Greetings all,
I've finally gotten multiple games under my belt (much to the detriment of my sleeping habits) and I wanted to write out some of my impressions about something that's near and dear to my heart - terraforming. My favorite approach to empire building is the economic or tech rush; I love squeezing every last bit of performance out of my colonies and infrastructure. Eventually this leads to a wave of disposable troops crushing my foes, which warms my blackened heart every time I see it. As such a huge part of that is planning ahead and figuring out what I can expect from my colonies at certain points in time.
Right now, I find the terraforming technologies a bit ... odd. I see in the various descriptions that different technologies are supposed to impact specific 'qualities' of a tile - but there's no feedback on what tiles can be impacted by a particular technology until you choose to build the improvement. I would find it far easier to understand - and plan for my colony's development - if all of the tiles were visible, but color-coded to indicate their 'quality'. If tiles had a progression - green was something you could develop, but then tiles that need terraforming would be colored yellow, orange, red, gray, black (or whatever color progression makes sense). Each technology then indicates what 'color' of tile that it impacts. A planet with only a few green tiles at start - but lots of yellow - would be a prime candidate to fight over. Whereas a planet with mostly black would be only desirable at the end-tier of terraforming.
In a similar vein, only being able to terraform a single tile (for most techs) seems a bit odd. I suspect this is a mechanism that is intended to prevent small planets from blossoming into large ones from terraforming - but it seems that there's already a restriction on the number of total tiles in place as well (judging from my exposure to some of the top-tier terraforming technologies). I would personally find it more rewarding if I could terraform a swath of land at once, rather than getting one hex per planet for most of the technologies. Based on the tooltips and other feedbacks in place in the game, I have to suspect that this is the intent of some technologies already - they just may not be working as expected.
I get that this is a beta - so I'm more than patient and willing to wait. I just know that these are particular pain points that I'd be strongly tempted to mod in the final game if unchanged. The only part that concerns me is the visibility of tiles by type - which I suspect would be difficult to change.
Now if you'll excuse me I need to finish just one more technology before bedtime...... and it's 1:30 AM. Oh well, I can sleep when I've taken control of the galaxy!
I agree to all you wrote.
Mods already are taking care the terraform issue with one tile per tech. Can the AI currently cope with many tiles per tech? or does it lock on to terraform spending only and blows itself up?
A visual representation of tile quality is needed. The system uses nunbers for tile quality, perhaps holding a key down would make the numbers visible on the tiles. Color coding would also work but it wouldn't be precise.
In GC2 a planet had colored tiles to indicate which terraforming tech was needed to add a tile. That's part of what you are talking about. However, this clashes with allowing the player to choose from multiple locations and use adjacency. Perhaps tiles that might be terraformed in different ways could be colored from the start but a limit of one use for each tech maintained, with the abstracted idea that planetary resources (water especially) would only allow that much expansion.
I agree that the present terraforming techs are sort of Byzantine. I would cut it back to a tech that adds 1 hex, a tech that adds 3, and finally, the Ultra Terraformer. Just leave off the Biosphere tech, as it applies to adding a final hex. It just seems like a lot of too similar tech in a row.
They could use a color code or something to indicate what hexes can be terraformed with what. but that might be too much to expect. In GCII low quality tiles that required terraforming were yellow. Ultimately I think you could add more tiles than just the yellow. Maybe they should restore that code.
I wonder if anyone can confirm where the AI has ever used a terraforming tech? I cannot.
I have yet to see an AI planet that has any tiles terraformed.
I like the 1-tile per tech, honestly. It forces me to make tough decisions. I like that. I wholeheartedly agree that some sort of color-coding would be great to see which tiles are 'salvageable,' 'marginal,' 'near-useless,' etc. It would help with planning. Right now when I use the early techs I worry that my decisions will adversely affect the usefulness of future terraforming techs.
I also like the one tile per tech option.Especially assuming the Bene trait that improves planet quality is fixed to work...I can also see a Super project that automatically Terriforms one low level tile... and another one that does the Middle... and the High end tiles....
Going to have to chime in on the side of "One tile per tech makes no sense".Great that the modders are capable of fixing it readily; I'm of the opinion the limitations of your final layout should be the resources you're willing to expend, and the amount of space available.Next up, we'll be able to smash worthless planets into parts, and build superworlds.*drool*
Doesn't matter what makes sense. It matters if it's good gameplay. Good gameplay involves making decisions that matter.
