Greetings!
v1.2 is now out the door! Cool random events can now be created by modders and we include a few by default. Also, if you haven't already picked it up, grab the Mega Events DLC which adds a lot of new art assets to have even more mega events (and we plan to actually be updating these DLCs over time with more stuff as we think of them too).
DLC link: http://store.steampowered.com/app/389930%20
So...
What is 1.3 about? One thing: UI.
It's not sexy but it's time to talk about the late game micromanagement issue in this game. It needs to be fixed and it can't wait for some future expansion. It needs to be fixed NOW. We have a lot of things we want to do that require players to be able to manage effectively (and have it be fun) very very large empires.
1.3 is due out in 30 days so let's get to work.
Name the top 5 things you would like to see done to address micro management. Be as specific as possible.
1. Searching. I want to be able to search for ships, planets, starbases etc. by name or other criteria. Ideally I could select what I look for and the criteria and I get presented with a list of search results. The list would give me information and also allow me to move the map to the location. Let's say I search for ships of the type "Fujikos Frigate M1". I get a list of the matching ships with information like the fleet it belongs to or the planet it is on etc. I could double click and go to the fleet, the planet or the ship.
2. Filtering and sorting. I want to be able to sort lists by different criteria and also filter them. For example in the shipyard list: It should be sortable by name, shiptype that is build, by productions points etc. I also want to be able to filter for shipyards that build a certain shiptype or that have names starting with "blabla ".
3. Commands should work on groups not just on everything. Currently commands are too universal. I can send all ships of a certain type to a rally point. I can tell all shipyards to produce this. That is not good if the empire gets larger. I want to be able to break that down and adress a certain group of ships or all shipyards in a certain region. This could be realized by either the ability to mark ships and shipyards with a group name or by the ability to give criteria for the command or again by searching.
An example:
I want to send fleets to a certain border, because war just broke out. It would be great if I could set a rally point and in the commands view I could search for fleets matching certain criteria, for example names or weapon types. I get a list that has the option to mark the fleets I really want. Just then I click OK and execute the command. After that I want to change production of several shipyards to produce war ships. Same thing really - I start with a search, if necessary narrow it further down by deselecting some and execute.
4. I want a convenient way to spend money. I usually play very money oriented and often buy improvements and ships, not to mention upgrades of ships. It would be good if this was easier. In GalCiv2 it was possible to buy improvements and I also think ships directly in the colony manager. This should be brought back.
Also I want to be able to set up a programm of spending. For example: At the start of the turn, if there are more than 2000 credits, use that money to upgrade ships, buy improvements etc. Obviously we would need a tool to set up the priority and in case of ship upgrades what type should upgrade into what and in which order. Here groups could be useful again. The player could mark the ships engaged with the Drengin into a group and set up a programm to upgrade the ships of the type "Fujikos Frigate M1" into "Fujikos Frigate M2" in order of their names. The tool should inform the player if something goes wrong and when it finished.
5. Better information. Yes, this belongs here! You can't manage what you don't know. I would like better information because I sometimes take up games after weeks or months of pausing, but also to better think about the strategy. In GalCiv2 the mini map could show the relativ importance of planets in terms of population or productions, by painting them bigger - meaning highly populated planets would be bigger dots. I often used this to quickly figure out which planets I send agents to in order to sabotage farms.
It's stuff like that I miss in GalCiv3 because good visualization can help a lot in understanding the situation and this helps your decision making and therefore your management. In especially I would like special maps that represent certain aspects of the galaxy - like for example where the highly populated planets are or where the Antimatter-Mining-Starbases are and how productive or well defended they are. The zoomed out map is a start for that kind of thing, but in my opinion it is to cluttered and lacks the ability to represent abstract facts (like the relative production strength of a planet) or to concentrate on a certain aspect (like just show the stars and the fleets with war ships to get an idea how the forces a deployed).
Also better statistics are need. Last sunday I couldn't figure out the ranking of the planets in terms of influence (not influence growth per turn, but the actual influence points). It didn't even say "This planet ranks place 4 in the empire" like it did in GalCiv2. Maybe there is already a way, but than it is not obvious enough. So yeah, more tools to get, present and analyze information so I can make an informend management decision please!
