Edit 12/21/14
Since this thread has gotten more attention than I expected and has been revived several times I thought I should update with my thoughts on how the game has progressed.
When I preordered this game I was hoping for improvements to the gameplay of GalCiv2 not just GalCiv2 with larger maps which is what it seems to be at this point but I did pay to get into the beta and give feedback so here goes. Edit: When I say this I'm not saying there aren't any improvements to 3 over 2 just that it plays very similarly and has the same feel. This can be seen as good and bad, my issue is that while there are a lot of improvements the problems as I see them are still intact.
General game play issues:
Colony management, while I like the bonus tile/adjacency system in theory it doesn't really work well in practice. I tend to build the same things on every planet and most of the specialty buildings fall by the wayside with few exceptions that I build on large worlds. Why even bother with colony management beyond using the production wheel for optimization. The placement of tiles on most worlds aren't very good for optimization anyway so in practice it just doesn't work well and doesn't end up giving the player a meaningful choice. Edit: This has improved since I first posted, diminishing returns on population contribution to production means building farms is an actual choice now and brings the adjacency system into clearer focus. Regarding unique improvements, I'm not sure if I missed the global bonuses from things like the Galactic Showcase and Entertainment Capital but I think all unique builds should act like that. I know the Hyperion Shrinker's tool tip says that you have more space on ships built from that planet. This makes no sense as you can't really use that. The Hyperion Logistics building while useful can cause problems when merging fleets with ships that are build on other planets. Personally I prefer my fleets to be fairly uniform so I know what they can take on.
I've participated in a few discussions about aspects of this and most players in the beta like the system but it completely breaks my enjoyment of the game for me that I can't build all of my toys on all of my worlds and that huge populations are required. One of those discussions I mentioned earlier was about building farms not being fun, I say this because its a false choice, because you have to have that huge population to be productive. Edit: Addressed.
Combat: I know combat isn't in the game yet but that I can't control my ships in combat will always bother me. That combat is effectively rock, paper, scissors further bothers me. At least give me something that gives me a tactical choice in the resolution of combat. Like shields and armor are effective against all weapon types but with point defense tech I can just my guns and lasers against missiles too but missiles fire from further out and guns are laid out in devastating broadsides and lasers are more effective point defense weapons. Something more than, my opponent is using missile/PD ships so I'll build laser/PD ships. This is another game breaker for me. Edit: This seems to have been addressed but I haven't really tried it out much as my attempts to play the Yor didn't work out well and my games playing the Iridium since Beta 2 have been pretty peaceful. I tend to play live and let live but once someone declares war on my I destroy them as I tend to enjoy the building aspect of the game and everyone is too nice while diplomacy is being tested. Not a complaint, observation on part of the testing process.
Research: While I appreciate a large tech tree the way it is implemented at this stage is just boring. If I could queue up research jumping from tree to tree it would be tolerable but most things are just an incremental bonuses and I never get excited about getting a new tech. There are a few things that completely kill it for me, that I have to research each and every treaty when I researched a universal translator after I encountered other races drives me nuts. All of the races in GalCiv have a very similar view of the universe this just makes no sense. I could see it if different races implemented treaties differently but its all the same. Edit: This is much the same, I appreciate that each race has some special stuff and there are some things moved around it play much the same and I'd like a bit more creativity if possible.
Terraforming: That planets are improved for life one tile at a time makes no sense and just bugs the crap out of me. Just put terraforming as a single tech that allows you to build a building that slowly improves the planet to be earthlike and adds usable terrain in increments. Or just scrap the whole tile system and allow terraformers to make the planet more habitable allowing higher populations. Edit: Still the same but can be modded later.
Multiplayer:
There are 2 issues I see for multiplayer, the first is asynchronous turns. That player 1 has to finish his turn before player 2 can go just makes the game take that much longer to play and most people won't sit staring intently at the screen for their turn to start will just make it worse. Edit: I haven't had a chance to play multiplayer yet but I can accept simultaneous planning and sequential execution.
