Galactic Era Board Game: Solo Review - 4X Space Exploration/Battles/Conquest tabletop game

Today I'm reviewing Galactic Era, a 4X sci-fi board game game of space exploration and domination. It has technology research, exploration, epic space battles, and it also brings its own twists to the 4X genre, with a light/dark era mechanism, as well a deterministic battles and fog of war.
This review focuses exclusively on the solo mode of the game.
Disclaimer: A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for this review.
Solo gameplay walkthrough by Galactic Era designer Channing Jones: • Solo Variant - Playthr...
00:00: Intro
00:52 First impressions
02:22 Gameplay
05:00 Solo gameplay
05:47 Review: The Good
10:20 Review: The Bad
12:59 Should you get Galactic Era as an exclusively solo gamer?
13:53 Conclusion
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music:
Approaching Mars by Arthur Vyncke | / arthurvost
Music promoted by www.free-stock...
Creative Commons / Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)
creativecommon...
2020 (Quarantine) by Mike Leite | / mikeleite
Music promoted by www.free-stock...
Creative Commons / Attribution 3.0 Unported License (CC BY 3.0)
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Space Ambience by Alexander Nakarada | www.serpentsou...
Music promoted by www.free-stock...
Creative Commons / Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
creativecommon...
Polar Station by Glitch | / glitch
Music promoted by www.free-stock...
Creative Commons / Attribution 3.0 Unported License (CC BY 3.0)
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[@wardenakfiles]

Great review BTW. Thanks!

[@peterevensen]

Have you played Gaia Project solo? How would you compare that to this? There is no eXterminate there, so it isn’t really 4X, but there seems to be some overlap.

[@meepleshelter]

Unfortunately I haven't had the chance to try Gaia project yet, so I can't compare them easily. I'd say the lack of spaceship battles in Gaia would make it significantly different from this and other 4x games. I also read that there isn't any exploration in Gaia project, as the map is entirely known to you from the beginning (while in this game you have to explore to discover resource/bonus chips). But the themes (space conquest, technology trees, multiple factions,...) and overall gameplay aspects seem very similar indeed!

[@wardenakfiles]

Gaja is completely different game. Gaja is more of a heavy euro with galactic theme. Gaja is not 4x game. There is no exploration. No fighting, no trading. You get a goal for each round and you trying to achieve that along the way. Basically you can not compare these two games. And to be 100% honest I sold Gaja and got Age of Innovation instead. Better game, better visually and a lot meatier.