Purposefully didn't read the other posts, instead I concentrate of the things that bother me in my own game (still first sandbox game on a huge map since I bought the game although I play 1-2 h nearly every day - there you see the offect of micromanagement in action ...):
1. Starbase management: when I'm not at war I produce only constructors that have to be sent somewhere. For every constructor I search manually on the map which starbases still need upgrades. I need a function that shows starbases sorted by increasing distance from a contructor with a list of icons like the ones in the starbase build screen that show the missing modules so that I don't have to scroll around on the map, hover over every starbase to show the tooltip and try to deduce from the shown number of possible modules whether the starbase needs an upgrade.
2. Sortable list of habitable but not colonized planets with a button to send the next available colony ship there.
3. In wartime (or to counter threats in time) I have to go to the notification about foreign ships in your observed space and manually click through all of them to identify enemies that need to be destroyed. I want the option back to optionally show all ship movements (perhaps fine tuned to show only war ships or all ships or only ships of specific races) in sensor range of any ship or planet or starbase I own.
4. Ship and Fleet management: I would like to have a range indicator that shows on the fly how far a fleet/ship can still move in the cuirrent turn. Right now when I want to control movement (what happens very often) I have to estimate how far the ship/fleet can go, then click to move, then click one or two or three times more until all movement points are used up or to reduce movement so that the ship/fleet isn't moved automatically at the end of the next turn without notification. Also I need to see which ship in a fleet limits range or speed at a glance without having to click a lot. Just show a little icon to mark the slowest ship(s) and the ones with the shortest range in the fleet view in the lower left corner.
5. Add the maintenance cost to the ships in the ship list and make it sortable by all shown criteria.
And since I can't help myself something else:
- I wouldn't have needed the special resources, but they are there now, making asteroid fields as such useless. There should be the possibility to mine them as well, e. g. like in GC2 to increase production.
- I don't like useless objects (as you can see above ) so give us the possibility to do something with class 0 planets (mine them, make them habitable with a lot of work, make it possible to explore them to find treasures of all kind, whatever)
I really like this idea. It would be great to have a special survey ship to explore uninhabitable in your ZOC. The might find nothing, something good or get destroyed for their efforts.
I doubt that this is the kind of thing they are looking for to improve the existing UI, but it is still a very good idea.
A tick box on the shipyard screen that says 'auto-upgrade repeat build to latest model'. If I have set a shipyard to produce an endless streeam of Destroyers, I clearly don't want it producing to still be producing Mark 3 destroyers when I've just put the finishing touches on the Mark 47.
Thank you! I look forward to playing with this update.
If you're interested and haven't see this yet, I posted some ideas for apocalyptic mid to near end game mega-events from this thread.
Most of my 5 have been mentioned, but I figure you're looking for consensus.
1) Starbases!!!!!! I like insane maps and eventually have hundreds of starbases. Building them is the single most time-intensive micromanagement task I do. I like someone else's suggestion of not requiring constructors for buildout. Maybe an initial constructor to start it, but then build modules right at the starbase, with an automatic upgrade option. Or, another suggestion someone made that allows the starbase to auto upgrade when it receives constructor modules (notice the plural). Auto upgrade would have to be an optional button or checkbox because there are times when starbases require immediate specialization.
2) Customizable planetary governors. I don't want just three options. I want to create at least 5 custom governors I can choose from for each planet, and also in a planet list on the Govern tab. It would also be nice if that planet list showed the current defending ships instead of just the shield symbol like on the main map UI.
3) In the turn I get ultra-terriformers I can spend 30-45 minutes setting production on 100+ worlds. This is because I want to maximize the productive capacity of the world by placing all UTs and then adding the other tile upgrade projects strategically. It would REALLY help if all tile upgrade options had unique tiles from the beginning (so a soil improvement would not be in the same tile as a UT, etc.) It would also help if, when combined with the first suggestion, planets queued the UT building automatically. That would save a lot of time.
4) I ALWAYS want to use the tech tree on the research screen. Either make this so, or give me the option in the Options menu, please.
