Hey,
I'm wondering if someone else has similar problems with the early rushing out practice to get the last availible colonies before AI is explosively expanding it's zone of control.
Doesn't make sense to just explore the galaxy and plan your expanding empire. You have to rush out and colonize every single availible planet before the AI is approaching. You defenetly get no second chance otherwise. This is horrible and feels like all AI players act like robotic swarming grasshoppers. This aspect really cuts off the funny part of this otherwise quite interesting game.
Next argument is, that the whole galaxy is divided, before you even develop the needed tech to found a huge space empire. In most cases I only have Ion drive when the whole thing is settled and all availible colonys are gone. Why not limiting the distances one is able to fly from home or let's say from drydocks at least. Other then now, only with more advanced drives it should be possible to reach the farthest star systems.
Why not having enviromental diversity...so one has to research the needed tech to settle on different planets. I mean, there should be at least a comfort zone for your race, while other parts (ice, desert, vulcanoid, oceanic aso.) may start to get colonized the more you invest in colonyzing tech.
(Allready mentioned the lack of racial diversity, as all players do more act like different faction of a single race instead of different species. All do compete on the same habitable planets with simply the same # of build slots. Seems to me like a missing design pattern...)
So, do we get some more flavor, in-depth development on this exciting and long-term interesting part of the game?
"
Inherently, the OP is correct. There really isn't much of a penalty to rushing pop and colony ships and taking every bit of dirt you can. Other factions can't invade you for a looooooooong time. By then, your colony is built up.
Bingo.
The main thing that should slow expansion is danger.
MOO2 for perspective: Rapid expansion in MOO2 was dangerous because newborn planets with no defences were easy pickin's for predatory neighbors. Backfilling your own corner of the galaxy was okay, but if you wanted to settle frontier worlds, you needed some firepower to go with it. Not defending planets is like just giving them away for free.
In GalCiv there is no penalty for blindly sending colony ships out to explore and expand at the same time. There is no military ability to steal fledgling colonies from neighbors in the early game, so why not? It's like playing a Nerf game. No one really gets hurt."
Part of this is the fault of having tech ages. No one has any serious military in the beginning of the game, it just turns into a colonization-fest.
As charon2112 pointed out, overexpansion in GC2 can easily wreck your economy and I expect this to return in GC3 before launch. That said, I would welcome additional gameplay mechanics to spice up the eXpand portion of the game.
"No one has any serious military in the beginning of the game, it just turns into a colonization-fest."
Civ has barbarians to add a little danger to the colonization and goody hut phase. Space monsters could be the answer here, or maybe pirates or aggressive minors. Otherwise useless planets could be turned into Pirate bases.
Edit: Quotes not working and other formatting atrocities.
Actually, I believe the release game will have pirates. That should change the early game.
Extreme Worlds will be awesome when they are implemented! But in addition to them how about barriers on the map? Areas of the galaxy that are blocked off by natural phenomena?
These could include:
Tight clusters of stars on the map that are surrounded by dangerous nebula which you need specific techs to fly through.
Specific star types that are dangerous to fly near in ships like Pulsars or Magnetars which could (for whatever reason) contain habitable planets.
Perhaps planets and/or single star systems surrounded by ring of interstallar debris that would be hazardous to fly through.
Or just in general large clumps of tiles that qualify as a galactic danger zone. Whether it be an area of a star nursery, a large swath of unexplained hazardous particles (filled with those cool bug effects from the last stream for instance), strips or clumps of tiles that are so cold ships cannot pass through them OR the awesome idea of putting a super massive black hole in the center of the map forcing players to travel around the center.
I know interstellar rifts are coming which will address some of this I think - but space is a dangerous place and more interstellar barriers/dangers will somewhat mitigate the unhinged flowering of colonized worlds I think.
These things would make a truly dynamic terrain that you would really have to think twice before traveling through and/or around.
I would hope that pirates will help slow down everyone's expansion early.
I disagree completely with the OP, and think the tech you are going for is unnecessary. I love the eXpand part. I quickly snatch up hospitals for the pop bonus build those and slowly work on approval techs to keep me in the 100%. If you want to tech up first you will find its just a slower process and the AI will pwn you since its empire is wide vs yours being tall. Very contrary to other titles like civ where wide is crap and you have to build tall.
If you really want to tech up I'd build a hospital on all new colonies and nothing else then put the slider to research for several turns. As your empire gets wider you will have more planets doing research and your tech tree will build up. Eventually you will get those engine techs for faster ships, which will be necessary by then since you empire will be wider across. Personally if I had those engines at first I would still Use my "cheap colony ship" as build times are faster with just a hull with a colo mod
Bingo.The main thing that should slow expansion is danger.MOO2 for perspective: Rapid expansion in MOO2 was dangerous because newborn planets with no defences were easy pickin's for predatory neighbors. Backfilling your own corner of the galaxy was okay, but if you wanted to settle frontier worlds, you needed some firepower to go with it. Not defending planets is like just giving them away for free.In GalCiv there is no penalty for blindly sending colony ships out to explore and expand at the same time. There is no military ability to steal fledgling colonies from neighbors in the early game, so why not? It's like playing a Nerf game. No one really gets hurt." Part of this is the fault of having tech ages. No one has any serious military in the beginning of the game, it just turns into a colonization-fest.
