Galactic Civilizations III
Skip · Multiplayer · 2015
Steam Deck PlayableThe verdict
SKIP IT.
The value isn't there at $29.99.
- Length
- 27.2h
- Value
- $1.10/hr
- Reviews
- 77% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 4 GB of memory, 12 GB of storage. Windows only.
Build a civilization that will stand the test of time in the largest space-based strategy game ever! Choose from dozens of unique races and make a name for yourself across the galaxy through diplomacy, espionage, technological advances, and more.
What drives the score
How to read this
Every input gets a grade, S to D, read from the buyer's side. The score is multiplicative, so an input only counts as raising when it sits near the top of its own scale. Anything with real room left is holding the score back, because that room is the gap to 100. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. The exact weights stay secret.
The value story
May 2019 is where it bottomed out, at $4.50. 95 discounts in the 13 years on record. They run about 66 percent off, roughly 6 weeks apart. Today it is at full price. The last sale was about 2 weeks ago, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 6 weeks.
On value it sits in the top 17 percent of its genre. It is pricier than 97 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 75 percent. Among the games that feel like it, ZEPHON ($15.99, scores 58) beats it on value, while it beats Galactic Civilizations® II: Ultimate Edition ($9.99, scores 38).
None of the 660 Steam-purchase reviews sampled here come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written March 2020 to September 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 35 percent of the 436 reviews written there were positive, against 77 percent overall, and those are 5 percent of everything written about it.
HowLongToBeat players log 27.2 hours as a typical playtime, and completionists log 55, 2.0 times as much.
The drop-off
78% start to <1% rarestNo achievement in this game marks the ending, so there is no finish rate. The curve runs from the most-unlocked achievement to the rarest, and its shape is where players stop. Steam global achievements
Players
161 players at peak in the last day.
The chart appears once this game has been counted more than once.Player counts via SteamSpy.
What players say
It's not much of a strategy game since the only strategy available is "prepare for war". Want to build a peaceful empire? prepare for war. Want to build a warring empire? prepare for war.
I like the consistency, the art, and the fact that is is turn-based. I am an old man (51), been playing mostly RTS games for most of my life. I am not big on fast-paced FPS stuff because I can never manage the controls (neither keyboard NOR controllers), most games do NOT have auto-targeting so I get frustrated and give up after 10 minutes tops. So, a game like Gal Civ (and others like Total Annihilation and Supreme...
The game snowballs. One civ gets ahead and conquers everything. I make that civ me by finding the best path to plantary invasion. I make my citizens generals and send out invasion fleets with a few escorts. The ai doesn't build a navy at all so I clear out the defense of the ai's capital and surrounding planets and conquer with no opposition to my invasion fleets. Now I am ahead and conquering everything. The...
Player reviews from Steam: the most helpful all-time, plus the newest that clear the same quality bar, with the hours each player had put in when they wrote it. The mix of Recommended and Not recommended follows the game's Steam ratio. Rotates daily. Opinions are theirs.
Cite this score
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Galactic Civilizations III scores 46/100 on the BANG Score (a skip). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/226860/galactic-civilizations-iiiThe BANG Score is one number for value, 0 to 100: price against how it reviews and how long it was built to be. It answers the money question and stops there; whether the game is for you is still your call.
Reviews set the ceiling and price moves you inside it, so a cheap game that reviews badly cannot climb. Ratings from few reviewers are shrunk toward the middle, so 100 percent from nine people does not outrank 96 percent from ninety thousand. Length comes from HowLongToBeat where it can be matched, measured against a per-genre floor so a five-hour narrative game is judged against other narrative games rather than against a sixty-hour RPG. Where no verified length exists the score says so and carries a dock, because the biggest input is then a guess. The full method, including where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Sep 13, price as of Sep 24.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.