I really enjoy colony management at first. It's especially fun on the first couple worlds, and then it just becomes a tedious chore. I have never felt that there were ENOUGH tiles on the planets. I would much rather have MORE tiles on FEWER planets, than have to build the same crap over and over as you said. It's always the same basic buildings. I would agree that there is a lot of artificial choice. The farm, hospital, and market are really quite necessary, unless the planet is so tiny as to be useless. Personally, I hate lvl 5 and below planets, if I see one, the only reason I will colonize it is because I don't want someone else to. I would rather perform a "core detonation" and create an asteroid field if I could.

I kinda feel like any planet you are actually going to colonize should have at least 6 tiles, and even then, certain changes could make a big difference. I like your idea of regarding teraforming. I wouldn't mind if this was either VERY expensive, or VERY slow. It should be available early in the game however, since even though the Aceans had something similar in GalCiv2 (an improvement that took one tile, but created 5 new usable tiles), the technology was too advanced (too late in the game) to be of any real strategic importance. Perhaps something like a terraforming station that costs 25 maintenance, and takes 100 turns to improve 10% planet quality (and/or improves only the adjacent tiles?). This way you could build a couple to help speed up terraforming efforts on a planet you really want to improve and include research technologies (+10% "performance", -10 "cost", etc).

Continuing on the subject of tile improvements, I would like to see something like the GDI Power Plant in the C&C Tiberian sun series. What I mean is a tile improvement with it's own improvements. The GDI Power Plant had expansion for an additional 3 turbines to increase power. See image: http://i.imgur.com/fi5l7r8.jpg

These improvements could be expensive to keep things a little more balanced if need be, but would be VERY useful on smaller planets, and would also make economic specialization more viable and rewarding, since you could improve your homeworld and make it stronger, without having to invade other systems to keep up in power. You could BUY your way with expensive improvements instead of using cheap slave labor through galactic conquest. 

I think that improvements for production and research facilities could be very useful, they could even be part of a different research branch, that would only be selected by someone who was perusing a fewer planet strategy, and had the money to invest in the more expensive upgrades. They could also be among the first to be destroyed using planetary invasion tactics, so that war-mongering AIs don't end up too powerful after taking a single planet. Other tile improvements could have modules as well. Farms (greenhouse & hydroponic modules?), Entertainment centers (football stadium, movie center, gladiator arena, etc), Embacy (impressive marble floors, expensive artwork, trophy case with mounted heads) as to improve the amount of usefulness on smaller planets, or to really stack up on bonuses (these modules would also carry a heavy premium). 

This would allow for more "toys" on each planet as you say, which would be nice, as well as offer new strategies which would make for a more interesting game. Something else I would be interested in is a large "map" of all my available build spaces across all worlds. That way I could plan my build que across all planets at once, since I often know WHAT I want, but really don't care where it's made (after a certain point). I would like to see another option than just going to each planetary menu.

This is difficult to address since as you say, combat hasn't been implemented yet, and I don't know what to expect. There is so much POTENTIAL with this game to have excellent combat, since it has the ship creator, however, I feel combat will be a POOR EXAMPLE of what it could have been. I would like to see something similar to the concept behind Master of Tactics.

MOT Example: http://www.strategycore.co.uk/forums/topic/10694-making-strategy-games-more-strategic/

where you can select which ships to attack with, which weapons to fire, which ship(s) to target, and what strategies to use (such as flanking behind an enemy for greater damage). This would be AWESOME in conjunction with the ship creator, since you could add point defense to the rear of a ship to counter missile attacks while attempting to flee, forward facing shields to protect against head-on laser attacks, and armor to the sides to protect against quick flying fighters with mass drivers.

Regardless of what tactical system is put into play, I feel it would be a SHAME to waste all the effort put into the wonderful ship creator they have built by not making the two interconnected (instead of just X amount of lasers, and Y amount of shields). The actual ship design should play a key role.

A few other tactical ideas I have been thinking about recently.... 

