I'm enjoying my time back on Galactic Civilizations. The team is working on lots of neat things for the upcoming version 2.0 update which is due this month.
Here are a few highlights:
Administrators
There's a new resource called administrators. Your capital world provides N of them where N is based on the size of the map. Building a starbase consumes one. You can get more by researching government related techs but that means you're not researching weapons or economy techs.
The practical effect is that it takes a little pressure off the idea that you have to spam out starbases and also gives some advantages to smaller empires who can now choose to use their starbases to improve morale and productivity in their home systems.
Better diplomacy
When I play other games, I tend to cheese. There have been patches made for games over the years to counter some of my cheese. There's plenty of diplomacy cheese in GalCiv also and thanks to player feedback, I was able to b-line my way to it.
But it wasn't just cheese that I wanted to improve on. I wanted the AI to do more trading and less "give me stuff please". So I worked on the diplomatic system to work harder on coming up with trades. It'll probably be one of the first things players notice. More AI talk with more interesting trades.
One new system I spent some time on was the concept of redlining.
When I inevitable have to work on contracts in my "day job" at Stardock/Mohawk/Oxide I do what is called redlining. That is where I make marks on a proposal as to why I think we should pass on it or cross out things that won't work for us.
One of the first things I did when cheesing GalCiv was to use the old technique of manipulating the aliens to do things that weren't in their best interests. Now, to be fair, most people don't do this kind of thing but once you do it, it's hard not to do it.
So in response, I implemented a redlining system that you code-geeks might find interesting:
I noticed that the game passes around the trade offer a lot:
VOID IAIOpponent::AppraiseTradeOffer(CDiplomacySystem::ActiveTradeInfo* pTradeOffer, CDiplomacySystem::ActiveTradeInfo* pOtherSideTradeOffer, ObjectID forPlayerID, ObjectID otherPlayerID)
See the pTradeOffer there? It was the full detail of what was being offered and the AI looks at it in lots and lots of different ways.
So what I did is add a vector of redlines to it. That is, the AI can be evaluating an offer and say "Hey, this tech is too valuable" or "Those guys are too tough" and add that redline to the trade offer.
Then, when it gets back to you, you see why they rejected it. And in the process of implementing it, I went ahead and got rid of some of the things I was exploiting like how easy it was to get other people to do your dirty work (you can still do it but you need to have a lot of persuasive ability or have a much better deal or both).
UI: This will be controversial
I don't expect this next change to be universally loved and I haven't gotten approval yet from the GalCiv III lead designer, Paul Boyer to check this in.
But anyway, I really really REALLY hate the ship list thing. That is, when I go to pick a ship to build, it gets filled with tons of auto-generated ship designs. None of the filter options work for me (i.e. I don't like them).
So instead, what I did was make it so that when you first load up the game, only your favored ships are shown and the other ones are folded up. Then I made it so that if you click on the label (like Beam Ships) it'll unfold the other ships.
Now, the trickier thing I had to do was when designing a ship. I wanted my ships that I designed to automatically show up in the favored list. It was annoying to design a ship and then have to go look for it.
So now, when I design a ship and save it (in this case, I'll call it the Intrepid class).
Ironically, this proved a lot tougher than you'd think because the ship design screen deals primarily with saving files where as the ship build list actually deals with UI handles (which don't exist when you design a ship since you haven't added that ship to a listbox list yet).
But it's done.
There's a lot of other stuff going into 2.0. Today I'm working on late game AI stuff.
This free update is due this month. Stay tuned!
This will be interesting to check out! Well, two weeks or less to go...
You are correct. Still, I would like to see a finite number of Star Bases you can build capped. I also would like to see changes in how they improve the output of a planet rather than how they are now. As you pointed out all you need is to boost population and put star bases up and little need to do anything else.
But capped in relation to what?
Number of planets colonized? Number of colonizable tiles? Population?
Thanks for the glimpse ahead! I'm all in favor of improved diplomacy.
One thing I wish is that when an AI comes up with a trade offer or request that I get a chance to review my state of affairs before having to commit to a decision. I can't keep the whole map in my head. If an AI wants me to declare war on someone else, I'd like to see if I'm really in a good position to do that -- do my ships even have the range to get to reach the new enemy? Am I going to put planets/ships at risk from a counter-attack? Or if an AI is asking me for a strategic resource can I afford to spare some or do I want to hang onto it to build something? I can't keep the whole tech tree in my head, so it's often hard to know if a proposed tech trade will be good for me. I greatly dislike having to make these snap decisions blind.
I'd really like it if I could get a chance to review my empire before committing to a trade like any reasonable leader would.
My suggestion: when an AI offers a trade, give me the option "I'll think about it." Then at the end of turn (or start of next turn?) have the requesting AI re-evaluate the trade and come back with a revised offer or withdraw it entirely.
Thanks for all the work looking for ways to keep improving GC3.