Second is micromanagement. That periodically throughout the game you will unlock new tiles and buildings that you will have to go to every planet to build then when it finishes build what you want there will further slow down the game. If Stardock creates truly outstanding governors that won't be much of an issue but I have yet to see an AI I trust to build the colony I want built. Edit: Pretty much the same, worse with the Yor.
I'm pretty much done already, the game frustrates me more than I enjoy it and it seems most players in the beta like the game as it is or prefer the direction its heading. I don't expect this rant to change much if anything in the game design as most players seem to like where the game is going but at this point I may just wait for Stardock to reboot the franchise before buying another GalCiv game. Edit: The ability to mod just about anything, that things are still being implemented and feedback does seem to be listened to have kept me paying attention.
Thanks.
I understand that certain planets don't make it easy to terraform. On these huge maps though, an option to be able to terraform would be great....even if it means through the whole play-through of massive universes, just a handful can be done due to the time constraints and resources needed. It would add to the decisions and strategy for placement.
Rare number of planets inhabitable.
Small number of planets inhabitable after terraforming only. Limited to class 4 maybe.
Many planets uninhabitable.
So no effect in the starting rush, but mid game decisions can be made about new worlds to colonize. But, I repeat with a huge undertaking of time/ resources possibly.
But only other small gripe re-terraforming is, why can't we choose out starting base position on a planet? Surely with our Tech/ survey ability we could decide the best place instead of random.....to make best use of the adjacency bonuses. This is a strategic game after all.
Just my thoughts.
I'm sorry but adjacency bonuses add a great deal to colony management, and are one of those 'why didn't I think of this before' game improvements. But if you are smart about the layout, you reap a benefit. Big colony management improvement IMO.
What I have experienced so far is that planetary specialization is the way to go. I.e. one either goes full factory, full research or full economy. What than happens is that I place only (apart for necessary infrastructure like hospital, approval center etc) factories (if I want a production planet). So what does adjacency bonus then ad? I have the impression that it is not really much to think about. Put buildings with high level adjacency bonus in the center and building with lower level of adjacency bonus around it.
The game doesn't force you to lay out your planets a certain way, you still have full control.
Oh, i'm very well aware of the fact that I can place buildings in any way I want and that the game does not force me to a certain layout. But if I want to have the highest planetary output as possible (and I cant see why I would want anything else?) I cant see how adjacency bonus gives me meaningful choices? And that is want I have against it thus far. Can you give me an example of when it really provide a meaningful choice?
Sincerely
/N
I'd pretty much agree with the OP. The game as it stands is dead boring. I haven't made it completely through a single game yet and doubt if I will. By spamming minimalized colony ships (ie- a colonization module on a frame (no engine, no life support) I was able to take control of over half of a huge spiral map by turn 100. That part of the game was relatively fun, but after that it's just been a grind. Same build order on every planet, don't even bother checking what techs do anymore- just take the next cheapest one, after colonizing every colonizable planet on the map I switched from colony ship spam to minimalized constructor spam. At turn 179 I now control every strategic resource and relic within my area of influence. I pump out on average 5 new constructors per turn, and now what? I suppose I could start spamming transport fleets and finish off the map, but why bother? After the initial exploration and colonization phase there are no meaningful decisions to be made.
I'm also at somewhat of a loss for suggestions that might make the game more fun. A semi-randomized tech tree (like Masters of Orion3 and Sword of the Stars 2 employ) would help. At least that way you have to adjust your plans according to what techs are available to you each game. Some sort of malus to inhibit colonization spamming would also make the game a good deal more challenging. I guess I'll wait to see how the game develops through subsequent builds, but as it stands it ranks with washing the dishes on my fun scale.
Paul said he will do a play-through of this BETA. I'm waiting to see if he too comes to agree with some of the same comments made during this thread.
The game's mechanics so far are becoming pretty fun for me. What kills the fun at this stage is the lack of AI's to play against. I play on huge galaxies, and I'm 162 turns into my current game and I have yet to meet another civ. So that's not too fun. But I also know that this is a very temporary problem.
I have to agree with most of the original points : Research is boring, colony management lacks meaningful choice (eg multiple option that are significantly different and can each be worthwhile). Adjacency is a good idea, but having each thing give an adjacency bonus to its own type just means I spam one building type.
