Good Afternoon Stardock,
After two years or so since game launch I would like to share the current state of the game in players eyes. Now I know Crusade will change the game play of the game but, most of these issues have been around since pre-launch and not much has been done about them or even been acknowledged. Overall many Founders are owners of Galactic Civilizations II and most were looking for a more modern game that could bring Galactic Civilizations II up to date and expand on this great game.
Now with that being said there is a lot of potential to Galactic Civilizations III and I believe the upcoming expansion could help bring people back to the game but, as a long time fan of the series and Stardock, even though my hopes are high, I'm struggling to play games for the following reasons.
Now on to the game log, if one goes through this they can see my largest issue is lack of planets with the abundant settings with the insane map.
Thanks for listening...
Game Settings…
Insane Map Size
Scattered Stars
Abundant on all settings except Pirates.
Week One - Dawn of Interstellar Travel:
Starting the game on my home world, Zalis, luck is shining my way with Geothermal Springs (+2 Manufacturing, +1 Tourism) right next to my Capitol. I quickly build a basic factory on that tile. Other noticeable bonus’s, Prometheus Stone (+5% moves), Rare Earth Metals (+2 Research, +1 Manufacturing), Floodplain (+1 Population, +1 Wealth).
Time to adjust the Production Wheel, I go a little heavy on Manufacturing/Research 40%, Economy 20%. This does create a little coercion issue but, not bad. I start researching Hives as those extra production points will work wonders.
I rush build a basic bare bones colony ship as I need to expand my planets. I send my scout, survey ship and starting colony ship off in opposite directions to the next closest star systems. On to the next turn…
Week Two – Nearest Star System:
On to week two, I rush build a second basic factory adjacent to my Capitol, previous basic factory and, the Rare Earth Metals, +6 bonus for me.
Travelling through space I discover my first two star systems, unfortunately for me, even though habitable planets are abundant both stars are red giants with no planets around them. Now to continue to the next possible star. I have found my first anomaly but, I’m choosing not to send my survey ship in that direction right now as I am choosing to explore more space before redirecting my survey ship to the anomaly.
Week Three – No Habitable Planets:
Production is starting to boom on my home world, up to 17 points. I have continued to rush build basic factories, adjacent to the other two as well as adjacent to Rare Earth Metals, +3 bonus for me. I now rush build a basic constructor. Hopefully I can get some Durantium. I now have reached 3 adjacent star systems, with no habitable planets, have to continue to explore.
Week Four – Aliens:
I need to start to research new technology and, to this point it will still take 13 additional turns to research Hives. I rush build a Research Library on the Rare Earth Metals tile +2 bonus for me. Additional to that I rush build another colony ship.
Beyond my home world I continue to explore space. The fourth star system I’ve come across has a class 6 planet, finally something to colonize. Sending colony ship to that planet to colonize, 4 weeks out. I have discovered aliens, the Flarite Community. Unfortunately for me, I can not understand them as I have not researched Universal Translator technology yet.
Week Five – Seven:
Not much has changed, I now have rushed built another 2 Research Libraries adjacent to my Capitol, +4 bonus each for me. I continue to explore space, I have found a Manufacturing Relic, however, it will take several turns to get a constructor in the area.
Week Eight – Colonization:
I’ve finally made it to that class 6 planet. An Elemental Extractor, I will choose +25 Benevolent, +1 Resource to all mining bases. That should come in handy. The planet is sparse with the only tile adjacent to another is a Hyper Silicates trade resource. I rush build a Research Laboratory next to it, +2 bonus for me.
Now I have some ideology points to spend. I have chosen Eminence, which allows the building of a Missionary Center and will allow me to continue to collect Benevolent Ideology points throughout the game. Being that planets appear to be sparse, even though set to abundant, I may need this to advance my ideology throughout the game.
Week Nine – Fifteen - The emptiness of space:
Starting to build a Missionary Center, however, not much else has changed. Research on the Hives has completed, started to research Universal Translator. Built my first mining star base, I am collecting 4 Durantium and 4 Thulium.
I have built a Durantium Refinery and I’m in the process of building a Thulium Data Archive. While moving one of my colony ships, while the colony ship was off screen, it produced the FOW reveal bug (turn 14). So far I have found 18 stars, however, still only one habitable planet, to this point doesn’t appear to be abundant to me.
Week Sixteen – Technology Trade:
The Flarite Community, has reached out to me and offered to trade Interstellar Travel for Universal Translator. It would not be smart to turn down this trade so I accepted. Continuing to explore space, still no new habitable planets found.