I would like to see some lvl of tactics on the grid screen before battles as well. I'm not familiar with the GC cannon, but I think that the ability to cloak ships would be awesome. Cloaked ships could be detected (by thermal imaging), with advanced sensors on ships and spacestations (I like the idea of having to avoid space-stations). You wouldn't be able to fire, and you would have to shut down your reactor and run on (expensive and heavy) batteries using low-heat engines for movement. Lets say one engine movement per battery for example. Due to the amount of thermal heat by 500million+ people, large amounts of troops in a transport or colony module would be out of the question, but small strike teams would be fine. 

Another idea for those crappy lvl 5 and under planets would be as military outposts. I would find them much more useful if I could put a beam/flak/missle cannon on these planets that could fire anywhere within say 4 spaces, and destroy most any SINGLE ship in one hit that wasn't protected (by shields, armor, point defense). They could also have a training station on them, where you could bring troops to train, which would increase their soldering ability (by say +10%). Other military ideas... ship repair facility. You could bring ships to the planet to be repaired.

The smaller planets (yes I hate them!) could also be used for other strategies as well. Lets say you could add a cargo station that trade ships could travel to, to pick up goods, which would cut down on the time it takes to make deliveries (closer to trading planets). You could set up mineral and heat extractors that slowly destroy the planet but generate revenue. Build experimental research labs that perform dangerous tests that might destroy the planet, or unlock a new technology 50% faster.

I believe that the research tree is "boring" because of the lack of strategy. It would almost do just as well to have 6 buttons (Economics, war, trade, influence, Diplomacy, Research) and get rid of all the techno-bable all together. Each research "block" would improve that category by 5%. No new improvements or "technologies." The funny thing is, the game would pretty much be exactly the same, which just goes to show how bad the tech tree really is. 

It desperately needs branching in as many of these categories as possible. Economics should branch into (trade, tourism, entertainment), Diplomacy should branch out (negotiations, barter). The outpost I mentioned earlier could be part of Galactic Conquest, and weapons could focus on speed, range, ammo size, and damage. Research and influence might remain with a single tree but have other interesting characteristics. Maybe send "performers" to other worlds for influence in their domain, send out research ships to investigate wormholes and nebula's, etc. 

I would just like to see more specialization in general, and more rewards for those specializations. 

I don't expect a whole lot more than what we have seen, and I certainly don't expect any of my requests, but there is still a LOT of time left. Not to mention several expansions. It's WAY too early to give up on the game. It's only half way done. Only time will tell what improvements GalCiv3 will actually offer, hopefully a lot more than what we have seen so far!

Well written summary of what bothers me currently with Gal Civ 3, kestlstw. I do agree that it ist too early to judge combat but my biggest fear is, that it will be the same old "rock, paper, scissors" system without any real choices, other than defense and weapon type. I hope I will be proven wrong in december.

Another thing i couldn't quite put my finger on were the tech trees and the "choices" they offered or rather did not offer. It currently feels like you are reseaching tiny bonuses with every tech and very few offer meaningfull choices that feel impactfull. I am all for fewer techs per race but more specialised techs and more mutually exclusive ones. And I would love to see the different races excelling in different ways of combat. some have more specialisations for carriers, others might have better shields and more powerfull beam weapons etc.

I hope some of theese concerns are at least considered by the devs, as in my opinion the game feels a bit shallow at the moment.

The thing is that most of the race specific buildings and techs feel very generic. Often they just give a bonus to production, culture... or provide adjacency bonuses. And even the "wonders" like the Tech Capital just give you more research and that's it.

I know it is not easy to make the races feel and play different (Sword of the Stars did a decent job with that imo), but at the moment all races feel a bit too alike, at least that is my impression. That's why I am hoping for special weapons and modules for each race ones combat is fully implemented and would encourage the devs to try more unique techs, bonuses and buildings, while we are still in Beta.

One thing I do agree with lets set the minimum planet size up to 6, planets with less than 6 Hexes on them do feel like a waste of time to build on. That should be an easy tweak.

I have to agree with Eco here. The game is supposed to be like GC II but more of it. Rock/Paper/Scissors works and worked well, this will never be a TC game so why reinvent the wheel?

