My 2 Cents on how to improve GalCiv3 with some simple changes:
1. No "end-of-turn-wait"
Do away with the "end-of-turn-wait". It is just tedious to press "next turn" again and again until at last the thing you are waiting for (ship is built, tech is researched, whatever) is finally done. The famous game "Master of Orion 2" had this option (no end-of-turn-wait) and it did indeed improve gameplay enormously, because waiting did not feel as tedious anymore.
The game will only stop if either a new tech is discovered, a ship or planet is attacked or if a shipyard or colony runs out of orders.
2. Race-specific music-scores
Race-specific music-scores for diplomacy, declaration of war and so on would be great. It would improve imersion in the game.
3. More equal starting positions; more than one planet at start
I think, every major race should have more than one colony to start with (e.g. three colonies instead of just one). It simply destroys game-balance if one (or more) major races end up in a desolate part of the galaxy with no meaningful chance to expand at all.
4. Give everybody a speed-burst
At the moment, ships are incredibly slow at the start of the game. Giving everybody a higher base-movement-speed (e.g. 4 instead of just 2) would make the game feel more dynamic. It would also speed up the discovery of the map.
5. Do away with "just dead" planets.
While I understand, that not every planet can support live on a larger scale, I think, that it is a disapointment for the player to discover yet another star-system with nothing but dead planets that are absolutely useless.
Why not give those "just dead" planets some purpose, as for example, a mining-colony, a gas-mine, a fleet base, a science lab, a space-factory or something else?
6. Fix the algorithm for planet generation
In my impression, extreme planets and outright hostile planets are rare, no matter whatever you chose as a starting setting. Even if you chose the amount of habitable planets to be "rare" and extreme planets as "abundant", there are always far more habitable planets than extreme ones.
In my opinion, it would be far more interesting if there were more "difficult" planets (toxic, radioactive, desert, frozen...) and less "run-of-the mill" habitable planets. This is especially true, because if that were the case, the trait "adaptable" would be valuable (which it is not at the moment).
7. Tune down (or abolish) star-bases
At the moment, star-bases are mostly a source of tedium. Noone really enjoys to shuttle 20 constructors to a star-base to built it up, just to have it destroyed by some small random fleet that happens to wander around.
What is more:
Star-bases seriously hamper the AI, because it is not able to employ them as well as a human player can. The AI tends to built either no star-bases at all or an insane amount of them (three econonic star-bases in the same star-system? Really?)
So, my thoughts on this.
1) I think it would be a great idea to have this. but also have a way for the player to stop the auto continue from happening in case the player needs to divert ships.
2) meh. Making specific music for custom races would be tedious. Though interesting idea. Might turn into an upload option on the race creation menu (90% of the time I'm playing custom races so don't really care about the base ones)
3) now this one is onteresting to me. I've run into this before. But in my opinion it just led to more interesting gameplay. It gives the player more of a challange. Are you good enough to get out of that situatio? I find diplomacy a must under this, get a decent ally and then fight someone close to you that your ally is fighting and free planets.
4) no. I don't like this idea. I like the begining being so slow. It gives a sence of accomplishment when I later have much faster ships, like, these are tiny ships with the very first engine. They are meant to be slow.
5) Desd planets aren't as annoying as you make them out to be. If every system had colonizable worlds that would be a bit lame don't you think? With dead systems there's a sence of rushing to find planets like the game has in its lore and there's a sence of luck when you get to the last colonizable world 1 turn before another faction. but, making dead plaets eventually useful is a great idea. Have an end game tech that gives someone some thing from the dead worlds near say a star base, like the minimg resources.
6) i usually play on all abundent so no feelings about this.
7) I don't like how the star bases are weak late game. But I do like upgrading them to get better beefits from them. As for Economic star bases, I either have it maxed out in my system (5) or no econo star bases. Depends on the starting position for me.
5 and 6 I strongly agree with. I'd like to be able to do something with all the uninhabitable worlds I encounter, even if the bonus is only very small.
For 7 I think the best thing would just be to improve AI utilization. Once you've researched larger hulls you can put multiple constructor modules on the same ship and ordering them around becomes significantly less tedious. Maybe make it so constructor modules have little enough mass that two can be placed on the same cargo hull from the start of the game? And as to starbases being easily destroyed, to counter that give them defensive modules early on and defend the most important ones with stationed ships.
Yes it is a disapointment for the player to discover yet another star-system with nothing but dead planets ... but in part it is that disapointment that gives you the satisfaction if you find a star-system with good planets.
Maybe there can be something done with certain types of dead planets, but it would be a bad decision to do a away with dead planets all together and give all of them purpose. Dead planets are part of the "landscape" just like nebulae, stars, black holes and empty tiles.
One question how many of you do actually watch the stardock streams ?
i kind of see that there are many newcomers or people not watching the streams, and they tend to often give you the answers you are looking for.
the dead planets are in fact in the game for a reason because they will be used as a dlc or expansion for new content (its just they havent gotten to that point yet) and in the next month there will be a new expansion, so its possible the dead planets, may have the turn to shine, (unconfirm by the devs currently no promises)
also espionage will be added, two new major factions returns to the game, a new core/major feature will be added (they protect this secret valiently, for good reason, (The Market) also there are more info on the roadmap on the forums on steam (you will get the idea)
so help yourselfs with some useful information from the streams and the forums on steam.
I concur, you all should watch the streams when they are available. They do a really good job answering questions when they run. Also you can see new builds of the game and get a feel for how the Developers want the direction of the game to go.