Terraforming is fine as it is, and we haven't seen combat yet so hard to comment there.
Also, simultaneous MP is a must.
Do you think GC2 had superior colony management? and how so?
I kinda like the idea that non-habitable tiles could be used for production. Planets could have multiple classes of buildable tiles. Let's go with three tiers:
Green tiles: all use (including farms & economy)
Yellow tiles: industrial use (manufacturing/research/military)
Red tiles: experimental use (listening posts/military bases/etc.)
Then you could have a class four planet like Mars which would be intensely population limited but could be useful as a research/industrial outpost. And you could have a barren world that would barely support life (a class 1) and have no industrial output but where you could station troops or a listening post.
I bet that could be modded into this game.
I was actually just thinking about this. I never add defensive structures on a planet because, the important ones are specialized, and I can't be bothered to waste a research lab on my research capital. I would however, be much more inclined to spend money, and time researching defense if you could build defense platforms, fleet managers, listening outposts etc. on "red" tiles. I really like the idea of different tile types for different uses.
They could be much more common on lvl 4 planets too. This works very well with terraforming as it is. If you had a bunch (say 4 red), and (3 yellow), and 2 green tiles on a few lvl 4 planets (I know, not really "lvl 4" anymore), they would become much more viable strategically. Terraforming would then improve a greater number of simultaneous tiles (which makes a lot more sense), and crappy planets could eventually become good relative to regular ones (with a lot of research, time, etc.) but could not be made overpowered. It would still be much more valuable to find lvl 8+ planets in the beginning of the game, since terraforming would take research, time, money, but lvl 4 planets would still be useful, both in the beginning game and late game this way.
I don't think he claimed it being better in gal civ 2. It wasn't better in gal civ 2. The thing is that the colony management in gal civ 2 didn't provide many meaningful choices but the adjacency bonus (in its current form) doesn't either.
Come to think of it. I wonder if we really could have meaningful choices for every planet in a game like gal civ. And by meaningful, I'm going to steal Wraith367s definition which I think was really good. I.e. multiple options that are significantly different and can each be worthwhile.
I'll try to explain what I mean. Take civ 5 for example. In ciV each time a city grew you would have a choice, more or less meaningful. And that worked fine in ciV where the number of cities are significantly less than the number of planets in gal civ 3. But in gal civ 3 one has only one choice. And that is when the planets is colonized. The choice is than in what direction to specialize. The rest is just a chore, to build the structures, micromanage the production wheel etc. If they introduce good planetary governors maybe they will relieve that chore. But than again, only one choice will remain for each planet and that is when the planet is colonized. I will then just choose the appropriate governor and leave the planet be and it will become just a production unit amongst hundreds of other production units in the empire.
But what if meaningful choices turned up for each planet with regularly interval, much as it did i ciV with the city-growth but at a lesser frequency. I'm not sure what that would be. It was just a loose thought. Maybe elections once democracy and federation are invented giving planets increased autonomy. And the terraforming idea discussed above sound like an interesting idea.
Anyways, my two major issues with gal civ 2 was starbase micro management (which they have claimed in streams will be fixed) and colony management. The latter being not meaningful and being a chore. If they remove the chore with good governors it will still be an improvement and I will still buy the game.
Come to think of it, I have already bought the game...
So he doesn't like galciv in general, good to know. I wish him and any of his ilk good luck in finding another game that you do like.
The purpose of "Early Access Feedback" is for people to leave suggestions and feedback. Stop acting like an immature fanboy.
Joining an early access beta and then complaining about things that have always been the nature of the game doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
Simultaneous turns (similar to the alternative Civ 4/5 turn system) is certainly needed for multiplayer games, especially larger games between players. I expect this to come in much later though, but I would like to hear it to be confirmed, becuase truth be told, it is essential for larger multiplayer games which I take part in with my mates.
I don't have a problem with the other points the OP made, but I do have an issue about the rock/paper/scissors system. Did it work for Galciv2? Yes, it worked just fine. Was it great? No, it wasn't great, and can it be improved? Most certainly.
