiting my colony is soon engaged by a Famished fleet.

Combats in Imperium Galactum are unimpressive: the game shows your fleets and the enemy fleets in separate screens, and then asks you what you want to do (engage the enemy in space to make sure your opponent can’t damage your planet, or engage it near your planet to receive support from its satellite defense). After that, the game directly shows you what’s left of your fleet and the enemy fleet – you have to imagine what happened in between.

The enemy has a larger fleet, but my tech advantage more than compensates for this. After two rounds my losses are marginal while the Famished lose a quarter of their fleets (the light FF and DDG receiving most of the damage as they act as “shields” for the better ships). The enemy disengages – my colony will survive one more turn. The following turn, I have my first industry on Artemis, allowing me to repair my most damaged ships.

This is the first significant battle, but from turn 8 to turn 18 they are constant and it would be tedious to list them all. The Famished are the most vindictive, constantly attacking me on both Artemis and Sol. The Data Driven and the Addicted focus on Sol, I suppose attracted by the small size of my fleet there. However, I (probably) have a tech advantage in Sol as well, and I can fight from the protective cover of my defensive satellites. My rivals only ever attack for one or two rounds of combat, receive some losses, and then retreat.

Over time, the size of my fleets increases faster than the size of my opponents’ fleets, particularly after I reach the maximum research level (7). Every turn, I try to negotiate “neutral” status with each of my opponents, and every turn they reject it – until two things happen turn 18:

• My neighbours decide to switch sides and join the Famished:

• My rivals all decided independently they wanted to end the war and all suddenly accepted “neutral” status – I must have passed a relative power threshold of some sort. The war is over.

C. Interbellum (turns 18 – 26)

Peace is re-established in the galaxy. Or almost. I am not very happy with my old friends from planet #2 joining the Famished. As it turns out, in Imperium Galactum, you can attack the independent world “allied” with your rivals without breaking the truce with the latter, and – well – I happen to have a fleet loitering in the same system. I easily destroy planet #2’s defensive satellites and then the game asks me to take an executive decision:

• “Capture” is landing an army which needs to destroy the enemy army. If they succeed, the planet is captured indeed,
• Bombing allows to destroy enemy armies safely, but it also destroys industries and mines,
• Garrison is fancy talk for “do nothing”,
• Purge destroys everything and everyone on the planet,

Now having an extremely rich and mysteriously unpopulated planet next to my homeworld, I transfer a large number of settlers instantly thanks to successive orders of “loading population” and “unloading population” in the same turn. The following turn, I build massive agriculture and mine, and thus add a jewel to my empire.

Between the peace dividends and resources flowing from Planet #2 even more so than before (my neighbours ever maxed their industry), I can focus on the rest of the galaxy and colonize Mithra. Mithra and Planet #2 are soon critical to my empire, as they pass the 70 industry threshold which allows you to build large ships.

I also leverage the peace to explore the rest of the Galaxy.

That’s where I discover that the game (logically) does not update automatically the map when you don’t have scouts there; it works the same in Reach for the Stars but I never had an opportunity to test before. Unfortunately, it turns out that my rivals have settled all the worlds I was eyeing for myself. I can’t say they have colonized them properly, but well, they’ve got a flag.

When I also hit the ship limit (255), it is time to re-ignite the fire of war in the galaxy.

D. Crepusculum Deorum (turns 27-37)

I pick a target: the Famished. I regroup all my ships and I go straight for the jugular: their homeworld.

I am not surprised to discover that the Famished have not even been able to colonize their twin planet:

In any case, my fleet is largely superior to theirs – I crush it, losing only a dozen of light ships.

I immediately colonize the new planets and hold my position.

My aggressive action makes everyone paranoid, and I am soon attacked on Paradise by the Addicted and the Data-Driven. Meanwhile, I receive reports of battle in stars I don’t have any assets in – something I used to see early on in the game but had slowly disappeared. As I interpret it, the loss of their homeworld made the Famished a target, and the two other computer players are now reaping the benefits.

I spend some time with all my fleet guarding Paradise – my rivals don’t seem to care about my other defenceless systems, or rather it seemed so until the Addicts jump on Artemis and purge my planet there with a massive fleet:

At this point in the game, my fleet rivals the Addicts’ fleet, but it cannot be everywhere. I once again resolve to solve the conundrum by cutting the head of the hydra: Utopia, the Addict homeworld.

After securing again a neutrality agreement from the Famished and the Data Driven , I jump on Utopia… and find out that the Addicts have regrouped their fleets and are stronger than expected.

After a few rounds of combat, my fleet is defeated. All is not lost however: while I lost more ships than the Addicts, I still caused some significant damage and I managed to retreat to Mithra with most of my large CVs and BCs. The Addicts follow me, but by the time they arrive I had the time to rebuild an armada of small ships to serve as shields for my capital ships – and now in turn I force the Addicts to retreat with massive losses.

