"Tight clusters" is probably best.
Super traits: "Colonizer" (free building upon colonizing). Other is optional, though "Patriotic" is probably best for the long game. For smaller maps get "Double Population upon Colonizing" super trait.
Other traits: Fast +2. Sensors +1. Military production +20%. Growth +20% optional (but useful).
Any tech tree. Thalan is probably best given your low population colonies. Hives is awesome with this strategy because it guarantees 4 extra prod in each colony regardless of population.
Step 1:
Colonize [Edited] nearest planet that grants ideology point. Get Pragmatism 3 free constructor ships.
Step 2: Convert constructor ships to colony ships (takes 1 turn). Move colony ships to capital and load up on some population.
Step 3: Colonize worlds with your 3 new colony ships. Each world will start out with a shipyard thanks to Colonizer.
Step 4: Get Benevolence free colony ship.
Step 5: Colonize your SIXTH!! world by turn 9 or 10. Every world will have a shipyard thanks to "Colonizer."
Step 6: have every colony produce colony ships. They'll have minimal population but it doesn't matter. Key is to colonize planets to get Benevolence level 3 free 5 population upon colonizing. At that point you can just spam colony ships with minimal or zero population indefinitely.
Once you have that the game is effectively won on any difficulty below Suicidal on a map where there are plenty of planets to colonize.
Haha.. didnt get until now that you can convert constructors to colony ships... nice find. (albeit cheaty)
Needs to be fixed, colony ships shouldn't be able to colonize with no-one on board, but this will indeed be tricky to properly balance because this is so OP lol
Mars no longer has a colonization event, that applies to all colonizable planets in starting systems.
I do think colonizer should not grant free shipyards. And the Benevolent trait Prolific should be changed to grant say extra 50% pop of what the colony ship has when colonizing, rather than a flat +5 bp. The same goes for the racial ability.
Quoting Kyoss79, reply 1Haha.. didnt get until now that you can convert constructors to colony ships... nice find. (albeit cheaty)
Not really, they have zero population when upgraded, it's the Benevolent trait Prolific that's causing the problem.
TBH i'd rather they make the constructor > colony ship upgrade more expensive or limiting in some way.
picking constructor pragmatic perk almost feels mandatory if you want early colony ships, i certainly don't know any other method that can compete.
It's things like this, and the great many linear stacking bonuses, that make GC3 a non-starter for any kind of MP that isn't just teams; GC3 ceases to be a 4X game with any sense of narrative and instead becomes a 1X (eXploit) game.
It's at time like these where I find myself disagreeing with SD's take on the importance of balancing. Yes, exploits will always creep through to release and will require hammering down thereafter but even some of the basics in GC3 are dubious, e.g., no limit on linear bonus stacking. Yes, you too can have a fleet filled with super-dense micro-carriers that can see for hundreds of hexes and pretty much teleport limitless quantities of machinegun missile-firing fighters around the map with impunity; all will crumble beneath your feet. (Unless you're playing against other Humans, in which case let the best eXploit win!)
Most games tend to fall apart at the seams in their later stages, and 4X games do tend to suffer from this more than many other types of game, but GC3 starts to unpick itself at the mid-point, with obvious weaknesses exploitable right from the very beginning. If this kind of thing isn't desireable then the devs still have a lot of work to do on the fundamentals with GC3; however, if this is what the devs aimed for -- to be honest GC2 was riddled with game-breaky exploits* so perhaps the writing was already on the wall -- then maybe these aren't the droids that I'm looking for and I should indeed move along. ...With a heavy sigh. ...And a forlorn face.
* Interestingly, some of those were latterly fixed only to make an unwelcome return in their original dubious state in GC3.
Yeah. Even if i enjoy GC3 a lot, a find amount of exploits, balance problems, errors in stats (like give % bonus instead of flat number or other way around) too high for a game that was in EA for so long.
217 colonies by turn 35 - Gigantic, spiral, abundant everything, suicidal, 10 AI.
Yep, there are much worse exploits than the above posts suggest.
The AI is plain retarded and has serious issues
- keeping up with the tech race
- utilizing their planets
- and defending their important planets
I mean, there's no need for exploits.
Can confirm, atleast on challenging. The start was more or less balanced. I didn't use any obvious exploits like turning 3 constructers into colonizers just making the colonizer a bit cheaper. They managed to sneak in two planets in my ZoC. It took over a hundred turns to flip them, I think they had the trait unwavering. Anyways after all that time they were still only like 4 buildings on the planet. I have never seen the A.I. doing something useful with their fleet. Maybe on higher difficulties?
Good points. I've more or less shelved the game for now. I had a bit of the fun with the game, but I don't see myself playing much more or buying any DLC/expansions unless there is massive improvement in these areas. The fact that the game has been released with so many issues points to the devs being more interested in adding new features rather than polishing and balancing what is already there.
Since we're officially grousing, the "upgrade" mechanic in GC3 is so gamey and broken as to be considered entirely an exploit. It's impossible to balance and it completely obliterates immersion.
"Upgrading" a ship should mean stationing it at a shipyard and using the planet's production to pay for the "upgraded" parts.
