Galactic Civilizations III: Mercenaries (PC) Review

Galactic Civilizations 3 has had a committed developer that still updates its game regularly, as well as having new download content for it even if the title is a few years old. This is definitely pleasing to see in a world where many other companies tend to just let their games die.

In this case, Mercenaries provides a short but interesting change to the main experience; it creates certain locations on the map called the 'bazaar,' which people can go to in order to buy mercenaries. These mercenaries range from very cheap, to late game and expensive. To Stardock's credit, there are actually some interesting things they do beyond just having better stats.

The true depth of the system is that many of the ships will have special effects that cannot be acquired elsewhere. These could be like 'reduce all missile damage in the fleet by 30%' and various things to that extent. Other aspects could be getting more money for various actions, expanding ship range, or just having high stats.

The system itself is interesting, if small. The AI seems to not utilise it, which means that gamers can freely grab the best stuff that can be game-breaking or at least make the action much easier. Playing against other players can be great fun as they are limited to only one per type the whole game, meaning there is a rush element to it.