Week Seventeen – More Aliens:
I have now discovered an additional alien faction, the Loomite Parasitic. Unfortunately when I have run into them while discovering my second planet. Too bad they’ve already colonized it. So far 2 habitable planets found in 21 star systems. I have also not run into the Bazaar yet, hopefully soon.
Week Eighteen – Extreme Worlds:
I have discovered a third planet, however, it’s Radioactive and I’m unable to colonize it. Better continue to look. On the bright side I have now researched Industrialization Adaption, so technology is progressing.
Week Nineteen – Major Event:
Give Peace A Chance, +1 Diplomacy to all races. A wonderful bonus, too bad we can’t get these while playing multiplayer games. Meanwhile I have discovered another habitable star system, unfortunately again it was already colonized by the Voufan Creator. Along with this was another extreme world, Frozen, maybe I’ll find something soon.
Week Twenty – Game on Hold:
After twenty weeks, I have put the game on hold to move on for the day. At this point I have two planets, my home world, Zalis which has 41.2 Manufacturing, 40.5 Research. I have met 3 factions, discovered 30 stars and have revealed 3 habitable planets, however, two were already colonized. I have also discovered 2 extreme worlds. All in all 4 of the 30 systems have planets in them to colonize.
Problems discovered on this map. Bazaar is unfound, FOW bug is present any time you move a ship from a part of the map where the ship is off screen. Habitable planets seem scares (uncommon) even though abundant. Anomalies also appear uncommon, have only six in twenty turns, only one by my survey ship, which was a worm hole and, I did not investigate.
Hopefully Crusade fixes some of these issues, however, hope is not high.
What might be cool is having the 6 nearest neighbor systems defined in the homesystem or semi-randomized so one could be guaranteed to find 2-3 useful things in them.
Every now and then I start a game and become angry because the two closest rings of systems contain uninhabitable worlds, extreme worlds or habitable worlds which the AI reaches faster, because it has maphack on genius.
Reducing start location randomness like this might not be appreciable for everyone, so having the semi-random neighboring systems as a map option might be necessary.
I think the useful stuff in your nearest neighbor systems would also serve what Frogboy posted in diary 4 (I believe): Making important decisions every turn. What decision is there to make , when all the space you explored only holds gas giants, rocks and searing stars?
I might also help is being able to see the color of a star from the start (Do I send my survey ship to that purple system which might hold up to four habitables or do I send it to this white dwarf which is more likely to hold thulium?). We allready have that technology today already after all!
Map generation in general needs a really good look at. The amount of times I have started a game on an Exsessive map to find the cloeset 15-20 systems have at tops 2-3 habitable planets(on abundant and with adjustments via mods) is well atleast 10-1. Factor in the fact the map generation also 75% of the time likes to stick 8-10 of my 21 faction all close to gether in 1 corner of the map and another 8-10 in a different corner then places the rest in the space that left, this allows the factions that did not start in these groups to steam roll planets like theres no tomorrow, which in turn give them the snowball effect. Frustrating, on average I play like 1 in 30 generations, not what I call fun tbh.
Side note, in MapSizeDefs.xml there is a Habitable Plant Divisor of 3. Reducing this increases planet count, alot. (Although groupings and spread can still be very very wonkey).
Edit:
I use Lose clusters or Spiral, I did try close Clusters once, but after 20 odd generations and having myself plus 2-3 other ai in the same cluster then finding out (fowtrans) that it was the same pretty much everywhere with a good 10+ clusters all empty I gave up with this map type.
I have even had map generatins where there was an AI right next door to me, the very next system, so much for the Min distance limits set in the MapDefs.
That's why I posted the above post, this is the common issue I run into, this is not the unusual.
There needs to be more options to pick when starting a new game. Example "Empire Spawn" determines how far away each major race is from each other when starting a new game.
Options available: Very far, Far, Average, Close, Very Close, Random for each major race.
Faction start: Determines surrounding planets and maybe resources?
Legendary start-All planets around each starting major race have a high chance for high quality planets and resources.
Rich-
Balance start-
Unfair
Very unfair-very low chance
As for me I stop playing since version 1.5. I will give 2.0 Crusade a try.
I've been playing Endless Legend the last few weeks, love the many starting features and options when you start a new game. GC3 devs need to take some of the good features from Endless Legends and Endless Space series and implement them into GC3.
I have never heard of or seen a FOW bug in the game. Can you describe this?
I guess maybe part of the issue of these bugs falling though the cracks could be rectified by a better bug reporting system. Or perhaps a more clear path to follow for new people who sometimes drop in on the forums seeking help or have a bug to report but seem to go unnoticed.
