Greetings!First off, welcome to the Galactic Civilizations III Steam forums! We are so glad you're here! Before you post please read this as I'll try to answer some of the common topics that come up here.#1 $99!? For the Founder Edlite Edition?!Yes. The idea is to let GalCiv fans who are interested in the long-term success of GalCiv III. The Founder's Elite edition gives you:
The idea being a bit like some recent games that have come out that have let you do the same thing which can be convenient for those who just want to sit down and always have "everything".#2 Why not have a seperate option for those who don't want all that?When the BETA arrives, the Founder Elite version will go away entirely and have the regular version. We actually had this on GalCiv3.com where the standard edition was only $40. The regular version with early access will be discounted over the final price as a thank you to those willing to put up with Beta bugs.However, the ALPHA is a very different animal. It sucks. It's not fun. It's ugly. And for that reason, we decided that it made more sense to only share it with those who are looking to be with us for the long haul and thus looking at the long-term.By the time the BETA hits, the game should suck a lot less and be less ugly.#3 Why have an Alpha at all?The big reason for the public alpha is the same reason I had a public alpha back in 1993 for the original OS/2 verrsion of GalCiv (back when I was in college). Alpha access is early enough where we can experiment with new ideas that we may subsequently throw out. The downside is that it's a real sausage factory. People always imagine game designs being set in stone. But they're not. Having our most dedicated players sharing their ideas and thoughts early in the process can be helpful. Starbases in GalCiv came from the beta community (for example).#4 Why 64-bit only?We are looking for GalCiv III to be able to be enhanced and expanded on for a very very long time. GalCiv II was 32-bit and came out in 2006. By 2009, we could no longer add more stuff to it because we were out of RAM (all those ship parts for ship design and having thousands of unique planets gets memory intensive). 64-bit is cutting edge today but in 2021, it's going to be pretty passe. Having the base game be set up for 64-bit and DirectX 10/11/12 means we can do major updates to the game without having to start over.Anyway, hope that helps! I'll be around!
In the Steam forums you mentioned this
"Yea, in fact custom races will be more important this time than in GalCiv II because down the line, when people are playing on the insane size galaxies, playing against your own custom races is the only way you'll have enough opponents to fill up that galaxy."
How many players are we talking about on insane size galaxies?
It's more of a theoretical right now. I think that'll come from the feedback. Personally, I could imagine 100+ civs in a large enough galaxy.
Any idea how often the alpha will be updated for the player community? Are we talking monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly... or is this it until the beta?
Will there be options to not load in certain DLC when it comes out? A management system to turn it off (some but not all), when I want to alter my play experience.
Heck, I'm just happy that my PC will be able to run the game.
Is there any consideration being given to crewed ships (maybe just with larger classes) with skills/perks reminiscent of SoaSE? Also, in regards to multiplayer, what do you perceive to be the upper limits on human-controlled player numbers and map sizes?
Thanks in advance, and great work so far!
So many civilizations to conquer I mean with which to have diplomatic and trade relationships with, and not all about taking their planets by influence.
Speaking of conquest by influence, one of the things that bothered me a little in GC2 was no matter if the planet was colonized by me, it defected to me, I invaded it or bought it, there was no difference. Any plans on making this different in GC3?
100+ civs (along with the galaxy size needed to support that) being even theoretically possible sounds rather incredible. Some of that has to be down to going all in with the 64-bit support I would think.
I would also be interested to hear about this.
Frogboy has posted a tentative schedule
https://forums.galciv3.com/452913/page/1/
==============
Here's my take on it
You have to be realistic as to the trade off between
New features/tweaking/testing/time
Functionally it's an alpha. But it's still available to a lot of people. So you can't just roll out patches like you would internally. If your code crashes and melts your face off internally, that's ok, but to external players, that's not that cool. So there's still some semblance of 'hey lets at least do a minimal passthrough testing before giving it out' thing between patches. So you can't functinally roll out patches reallly quickly without sacrificing the testing aspect.
