The official release date has been announced: Galactic Civilizations III launches on May 14, 2015.
Stardock is extremely pleased to welcome everyone to the beginning of a long and glorious era of space-conquering excellence. Whether you prevail through diplomacy, cultural supremacy, scientific research, or the more traditional "crush all rivals with extreme force" method, Galactic Civilizations III gives you the tools to remake the galaxy in whatever image you desire.
We humbly thank all of our Founders and beta players for their support and for their ongoing help in making Galactic Civilizations III the best game it can be.
The end of beta is nearly upon us, but the future in store for space emperors everywhere is full of possibilities.
Good news, and congrats Stardock
About issues the game might still have - we will see what beta6 does in that regard. Beyond that, IIRC Stardock already said there are plans for DLC/expansions etc, so I take it that development does not suddenly stop after May 14.
Am I supposed to start a new game after each update?
I'm playing on a decent machine (i5-3570K, 16 GB RAM, 780GTX, Samsung 850 pro SSD, Win8.1), insane map size and get a CTD after only one turn every time I load the game.
This game was started around Beta 5 and had a couple of updates since, that is why I'm asking.
So - everything looking good if it wasn't for stability!
The game is in a good state. This is the only good "early acces" game I know. As a Beta tester since many months, I think the game will be ready in 3 weeks. It might not be perfect but there is no major problem that will prevent new players to have fun with GalCiv III.
Thank you very much for your efforts and dedication, I really respect what you guys did in the last few months (and years, I guess).
I'm a little disappointed to see some of the comments but I think it does not reflect the opinion of the silent majority.
Keep up the good work,
Gothvan
It is in good shape for a beta, it's not yet in great shape for release software. Though the release on the Dev stream looked more like. It the game is great fun but doesn't look 3 weeks from official release.
However the internal build might be better and I really hope I'm wrong and the launch goes Well.
Gal Civ 2 was and still is a great game. Gal Civ 3 is on a good road to that. However, I also feel two or three more betas before official release would help the game. Whoever wants to play the game in its current state already can via Early Access. And all the other folks, they expect a "complete" game. For me this still looks like a "banana game" - it will ripen at the customer.
As a loyal fan of Gal Civ 2, this is okay for me. I know that in a year the game will be better than now. But the reviews of magazines etc. will give the game a rating based on "what is", not "what could" (and hopefully will be). I think Gal Civ 3 can be a 90%+ game.
But: It needs more work for that. Personally I would advise to officially release it only after more work has gone into it. Lets say two or three more Betas, where user feedback is analyzed and properly integrated. Could be two or three more months, depending on how you work.
At least as long as the game is in beta
I found out about GC3 half a year ago and decided to wait until the official release. I monitored the progress by reading the forum and watching the stream - and I'm amazed about how the game looks now compared to 3 months ago. Not just the graphics but it seems really fleshed out now.
For me the long wait will be over soon and I fully expect that GC3 will be a great experience.
Obviously I have to wait for judgement until I played GC3 myself, but I want to make the following point: If you played the early access versions, than it is possible that you are so focused on specific problems and "tainted" by the history of bugs you experienced that you are missing the big picture. You should try to forget the months of playing an incomplete game and put yourself into the mind of someone who starts fresh.
STARDOCK please push back the release date at least 1 more month! I know you want money and you "think" the game is ready, but it is not. A lot of bugs, a lot of imbalance, and a shit ton more polishing is needed. You aren't going to attract any NEW gamers to the franchise with a earlier than needed release because no one is going to buy the damn game if you release it before it's ready and the game critics murder you.
Mbwah-hah-hah-hahahaha-haaaah-haaah-haaaaaa.... ah!
I agree. This would only be harmful to the game. Please push it back. Multiplayer isn't even playable yet. Like literally, the game crashes if you try. Let's get those bugs worked out and deliver a product worthy of headline praise!
I've played many released games that were in much worse shape than even the early betas of GCIII.
Tried multiplayer for the first time time last night. It's broke.
But single player is shaping up fine. Just get the AI to actually build up colonies and put sensible things in them, and all will be well
In general and with the bug fix list in 6.2 supposed to go out this week I think they are very close to having a releasable version of the single player game, I can’t speak for multiplayer because I haven’t and never intend to play it.
However if on May 14th multiplayer is crashing for a lot of people and isn’t playable I would advise them to delay launch. Because while I have no interest in multiplayer and agree that most players will probably ignore it, multiplayer is advertised as on of the new features that GC2 didn’t have so if you launch with it basically not working that would be mistake publicity wise.