Edit: I think another large part of the problem is that i see alot of new bugs brought up mid thread, bugs unrelated to the initial post. It can be easy for a mod to see the posts, think its solved and not read down the line and see the bugs people decide to add by basically hijacking the post. Or assume that it must be already in a ticket since most people see some common bugs (or sometimes its just a common complaint and not a bug) so assume its just common knowledge and a ticket has been made. I can think of several bugs I or others had made into a ticket and have been fixed pretty fast. So it seems possible there is some other disconnect there, just a thought.
(Op was asking about not enough Habitable Planets)Unless it changed, you also want to set "Planet Frequency" to abundant. And a higher Star Frequency cant hurt either.If im remembering it correctly what the game does is spawns the star, then adds the class 0 planets based on frequency. At which point it will swap some of those class 0 planets to higher class Habitable planets, followed by swapping some to extreme planets. Therefore if your 'Planet Frequency' is low no matter how high you set your other settings if there isnt enough planets on the map to convert to Habitable or extreme they wont spawn. The game also tries to keep a minimum % of class 0 planets in the game. (A latter post said it keeps the habitable planets at 1/3 ratio of a map, if this is the case this hard cap that we cant set would possible explain part of the issues with map generations. As from what i gather higher abundances dosnt really mean more planets)I think this is why generally Habitable planets have had issues spawning as well as the issue of little to no extreme planets in a game. They have been tinkering with this over the patches but IMO the map spawning system is very flawed. Especially when it comes nebulars and Thulium/Promethion planet resources.
(If you have more Habitable planets then u lose extreme planets, if you try and balance the two you also lose Thlium/Promethion. You cant have abundance of all 4. Then with how nebulars are actually pre made puzzle pieces that spawn on the map as opposed to a tile by tile fractal map generation or similar, you can easily get a map with little to no Elerium. Or even if you get get Elerium the nebulars seem to sparse that all the strategic gameplay your supposed to get from them is pointless. Feels like a wasted opportunity to give them effects yet have them serve no real function. I mean look at nebulars in the campaigns that spawn huge areas of the map, that's how it should be imo if you set nebulars to the highest level.)I really hope map generation is really looked into especially with how important resources will be in crusade. My last game (huge map) had only 2 Thulium across the entire map, where I had like 20-30 antimatter. And I believe, unless i missed them somewhere, i only had ONE extreme planet. Sure i could up the chance of extreme planets but reducing Habitable but then you get a similar issue where you have little to no Habitable and tones of extreme where races with extreme planet traits or tech have a unfair advantage. Its kinda ridiculous lol
Edit. @Frogboy, know that I an others bring this up not because we want to complain, I just love the game and as a fan want to see things as best as they can possible be Its very possible that all the functionality is IN the options but if thats the case perhaps its simply an issue of none of that being clear to the player and therefore the confusion. (I dont know why this text is yellow, its not linked and i cant figure out how to fix it lol)
FOW reveal bug has been around since 1.5-1.8 (in that range don't know specifically when it cropped up). It is below as follows. (Usually appears with zoom level of map where one can see full graphics of all units/galactic items.)
There are several other posts laying out other players specific observations of this bug, below are several previous posts of this issue. (Mind you it is a minor bug.) There are more but, that is the one I located with a quick search.
https://forums.galciv3.com/478808/page/1/#3644717
https://forums.galciv3.com/479259/page/1/#3668567 (Edited thanks to erischild for finding this for me.)
Steam Forum
http://steamcommunity.com/app/226860/discussions/1/537402115089162250/
I wonder.. have there been any tickets made for any of these bugs by any of the people who posted? Im curious if my theory of people not making tickets and so going unnoticed rings true here.
edit: I also would like to point out that in your main post you talked about the bug as if its just common knowledge. Im not pointing it out to be rude by any means I just think its also a possible confirmation that there are alot of bugs that people are assuming have been reported or are just "Known". I see alot of posts on these forums where people will refer to bugs as such, the "habitability bug" the "Custom parts bug". Its just assumed that the bug is known an being ignored when in reality the devs have had no idea that its even an issue, or even that its something else that they thought was fixed.. Maybe im completely wrong I dont know, but it seems like a plausible possibility.
Ancient - Provides extra research points per Relic owned. The AI does not key on the players that have this trait allowing one to keep landing these relics allowing them to quickly jump up on research production. (We've noticed this in our MP games.)
Agreed...
