Yeah, that's the problem. The dev's themselves have been surprised at sales, because noone knows who it is. If I go onto any online game like CoH or WoW and ask "who here has galciv2", I either get blank looks or (very rarely) someone excited saying "Yeah I'll have that tomorrow/few days/couple weeks!" followed by a VERY long absence from the game
Mention Oblivion, however, and watch those who hate Elder Scrolls prepare for war against those looking forward to the game

In movie terms Oblivion is like a highly anticipated summer blockbuster and galciv2 is more like a beloved cult film, Stardock could have probably made 10 galciv2 like games with the budget of Oblivion.

Oblivion has an audience alot many times bigger than GC2. More audience = more readers = more pages.

I'd partially disagree with you their Fade. I think both games were eagerly anticipated. The marketeers like to push Obliviion more though because as you correctly say, its easier to sell.

I think that the type of gamer who plays TBS games is also the gamer who plays RPGs and real time strategy. People who prefer a little bit more meat in their games than the point and shoot or jump and shoot crowd you find with FPS players etc.

For me the choice not to get Oblivion was really because my machine isn't good enough to run it and I can't afford a new one (I have a AMD 2600 with 512MB RAM and a 9800 Raedon Pro) and I've tired of having to upgrade my machine to play a game!! (Plus I'm still playing thru Morrowind!)

If you took away Oblivion graphics and such, it is a dumbed down console port. MW was longer and more in depth.

Oblivion is not a very long game are. It is about 1/4 the size of MW.

Oblivion does have a better lockpicking and persuasion minigame. But for everything a step forward, a huge step backwards.

It definitely was made for the console gamer. I give it a 8/10 for a fun ADVENTURE game with some RPG elements.
Without all the hype...and living off the francise name..it would be slisshen.

GalCiv2 is also and independant game from a smaller company while Oblivion comes from a widely known gaming company and its a sequal to an already wildy successful game.

Oblivion is great and there are already mods to tweak the game play the way you want it. Frankly while Morrowind was great, Oblivion is just a much better overall experience.

Oh, and Oblivion is 4x as big as morrowind. It's 16 square miles (well its actually more than that due to all the elevation changes. and thats not counting the milage for the plane of oblivion or cave/ruins etc...) On horse back it still takes along time to get from one end to the other...A really really long time (thank goodness for quick travel). This game is mind boggingly huge and DETAILED it's amazing they finished it in four years. The only game environment thats bigger is DaggerFall and Operation Flashpoints island (25 square miles,but not as detailed)in their expansion.

The only thing thats smaller in comparison is the main quest which clocks in at about 40-50 hours where as Morrowinds was about 90 hours. The oblivion main quest however is more detailed from what I can tell and of course there is hundreds if not endless hours of game play outside the main quest of both games. Oblivion will be played for a looooong time.

There's one big difference between Oblivian and GC2 that I'd like to point out. Both games had bugs allright, but GC2 has been patched and updated since it's release. I've seen Frogboy all over the forums looking at the bug report. I appreciate that, although I'm aware that I'm fortunate to be able to play GC2 right off the bat.

On the other hand the developers of Oblivian haven't said jack since it's release. Plus, they outright lied both on the box and at the website, saying the game supported Gforce FX cards, WHICH IT DOES NOT.
I not only couldn't play Oblivian, I couldn't even get that buggy piece of crap to uninstall. Sold my copy and would like to send a galactic plague to Bethesda.

Kudos to Frogboy and Stardock, for not only providing a great game, but for their continued support after they got my money.

Some guy up there said the UI for pc oblivion sucks, the only way to play a mage with many spells is the hot keys. I know the 360 version has them too but they suck also try to precision aim an arrow with the frantic speed that game has with an analog stick.... go ahead try it. the mouse is way better plus with an uber pc the graphics with make you wet your pants. navigating the maps stats items etc. with F1-F4 rocks, the menus on the 360 are to clumsy.

That said I still love GalCiv2 and spend just as much time on it as oblivion ( I like things epic Right now playing huge with very many habitable planets and max comps I have like 49 planets and things are looking rough)

It comes on one DVD.

oblivion ships on 1 DVD.

imo Oblivion is really an awesome game. I was kinda disapointed by Morrowind. the graphic engine was powerful, but the Morrowind province isnt really a beautiful setting to begin with and the atmosphere just wasnt that good. also the storyline was kinda weak imo.

Oblivion on the other hand has a very interesting story and alot of improvements over Morrowind. especially the NPC behaviour is alot better and reminds me of Ultima 7 or Gothic. I have an AMD64 3200+ with 1 Gig RAM and an GF 6800 GT with 256 MB DDR. not a bad system but overally already more than 2 years old and Oblivion runs like a charm on high settings (and looks awesome). of your maxing every detail would probably kill my system, but dont forget that the game engine is supposed to still look awesome in 1-2 years when way better hardware is common.

anyway back to topic.

The german's leading game magazine Gamestar gave GalCiv a crappy 62%.

I guess they played the game for 15 minutes only because I dont know where they came up with the crap they wrote about it. Like:

- low detail ship models (did they notice that they have to add fluff to the base hull models in order to make them look good?)
- weak sound/music (I like the music, and its an Turn Based Strategy Game, what kind of sound do they expect?)
- screwed balance, unfairness (well playing on random maps can turn out to be quiet hard in certain setups, but there are scenarious as well. guess they dont know the meaning of RANDOM when they start a game).
- they complain that during the game there are periods where you aint doing anything but hitting the next turn button (thats probably why they suck so bad instead of micro managing their planets and taxes lol)
- starting locations unfair distributed (see screwed balance, man carebears to not be game testers )
- AI partly acts stupid (they probably didnt play at Intelligent)
- The AI cheats technology (lol, AI only trades very aggressively. trade yourself and you wont get rolled by them, man how dumb can professional testers be?)
- weak campaign (well we didnt buy GC2 to play the campaign until the end of times. metaverse its where its at)

So, Iam really thinking of canceling my subscription to that magazine ( they also gave Spellforce 2 a 91%, but Oblivion only a 90% wtf).

I totally agree with you Anubis.