Quoting Larsenex, reply 21In response to Noric who wants unlimited amounts of constructors. The game was getting 'too messy' and there needed to be a cap on things a player can do. Putting a soft cap on the number of star-bases a player or ai can build will go a long way to help minimize star base spam. One of the biggest complaints was the micro management associated with the game and star base micro in particular. By limiting how many a player can build now you impact that problem. Before a player could blindly build hundreds of constructors with zero worry it would impact economy or your empire. Now we must make choices on where to send those constructors, it is something we needed from the start.
I wasn't aware that this was an issue with players as my friends and I never had much of an issue being able to spam constructors should we choose to do so. When we focused on constructor growth it took away manufacturing that could go to something else, so it was a decision between building military versus strengthening your economy. Yes, it could be tedious micromanaging all the starbases, but that is where I feel a starbase management screen would have done wonders. A tall request, but one that would reduce the micromanagement of it all. I guess the answer to the complaints of micromanagement by reducing how much you can build doesn’t seem like a good solution to me. Capping the number of starbases also feels like it’s a way of dictating how to play the game. Build these improvements, make some military, cap your starbase limit and then move on to something else.
But it seems I’m clearly in the minority here, so it looks like most of the fanbase will be happy with the cap and that’s overall a good thing for the game. I can accept that if it means the game has a happier fanbase as a whole. Perhaps I just don’t play the game on the same level as other players where starbases turn from fun to nuisance. It always took time for me to get the maxed amount of starbases around my planets and I’d always worry I wasn’t strengthening my military enough during construction. It just feels odd to have something that could be expanded across your empire if you had the time and resources to do so now become a resource you have to manage. I really enjoyed expanding my empire with starbases, and having to now decide on whether expanding borders, mining, or supporting my worlds doesn’t sound fun.
Edit: I tried to copy and paste this from another doc as I wanted to get all my words out first, built it seems I had to change the font to white just for it to appear here.
...One thing I wish is that when an AI comes up with a trade offer or request that I get a chance to review my state of affairs before having to commit to a decision. ... I can't keep the whole tech tree in my head, so it's often hard to know if a proposed tech trade will be good for me. ...
Referring to tech trading: especially for specializations I have a problem that most of the time I don't know whether I already researched that tech (and took another specialization than the ones the AI has to offer) or not, in the latter case that would mean I would block me the other options when I trade the specialization from the AI. So it would be nice to see at least that when trading, what shouldn't be a big issue: just color the star icon indicating a specialization tech e. g. red instead of yellow when I haven't researched that tech myself already as a warning to be careful. Even better would be to see the other two options via tooltip so that I'm not only warned but can decide at once whether the offered tech is of interest for me or not.
Wow some interesting changes here! I was just getting GST upto work with 1.9 (Had a few CTD's that have been giving me hassle but finaly getting there), only to read this! i think its in my best interests to hold off and wait for 2.0 or I will be re doing work yet again!
It seems to me that the hard cap on starbases by the administration stat already fixes this problem, with the nice side effect that small empires are much more competitive with big ones now. I think diminishing returns on stacking on top of that goes in the wrong direction, since a bigger civilization can then use the same number of starbases more effectively. So no, just the hardcap is a great solution already.
The current version is 1.90.
1.10 came out over a year ago.
Great stuff! Thanx, Brad.
Few questions/suggestions though:
Looking forward to hearing more about 2.0.
J.
The current version is 1.90.1.10 came out over a year ago.
What i'm really asking is: will "2.0" be backward-compatible with current save games, DLC, etc? or will it make breaking changes?
thanks
But it seems I’m clearly in the minority here,
If it is any comfort, I am 100% with you. I love my starbases and I love the ongoing flow of upgrade constructors as they wander across the map. My most extreme was 600 to 700 starbases at once, during a complete conquest of an immense galaxy. Constructors everywhere while a few main shipyards kept pumping out warships. Any conquered planet got a constructor-based shipyard asap, then initiated its ring of econ bases, and then become part of the pool available for continued starbase upgrade requests. It was awesome.
I agree with it needing micromanagement assistance, but I was always certain it would come down to some sort of limit instead. So, that's why I haven't griped about it. At least, not yet. There is also the threat of an AI that Brad and company have taught to starbase spam even better than we do. That would be scary.
I'm with you also. I guess it will all come down to the details of how the administrators are implemented, but while everything else Brad talked about sounds great, this is the one thing I'm concerned about.
Ahhhhh, my fellow constructor junkies!
<raises hand> LOL
So... how about a happy medium..
In GC2 certain starbase components had a cost associated with them above and beyond the cost of the constructor needed to build the component.
Because GC2 was on a grid based map rather than hexes it was easy to put a Max number of starbases per sector cap in the game, and it WAS capped. This lead to balance that is not currently found in GC3 Just because you can do something doesn't mean you SHOULD do it.... the current system is an exploit and is broken.