I'm already seeing curious stats like tactical speed, missile range and a few other things that may make combat much less abuot rock/paper/scissors, but I'm hoping for more but limited control. The devs are absolutely right on not inserting in tactical combat, because it is completely and utterly not feasible for large games. Tactical combat of decent depth would drastically increase the turn time. Think about other players who have to wait while you get involved in tactical combat, or in single player it would soon become a drag as you start playing bigger games.
So any indepth tactical feature is just not feasible in a game like GalCiv. But, adding more depth to the fleet combat system and giving the player more options prior to combat that would effect combat, would be a decent compromise that doesn't result in crazy long turn times.
Upon further consideration, I now realize that multi-turn combat is probably unrealistic given the scope of GalCiv. I hadn't really taken that element into consideration. Time during multiplayer could really become atrocious with true tactical combat, but I believe everyone would like to see more depth. I would like for ships to be able to play different roles, and have the ability to target particular ships in a fleet. Even just being able to form squads and select tactics "a," "b," and "c" would be nice. Maybe, "all out attack," "defensive attack," "protect," and "avoid contact" for starters. All of these tactics could be implemented into a single turn, and therefore shouldn't noticeably slow down a game.
The ability to target components, certain ships, use certain tactics, and employ support ships would still be awesome, and add greatly to the enjoyment of combat. I would like to see modules that can shield other ships, and maybe weapons that specialize in attacking more than one target simultaneously.
Example: A fleet with 5 fighters that specialize in quick firing mass-drivers, medium size frigates that specialize in both high damage lasers (to target large ships) and quick firing flak cannons that can target multiple ships (to protect from fighters), a few medium sized missile boats that are set to stay behind and fire long range missiles from a distance, while a large ship with support modules, flack cannons, lasers, and short range missiles takes to the front lines with the fighters while also providing shielding to all units close by with a specialized module (+5 laser protection). In this scenario the fighters would be receiving the "shield extension" benefit, but it could just as easily stay back with the gun boats to help protect and shield them instead. I see no reason why point-defense couldn't destroy (or scatter) missiles within a certain range as well. That actually makes a lot of sense when you think about it.
All of this could be selected in a couple seconds pretty easy, since most of the tactics would be in ship load-out and fleet selection. Just fighters "default engage," Frigates "attack enemy gunboats," missile boats "Defensive attack," and large support ship "support fighters." If the enemy has a powerful support ship, I might select that as the first target for the missile boats and fighters. Done.
The ability to select multiple ships for attack would be nice too. For example, have fighters attack missile boats first (#1), then target other fighters (#2), and then protect support carrier (#3). That would still be a very reasonable amount of time for fleet strategy, since it only requires one turn.
First I want to say I've decided to stick it out with GalCiv3 as some of the people arguing against my suggestions have made some good points and the potential for modding the game is enormous so even if I'm not thrilled with the end result likely someone will mod it so I will like it much better or I might try my hand at modding myself.
So it seems based on this thread that there is consensus that multiplayer needs simultaneous turns hope the devs agree.
Tactical combat is not an option for GalCiv at all, so arguing for it isn't really productive even a single turn or set up. Choosing formations or assigning roles/tactics to ships/fleets before combat would I think be an interesting addition to the game. I would suggest if this idea is implemented the player must assign them before combat not when the combat occurs. Also I took a look at the support modules that are already in place and they are still lame but modding could make it more interesting if Stardock doesn't get to it.
I still think colony management needs an overhaul but choosing where to place the colony center and knowing where the expansion tiles are from the start would at least make the adjacency system more useful so that players can plan better for long term colony management.
I think the tech tree should really but trimmed revamped. Combine some of the incremental techs and throw in some interesting ones like the ever popular inertial stabilizer and or nullifier which gives bonus to tactical and strategic speeds, genetic manipulation that depending on the race will provide different bonuses, military, production, intelligence, birth rate, or tolerance to hostile environments, cybernetics could be used similarly to genetic manipulation to give bonuses, different bonuses than genetic manipulation though, or to allow building of a cybernetic core that give bonuses to production but penalties to research. At extreme end of the tree, planet building, turning asteroids into a new planet, change the orbit of existing planets to improve conditions or build a ring world or teleportation arrays to move ships from one end of the empire to the other. It would take more work and I'm sure the player base would be happy to contribute ideas for more interesting techs than just incremental bonuses.