I also agree many games have released in a worse state than the version of this game we where playing months ago, many games have also flopped or completely disappointed those who have waited for them, ahem..MOO3…ahem. So I don’t think Stardock should follow there example.
All this said I’m starting to change my mind that it won’t be ready for launch based on progress they have made over the past couple of weeks, but if you have advertised multiplayer as a feature it should work on release even if many of us won’t play it.
I think if multiplayer is not stable the game will catch a lot of flak and tank because it is very a sought for feature these days. People on Steam are also not as forgiving as people here, in fact ferocious relentlessness is one of the hallmark features of Steam community. That's where I am getting my ill stomach feeling from when seeing release date and checking the actual state of the game.
I would not even consider it even close to stable enough for a release from a singleplayer perspective. Might be they just need to get it out into the shelves because right now it's just investment without returns. However if it's possible to add another month then I'd just rather give it that one. I still see a lot of glitches. The battle viewer is not really convincing by presentational value with its camera issues and the occasional not even showing up. Minor notorious issues like the still not fixed tooltips, misplaced UI elements, texts, typos or major ones leading to crashes still. I know they are probably doing there best but it should be tested thoroughly, issue by issue, for each element of the game in order to ensure a high level polishing.
I am not even saying that because I have never seen bugs in a game before but there's a lot of early access games shipped these days feeling they are still in Beta. It's becoming frustrating as a gamer. In fact so much frustrating that I haven't bought a new game in over many months now. It will be a very disappointing experience for me if Stardock followed that trend.
Nor will I.
Stardock, ignore the infidels. The game is ready and (incoming buzzword) fun! You have my blessing to release it.
(error plz delete)
Well the game is fine as single player, Gal civ has always been about single player.
Where most new games lack is support from Devs, so far Stardock has met everyones expectations as far as updates and communication between community goes. If that doesnt stop, people will overlook small things because they know- Devs actually care, its not like next money grabber thing like khm khm... Civilization.... just for the show.
Multiplayer is there because market demands it, if we take that out, the game is fine. Also not so many poeple will heavy rely on multiplayer- if they like the game they would buy it for single player experience mainly.
I have to say I'm finding the game reasonably stable in single player even without the memory leak and crash fixes in 6.2 which you can read about here https://forums.galciv3.com/464667/page/2/#3545709
My concerns are more around broken features, planetary events for example I'd say over 1/3 of them don't apply well to synthetics either flavor text wise or mechanically. Stability wise I'd say it's reasonable on most systems, (although like most games I'm sure it suffers instability on some hardware/software combinations which is very annoying for those who have the issue).
As I say I don't play multiplayer and never will for this sort of complex strategy game I have to play when I can and prefer to have my own sandbox without other people to mess it up when I do play. So I can't really say how bad that is but if it's unstable for the majority or doesn't work properly that is a big issue since it's a promised feature.
There's a whole customer base unto itself that loves multi-player turn-based strategy games. I know this because i've been participating in them since Romance of the Three Kingdoms back in the early 90s. This is a large group of potential customers that Stardock can win over if this obviously superior strategy game has a stable multi-player mode intact during release. With today's software development capabilities, this should be doable without being at the expense of the metaverse or single-player functionality. If we only give it time to ripen on the vine. What's wrong with being in beta for a while longer? Why rush it out? I haven't seen a good argument why this product should ship on the 14th.
MP won't be stable until we finailize the data structures. It's annoying And we apologize for the inconvenience.
It's the trade off of having so many updates in a short time.
Love what you've done with the game. Keep up the good work!
I'm sure that's true, just saying that they aren't stardocks traditional GC audience since the previous game hasn't supported it and they will be a smaller section of the market than than the single player fans who have followed this game series so far.
But i agree with you since stardock have decided to try and attract the multiplayer strategy crowd by adding the feature they should ensure it works reasonably at least for most people from the release.
I'm a long term fan of the series, a stardock fan, and a multiplayer enthusiast. I would have bought the game as a single player game. I would not have purchased 5 copies like I did without that element. Not a complaint just my response. I'm very happy with the game and understand that work will continue well after whatever day it's officially released. I'm skeptical that 1 week could provide enough time for them to finish their polishing and stabilize multiplayer. Thats a huge undertaking. If anyone could pull it off I think it would be the team at stardock. They have a passion for the game that isn't rivaled by any other company.
You purchased 5 copies of the game?
Way to go Mohobie!
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