Imperium Galactum has a weird win condition: the players can end the game at any moment (no set duration) and compare their populations. The game has been going for a long time and I don’t see myself ever finishing it: after all the more I grow, the more I will have to spread out my 255 ships to avoid a purge. Both the Addicts and myself have lost the largest part of our fleets, the Data Driven are still friendly to me and the Famished effectively disappeared from my view – I reckon it’s a good time to end the game and check the score.

I lost, but I am happy it’s over. I reckon the game lasted more than 4 or 5 hours, and I am afraid none of it was really fun.

Ratings & Review

Imperium Galactum by Paul Murray, published by SSI, US
First release: October 1984 on Apple II and Atari 8-bits
Genre: Space 4X
Average duration of a battle: As long as you want it to be, as you can end anytime.
Total time played: Around 12 hours
Complexity: High (3/5)
Final Rating: Totally obsolete

Context – In 1984, SSI’s founder Joel Billings and developer Paul Murray, both wargame lovers, were facing the galling reality that bona fide wargames were selling less than space and fantasy games: the former rarely passed 10 000 sales, while the latter rarely sold below that mark. However, Murray’s latest game: Cosmic Balance II, had been such an exception with only around 5000 copies sold. It left a sour tinge of failure, and Murray acknowledged he had gone overboard with complexity with “VisiCalc in space“. Only a few weeks after the release of Cosmic Balance II, SSG’s seminal Reach for the Stars reached the US market and codified the genre for decades to come. The way was opened for another space 4X, in which Murray would use Reach for the Stars (and Stellar Conquest, which he had played) as a base and add what had made Cosmic Balance II distinctive: spaceship customization and fleet missions.

Murray does not remember much about the game, but does remember how he came to the most influential part: the name. At that point in his life, he was into alt-history – a genre in which the Roman Empire occasionally survives into the modern era and beyond. This led him to think about Romans in space and how “cool” (I quote him) the initials SPQG would be. SPQG ended up on the cover art, and Murray, “not having the foggiest idea of proper Latin“, called the game Imperium Galactum.

Imperium Galactum was initially released on Apple II and Atari and sold for $39.95. It was later in 1985 ported to Commodore 64.

Traits – In theory, Imperium Galactum is Reach for the Stars, with extra features: neutral planets, diplomacy, ship design, and fleet missions. The core loop is roughly the same between the two games:

There are a few differences, and I have to say that I prefer the Imperium Galactum core ruleset. At the end of my AAR of Reach for the Stars, I had complained that “my main criticism is that population is more a drag than a boon”, due to the complex relationship between production, population and a third value called “social”. Murray fixed the issue in Imperium Galactum with a simple direct relationship: each industry point requires 2 population points to be “active”.

As for the extra features, I have mixed feelings:

• neutral planets are probably balance-breaking in multiplayer, but fun in single player – pass.
• diplomacy feels more random than logical (your rivals will accept to peace out immediately after a betrayal, or they will accept to be friendly even though you are yourself hostile to them). Its existence has the irritating impact that AI players sometimes remain at peace with one another, and then focus on you, particularly at the beginning of the game – begrudgingly pass.

• ship design can be somewhat useful to create planet busters or slow/fast warships, but the split between missiles and phases feels pointless given how little information you have on combat and enemy composition. I barely used it – fail
• Finally, I only ever used move, garrison and repair missions. The game also allows you to embargo or commerce raid the enemy, or to patrol against those missions – but if you are above an enemy worl you should either try to destroy their planet or retreat. The “missions” system also adds a lot of clutter to the game – fail.

At this point of the review, Imperium Galactum looks like a better Reach for the Stars with a few extra features that are either improving or cluttering the game somewhat. Given Reach for the Stars is my best game so far, Imperium Galactum should rank pretty high, shouldn’t it?

Core issues – It is my belief that games of the era deprecate on their UX, and Imperium Galactum fails horribly in this category. Everything in Imperium Galactum is longer and more complicated than it should be, including something as simple as moving a fleet. I initially explained at length why I hated it, but I ended with several paragraphs on the user interface. For the sake of my readership, I removed it all and replaced it with the meme below; for the rest trust me when I say I wrote several paragraphs full of spite on the topic, a process that involved querying ChatGPT for synonyms of “irritating” and “frustrating” because I was all out.

Just to drive this point home, the difference between the dry but well-thought Reach for the Stars interface and the dry and barely-thought Imperium Galactum interface is nowhere as apparent as in combat. Reach for the Stars managed to show everything you needed to see on one screen, and combats lasted only a few seconds.