5) Diplomacy. I would love to know at a glance on the diplomacy screen whom I can trade with (maybe gray out the others), and what treaties I currently have with each player (a tiny symbol or colored rings or something). Right now, I have to scroll through every player to see if I can trade with them and whether an open borders treaty or non-aggression pact (or whatever) needs to be renewed. Being able to tell with a quick glance on the main diplomacy screen would save a lot of time and clicks, especially with 20+ AIs.
P.S. When you post the change log, could you please indicate whether we need to start a new game. Thank you.
My top priority would be some kind of filter system for the ship designer.
With the option to only have the latest design show up, or only medium ship designs, or only huge designs.
Have the design ordered alphabetically or by ship size, cost... etc.
Once you get a couple of designs, the ship designer becomes a pain in the A..!
Some points are taken from the comments before, but the are really important so I will add thm to my list
1. THIS IS VITAL. All lists need to be sortable in multiple ways. In addition to multiple sorting methods (i.e. size, name, class for ships, sort after free/used modules on etc.; I know this function are on the “govern” page but we need them on the list on the right…) we should be able to group up planets, shipyard, SHIPS. For example group up all “science” planet in a group that can be expanded, but otherwise remains closed to save space on the list. Or for example be able to select the fleet from the list instead of the single ships (btw ships in a fleet should be group in the list to save space e be easier to use).
2. Small EXTRA windows in the planet management that shows exactly all bonus/malus of that planet (including the bonus/malus from the colonizing event).
3. Fix/remove/improve “eject ship” system from fleet/planets. Fleets need to be able to exchange ships more freely.
4. Ability to choose a series of tech (also from different branches) to research one after the other, so that no reseacrh points go to waste. (shift click of CIV 5 for example)
5. Improve “improvement management” (for example it bothers me everytime I choose a location for an improvement and it changes the target location or it selects a terraforming improvement)
6. Wypoints/Patrol
7. The ability to switch between shipyards, like you can with planets.
8. When switching from planet to planet PLEASE KEEP THE ORDER THE SAME! Everytime I go out and in again the order is messed up.
9. list of both habitable and ones that are able to be colonized (where size > 0 and not barren)
10. A button to remove projects from every planet - or every project of a selected type. Every time you research a new terraforming item you have to go to every single planet and shut off the project, select the tile to update and then (when it's done) go back and start constructing the building for that tile AND THEN go back and restart the project - or customize the production wheel for every single planet. I've actually quit playing the game because it is too painful to research anything.
11. Reduce clickfest that doesn't really allow you to do anything anyway. To give one common example: click on the fleet, click on a ship, click on decommission, click on YES, probably click on three other things, then repeat. And repeat. And repeat. Or move a ship onto a fleet at the end of a turn; next turn you will have to select it, move it one hex, move it back and THEN it will join. Don't try to use the 'Manage Fleets' because you can't add one ship that way.
12. Fix the sorting issue in the shipyard. I go into one planet, the oldest ships are on top. Next planet, the oldest are on bottom. Then the oldest are at the top again... rinse and repeat.
13. Give us a warning when the Birthing project hits the population cap so we can switch more easily without checking all the time.
14. Multi-selection in the ship designer. Sometimes I want to get rid of a ton of ships to clean up the mess. Multi-selection would help immensely with that.
I forgot one important thing:
6. When a planet has built all possible improvements I set the production to 100% military so everything goes into ship production. When I research a new improvement then auto upgrade tries to build it but shows N/A for time since there is no social production. So I have to remember to go to every affected planet and set the production back to 50% social /50% military (or whatever, but social > 0). That can be quite tiresome with a lot of planets ...
So a function like "set production to x% social / 100-x% military when it is 100% military" would be needed (edit: for all planets at once of course).
I'm glad you decided this is important. I'm going to repeat my number one peeve about shipyard micromanagement and the rest will come later:
1) Allow sorting the shipyard list by Hull Size, Weapon Type, Defence Type. Then once the ships are sorted by that, you can apply secondary sorting, by cost,size etc. As an example:
http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i269/achronous/Shipyard%20Sorting.png
Both of these are very important, IMO.
