Video Game / Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds

Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds is, depending on who you ask, Age of Empires IN SPACE! or an Age of Empires-like strategy game set in Star Wars Legends where players pick a faction and try to complete the objectives (it even uses the same Game Engine as Age of Empires II). The original game featured the Rebel Alliance, the Galactic Empire, the Royal Naboo Security Forces, the Gungans, the Trade Federation, and the Wookiees. Clone Campaigns, its expansion, included a new Air Cruiser model for all factions, a new type of supply droid, as well as the factions of the Grand Army of the Republic and the Confederacy of Independent Systems (aka, the Clone Army and the Separatists, respectively).

Tropes used in Galactic Battlegrounds

• Achilles' Heel:
  • Taking out the power cores will shut down shields and cripple most buildings. Naturally, power cores have low HP and bombers get bonus damage against them.^note And speaking of bombers, they also get bonus damage against turrets — including, strangely enough, Anti-air turrets.
  • Assault mechs and artillery can dish out long range punishment, but have a minimum firing range in which they can aim. Without proper escort, they have no answer for melee units.
• Actor Allusion: One of the voice clips has one for Samuel L. Jackson even though he's not actually voicing Mace.

  Mace Windu: Banthas are filthy animals. I don't eat filthy animals.

• Agri World: In the Darth Vader campaign, several missions take place on the agri-world of Reytha.
• Anachronism Stew: Playing in Standard mode you can have a battle between the Empire and the Republic despite the fact that they are the same civilization at different points in history, and the same applies to the Trade Federation and Confederacy. You can even get Darth Vader versus Anakin Skywalker.
• Anti-Air: With the addition of air units, anti-air units are added as the counter against them. The game includes infantry, mech, and tower variants. Fortresses are also capable of shooting down air units.
• Artificial Stupidity: the AI is slightly better than in Age of Empires II in some departments, but still leaves a lot to be desired. The AI will frequently throw units at you one by one instead of mustering a proper attack force, units attacking buildings will keep doing so even while being shot to pieces by your troops. Their pathfinding and formation skills are also fairly dubious: ordering a group of units to attack a target only to watch the closest ones move away from it (to form up with the rear-most units, which the AI isn't very good at either) can be especially frustrating.
• Artistic License – Military:
  • Due to the fact that the Clone Campaigns expansion was created prior to the reveal of Revenge of the Sith, the Galactic Republic's clone army lacks several vehicles that were standardized in later media. For instance, their starfighter unit is the LAAT gunship rather than the ARC-70 starfighter.
  • Similarly, the heavy mech unit of the Confederacy is an out-of-scale NR-N99 Tank Droid (which cannot transport droids in the Star Wars universe), rather than a variant of the MTT, which the Trade Federation faction also uses.
• Ascended Extra: The Wookiees, despite not appearing in the movies as a faction (At least not until Revenge of the Sith), have a total of two campaigns of their own in the game, and one of them happens to be the Basic Training campaign.
• Awesome, but Impractical
  • The "grenade trooper", who carries a huge mortar that lobs thermal detonators at the enemy. In practice, though, she is mostly useless, and is most effective against shields and mechanized units, which don't come until Tech Level 3. The Grenade Trooper is otherwise extremely fragile and doesn't do a great deal of damage, and is just as likely to cause friendly fire through splash damage.
  • Sometimes the case with the "pummel", a sci-fi incarnation of the battering ram of old — in a game with Imperial walkers, heavy artillery and bombers. Pummels, at least, are well-defended against ranged attacks and can rip through fortified buildings very quickly - especially if the other side doesn't have the Rotation Bearings upgrade, ensuring that turrets can't defend themselves. Melee attacks, however, will quickly take them down. They are also extremely slow, so they have a tendency to get stuck behind their escorts.