Rolling out patches quickly also makes it feel like you're on a treadmill from a development perspective. Wanting to do nly small changes rather than addressing large sweeping issues that might take a month of planning and dev work.
Thus I think realistically it makes sense to see large patches happen maybe 1-1.5 months. Then hotfixes in between to address critical face melting problems.
-----
I think it would be nice for Stardock to have an "Experimental" beta channel. A place where they can roll out new features for users to test for those who want to be on the 'cutting edge'. But with the understanding that save games could be incompatible, hardware issues could arise, etc. I realize it seems like we're doing that right now, but again, it's important to realize that even as an alpha customers do have an expectation of the game not exploding when you hit Start.
Wow, that will be so cool! I can imagine that pretty darn well. Looking forward to the monthly updates.
Hi everybody.
It's been more than 20 years since i first played MASTER OF ORION. Having spent hundreds of hours on that game as a kid i had been wondering for a long time when a worthy successor would arrive....
...Until I played GALCIV2....
Congratulations to Stardock for bringing us GALCIV3 and although i'm not fond of alphas or betas, i can't wait until i get my hands on the finalised version of the game .
omg! one of the best franchise games ever!
i bought gal civ 3 elite founders edition on steam
and now?? where i put my planet name?
thanks stardock!!!
So awesome.
For now, I'll settle for an awesome base game (equivalent at least to Twilight of the Vampires... I mean, of the Arnor + 1).
That would just be.... i CAN'T WAIT FOR THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What does +N levels to improvement type Y do? I can see a little number up in the corner of the improvement types that changes depending on what kinds of bonuses to the correct improvement type are available, but I don't see any change in the actual bonus provided.
Also, is there a way to turn off that stupid beeping noise at the end of the turn?
Hurray! Do I get to name my star now or later?
Later (aka Wednesday).
near 50 civilizations are great for the game... with new custom races options. of course!
From the info you've given on the forums, I see about 7 major races in the game for initial release.
TerranAltarianDrenginIridium
YorKrynnThalan
What other races are expected to make the initial release, and are we going to see all these races in the beta at some point?
From the Community Q&A #1 -- Answered! thread:
I just want to say I did not hesitate to cough up my hard earned money because in my humble opinion it is actually good value for money. A $100 game that you spend 100s of hours playing is much better value than a $5 you only play once.
Now I can't wait for the finished game
Wow... Brad, you are awesome.
That blew my mind. I cannot wait to play these large, LARGE games!
I think if you wanted to do 100+ civs in a super large galaxy than it would be cool if you were to start off on your planet with just maybe managing the land and people, than 'evolve' into space in a couple turns. Be limited to just your solar system for like a handful of turns(enough to build a colony and survey ship), than 'evolve' into being able to go to other solar systems like the game is currently with the tech tree at 'expansion.' Maybe use the other two tech levels as different forms of 'evolution' for expanding and conquering more effortlessly or make it more organized when you have 100+ civs and a super large galaxy. Hope this makes sense Frogboy. (PS. I guess I'm getting this from games like Spore)
Burba - that's interesting, but that's an entirely different model for a game than GC3.
At some time in the (far) future, Game Developers are going to come together and form a consortium that handles combining different game types, so you can have something like a 4X with RTS combat, Spore-like planetary evolution, "spy" missions that play like Thief, etc. All in a persistent universe like Eve Online.
But I'm not holding my breath, because the amount of work to do that is staggering.
As we've talked about in another thread, one of the benefits of a 64-bit OS and fully 64-bit aware application is that there are no effective limits. You're limited only by how much RAM you can stuff in your box - GC3 will be able to allocate ridiculous amounts of space to hold it's galaxy and units.
The consequence is that I can easily see GC3 being playable until 2030 or beyond, where you have a desktop system with 1TB of RAM and 100-core processors.
Of course, that means you could take a year to finish a single game.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