Another would be being able to easily turn multiple shipyards that currently turned off back on. Either from a list or at the map screen itself. As it is, going in and manually clicking a shipyard, clicking on resume, then going back to the main screen, then clicking on another shipyard, clicking on resume, and then going back to the main screen, and then clicking on another gets tedious if you are turning dozens of shipyards back on if they had all been off for one reason or another.
Currently there IS a way for them to go from NOTHING -> WHATEVER. But there is no way, as far as I know, to turn them from OFF -> ON in a batch manner.
Alternatively, being able to just build something from a shipyard that is currently turned off from the main screen and having that turn the shipyard automatically back on if it is off would be even better.
Basically, if something is "Shutdown", have it so the "Quick Build" field (or whatever) can still be used.
I'm re-posting my economy solution below "A Suicidal difficulty Let's Players proposal..." I've posted it it elsewhere but I'll add some additional requests here. I could right an essay on what needs to be improved in Gal Civ 3 but I'll just cover the top of the iceberg.
Others have mentioned similar to these but here's my 2c.
Sorting: All the queue's in the game lack sorting options shockingly poor currently can't believe it's still not fixed.
Terraforming: Color coded levels of ALL terrain quality visible when terraforming should solve ultra terrformer issues.
AI. I haven't played 1.2 yet since I'm too frustrated with areas other the game that haven't been improved but people whose opinion I trust say it's not up to par so more improvement on that please.
Starbases: I assume this will be a later patch, Constructor spam micromanagement issues need to be dealt with.
Diplomacy Screen: It sucks just like it did in GC1+2. Tech trading is boring, micromanagement intensive and very out of date other developers have abandoned it in their games for good reason. There are scant tootips to see all the information you need on one screen so you can know who you want to trade with and for what. Personally I'd scrap it entirely and have a diplomacy system similar to the one their going to have in Beyond Earth: Rising Tide it looks really innovative and fun and you could perhaps use Gal Civ's influence in a similar system.
All things that encourage lengthy micromanagement in general to be improved/streamlined, spare a thought for people who play 15+ planet empires that want some time out of the game.
There's lots of things I'm no doubt forgetting...
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A Suicidal difficulty Let's Players proposal...
The game needs an economy system that has little micromanagement without dumbing down or sacrificing control over your empire too much.
Suicidal players tend to devote a 100% of production in one area until that job is done. This is the best strategy, this system would enable you to do that and reduce micro.
I would use an individual planet focus system to separate production (Manufacturing*/Research/Wealth Generation) each planet has to select one but you can select two possibly three. With one selected 100 percent two 50/50 three is 33/33/33 of production is split though why you would want to select three in a system where specializing planets is the best idea I don't know. You can change the focus of a planet whenever you like. I focus my planets 100% in one area almost always currently though sometimes two e.g. I want to finish a building/ship that turn and with leftover production do research (this is an area where a good player is forced into very time consuming micro to achieve the best results**). Losing a small amount of flexibility in regards of selecting exact percentage amounts wouldn't bother me, the micromanagement currently needed per turn for lots of planets is shocking due in great part to the horrendous percentage wheel system.
**Frankly I might prefer that only one production focus be allowed per planet that would be the best way to reduce micro!!!
*Manufacturing should probably still be split between social and military and I'd like the per planet slider for this to stay, since not every planet makes ships the micro isn't so pronounced and ship production is a vital part of the game that a player should be giving attention to. A fourth focus option could be the answer if you wanted to get rid of the slider. (Military/Social//Research/Wealth)
I actually NEVER use the global wheel in my suicidal games I think there's more reason to scrap that than a per planet system. Doing the opposite would dumb the game down too much even if it would reduce micro management... all management in fact... MOO3 and gaming hell comes to mind.
A focus system would have to be represented well in the UI. On the tactical map I would use colored icons adjacent to each planet to denote production focus (e.g. red hammer/blue flask/yellow or green dollar sign) perhaps also a colored haze/fog around the planets. The player should NOT have to enter the planet screen to set focus it should be able to be done elsewhere including the main screen right hand side planet list in addition to the planet screen. A one focus only allowed system would stand out more in regards of UI, 2 or 3 simultaneous focuses per planet would be harder to implement satisfactorily.