I like colony management and the tech tree needs an adjustment on pacing, especially on HUGE maps. One way to remove your tedium is to set you galaxy to what I enjoy, HUGE maps, tight clusters uncommon habitable planets. You can actually play 70 turns and NOT find a planet to colonize. It makes finding one, ANY one more of a treat and you agonize over how to specialize it 

Terra forming is fine as it is with the current tile system. Asking for a change like mentioned would not be feasible at this stage of beta. It could be an expansion though. Personally I want to see more diplomacy interchange with Civs either requesting, threatening or begging for anything, techs/cash/help/ships and occasionally dropping in to give me more of my favorite snarky comments and such. 

I agree. I have also posted about this before. I really have no problem with the adjacency bonus per se. It is not something that is outright bad. But it is not something that ads to the game. It really does not give u meaningful choices. There is, more or less, only one way to build your planets. A strategy game really needs to have choices.

And then there is the fact that to play it optimally. One has to construct the appropriate production building (labs, factories och economy-buildings) on most of the tiles until population start to reach the current cap. Then, one by one I have to replace the production building with a farm since population is more important for the actual output (up to the optimum level).

Yes, I think they have said in multiple streams that they are going to work with micromanagement and I do hope so. THe micromanagement of starbases in gal civ 2 was my major issue with that game.

Sincerely

/N

I too like the tile adjacency bonuses, although I feel it's something else that could benefit from better terraforming, larger planet sizes, or the need for less redundancy on planets. As for your expectations of the game, it's called Galactic Civilizations 3, not GalCiv2 HD. While I too am very impressed with the graphics, multiplayer, and the small improvements that they have made, a lot of the core problems with Galactic Civilizations 2 are coming back to light for veteran players. The things that really made galactic civilizations quite tedious and boring after a while. We have all payed to play the alpha/beta and have come here to the forum, in hopes of shining a bit of light on these dark areas of the game.

The technology tree and ship combat are probably the two biggest factors. What bothers me is that all of the weapons, ship designs, tile improvements, and technologies to accomplish everything people are discussing have already been made. Very few new technologies would need to be made in order to allow branching in all core game strategies (research, influence, conquest, trade, etc), and all of the weapons and ship design mechanics are already in place to make an awesome ship combat system, it's just a matter of organization, mechanics, and balancing. Granted, I'm certain it would be a lot of work, but if you already have the assets and a large group of vocal testers, I feel like investing some time in a better tech tree could really improve the game experience, and since ship combat is going to be added, why not do it right?

We have all played new games that destroyed the core mechanics of the original and integrated terrible ideas into the game play, launched with a completely broken AI, or simply added cheap gimmicks in place of new content, so I'm very thankful that Stardock is staying true to the original. Everything that was done right in Galiciv2 is being done right in Galciv3, but the things that were done wrong are also being repeated. A GalCiv with improved graphics and minor improvements is still a wonderful addition to anyone's game library, these types of suggestions are simply part of an open alpha/beta testing group. Hopefully this makes a difference in the end-game product, and user feedback is actually able to improve on these issues. We are simply chasing the idea of a more perfect GalCiv, but the developers are the ones that have to actually build, implement, and balance it all.

This is exactly why I posted.  It seems most players love GalCiv2 and just want GalCiv2 64 bit edition which is what 3 seems to be heading toward to me.  

I liked GalCiv2 but it had its problems and I bought 3 so I could input my thoughts and as is the case try to get the devs to address the problems of 2 if they are repeated in 3.  

Larsenex I like huge games with common habitable planets, huge battle fleets in massive interstellar wars and awesome technological improvements which means I get to the tedium of micromanagement fairly quickly and end up with half hour turns more often than not mid game just to be sure I don't have empty tiles on half my planets.  If the game does end up with truly phenomenal governors that would eliminate the issue especially if they are customizable.  However I think that colony management could be improved and simplified and that would greatly improve my enjoyment of the game.  Like I said in my original post, in theory adjacency bonuses are great but in practice they are kinda meh.  Another playstyle choice, I don't like to overly specialize.  If I don't build up my military fast enough early game and loose my major research planet and severely hampered simply because I started next to a militaristic player or AI so I put a bit of manufacturing, research and economy on all my planets.  The adjacency bonuses are only really useful if you specialize every planet and then you still need some luck in what you find.