  • Air Cruisers are airborne artillery with long attack range, gargantuan power, and a large amount of hit points and shields. They punish buildings (including outranging most fortress and anti air) and absolutely devastate mech and infantry formations. That said, they are slower than a sleepy Hutt, cost well over 600 food and nova crystals, and require two open population slots to produce. In terms of tactics, Anti Air Turrets and Mobiles (with the proper upgrades, and also careless maneuvering) can outrange and destroy Air Cruisers, and a small squadron of fighters can easily take down an unguarded one. To get the most out of the soaring behemoths, you would otherwise need to sink a lot of resources into fighter escorts to counter those problems, which, if you're not already ahead in the game, will be difficult.
• All There in the Manual: The game itself elaborates somewhat on some events the movies either shown or implied. Likewise, the Prima Official Strategy Guide also elaborates on some of the events in the game (eg, that the Rebel and Imperial factions do indeed possess a maritime naval force and not just a space naval force.)
• Arc Words:
  • Wesa ready to do our part!
  • I have a bad feeling about this... (about 4 taunts dedicated to this one alone)
• Batman Can Breathe in Space: Infantry units on asteroid maps have no problem functioning without special helmets or spacesuits. Handwaved by the presence of terraforming devices on certain maps. Also justified for the Trade Federation and Separatists, whose units are mainly droids and thus don't require oxygen to breathe.
• Beam Spam: Repeater troopers can fire a lot of blaster bolts. Put a whole bunch of repeater troopers in a Fortress, and look forward to the enemy having a really, really hard time getting past it without Cannons.
• Bears Are Bad News: The bursas are basically Naboo's equivalent of giant bears, and tear down the city of Otoh Sancture in less than a minute.
• The Berserker: The Wookiee unique unit is the Berserker, who carries a huge sword in each hand.
• Beware the Quiet Ones / Awakening the Sleeping Giant: Gungan Boss Gallo, distant ancestor of Boss Rugor Nass from Phantom Menace. He led his village without fighting other Bosses, as he hated fighting his fellow gungans... until the evil Boss Rogoe wiped out his village. He then allied with the leader of thieves Marsun (who was disgusted by Rogoe's deed), united the warring Gungan tribes, and destroyed Rogoe's forces, including the Boss himself, and founded Otoh Gunga, the same city we saw in Phantom Menace.
• Book Ends: The first and last campaigns of the original game are both devoted to the Wookiees - one with a young Chewbacca learning the ropes, and one where he comes back with Han to liberate Kashyyyk.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Infantry units and some mechs and aircraft fire red (anti-infantry) lasers, some mechs (mainly destroyers) and the sandcrawler (non-Clone Campaigns) fire blue (anti-vehicle) lasers, Assault Mechs, TIE fighters/Republic Gunships and the Decimator fire green (anti-building?) lasers, bounty hunters and many hero units fire yellow lasers (anti-Jedi?).
  • Just as in Age of Empires II, a Friend-Foe Colours option is available.
• Construct Additional Pylons: while there are some Fixed Force missions, your forces always seem to be able to find the resouces to build a base and the recruits to field an army. In the second rebel mission, Leia Organa start out with a tiny squad deep in Imperial-controlled woods, not that this stops you from building a base and training a small army. Where she gets the recruits from is anyone's guess; either they snuck in after her or the locals are very sympathetic to the Rebel cause.
  • Prefab Shelters are equivalent to houses in Age of Empires that determine the factions population. The Trade Federation don't need to build Shelters since most of their forces are droids.
• Cute Machines: the Naboo air cruiser (the heaviest air unit you can build, meant to terrorize and decimate enemy armies) for some reason looks to some people like something totally not meant to kill anyone, and it's got a red clown nose. To others it looks like a great golden eagle, just as fearsome as it is cute. (The Gungan Air Cruiser compensates for this by being a disgusting, bloody flying blob of... something that totally looks like it's an Eldritch Abomination. Wookiepedia says it's Naboo's version of a pufferfish.)
  • The Royal Naboo worker and the R2 Worker for the Rebellion also are somewhat charming, plus the Naboo droid is slightly less shrill in the sound department.