Options could be added to switch all planets to one focus in place of the global wheel and perhaps governors added that in general use the focus that a planets buildings and bonuses have been specialized towards.
Overall I think this system shouldn't be too hard to to implement, be intuitive and familiar to players, it would reduce the micro considerably without dumbing down the game and might even be fun to play as well
This thread contains more of my thoughts on this system: https://forums.galciv3.com/469462/page/1/
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(My Gal Civ3/Stardock Review so far)
It's really time to start delivering though Stardock you say all the right things! but just haven't delivered. With the patches so far I don't see any signs of that changing anytime soon perhaps you need to have more people working on the game, (this post is probably very critical but I'd work for you in a shot, I wouldn't bother posting if I didn't care about the game/company) progress has been painfully slow. I loved Gal Civ 1+2 though they had their flaws they were excellent for their time Gal Civ 3 isn't yet. It's a very average game that hasn't kept up with the times apart from a few things it's like it was made for 2009 imo. Your competitors e.g. Paradox, Amplitude, Firaxis are making better games imo.
I haven't written a review on steam yet but if 1.3 is disappointing I'm inclined to write a negative review I came close to spending $100 on your game I decided not to and haven't regretted buying the cheaper option. I know a companies main priority is making a profit but releasing DLC of questionable value for money (mega events aren't probably on the radar of the communities most requested feature/improvement) when the base game is in dire need of attention also doesn't sit well with me. These are my personal opinions others will disagree with them or think they are harsh you have a very loyal fanbase but I think you are jeopardizing that... time to deliver.
Macsen.
Some things that have been mentioned, but still biggies for me:
1. Tech tree queues
2. Auto-updating ship designs in the construction queue
3. Centering some UI elements in the tech selection screen. I play on a 40" 4k monitor with the small UI and it's just a long way from 'choose new tech' to the upper left to pick a new tech
4. Likewise another 4k suggestion: It would be nice to change the threshold where ships, planets, and other objects go from animated objects to icons. The view switches to icon view too early as i zoom out so I end up playing the game mostly in icon view since I can see a lot of info in fine detail.
My take on fixing the main issue with planetary micromanagement is extremely simple.
Simply add a button next to the wheel called something like 'Maximize planetary development' that you can tick on/off.
What it would do: Whenever the planet is producing something other than a project, set production to 100%. That way you can set the wheel to 100% research/wealth without having to go through every single planet every few turns as you research upgrades to make sure they are actually being produced.
1. My scouts and defenders need waypoints to patrol and the possibility to set certain actions (e.g. notify and retreat to the nearest allied/owned planet) if the spot an enemy.
3. Ship and Fleet management: I would like to switch between ship and fleet overview and/or show both and make it sortable (i.e. fleets are listed first).
4. Seconded: Give us the possibility to do something with class 0 planets (mine them, make them habitable with a lot of work, make it possible to explore them to find treasures of all kind, whatever).
Fly safe!
Skyh Blue
Sorry to disagree here but please don't. Really. I want the ability to "sterilize" the galaxy by destroying a colony so that it stays dead.
Well, that's as far as colonization is concerned. If dead worlds occasionally spawned resources, either current ones or some completely new types, or offered exploration options for survey ships, that's ok, I guess.
That doesn't exclude each other. If you give players the ability (weapon) to transform a planet to a bunch of asteroids then you can still prevent an opponent to terraform that planet again ... unless there is a tech to construct planets from asteroids like in MoO 2
Have an option for a shipyard to build a supply management extention which allows ready made sections of ships and effectively support another shipyards production, so that shipyard can build ships much quicker. This should probably require another constructor, and the supply ship supplying the other shipyward with parts or whatever should be interceptable.
1. The ability to see which tiles will be terraformable by Ultra Terraformer before getting that tech (so we can use lower tech terraformers on other tiles). I don't even think we need to be able to differentiate between the other tiles, just green for UT tiles and yellow for everything the terraformer we selected can terraform but UT cannot.