Imperium Galactum requires you to open a different screen for each participant in the combat, and despite this it gives you less information than Reach for the Stars (it does not give you the tech level of the enemy ships!). To understand in which direction the battle is going, you need to commit the size of the enemy or enemies to memory and open their status menu every round. And of course, like everywhere else in the game, Imperium Galactum also hassles you with pointless questions to fake depth, eg do you want to fight this battle in deep space or within range of the enemy planetary defence?

The UX is mightily irksome, but alone it would not have been enough to fully ruin the game. Unfortunately, there is another massive issue: balancing. A series of facially minor design decisions broke the delicate equilibrium that made Reach for the Stars so compelling. First, there is the obvious issue that the AIs always know where your colonies are, and will try to destroy them as soon as possible – I only managed to survive to the latter part of the game because of the incredible luck of having a friendly world next to mine. But really, the knot of the issue, whether you play solitaire or multiplayer, and whether you play against 1 AI or 3 is the “purge” feature – the ability to destroy from space and without risk the entire population of a planet.

In Reach for the Stars, you could never destroy the enemy population: all you could do was occupy a planet, extract only a fraction of its production for yourself and fend off attempts from its original owner to recover it. Additionally, given transports are so slow in Reach for the Stars, there were many situations in my AARs where I destroyed all enemy defences but lacked transports to land, and then lost space superiority by the time the transports arrived. Imperium Galactum had none of those moments: it’s all or nothing. Once you have space superiority over a planet, it’s immediately good night for all intelligent lives on it.

Compounding the issue, Imperium Galactum has a limit of 255 ships – a limit probably due to the pointless design choice of tracking each ship individually. With a maximum of 30 defensive satellites – not enough to stop even a medium-sized attack – and attacks that can come from anywhere due to how fast spaceships move, it is impossible to defend all your systems at the same time. Worse, the more systems you control, the harder it is to defend anything, until you are bound to lose something. The combination of purge, the limit of 255 ships and the lack of other defence locks the game in a genocidal stalemate.

Did I make interesting decisions? Yes, but they are drowned in a bazillion key presses. Once you’ve survived the beginning, your decisions are irrelevant in the long run because it is a matter of luck whether one of your defenseless worlds will be purged next turn or not.

Final rating: Totally obsolete. There is no reason to play Imperium Galactum instead of Reach for the Stars. I reckon I had even more fun with the idiosyncratic Cosmic Balance II, which was just as maddening to play due to the even more terrible user experience, but was not balanced in a way that also made it pointless to play: at least in Cosmic Balance II the front was moving in a direction or another and there were mission objectives and time-limits in the campaign.

Ranking at the time of review: 153/160

Reception

Imperium Galactum received a good number of reviews, some of them automatically correcting the title into Imperium Galacticum. The first review was from the Atari Computer Enthusiast Newsletter (November 1984), which focused on the multiplayer experience. As many later reviewed, it noted the innovation of built-in diplomacy, and concluded: “The game moves very quickly and is fun to play. No one has to look away from the screen for very long while another player does a portion of a turn. […] The multi-player feature and diplomacy with the computer players make this a fun game of many possibilities in play and outcome.” Later, Eric Johnston for MicroTimes (April 1985) and Steward MacKames for Computer Gaming World (June 1985) echo this review but for solitaire play, with both mentioning the importance of diplomacy – Johnston eventually rated the game 9 out of 10. Foreign reviews land close to this rating: Tilt (France) gives it 4 stars, Moje Atari (Poland) gives it 8/10, Atari Magazin (Germany) 4/5 and Pelit Vuosikirja (Finland) 5 stars in 1988! The only discordant voice is InCider (September 1985), which simply stated that the game “adds nothing noteworthy to the genre”.

However, the reviewers who compared Imperium Galactum to Reach for the Stars usually favoured the latter. Shay Addams in Commodore Microcomputer (September 1986) explains that Reach for the Stars “gets [the] strongest recommendation”, but Imperium Galactum, as poorly-explained and slow as it is according to Addams, does put up a fight: “for those who demand more control over their starships or who prefer the complexities of diplomatic intrigue. Imperium Galacticum is the best choice, despite its shortcomings in other departments.” Similarly, Evan Brooks in 1992 gave 5 stars to the SSG game, but only 2 stars to Imperium Galactum(“this detailed strategic simulation of space empires simply lacked sufficient “chrome” to make it enduring”), still honourable for an 8-year-old game.

So, it seems I am the only one to have such a negative opinion of Imperium Galactum. The game sold 11 000 copies in the United States, which was successful by SSI standards but still not as much as expected. It is also the last of Murray’s strategy game for a while. After Imperium Galactum, Murray moved into the cRPGAddict’s territory with games like The Wizard’s Crown, The Eternal Dagger and the famous Pool of Radiance. His return to wargaming, in 1994, would be for an even more famous title: Panzer General – and I can easily forgive Cosmic Balance II and Imperium Galactum for ultimately leading to one of my favourite games of my teenage years.