• Damage Is Fire: even metal buildings burn like they're made out of matches. Also, say good bye to the modest Age of Empires II flames — all SWGB fires look like they're fueled by a mixture of nitro and magnesium. A badly damaged Rebel fortress has a fire large enough to consume several other buildings.
• Dark Action Girl:
  • Sev'rance Tann, Count Dooku's Chiss apprentice and The Dragon as far as the Confederacy is concerned (preceding General Grievous).^note And, amusingly enough, Asajj Ventress.
  • Mahwi Lihnn from the EU novel Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter, who is available as a hero in the scenario editor.
• Distant Prologue: The Gungan campaign, which mostly covers the Battle of Naboo, begins about three thousand years before the events of The Phantom Menace, and dedicates the first three levels to Boss Nass's ancestor, Gallo, who is attempting to unite the Gungan tribes against the tyrant Boss Rogoe.
  • Prolonged Prologue: Said three levels might seem this way to casual gamers that were expecting to start fighting the Trade Federation right away.
• Do Not Run with a Gun: All ranged units, including infantry, artillery, and even starfighters, are incapable of attacking without coming to a complete halt first, even things like fighters and bombers that would conceivably make strafing and bombing runs on the move. Although since this game was made using the Genie engine, this is to be expected.
• Enemy Exchange Program: Like Age of Empires priests and monks, Jedi and Sith Knights can convert infantry units to your side, while Masters, for certain factions with the proper technology, can do the same to buildings and heavy units. ^note Never mind that some of those units may be droids, automated, fighter aircraft, or piloted by multi person crews; the jedi mind tricks are that strong, apparently. Other techs allow you to slow down conversion time to allow you to assassinate the Force user, or just have the targeted unit self terminate upon conversion.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Pekt, one of the antagonists of the Chewbacca Campaign, can be heard vowing revenge on the Wookiees at the end of the Basic Training campaign.
  • The Confederacy Persuader droid makes its first appearance in this game before it’s official debut in Revenge of the Sith.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Clone Campaigns was released to coincide with the release of Attack of the Clones and is particularly notorious for this when it comes to units. The Clone Wars Multimedia Project was yet to released and as a result the developers had to fill out the unit rosters of the Republic and Confederacy with a lot of decidedly unique units that would never be seen in other Clone Wars media again. (For example, a collection of fighter and bomber gunship variants for the Republic, as the fighters that Clones would utilize in later media had yet to be even created.)
• Easter Egg: Many maps have references to other Star Wars events through the use of vision cheats or judicious use of terrain destroying weaponry.
  • In the first few Imperial maps, Mara Jade will be somewhere normally unreachable before leaving the map one way or another.
  • Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon meeting Jar Jar can be found in the second Trade Federation mission (and even has unique scripts that make the units disappear off of the map if you move them correctly).
  • Luke, Yoda, and R2 can be found in a Gungan mission, deep in the swamp.
  • The first mission of the second Wookie campaign has a rather faithful recreation of the escape from Tantooine from The Phantom Menace hiding behind the treeline.
  • The final Republic mission on Coruscant has tons of Legends references hiding in the buildings, including Bossk, the infamous Wookie-hating Trandoshan bounty hunter.
• Enemy Mine + Mook–Face Turn: In the third and final Boss Gallo-related mission in the Gungans campaign, the player has the option of healing the chieftain of a local bursa tribe in order to recruit said tribe and use them as an 11th-Hour Superpower to fight their former employer, Boss Rogoe.
• Expansion Pack: Clone Campaigns adds two new factions and a couple new features.
• Final Solution: Pekt is hired by the Empire to empty Kashyyyk of all Wookiee life, a job he eagerly takes on with a promise to reduce every last Wookies to "a slave or a pelt."
  • The bonus Wookiee mission takes place in Kessel. The Imperials keep the Wookiees there trapped while turning off the air factories to kill them off. Han, Chewie, Luke, and Lando have to turn them back on and eliminate the Imperial forces on the planet.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: If you click on Darth Vader: "I hope, for your sake, that this is important."