You dont have to shuttle 20 constructors to build a starbase, just research the appropirate techs and you can do it all with one or 2.
*and follow Neutral ideology
When you say 'race-specific' music scores I trust you mean each race still having Western tonal music. I'm not prepared to listen to three hours of atonal, eastern or random-noise music, and frankly a lot of the experimental music of the past 50 years gives me hives.
Please bear in mind that a musical score is a significant investment of time and effort, and it would be quite expensive to multiply that by 10 or 12. A short riff for the diplomacy screen would be nice.
I agree with point 6.
The cure for point 7 is to give starbases the ability to manufacture their own upgrades, perhaps at the cost of giving up other benefits while they do so.
I made a simple Mod for 6/7 where you can adjust it like you want... had a game then with over 800 colonizable planets.Its just a few lines if you like to have the code.... just post.
And a BIG + for 1.
2/3 think is just a feeling i like it, the way it is.
The other way around would be correct. There will expansions / dlc giving dead planets some usefulness because there are dead planets in the game and people wish they would have some usefulness. The dead planets are in the game because they were in the previous games ... and they were in the previous games because there are dead planets in real space. Dead planets are part of the landscape of a space map, just like mountains and lakes are part of any gaming map simulating some planet - and no, not every map element needs to have some use to the player, some are just decoration.
This is already in place for the core factions in the game, pay attention to how the music changes when you play or talk to these factions.
The game is a sandbox game with many possible options. Randomness is part of the game. Should one like equal starting positions you can create a custom map allowing for equal start.
I would love additional use for these dead planets, I agree too many in the game does not feel as full as Galactic Civilizations II, even though overall the map is larger with more stars. This though was limited do to performance issues near the end of the beta process, there is a max number of habitable planets for each game type which, can and has been modded if you are looking for this.
This goes along more with my previous point. Need to have more use for dead and more variety of other planets out there.
I agree it's a pain to some extent with starbases, however, how would you do this better without taking starbases out of the game?
You may want 3 economic star-bases in the same star system, These give a huge boost to that systems economy especially if you have a system with 3 or more habitable planets this can be a huge boost.
I sometimes build as many as five economic starbases - really, just as many as I can fit in - at key systems. Of course, my preferred strategy is to build up my industry and research first, shifting to military only when I must.
I don't mind the dead planets tbh. One of the repeated criticisms we hear is that space is too empty and there's not enough terrain; planets help provide at least a little filling. It'd be nice to see some things like multi-tile Gas Giants, mineable dead worlds (though actually that's how the game already generates Promethium and Thulium) etc - and maybe to have a few more habitables as opposed to deadies on the higher hab planet settings.
But the fact is, in real life the majority of planets in the universe are basically going to be dead balls of dirt with very limited use. Mining is unlikely to be economically feasible in most cases (are you REALLY going to ship iron across a dozen light years to a factory world when you can just rip it out of the nearest asteroid belt instead?). Only a very rare set of elements are likely to be worth the fuel. Science is also unlikely to be a major pull for most of them - one dead ball of rock is pretty much like another in the end, and only very occasional ones will be worth the effort. OK, they might be strategically useful - but we can already build star bases in their systems for that.
[quote quoting="post"]My 2 Cents on how to improve GalCiv3 with some simple changes: 1. No "end-of-turn-wait"Do away with the "end-of-turn-wait". It is just tedious to press "next turn" again and again until at last the thing you are waiting for (ship is built, tech is researched, whatever) is finally done. The famous game "Master of Orion 2" had this option (no end-of-turn-wait) and it did indeed improve gameplay enormously, because waiting did not feel as tedious anymore.(quote]
Your best of 7! The devs should listen up
Every race already has their own theme in diplomacy and war.
1. I'd prefer to have an option for both ways, but bring back the in game clock.
1. No end of turn wait
This is a very nice feature in civ games, could streamline turns in a good way.
7.Tune down starbases
Economic starbases are a terrible micromanaging nightmare right now, especially on bigger maps, counting out the tiles to place them, building constructors, sending constructors to bases, choosing tiny incremental bonuses. You just need so many constructors for a single starbase, now multiply it by 10, soon 90% of your time is dealing with starbases.
Regarding number 3, that is simply not going to happen, defeats the purpose of having the 'first colony' cinematic and is the basis of the original civilization.
You can however mod this by using the 'DiscoverNearbyPlanetOfClass' action, which will colonize a nearby dead planet. Thought it has to be an Ability, as GlobalDefs ignores it. Here is an example, which adds 3 Class 8 planets to the faction that uses this ability:https://gist.github.com/Pendrokar/9597c5b3556c3e7ee1c2And how the hell is number 5 and 7 simple?Besides, 7 is being reworked on by Stardock.
It's a QOL upgrade. But every major race already has 2 scores devoted to theme. Though this could be expanded on further for a small DLC in the ballpark of 3-5$ (say a new theme for exploration/war/ascension)
As to dead planets, I'd be much more interested in things like more planet types/bonuses, such as planets with rare resources, or planets which have shipyards already in orbit when you colonize them. Highly mountainous planets that have massive bonuses to defense, but support tiny populations.
more sliders on colonizable landscapes (ie, see more hostile planet types)
more types of starting systems (instead of just the current 12/4 which is universalish) Systems start with a 10 / 5 with the 5 quality planet being desert, or the "abundant home" start, where you have 5 planets in your starting system but they all start at 3.
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