I've made this argument before but here I go again.  There is no reason population has the be the main driver of everything and there is no reason not to use all of a planet like Mars.  If I could turn Mars into a forge world covered in robotic factories, I would specialize every planet without worrying about loosing a specialized planet.  Its not like Mars has actual habitable zones that people are restricted to, it needs domes for people but the entire world is usable land for buildings.  If its terraformed that changes but as a dead desert world why can't I turn it into a huge factory or military world and leave my living worlds for high populations, economics and research?  Yes it changes the dynamics of the game but I would think it would improve it for the better.  It gives you the opportunity to really use all those specialist buildings and could speed up some of the slow parts of the game to get to the good parts.  This would also greatly improve my enjoyment of the game.  

Just let me use all the usable land a planet instead of the current you can only use these tiles because balance but really is an artificial restriction.  Its not like I'm even saying the robot factories have to be intelligent, they still need a person to oversee them, to repair them and to direct them just not a massive population to do so.  They might still need a million people to use them but more people doesn't increase their production like farms do now.  That looks pretty balanced to me and turns small planets into useful planets.  I would even say building farms on such planets would be more expensive since you do need some people for it.  The basic functionality is already in the game farms are already independent from population, just make factories the same but with the requirement for some X minimum population for them to function and leave research, economy and military as population based.

Derracs I like your idea about improvements to buildings and think that could resolve part of my issue with the tile system.  Really think breaking up the tiles into smaller tiles would be the easiest way to do it but that would mainly add more micromanagement later in the game but I think it could work.  I would say not building additions to tiles but specializing them.  I've found 3 specialized tiles together generally give enough bonus to at least be worthwhile one a planet.  Reducing that to 2 would free up the space to use some of those specialist buildings or the military buildings that always seem to fall by the wayside.  For the people that specialize every planet just more specialization and bigger bonuses.

Regarding combat, I had forgotten about carriers and honestly I haven't looked too closely at the support modules since I think the first one are just bigger rock, paper or scissors.  I will have to look at those again as that might be enough to make combat interesting in GalCiv3.  I'm not asking for tactical combat, that was never an option for GalCiv but rock, paper, scissors while I works is boring and not really much of a choice.  I'm just asking for an interesting choice here and it would make the combat viewer more interesting.

Just realized that my wanting factories to be independent from population and worlds like Mars being fully usable might be a modable possibility.  Not sure what the limits of modding are at the moment but it does seem like the game is being designed to allow a lot of freedom.  Anyone know if that would be possible?

I have to disagree with your questioning of having planets of different usability.  I think your example was Mars, as in, why can't all tiles on mars be used for factories even though they aren't suitable for life.  Part of the fun of GC is discovering different planets, most not great, but occasionally an awesome one.  Your idea would remove that whole aspect of the game, and make most planets the same.  I think that (from a story point of view) the point of the planet quality system in GC is that Mars isn't just a class 4 planet for life sustaining building, but it's a class 4 in all respects, science, manufacturing and tourism too.  For whatever reason (dust storms, unstable tectonic activity, volcanic activity) low quality planets aren't good to build anything on, until you improve areas of the planet through terraforming one small area (tile) at a time.  To just open all tiles of every planet for building would ruin a major part of the game.

but even a class 4 can eventually be upgraded to be pretty good.  the solution is, don't colonize them.  Where to send your colony ships is part of the strategy of the early game.  do you colonize that class 4 next door, or hang on to your colony ship in the hopes that something better pops up.  

Part of it depends on how you play too, I like to have habitable planets pretty rare, so even a class 4 could be a valuable find, especially if it has strategic value.  If you have plentiful habitable planets, then the class 4's may seem more useless.

I see class 4's as a tundra tile in Civ.  You could put a city there, but probably wouldn't want to.  But you can't have all good colony areas, there has to be bad as well.

That's just the way GC works, if you want those gameplay elements, check out Distant Worlds, in that game, you can mine pretty much anything.