Galactic Civilizations For Windows

By 1997, OS/2 had clearly lost to Microsoft Windows in the battle for the PC desktop. Stardock began migrating its development efforts to Windows and made a number of small Windows games such as The Corporate Machine. Stardock kept its finger in the game industry pie with projects such as Starcraft: Retribution developed for GT Interactive & Blizzard Entertainment.

Stardock was finally able to revisit Galactic Civilizations in 2001, and it would take an additional two years for the game to be released.

Here’s a mockup for Galactic Civilizations I for Windows:

And this is what it ended up looking like:

As Galactic Civilizations was approaching completion, Atari informed Stardock that Master of Orion 3 would be released near the same time. The two companies cooperated on the release schedule in order for them to not directly compete. Stardock moved its ship date so that Master of Orion 3 could be released first, and axed the Shipyards (ship design feature). In return, every box of Master of Orion 3 came with a coupon promoting the relatively unknown Galactic Civilizations.