Summary
The AI Strikes Back! The AI now does a much better job of building its planets and managing its economy. Player Governors are likewise better at building planets and the new Spending Foci allow you to manage planetary production.
AI+ The AI does a much better job at building worlds + Added AI governors to better manage starbase construction+ Improved budget management + Improved constructor movement logic
Governors+ Player governors do a much better job of building planets+ Added spending foci to the planetary screen. This allows players to shift their planetary production between manufacturing, research, or wealth. + Added a Balanced Governor type that builds worlds that are balanced between manufacturing, research, and wealth spending.
Known issuePlayers who haven't updated to 1.3 previous to this update will need to delete the following directories and their contents:My Games/GalCiv3/gfxMy Games/GalCiv3/Screens
Change LogAI Changes+ AI creates specialized planets instead of generic worlds.+ AI prioritizes building starbases around planets instead of strictly claiming resources.+ If the AI determines that it is overspending and cannot support the fleet size, it will aggressively decommission ships. Older ships are decommissioned first.+ Improved AI and Governor planetary project (e.g. Economic Stimulus, Cultural Festival, etc.) selection + After conquering a planet, AI will pick Governors based on the existing improvements.+ AI now picks Governors based on planet bonuses.+ AI now uses spending foci. + AI tech Governor now has a better tech order provided.+ AI will no longer overbuild starbases and it only builds what it wants to build.+ Add Governors for the AI to manage Starbases. +Tweaked the AI War strategy to focus a bit more on Research.+ Improved Constructor movement logic:- Constructors will no longer get stuck in a logic loop when entering dangerous areas.- Fixed weird edge cases regarding constructor building rings and resource capturing.
+ Made the AI research weapons better by increasing the priority of all weapons types slightly to work better with tech governors.+ Added multiple new AI prototype blueprints and designs such that the AI is now much better at using Resources to kill you.+ AI ships now patrol their territory if they do not have a specific target. + AI now use shipyards and planets as rally points. + Adjusted levels at which the AI will start decommissioning ships+ Fixed a bug where the AI was being notified that a ship has stationed in a fleet when it wasn't.+ Weak ships will fall back to starbases. + The AI will now prefer to build up transport fleets before building attack fleets. This will make AI invasion fleets stronger and invasions easier for the AI.
Governors+ Added spending percentages to the manufacturing, research, and wealth tooltips. For the manufacturing tooltip, also added social and military percentage information. This help clarifies the effects of the new spending foci+ Added spending focus to the planetary screen. This allows players shift their planetary production to manufacturing, research, or wealth. Choosing a focus diverts 25% of the planetary production to that area.+ Added a "Direct Control" governor that allows players to manually place planetary improvements (similar to the old "remove governor" button)+ Added a Balanced Governor that builds worlds that are balanced between manufacturing, research, and wealth spending.
Gameplay+ Added new Military Subsidies Planetary project that funnels excess social manufacturing production into a sponsored shipyard.+ Created new Moral Allowance planetary project that funnels social manufacturing production into boasting the planet's morale. + Lowered tech weights on some defense techs.+ Drengin are now able to build Approval starbase modules.+ Tweaked the common medium habitable planet from 25 to 22+ Increased the priority of life support on most blueprints.+ Lowered mass of several components slightly
Diplomacy Polish+ In the trade window, added the relations slider underneath the Leader's name+ Diplomacy Trade screen: added confirmation before declaring war+ Added mouse tooltip to the "speak to" button if the opponent wasn't available for trade+ Add an "available to talk" icon to faction power list on the main screen+ Trade screen: collapsed ships stay collapsed each time between screen transitions+ Trade offers should properly consider the credit value of a stack of items. + The cancel button in the "Home Star System Window" now works properly
UI / Graphics+ Minimap no longers shows ZOC influence under fog of war+ Added gel background to the Load Map screen and fixed some text overlap issues+Search results in Research Technologies are are now flushed between games+ Added new tooltips for faction power list+ Fixed an issue where the production wheel does not always update the values on the screen when previewing new values on the wheel.+ Revised the Collect Gameplay Data tooltip text to make it clearer what it's doing.+ Removed the "Quick Move" game options screen as it didn't do anything.+ The rename object dialog did not have a message or icon. Fixed it so it looks a little better.+ Fix line artifacts on the Research screens+ Fix Medium UI sizing issues in the Relic list.+ Fix issue where Approval stat on planet list entries was popping out of grid in Medium UI.+ Fixed lines on medium UI in the battle report entry.+ Clicking on sorting icons in the main UI again will reverse the sorting order+ Cleaned up the Relationship `sliders on the Interaction and Diplomacy windows.+ Added new diplomacy icons for war and ally+ Cleaned up unused assets+ Re-work icons on for Planetary Governors.+ Added "Low Res Textures" option to improve performance. + Setting up lean textures for dread lords texture set to improve their appearance
Balance+ Reduced decommission idle time from 30 to 10.+ Lower Manufacturing planet requirement to class 7+ Updated planetary projects. Boost birthing subsidies to 10% from 5%+ New Military Subsidies project, (Requires feedback work)+ Adjusted Life Support modules to be cheaper in general and scale better with advancement.+ Nerfed Factories slightly.+ Balance Drengin, and Yor manufacturing and Research improvements, to better balance against Terran improvements+ Lowered Tech inflation exponent slightly+ Rebalanced Starbase modules, primarily boosting bonuses+ Increased the influence generated by starbase modules+ Techs will now increase in cost in late game
MP+ Fixed several desync issues + Addressed issues that made the Host seem unresponsive.+ New Lobby messages will appear on new lines. Messages were sometimes bunching up.+ Added a Cancel button to the loading screen for multiplayer games. + If either player has the universal translator, then they can now speak to one another and trade. + Fixed a bug where the middle "For" section on the trade screen would appear when a trade is canceled.+ Fixed a case where the "start button" was appeared disable when it was not. + In some circumstances, the game was incorrectly sending multiple match reports for the same game. + If a peer exited the game or lobby, the host was not always getting the disconnection request. + Restored game: Fixed a problem where a player's faction was changed to Terran.+ Restored game: Joining the lobby will no longer occasion create an extra slot. + Fixed a case where starting a multiplayer game would have visual gaps in the player list + The game can now load player created Gigantic maps in multiplayer.+ Added support for private multiplayer games+ Host can now set the number of human players in the lobby.+ Fixed a multiplayer crash when attempting to de-select a spending focus+ The fixed a bug introduced in the previous opt-in that prevented players from choosing different factions in multiplayer.