I LIKE the idea of the administrators.. However, player choice is also very important... So perhaps rather than hard caps, perhaps make economic caps that make spamming starbases more difficult, but still achievable.Here's my thought. Increase the support cost of the starbases... the more stuff on them the more they cost to support.Administrators reduce this upkeep cost.Limit the number of constructors you can support in your empire at any given time. Basically think of it as the Constructors Laborers Unions needs time to train workers... the number of Constructors should be tied to the number of planets and make building constructors prohibitively expensive beyond a certain point...again Administrators can reduce this cost.Make economic station components prohibitively expensive... You want a research lab? 1000credits. Ok you want an Econ thing 2500 Credits... or make it so the first one is free, the next is 100, then 200, then 300 and so on until they are thousands of credits to build...Again, Administrators can reduce this cost... Any of these give the player choice... X thing will cost me Y but give me Z is this Z better than that Z?
Just some thoughts..
The admin system will be the make or break feature for me. The reason I've stayed away from this game for most of the last 18 months is that we were told -- a very long time ago -- that there would be a replacement for the Large Empire Penalty when it was removed. As I recall, this is how the admin system was originally advertised: a sensible replacement for the flaky and defunct LEP, a more elegant way of making tall empires viable. It must have been discussed by Brad a year ago or more. For me, it was an idea that resonated, as I prefer building tall, so it seemed better to wait. Unfortunately, the months rolled by and it never happened.
Being a fan of the series, I didn't lose all faith and have occasionally played for short bursts after some of the updates.. Just enough to experience 'Starbase Constructor Spam Hell' and develop sour feelings toward it. Now, more than anything else, it's the big issue that simply has to be addressed before I'm ready to dive in, ever again, much less think about buying more dlc.
To be honest, I probably would have given up forever on GalCiv3, except from shear force of habit I've continued following it here and in eXplorminate's forum. Eventually it began to sound like the long overdue replacement for the LEP -- allegedly still in the works -- would deal with SBCSH... And so here we are. My fingers are crossed. I've pinned so much hope on this one feature, again never imagining it would take so long.. It's almost done, Yaayy!!!
I hope you are right, torfbolt. Someone once showed me the numbers for a planet ringed round with multiple SB's and it blew my mind. Not only did the stacked bonuses strike me as absurdly, cosmically unrealistic, it was clear from the discussion (less from my limited experience; these were good players) that the ai wasn't anywhere close to being as effective with its overlapping zoc's.
[quote]There's a new resource called administrators. Your capital world provides N of them where N is based on the size of the map. Building a starbase consumes one. You can get more by researching government related techs but that means you're not researching weapons or economy techs.
Hi,
Brad's post is very interesting and the expansion will surely be excellent but I presume it isn't finalised yet and would like to open a discussion about balance.
Given that the number of starbases is to be restricted the first question is whether mining / archeological starbases are to be treated separately from economic ones? It's the economic starbase spam that has been something of a pain rather than the resource one.
Then there are the ideology trees. If many fewer starbases are to be built then the Builder line of the Pragmatic tree which improves starbases will become less useful -apart from Builder 4 which improves mining resources and could become absolutely crucial if you really can't build many mining starbases.
Correspondingly, the tech choices which increase mining output will also presumably become more attractive than alternatives which will change the game a little.
Any ideas,
Cheers,
Jon
Hi again,
Looking at the tree has this already been done in which case apology for doziness "Is that what "Construction points cap + 100% means" in B5 ?
I really dislike the starbase change, while it fixes the spamming starbase problem I think a hard cap is a really bad solution, especially for a game like galciv where freedom in building your empire is a vital feature.
I would prefer a solution which does not limit the amount of starbases but makes it harder to maintain them if you have a lot of them.
And I'm with you here, Publius.
Except my hopes for "how the administrators are implemented" includes wanting to see enough new starbase techs to enable starbase fans to keep investing clicks and production to make that handful of starbases stand out as well as a bristling Huge hull does when we near completing the tech trees.
I've had quite a few turns of 1.9 'diplomacy' since Brad posted this thread. I'm so very ready for more sensible behavior from the AIs and hope that the new diplomacy stuff includes 'player parity' so we can demand things from the AIs the way they can from us.
I like the idea of having to work hard and face difficult choices as I build up the infrastructure of my empire. The game suffers terribly, imo, from not having nearly enough practical limits on how big I can grow and remain stable, and from poorly scaled mechanics in general. The admin system might help the situation... though I'll reserve judgement until we see how it actually works. It doesn't sound ideal, however. Far better if it were part of a fully fleshed out internal political/economic system making "wide vs. tall" type decisions an integral part of the game.
Is version 2.0 the same as Crusades?
No, 2.0 is a free update, Crusade will surely take some time still ...
I welcome the change and am very excited for it. The vast majority of GC3 players I know have wanted this from the beginning. Thanks for listening!!!
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