It's fun when things make sense as it adds to the immersion. So incorporating such as can be done is a good thing.
But in the final analysis, Turkwise is 100% right. +1
Hey, chess, first strategy game I played seriously. Almost nothing makes sense, but it is running on several hundred years now.
So, most of you seem to be favoring one tile per tech. Are you saying eliminate the ultra terraform tech and have only the existing one tile techs, add one or more single tile techs?
Unless you make each tech give you a choice of all tiles, how do you make an intelligent decision on where to place the tiles each time.
I kind of like the ultra tech better than all the single tile choices. Less micro, and more opportunity to use late game improvements.
I'm fine with the ultra-terraformer, really, because it still has limitations (only 'salvageable' tiles) and it is unlocked in late game. As for making intelligent decisions, others here have suggested having some way to display what quality each unimproved tile is. I like that suggestion. Like Bamdorf said, GC2 did that - yellow, orange, and red tiles to show what tech you needed to get a tile. 3 is a bit different, but if we could see that information, perhaps when we selected soil enhancement improvement, we could make better plans.
Not me. I greatly prefer the GC II style of multiple tiles per tech. As it is, I find my self holding off terraforming until I know I am not 'wasting' a tile that UT will later give me.
I also haven't done enough (read any) testing to see how the ideological traits affect upgradeable tiles (or for that matter the planetary colonization/mega event ones). Hopefully they won't 'overwrite' the ones that UT can later give me, as I want all the precious tiles I can possibly get.
But I also can see that I very probably won't be getting my way on this one, so I'm holding my powder dry this time. As said, I can always (and probably will) mod my home games in regard to this.
I have noticed that if you wait until you use Ultra before you use the early techs, you will sometimes find zero tiles available. Especially from the first one (forget the name).
That's odd, it shouldn't have any effect at all. Sure, I occasionally get a planet with no bonus from Terraforming or even Habitat Improvement. And every once in a while, I strike out on all three bonus tile techs past Soil Enhancement (not including Biospheres), especially on low quality planets with little land mass available. But I'd say around 95% of the time, I get all three tile improvements at least on one square.
Well, I only found it twice, working with about 25-30 planets and I am pretty sure both times it was soil enhancement, so I didn't mean to imply it was common, just that I think at least soil enhancement will overlap with the Ultra tiles occasionally. Like you say occasionally there will be no soil enhancement tile available even when it is the first tech used.
I think we might be misunderstanding each other. Or I'm just confused. The latter happens a lot unfortunately.
The Ultra Terraformer improvement should work on all of the tiles that the Soil Enhancement improvement does. As far as I know, it is literally the same improvement (with a different icon), but with the 1 per planet restriction taken away. And costing a lot more to build, of course. If there is a Soil Enhancement tile that isn't being also done by Ultra Terraformer, then that's a bug, AFAIK.
What does happen occasionally is the other three terraforming improvements (Terraforming Plant, Habitat Improvement, Resequencing Station) won't give any new tiles, as there aren't any "higher" quality tiles to terraform.
Actually, I just thought of something else that very occasionally goes on. Every once in a while the Soil Enhancement improvement does not go away from the available to build list on the side after all available tiles have been terraformed. But what is happening in that case, I'm fairly sure, is the Colony Capitol has been placed on a tile that is supposed to be affected by Soil Enhancement. Thus the game still thinks there is a tile that is upgradeable, but when the player tries to click on it to upgrade a tile, the quick flash on the screen that usually shows up when you're not allowed to build something appears.
At least that's what I think is going on. I could be completely wrong.
I've never bothered to send in a ticket on that as it is a pretty rare, inconsequential bug. And I'm not sure it is still happening in the latest beta patch. But I suppose I should send a ticket in on that one of these days if I see it again.
AI for terraformong is not in, I was thinking about b5 and beyond.
There have been a variety of approaches to terraforming in space TBS games. Its not realistic, but I honestly really like the 'eventually you can remake every world into super star worlds' feel taken by games like Master of Orion II and Endless Space a lot more than 'get a few extra tiles' ala GalCiv.
Those who are surprised at GC3's approach I am guessing never played GC2 ... yeah you could see ahead which planets you will be able to eventually transform in GC2, but its basically the same vein of getting a few extra tiles and that's it. Its not an approach I am thrilled about, but its an enshrined staple of the GalCiv series, so it isn't gonna change, not for development of GC3 and not for GC4 or future iterations unless the producer in charge of the future iterations really pushes for that kind of change.
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