Bugs+ Fixed a startup crash caused by system variables. + Medium UI: In the Tech Tree screen, the player was in the "Age of Expansion" but is seeing a yellow bar as if they were in the "Age of War". + "Wish upon a Relic" Mega Event no longer spawns hordes of pirates.+ Fix an issue that was stopping the Drengin from getting Tech and Manufacturing Capitals.+ Fixing crash when removing a custom part from ship design if the custom part does not exist on the local machine. The most cost+ The Dread Lords were unable to build fighters for the orbital defenses. However, the game thought there should be fighters and prevented players from invading. + Some Dread Lord controlled planets could not be invaded if the Dread Lords built an Orbital Defines Platform. That defense would try to generate fighters that the Dread Lords could not build so the battle would never start. The Dread Lords can now build the fighters and their planets can be invaded. + Fix missing Icon on Hull Mastery Specialization.+ If the logo for a custom faction is not found, use the "random faction" logo is used as a fallback inside of entire texture atlas.+ Fixed a bad prerequisite for Yor Lossless life support technology that was causing an infinite loop.+ Added a check for "Windows\system32" in the environmental path variables at the start of the game. Some users are missing this in their path and the game would crash on start.+ The "Wish upon a Relic" Mega Event was incorrectly spawning pirates in addition to the Relic. + Fix issue that was stopping Drengin from getting the Tech and Manufacturing Capitals.+ Fixing crash when removing custom part from ship design if the custom part does not exist on the local machine+ Fix missing Icon on Hull Mastery Specialization.+ Fixed bug when loading a game with custom factions and the faction logo image was not found locally on the machine that loaded the saved game. It would not display the strategic icon properly and render the entire icon atlas. If a cust logo is not found, the "random faction" logo is used as a fallback.+ Ship movement debuffs are no longer clipped in tooltip+ Fixed the number suffixes for the End Game ranking.+ The first planet in custom made maps are now the player's homeworld.+ Planetary screen wasn't displaying the proper number of Manufacturing, Research, and Income icons.+ The Register and Free DLC buttons now become disabled (with a tooltip) the same way the Multiplayer button does, so if the internet or Steam cut out while the game is running there won't be any confusion about the state of those buttons.+ Added missing component icons+ Prevented a crash with wonders and players with custom data.+ Fix bad thumbnails on some Drengin Ships+ Removed the spending wheel from the Govern Planet screen. Use the focus buttons to adjust spending levels instead. + Fixed several stuck turn problems+ Added next and previous arrows to the shipyards window.+ Adjusted the height of the Map Editor description box to allow more room+ Shipyard: Improved "required resources" tooltip Buy button to be more informative and friendly to the player+ Starbase list now only displays filters that are needed. That is, don't show a "mining" filter unless you have a mining starbase.+ Planet lists will now properly sort at the beginning of each turn+ Fixed a problem that made the game unstable if you had hundreds of ships. + Typos + Pressing T while the input box does not have focus will now hide the chat window.+ Rally point and Fleet numbers will no longer appear on top of the UI.+ When choose a Civilization, the the factions appear in the following order: default factions, DLC factions next, and custom factions last.+ The game now verifies if the user is logged on to Steam when attempting to show/hide the DLC Available button.+ Fixed a crash when a dead AI is the last player in the turn listRenamed the improvement "Moral Allowance" to "Morale Allowance"Human player can longer initiate trade before other player has universal translatorGetting or setting player stats will now not work if the user isn't logged in to SteamUpdated registration UI and text.Fixed startup crash with generation of the texture atlas. As a result of this fix: - Atlas files are now in the steam game folder- Modders: Atlas files can be generated by adding /atlasgen to startup command line. This puts the atlas files in the "my games/galciv3" folder. The game will now check the "my games/galciv3" folder first, and fall back to game dir if not found.+ Updated batch files to prevent a crash with systems with specific path variable settings. + Starbases no longer give +100% to beam weapons.+ On the Planetary Governors screen, the auto-terraform is no longer disabled the first time the screen is opened.