  • The Darth Vader campaign treats you as an Imperial commander of sorts. Throughout the missions, Lord Vader will sometimes address you directly.
• Fragile Speedster: Speeder bike scouts are incredibly fast, but also die very, very quickly in combat. Even more the case for the Imperial unique Probe Droid.
  • Fighters in general. Though they can get shield and armor upgrades, an individual one is more or less destroyed if caught within sight of a homing turret or fortress. The king of this is the Rebel Alliance A-Wing, an interceptor craft that moves extremely fast, has longer attack range than usual fighters, but will get smoked in one hit by most things that manage to hit it.
• Game Mod: Expanding Fronts, first released in 2016, expands the game with new factions, units and maps from both the Legends and Disney canons, new features, a new improved AI, balance changes to the vanilla factions and technical optimizations for modern PCs. As of 2023, the mod adds the Zann Consortium, the Geonosians (with the Confederacy redesigned to account for their split), the First Order, the Resistance, the Black Sun, the Imperial Remnant and the Legends New Republic as playable factions.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: To a degree. In the Clone Campaigns expansion, the Republic gets research that allows them to create clone troopers very quickly, while the Confederacy can upgrade their Super Battle Droids to have increased hit points, armor, and damage. While this makes sense in the context of Episode II right the game was made (the clones arrive out of nowhere in large numbers on Geonosis, and the B-2s are shown shrugging off blaster shots) other Star Wars works on the Clone Wars since tend to emphasize the small but elite nature of the Clone units against the massive amounts of droids that the Separatists can field.
  • Similarly, in the Star Wars universe, B-2 Battle Droids are straight upgrades to B-1 Battle Droids, whereas in game, they are the standard infantry of the Confederacy and Trade Federation respectively, and are evenly matched outside of researched upgrades.
• Glass Cannon: Bombers are very fragile but can do a lot of damage if not countered. Artillery and cannons can take out buildings with ease... but can't shoot enemies who are too close and are easily ripped to pieces by mounted troopers or Jedi/Sith.
• Halfway Plot Switch
  • Basic Training Campaign: Colonize Alaris Prime and train a militia to destroy an infestation of Gundarks—> Eliminate the Trade Federation presence on that moon.
  • Gungans Campaign: Boss Gallo and Captain Marsune vs. Boss Rogoe in 3,000 BBY [[Time Skip—>]] Boss Nass vs. Trade Federation forces in 32 BBY.
• Hero of Another Story: Echuu Shen-Jon, who is a supporting character in the Rebel Alliance campaign, is the main protagonist of the expansion's Republic campaign.
• Hijacked by Ganon: The Trade Federation shows up halfway through the Basic Training campaign, having wiped out the Gundarks, and become the villains for the rest of the campaign.
• Hit-and-Run Tactics: Fighter and Bomber squadrons fit the bill. They can ravage ground forces and bases unprepared for them, but mostly can't stand up to sustained anti air fire (especially from turrets or a fortress). As a result, they usually aren't great at holding ground and are best at quickly bypassing ground obstacles, destroying key targets, and retreating to wait for another sortie.
• Horse of a Different Color: Various mounted units use dewbacks, tauntauns, kaadu, robot beetles, these things and, for the Wookiees, what can only be described as dinosaurs.
• Hufflepuff House: The Royal Naboo are the only faction in the game that have no campaign to call their own.
• Justified Tutorial: The Basic Training campaign revolves around a group of Wookiee settlers, led by Chewbacca's father Attichitcuk, who are taught by Qui-Gon Jinn on how to maintain a strong colony on the hostile world of Alaris Prime.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: One of the dialogue phrases of the generic AT-AT commander is "They won't be back for the sequel."