From Paul's stream comment: there is actually a need for a nifty tree UI for the buildable-trees XML files. A "buildable" is { tech / improvements / modules / components } + { ideology }. These form a tree (actually a forest), with techs at the top, the other 3 branching off them like epiphytes, and ideology (and its improvements) as a disjoint tree.
Currently, Stardock does this in one big Excel file. As text. No UI. Hence the tangled loops, missing preclusions, incorrect module upgrade paths, and missing race-specific improvements we've all noted elsewhere. Their plan for modding support is to simply release the Excel file
So ... we could use a really snazzy tree-based editor, which reads from a set of XML files or Excel, writes to same, and lets you see interwoven trees as interwoven trees, with drag-and-drop. Any volunteers? If it helps us mod our own tech trees ... we could release the tool to Stardock
If you want to, say, replace Ages with a web of more explicit tech dependencies, then maybe we should start with a graph UI. That would actually be kind of ground-breaking.
To put it simply, the gameplay is flawed. Gal Civ 2 was already complex and refined. Gal Civ 3 so expands the scope of the complexity but only in sheer terms of complexity. This was never a necessary addition to the franchise. It was already there, hence the universal acclaim of the series. What the game really needs is moee fluid and organic gameplay, which I believe the commubity expected and asked for but which the designers shut out due entrenchment in the company standards for game design. Chess is beautiful because it is simple and complex. Galactic Civ 3 is too complex in hard terms but lacking completely in liquid terms.
I wouldn't go so far as to say it's entrenchment. I would say that fluid and organic gameplay is hard.
As with Elemental, Stardock set an ambitious agenda for this game. Appropriately ambitious as GC2 was a great game and its successor should be as well. However, we tend to forget that GC2 was a terrific game only after all the expansions and whatnot had fleshed out the basic mechanics, focused gameplay and squashed the bugs.
I think the comparison to Elemental is useful here because it highlights that the problem with Elemental wasn't just that Brad was trying to wear too many hats. It was that the game was too ambitious to hit a specific release point. Months before the release of the game it was clear to many (if not all) people in the Beta that the game was broken. But it was too late; a proper game studio cannot miss release dates.
There's a lot to like about GC3 right now, but the fun isn't really there and the schedule is set.
So the developers are stuck. They can only hope that if they implement the rest of the features on the road-map that the gameplay will coalesce all by itself. Which is what they promised for those last few months with Elemental. But they were only able to deliver it really with FE:LH, the third release.
People need to go back and remember what the beta for GC2 was like. GC3 is a blessing in comparison.
Times change. GC2 isn't the benchmark for GC3. Civ5 is.
And civ 5 was only really good after several expansions.
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/sid-meiers-civilization-v
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/elemental-war-of-magic
It's pretty clear where I think the current beta is right now.
I love this idea, but I would assume you would need to replace the graphic for the ages with one for the web. I think you would still have to fairly simple just so its readable. Or I may be thinking too small in that, you should be able to import new images and options right? If so you can use a much larger diagram and allow a fair amount of complexity.
I'm not sure what you mean by hard and liquid terms but I completely disagree about the game is too complex and that GalCiv2 hit the mark in terms of complexity. Go back and play GC2, I did this weekend and realized how much better 3 is already. That said I still have issues with 3 and agree that it should have more fluid game play, also not sure what you mean by organic game play. Paul has said many times in the dev stream that the devs don't want to take choices from the player, however there are certain choices I don't want to micromanage, like I would love to have transports move population for me with only a few settings, like people can move from my home world to new colonies and new colonies will accept more colonists. Each colony would have check boxes allowing immigration and emigration and it happen in the background, but those lanes of transport shouldn't be instant and should be raidable like trade routes. I also think trade routes should be abstracted in the same way, that's not something I want to actively set up and I think is similar to tourism which just needs to be unlocked. I also thing internal trade should be abstracted, visible and raidable however that might be a bit much for the game and lower end computers to handle.
Additionally moving population is generally disincentivized as everything but food production is based on population, this is part of why I think production should not be directly tied to population.
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