So I let the files reload, then verified again - said all files good.
Rebooted, launched GC3 and started new game, had same graphic problem. Verified cache, says 6 files failed to validate.
So launching GC3 is damaging the files in some way?
Turn off Steam Cloud and then verify cache.
Steam Cloud is off.
Same pattern - launching game shows graphic issue, verifying cache shows 6 files fail to validate.
So I uninstalled the game, deleted all folders, turned off opt-in for 1.4, uninstalled and - voila!
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The planet icon shows up at right and in the lower left, the background is lighter and the blue color is the familiar 'Terran Blue'. Compare and contrast with:
I did save the GC3 folder from Documents and it has some log files from the last 'bad' launch. Let me know if you want to see anything. But it seems pretty clear that 1.4 broke the game for me, graphically.
After the successful launch of a new game, just for consistency, I attempted to verify the cache. Again it said, "Six files failed to validate."
Maybe there were some issues with your My Games/GalCiv3 folder. I'm glad it's working now however. If you run into it again after the release of 1.4, please let us know.
[/quote]2. We can still only sort ships via 3 options All/Core/User in the design and Shipyards. It's 1.4 patch now c'mon Strardock the game shouldn't have been released without more options than this some people have 100's of ships to scroll through to find the right one. Add multiple options (and have it so more than one can be selected at the same time) e.g. hull size, cost, ship role, most damage output etc. Changes like these would allow players to actually play the game more rather than getting frustrated at losing time in an unwinnable battle against the inadequacies of the current UI.[/quote]
I agree. I've abandoned my immense game simply because it takes too long to go through the ship list and make your moves. The size option is the most important one, in my opinion, in the shipyard. In the fleet list, I'd prefer an option that would only display a subset of ships, picked by type (survey, constructor, transport, colony, and fleets not on a planet. Fleets ON a planet shouldn't even be listed as fleet because you can't move them). This would speed up the game by a factor of 100, I would guess.
The Ai is actually building fleets and using them. It is also building better designed ships. It definitely is better than 1.3.
Actually, I'll change my comment.The AI is pretty damn agressive at Genius level, but impotent at gifted. I was careless, the AI took advantage of me, now it's an uphill battle.
Hmmm, guess it's time to bump up the difficulty level then. I have noticed improvements but haven't felt like the AI is any more of a challenge, and I don't consider myself a great player. Next game, Genius it is!
It should say that if either player has Universal Translator then you can trade.
Sorry for the confusion.
yes, the step is very very very high. I haven't made it to the point where I can conquer a planet yet in this game, so I don't know how they are built yet. But I can see the terrans expanding fast.
Perfect. Makes complete sense that way. Thanks for the clarification.
Hey folks,
We just updated the opt-in with some fresh changes to the AI. Let us know what you think.
Any hint as to what those changes are and what we should be looking for? Thanks.
It would be really nice if change the font or something when you update the change log so we could see the deltas between releases
EDIT: oops spoke prior to looking, Thanks for doing that.
Will the AI prioritize Orbital Manufacturing now? It really limits them when they can not adapt the Military Subsidies project because they are too busy beelining to Advanced Construction.
Great updated changes! Im gonna restart a new game!
It would be really nice if change the font or something when you update the change log so we could see the deltas between releases EDIT: oops spoke prior to looking, Thanks for doing that.
No oops. I added it as per your suggestion
Please see the changes in blue above.
Thanks, pshaw, didn't mean to jump the gun before you were finished posting all your stuff... Looking forward to trying it out!
I see military starbases area of effect is unchanged, is this still planned to be increased?
Awesome update!I've heard that the AI was parking its ships next to the player instead of using it in its war against someone else and also that apparently minor factions aren't building up right (I forgot which thread mentioned this), have they been addressed as well?
Did you start a new game? You'd need to start a new game to see the effect.
Pshaw, thanks you confirmed. I will need to fire up a new game to see the changes.
It is working now after the 27th mini update, but was not on the original opt-in.
A new bug is now occurring for me, I can build interceptor defense module on my star bases before I have completed the required research.
Not entirely, but I see improvements.
and also that apparently minor factions aren't building up right (I forgot which thread mentioned this), have they been addressed as well?
In my opinion, no, they lag so far behind in research that they can be conquered too easily early in game by an agressive AI.
I think that, relative to other AIs, they fared better in 1.3 than in 1.4. Of course, they are minors, they do not expand. I think it warrants its own thread, to discuss about what kind of role we'de want to see minors playing.
Just got the update on steam and crash to desktop before I hit the menu from the splash screen. Nothing running other than a browser, but I do use the beta steam client.
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