• Lethal Joke Character: The Gungans are an entire faction of this. Not only do their buildings repair automatically ^note Albeit slowly, not only can they build prefab shelters underwater ^note Thus giving them access to more space in certain maps, not only are their frigates stealthed ^note Albeit Useless Useful Stealth, since all frigates, regardless of faction, are stealth-detecting, but still, not only are their medics able to heal more units than the medics of any other civilization,^note Gungan mech units are mounted on the backs of animals and thus organic NOT ONLY DO THEIR TROOPERS HAVE GREATER RANGE THAN THOSE OF ANY OTHER CIVILIZATION ^note To the point where, depending on the enemy's limitations (or bad decisions), they can outrange fortresses and Assault Mechs but they have the most powerful Mechs and Heavy Weapons in the game, AND their elite unit is a mobile shield generator, thus giving their armies extra protection even inside enemy strongholds. A skilled Gungan player will make life hell for a non-Gungan enemy.
  • Their awesomeness will be a little bit limited if the battle takes place on a non-aquatic map, but not by much.^note And whatever you do, do NOT face a Gungan player when "All Techs" is selected. Just don't.
• Limited Sound Effects: for example, all Imperial TIE Fighters have a pilot saying "TIE Fighter reporting", characters having only one stock phrase ("this is Leia Organa, this is Leia Organa, this is Leia Organa, this is Leia Organa) or droid/automated units with one sound clip for select, move, and attack.
• Living Ship: Gungan spaceships.
• MacGuffin: Jedi Holocrons are the equivalent to Age of Empires II's relics.
  • Special mention goes to the Vor'Na'Tu holocron in the Princess Leia campaign. Overlaps with Dismantled MacGuffin later.
• Mage Killer: Bounty hunters, which are specialized to counter Jedi units.
• Magikarp Power: The Royal Naboo is a peaceful civilization and will start out with weak infantry. However as they progress up the Tech Tree, they can gain more powerful units, especially their Air units.
• Mecha-Mooks: Obviously the modus operandi for the Trade Federation and the Confederacy. The Empire also has these for their unique unit, the Dark Trooper.
• Mighty Glacier:
  • Pummels are basically battering rams, and while they can rip through buildings like no-one's business, they move so very slowly. They can't deal with close quarters units as well.
  • Cannons are almost as slow, but make up for it with long range and massive anti-building damage. Alas, most other targets are able to move out of the way before the shot lands.
  • As noted above, Air Cruisers are slow, cumbersome, and expensive, but as the Empire Cruiser captain notes, "unleash hell" upon ground forces and buildings.
• Mythology Gag: The "unit created" sound queue that plays for Imperial Stormtroopers is the exact same sound that played whenever an E-11 blaster, their standard issue weapon, was acquired in Star Wars: Dark Forces.
• Not Me This Time: Otoh Jahih is at war with Otoh Langua because they stole their sacred staff. Otoh Langua says that it's not true, that they did not steal anything. And it is right, the staff was lost in the wilderness.
  • During the first mission of the Basic Training Campaign, a soldier for the Trade Federation blames the destruction of a power core on the local Gundarks. While the Gundarks did damage it earlier on, it was actually Chewbacca and Shoran that destroyed it.
• Not Playing Fair With Resources: Taking a page from Age of Empires II, Hard and Hardest A.I.s apparently have access to off-world shipments. For example, look at a replay of a game from their perspective to reveal resources getting dropped on them right about when they decide to advance to another tech level. This can lead to the unenviable situation against Hardest of getting hassled by Strike Mechs and fighters while you're just reaching Tech Level 2, where there are few effective counters available.
• Power-Up Letdown: Decimators are this for the Confederacy campaign; You'll spend most of the campaign trying to acquire them - one map even has several testing facilitates with crater-riddled wastelands ostensibly caused by the Decimators - but when you actually get them you find that they're effectively much more durable but considerably slower assault mechs with no splash damage and a noticeable charge-up time for their weapon. The two you start with can't even overwhelm the defenders of the first base in your path without significant mech support. You'd do much better to use them as air defense until you can build anti-air units.
• Properly Paranoid: Solo does not trust that Wookie who was all alone in a devastated Wookie village. And with good reason, he was The Mole.