Tho I disagree with this style being inherently wrong, I do think the ages blocking attacking colonies to be bs. I think the devs play a turtle style and want this shield. I would like to see it an option to click on or off.
I personally love the mad grab of planets at the beginning. I doubt that will change since it was the same in gc2. Every game is different and you just have to learn how to win with the rules of each game.
I like your ideas, but they do have this currently just less creative from black holes. They frequently block off section of the map or act as a mountain would in a ground 4x. This is mainly in the early game and because of range issues. However it does change after some more tech or a proxy starbase.
I think that civilization and call to power city building is way better than galactic civilization colony building. The only thing I didn't like about the colony rush is that other than the Thailand and torians. They couldn't keep up. Leaving a bunch of needed factions and the colony management would be better if were more like civilizations city and citizen management. Using resources and population limits for class designation instead of tiles. Putting citizens on tiles and in buildings. With influence expansion or have it a variable range for classes.
I forgot about citizenspecialzation. Like in civilization you could have one citizen stand for a lot of citizens.
in the alpha they pushed planetary invasion back behind the tech age because everyone started at war and you could rush it and conqour your enemies planet in about a dozen turns. now that maps are bigger and we have diplomacy i believe that planetary invasion should be pulled forward this along with pirates, more enemies and improvements that will be coming to the ai i think will slow down the rapid expansion.
Alpha planetary invasion sounds like the spore weapon from gc2. I forget the race but it was the 3rd tech and it would always take over a planet no matter the pop. This was especially effective vs minors and close neighbors capital planet.
It should be to some disadvantage to race to planetary invasion i.e. research time would give other AI time to colonize several planets, or get defending planetary ships (why does AI never defend planets currently?). However, it shouldn't be so far that its just not possible to get with out researching 30 (how many is it exactly?) random techs first.
That was o he thing I liked about galactic civilizations is that it took time before you went to war. For me war is not the most important part of the game.
And managing the AI to not go to war was a limiting factor in GC2. You could only "turtle" for so long before you would have to come out with some ships otherwise you would be deemed weak and ripe for conquest. You could of course buy time by paying other factions to go to war with each other or buy ships.
I think making colonization more expensive would be a good approach.
What about the following concept: You need to reach a certain population minimum to fully integrate a planet to your empire. This minimum depends on the size of the planet. So for a very large planet you would need to send several colony ships there. Before that you simply have an outpost on that planet, which doesn't allow you to improve any other tiles (other civs could have an outpost on the same planet too). Additionally one could implement some kind of mortality: each turn a certain number of colonists dies (because of wild and dangerous alien life forms or something else ).
This way colonization would be made more difficult and ressource demanding which would result in a trade-off: new colonies or improving your home planet(s).
I nevet had a problem going to war. everyone declared war beforevthey wrre ready. giving mec timevto build up. whrn you d ont have a military everyone is willing to trade military technology. in a few turns I'm the srcond strongest on the game. the only problem is I have to stop expsnding for awhile and touch up my military technology. yhank the thalans for being to defensive.
Colony module mmanufacturing cost needs to go up. Right now a base colony ship is only marginally more expensive than a scout ship.
Seems about the same as gc2.
Maybe they should put an optional slider for colony expense. I'm not sure but that might "break" the AI if it was unable to compensate for the need of a different stratagy
I eould have to admit that it doesn't make sense that a colonybwith no population could colonise other planets.
I think modding colony module cost and or colony ship range is too easy to mod to fit each player's preferences, that I prefer the devs not even worry about it at this point. Am I the only person that feels this way?
It's so easy to mod the ship modules and techs that you can tailor the rate of expansion to just about any level. You can make it take more research to unlock colony modules, make colony ship range extremely short in the beginning, you can make planetary invasion available earlier, you can create specific tech and invasion tactics that allow colony damage/destruction early on, or any number of other modded in limiters to expansion.
god point, players will be able to adjust extreme planets too. This slows down expansion and requires more tech depending on what kind of planet.
Lots of good information here. Personally I feel we should not tamper with hard coding such gates or restrictions into the game. Leave sliders or such in game and let each player, play how they like.
Some like the expansion some don't. Let each have his choices and enjoy their game.
Aye, this is why I hated civ5. I was so accustomed to gc2's wide empires and civ5 demanded you build tall and there was no way to accommodate my play style. I think the opposite should be true for gc3 one thing to keep in mind is that it must be done in a way that the AI can still be challenging and not have "broken" tactics.
For example, if costs to build a colony ship were so great it became more efficient that the priority was to research and build factories but the AI was still trying to build colonies off no factories it would be at a big disadvantage. The player would adapt new strategies and have a distinct advantage to the AI. Less challenging game, for me at least, is less fun. I'm all for accommodating other players game play it should just be done in a way the AI can accommodate for.
KSince expansion is at the core of how I play the game. I would try to expand as crazy as possible. I wouldn't mind slowing down expansion as long as they implemted some mechanic to slow me down to so I don't steamroll the ai.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
