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?
At the moment the AI isn't really in the game, it just grabs every available planet it can and in beta 1 attacked when it encountered others. In beta 2 it can be perfectly peaceful if you don't want to conquer it. The AI doesn't build star bases and doesn't optimize its planets very well and only give any sort of challenge because it has huge bonuses and gets to lots of planets to crank out lots of ships. Even then its not that challenging but it is a bit frustrating in the expansion phase because even if you select for higher quality planets, it goes for numbers and has bonuses enough to culture flip your better planets if you aren't careful.
What I'm getting at here is that its really too early to say the expansion phase doesn't feel right because the AI is a placeholder and different planet types aren't in the game yet. This will all be balanced when those aspects are added. If you really want a game with high penalties to colonization, mod it. In the mean time the AI should improve a lot in the next beta and extreme planets will be along shortly as well. Then is when you really should be saying I don't like how this feels.
I have plenty of complaints about the game so far but a lot of people have pointed out to me some of my complaints simply haven't been introduced yet or are not being balanced yet because something else that has not yet been added will greatly affect them. One of them has been addressed but is still not in the beta, so I'm waiting for the next beta get upset about the feel of the aspects I don't like that aren't there yet. If I don't like them in the release I plan on modding it to fit what I want. Let's not get too carried away too early in the game's development.
I did like the idea about picking different kinds of air. I agree we need to wait until they lay down the right an. I just want to remind you hat twilight of the armor had five broken ais. The sooner hey know about a problem more likely they are to fix it. I WO LD like to see more fair and more techs this time. I am hoping someone or more people mod a 130 faction game with1400 solar systems..
The idea to have planetary invasion quite early is a good point from my view.
Probably a basic choice between predators and eXpanders at early stages might bring a solution? Like predators get invasion quick (2.5M invasion modules) and therefore only core colonization modules with which you only could colonize small ammounts (max. 1M) till you reach a better tech stage. While eXpanders do get invasion systems just to bomb enemy planets early till they reach the full invasion module tech. They start with 2.5M colony modules and have to research larger ones. Both should be backed by a fitting diplomacy adoption...
Diplomacy adoption change offer:
While 'neutral' there shouldn't be a penalty for invasion or bombing down of so called 'outposts'. Only if the outposts reach a population and upgrade level to switch to a full colony they get their empires flag and their influence shield which marks the ownership. Besides...outposts will not grant the empire expanded borders...only colonies will do. With this adoption the colonizing part will be much more interesting and doesn't get a grab-as-grab-can motivation as it is today. If you want to colonize the far stars, you have to send dozens of colonizers to push a outpost to the colony level or to send a constructor to get a starbase so you could expand your borders and limits.
I like the idea of Tall vs Wide empires, where going for wide (rushing for as many cities/colonies as we can) is not the only wiable strategy. There should be strong mechanism for limiting expansion, but not hard limiting, just making it more and more expensive. The reason for this is to avoid the snowball effect. also managing many colonies can be painfull, i personally like to focus on fever systems, improving them as much as i can ("Tall empire").
While I actually enjoy that the expansion phase is sort of a race to find and settle as many planets as possible, there are plans for pirates that should be able to prey on vulnerable colony ships and over-eager scouts.
Did some testing with the new patch (v 0.70) and the immense maps. Unfortunately the game engine turned into a CTD-monster...no matter which size of map I use.
Also the 'extreme planets' I deeply waited for...are no good. Targeting to crate a galaxy with only rare habitable planets and abundand extreme planets shows, that those extreme planets are only be a percentage PART of habitable planets. So, when you have habitable planets at rare...you'll find nearly no planet and if you find one, it is of course no extreme planet, because they are just a percentage of habitable planets. Wondering what ideas the devs had behind it...I don't really catch it. So we are stucked to create overcrowded habitable planet galaxys if we like to get extreme planets in, which leads to only grabbing every single planet instead of growing the own force, invest smart into research to gain more planets. Just rushing out and never stop...
I'm really sorry about, but so far, GalCivIII in it's current shape is 1. boring, 2. totaly instable and 3. certainly no 4x game from my view.
As written in the header of this theme, it is just a very very expensive catch-as-catch-can simulation. It has interesting parts, like the ship builder or the research, but still there is nothing which other games don't allready show up with.
Is it focused on singleplayer? If yes, the AI might need a better finishing.
Is it focused on multiplayer? Then it needs more challenging focus on decent and differencing expansion plans.
See, currently all do just the same...build ships, colonize every planet they find (while AI is much much much faster then anybody in it), build warships and kill all others. I really can't see the inspiration in it at the current state.
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