• Recycled In Space: The game is often seen as Age of Empires II Recycled In Space (since it uses that game's engine and general gameplay mechanics), albeit with a few new additions such as flying units, a rudimentary "power" system (buildings without a "power core" in its vicinity builds and conducts research at 1/4 speed), deflector shields (a second, regenerating pool of hit points), and space terrain.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Weebacca.
• Sadist: Pekt is plainly spelled out as one in his DataBank entry. He is described as a cruel monster whose greatest enjoyment in life is torturing other beings. He and his race the Trandoshans join the Empire in enslaving the Wookiees, with his plans to sell them or skin them for pelts.
• Schizo Tech: The Naboo have some of the most high-tech aircraft, sophisticated weapons and vehicles that manage to be both functional and elegant...and their unique unit is the Royal Crusader, a dude on a space horse who whacks people with a polearm. An upgrade gives them energy shields, which means they're using ultra-advanced force fields to make their whacking-people-with-polearms more effective. Mounted Units as a class are the same deal, except they trade in the shield and polearm for a flamethrower.
• Shout-Out: The Stormtrooper will sometimes say he is THX 1138.
• Space Is an Ocean: Space terrain works like any other kind of terrain (except only flying units can use it), just differently textured.
• Space Is Noisy: Of course. This is a Star Wars trope.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Units spawned by cheat codes tend to be excessively brutal. Simon the Killer Ewok is lightning fast, and has shields, regenerating health, and more firepower than a dozen repeater troopers. The Bongo Marauder is a boat unit with roughly the same stats and killing power. Clone Campaigns lets you summon a Victory-class Star Destroyer or a "Blockade Runner" Corellian Corvette, both of which can flatten forests and deal more damage than a regular air cruiser. But the king of excess is easily the Death Star, which is slower than a drunk bantha and has the longest reload interval in the game, but has max health and shields, and can wipe literally everything off the screen in one shot, even normally invulnerable resource crystals and the terrain of the map itself, leaving a featureless flat plain in its wake. You can also summon Decimators from the story mode, but they pale in comparison to the above units.
• Undying Loyalty: Many infantry troops, though the Imperial ones deserve special note, especially post Episode-6 in the Chewbacca campaign.
  • "The Emperor's will be done!" "FOR THE EMPIRE!" "In the Empire's service!"
  • Sometimes overlaps with Sycophantic Servant.
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment: You can let Jar Jar Binks be killed by the Federation robots, or kill him yourself, but then you lose the game.
  • This being a Genie Engine based-game, you can use the scenario editor to get revenge: set up a scenario, place some stuff and follow these directions: 1. Create a trigger. 2. Set it to loop. 3. Set it to create object Jar Jar Binks somewhere nice. 4. Create another trigger. 5. Set it to loop too. 6. Set it to Kill Object Jar Jar Binks. Don't set an area, don't do anything. 7. Test and enjoy watching him die over and over again, perpetually making screams of agony.
• Villain Protagonist: OOM-9 is a Trade Federation battle droid command unit - technically he's just doing his job, but that job just so happens to be the subjugation and destruction of a planet of people. He also shows up again as a straight up Villain in part of the Gungan campaign.
• Watching Troy Burn: Quite a few times in the campaigns, most notably in the first Gungans mission, where Boss Gallo finishes searching for Nerfs to feed his village...just in time for a pack of ravenous bursas to appear and mercilessly tear the entire settlement apart. And all he (and the player) can do is watch from afar.
• You Have Failed Me: In the Empire Campaign, Darth Vader is faced on several occasions in gameplay and story with uppity or incompetent underlings. Guess what happens.
• You Require More Vespene Gas: Much like in Age of Empires there are four resources the player gathers, food, carbon (wood), nova crystals (gold), and ore (stone). This game makes some of the (comparative) research less expensive than it might be in Age of Empires but in exchange for generally higher unit costs.
• Zerg Rush: The Republic gets technology that allows them to rapidly create clone troopers and flood areas with them (they don't cost any less, though).