This seems to assume balanced versus multiplayer was a core design goal. It was not, and the devs have said as much multiple times.
the "dense" trait is probably not a bad pick for such a strategy. i think dense alone is enough to put a colony module on a tiny hull. may also require the cheap "transport specialization" tech that reduces size of colnies, troop pods, carrier bays etc. since you're playing with the colonizer trait that gives you a free "rush" building on each colony, you might as well put the colony at 100% research during that turn and get a few points of research for free - so it shouldn't be hard to get the tech and then spam tiny colony ships at ~40 production each (at least for short range colonization like filling up extra planets nearby while your real colony ships fly to planets that are further away)
the game's full of strategies like that, though. i guess it's up to the user how much sillyness they want to use. not really sure i like that kind of game design. i don't do multiplayer - if i were interested in MP, i would have shelved the game already - but i also don't like games where you have to restrict yourself heavily in single player or play a completely asymmetric game vs. a superbuffed AI that gets huge bonuses and superpowers to make the game challenging.
They're still using the same AI as from Gal Civ II.
It's seemingly not balanced against anything sensible, least of all MP (which is pretty much busted from any perspective). If it were balanced against SP, as you seem to indicate it might be, then the AI would be able to make use of the many exploits this game currently has available. Not once have I seen the AI let rip with super-dense micro-carriers that teleport endless missile fighters around the galaxy at will. Actually I've not seen it make even passable use of any of the more basic linear stacking bonuses^HeXploits - not one.
Just exactly what is this game balanced against? You can't just lob all manner of crazy ideas into a game and call it 'done' because you want to give players the choice to play the game however they want to; that's what modding is meant to be - a window to make the game crazy, not a tool by which most mods you currently see are actually pulling back most of the stuff that makes GC3 pretty bloody stupid in the mid to late game (and at least a couple of things that make the game silly from Turn 1).
Gal Civ III is very similar to Gal Civ II with the change that maintenance costs are much lower.
The biggest change they could make is to fix the AI. Better AI = better game experience.
I still get defeated by the AI on Normal. Perhaps you guys constantly reload or are using some other exploit that you happen not to mention?
I hope you are not serious. The game forces you to keep your planets, shipyards, and research busy. You have to expand as quickly and prolifically as possible until all reasonable planets are taken. Usually the AI doesn't do as good a job at this as you can. Also the AI is not so good at placing improvements on their planets. In pretty much every sense, you have the advantage.
You must be doing something wrong, maybe describe your first 20 turns , what is your usual setup?
I'm guessing you're not a serious Min/Maxer like all the hard-core players here.
A lot of the "exploits" and "unbalanced" being mentioned is the ability to screw with edge cases and non-obvious assumptions. That's not to say that these exploits don't need fixed, but it does make a difference between the casual player and the hard-core one.
For instance: the starting money in this game is significantly higher than many other 4X games. The expectation is that you spend at least half of that immediately by rush building most of your planet's initial buildings, and a couple of ships. That strategy isn't always immediately obvious to people who only play casually.
So, take a lot of these threads with a BIG grain of salt - you're seeing the results from the *very* expert experienced players. Yes, there is a lot of work to do to fix many issues, which include a number of them which make the casual player's experience sub-optimal. But many of them will only impact play once you get up to the level of being a serious Min/Maxer.
Just use the strategy described above. Custom your civilization with Colonizer super trait. Easy mode. Get Benevolent Level 3 Prolific. Win.
I never was a good at GC2 or any other 4X games, aside from MoO2 maybe, but it was like 10? years ago. I always hate maximized rush strategies that supposed to be used against high difficulty AI. In GC2 i always preferred to build protected "core" of worlds and slowly expanding after that. It severely cripple my ability to fight against high level AI, but i liked it that way.
In my last party in GC3 i played against bunch of normal AI in huge map. I played with "Neutral ideology" and didn't exploit free 3 constructor ships. And guess that? AI, after sending his constructors out in first 50 turns or so just stopped. He din't bother to take some planets in his ZoI, ignored 22 lvl planet 50 hexes from his Capital he 100% knew about (i saw his survey ship). I dunno what stopped him - pirates raiding his colony ships, poor management or something else. After 150 turn i had like 40+ colonies and about 15 more not yet claimed planets in mu ZoI. And i didn't used any tactics i could call "exploits". If you don't count mini-colonies and launching empty colony ships(to get population from your worlds with few production) as exploits. I didn't even specialize planets too much, because i couldn't find my "perfect" planets for that role.
For that you need use debug console (click ` ) then " help " (all commend) and it's cheat but you can alway use console command "fow" and you see full map and don't get "cheater".
Tactic for that colony... need to try this but not better put 1 shipyard near 3 planet and put 5 sponsor, then spam colony ship. What you govern % look?
On my insane map i got 91 turn, 46 colony and 4 shipyard produce 4 colony per turn (14,98 move and 235 range) challenge difficult and got 454 power second got 212. Only military, treasure, tourist got 2-5 place. Colony spam tactic on insane map is OP. I can produce my best ship 1 per turn (91 turn).
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