2. Sortable and ideally filterable ship lists - lists should REMAIN sorted the way the player left them
3. On the planet management tab I would like to be able to differentiate between planets that have open tiles and those that do not (like we could in GCII) - this list should also remain sorted the way the player left it
4. Shipyard building options should have sorts and filters, surprisingly I think these should remain the way the player sorted them
5. A few things I would like to have that aren't super important:
5a. I would like a research queue
5b. I would like an "auto upgrade starbase" option (I also like the idea of shipyards sponsoring starbases, but I'm not opposed to the way it is now)
5c. I would like to be able to access my research screen from within the trading screen to evaluate whether I should trade for a tech. Right now I'm working around this using the snipping tool and my second monitor, which is a perfectly functional workaround, but probably not the best way the game could be played
1. Concur heartily with the notion of more and better sorts and filters that are sticky. I find it hard to rank-order which lists I want that help for more
Would especially like to see the bug where you end up having to click something else before you can get a filter for shipyards in the Starbases list and rally points in the Go To list (really, shouldn't the Rally Point button on the shipyard panel open directly to the Rally Point list?).
2. Make fleet names stick, and give us filter/list for them on the Ships tab.
Currently, I see inconsistent behavior when I move ships onto a fleet or move a fleet onto a single ship. Sometimes the fleet name sticks and sometimes it is replaced by a new generic numbered fleet name. On very large, late-game maps finding reserve fleets can be time-consuming. Why is there even a filter bar with that taunting All on it on the Ships tab anyway?
3. Give us a clear way to tell the ship design system that design X is an upgrade for design Y. I still haven't figured out how to get the Update Design to Latest Version button to do anything. If the functionality is there, please add info to the ToolTip to explain how to get it going.
4. Make movement info available on the panel for a selected fleet.
5. Please, please consider using context menus in all the non-map parts of the UI. Methodical application of this simple UI element could do wonders in reducing both heavy click paths and long mouse moves. Easy example: in the Colonies list, right-click a colony and click Buy to rush whatever is at the top of the queue for that colony.
I picked the filter/sort thing as my one Big List Already There second, but I also strongly support the idea of generally making more info available as it was in GC2, especially when we finally get an espionage/intelligence system to worry about.
Cheers for deciding to devote an entire update cycle to the UI. I still haven't stretched out for the kind of max-my-rig game that I enjoyed with GC2 and I'm looking forward to seeing some streamlining that will make that prospect less daunting.
p.s. I don't think it is in scope for 1.3, but it is sort of a UI thing: the game would benefit immensely from richer, more numerous ToolTips or even old-school What's This help. There are many details (e.g. what does alliance specialization do?) that are not explained in the manual or the official wiki and finding that stuff on the forums is hit or miss.
Here is my wish list:
A production overlay which we can turn on and off, that adds a small set of icons that hover over planets describing their econ, research and manufacturing output on the main map (rather than having to hover over each in turn). This would make it easier and quicker to see at-a-glance which planets in an area are the big producers.
I already made a post but thought of something else that some posts got me thinking on
tactical overlays on the main map that can be turned on and off like the minimap filters each would change the map to show off information to the relevent overlay
a) trade -would show all trade routes and ships on the main map and each planets income, it would hide everything else
anomolies - would show all anomolies and survey ships and hide everything else
c) resources - would show all resources and relics as well as starbases mining them
d) starbases - would show alll your starbases hiding everything else
there are a few more this is just an idea to get the ball rolling
Some of my ideas are not going to ever be in the game but if I were re-imagining the game I would change the tech tree ages to civilization types on the Kardashev scale where energy is the universal currency.
We are currently a type 0 civilization.
Type 1 - Controls all energy on their planet. This allows extensive space travel within a solar system.
Type 2 - Controls energy throughout their solar system. This ushers in FTL, space warping, worm holes, etc.
Type 3 - Controls energy on a galactic level. This civilization can manipulate energy on a cosmic scale. Create and destroy stars, etc.
Some have added types 4 and 5, with 4 being so advanced we can't really define it and 5 being gods or some kind of ascension.
The current ages in the game were designed to prevent planetary invasion too soon. This could be easily controlled by requiring a variety of techs for invasion and make it more interesting than simply sending a transport with a ridiculous number of troops and a few invasion options.
This is my personal fantasy. My more mundane wishes are...
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