I wonder if thats more a case of the AI not valuing them as much as a consideration to go to war or as a target to attack. I also wonder if the AI is able to recognize which races have the trait and give a higher priority to those targets in that case. Ill be curious if some of the AI enhancements in crusader will inherently just address this. Besides nerfing it, which I dont like to do in general, perhaps a UP resolution could be made to make all relics "protected sites" which reduce the bonuses you get from them . Ideally tho, as i said in my post, the tech trees being tied to the abilities should significantly help balance all these abilities
I submitted a ticket recently.
Here is the link for my posting about it. If multiple posts and a submitted ticket are not enough to get feedback as a user of a forum supposedly read by devs and someone who specifically requested feedback in the ticket are not enough to get attention, someone, please tell me what is.
I also am not looking for a nerf, however, AI tends to attack ships/shipyards first (at least in my games) and ignore star bases, which I'm assuming has to do with star bases being more powerful than the AI's fleet. I'm just looking for a better way for the AI to recognize this as an issue and key on it accordingly or protect their relics (ones near by to their area of influence which should scare by map size, unless in other players area of influence) as act of war. Make the AI smarter in that regards. For instance if we weren't allied, I would be focusing on knocking out these star bases as quickly as possible to limit the research buff... Now mind you, with an unknown player it would take a while for me to pick up on the trait but, when the players research skyrockets and star bases are by every relic it would be a clear hint that they have the Ancient ability. Also the AI should also take advantage of this as well, if they have the Ancient trait...
Double post
While i agree if a bug is being posted in the forums on a consistent bases for several months, the first post linked being july 2016. That itself warrants at least being looked at. Then again its been about 3 weeks since your ticket and crusader is looming, assuming this is the first ticket made on the subject in all that time. Its possible its been put in the 'fixed in the next patch or after the next DLC/Expansion' category.'. Or in the expansion itself. Some of my bugs are in the '[ Private ]' or assigned stage so I have no experience in a ticket being 'ignored' so I cant speculate about that. Now thats not an excuse if you have had no reply, but I have been around these forums long enough to know that posts alone without a ticket dont seem to get as much attention they did a few years ago so I have learned to just make a ticket.
I mean i dunno what the reasons may be but I dont think its malicious at all is what I am trying to say
While i agree if a bug is being posted in the forums on a consistent bases for several months, the first post linked being july 2016. That itself warrants at least being looked at. Then again its been about 3 weeks since your ticket and crusader is looming, assuming this is the first ticket made on the subject in all that time. Its possible its been put in the 'fixed in the next patch or after the next DLC/Expansion' category.'. Or in the expansion itself. Some of my bugs are in the '[ Private ]' or assigned stage so I have no experience in a ticket being 'ignored' so I cant speculate about that. Now thats not an excuse if you have had no reply, but I have been around these forums long enough to know that posts alone without a ticket dont seem to get as much attention they did a few years ago so I have learned to just make a ticket.I mean i dunno what the reasons may be but I dont think its malicious at all is what I am trying to say
I am not implying maliciousness or hostile intent. At least, I am not trying to.
Three weeks to look at the incoming information on a submitted ticket is not tolerable regardless of the status of next version, patch, whatever. If you can't walk and chew gum at the same time as a company, you are in the wrong business. The examples you give are of the type, "Sorry, but your information no longer applies. Thanks anyway." That is not a blow to my ego and lets me know it was looked at and closed. I consider that positive customer feedback. Another possible response is, "Interesting, we're checking it out." That is not likely since it is too canned a response and the devs aren't into that. Given that this particular ticket was about whether one could duplicate an issue on Stardock machines, a response of yes or no about whether it did work for them would have been wonderful. I am not convinced it takes three weeks to open a save game file and follow three steps to check. It may take a lot longer to trace any root cause, but all I needed was the feedback for "Did it fail for you, too?" I know how long it can take to find a tricky issue and I know not to be a bother because I have been on the other side, being bothered by demanding users. I try not to demand unreasonable updates because of that.
I did get a reply that it had been forwarded to the devs and an estimation for completion could not be offered. Since I specifically did not request updates about completion, I have to conclude that the ticket was either not completely read or not completely understood, or that meaningful and appropriate response to a customer from devs, however brief, is just not a behavior we should expect.
Perhaps our expectations of support are different. I am self taught to always fix both the problem and the customer. People should be almost happy they had a problem because of how well they were handled during the resolution. Each user ticket is an opportunity to improve customer loyalty. It possibly sounds like idealistic drivel to some, but it worked for me and seemed to work for my users and the various escalation desks I supported.
I do not fault any individual. The total result is, however, unsatisfying.
I agree there should be a better solution to the quote "it had been forwarded to the devs and an estimation for completion could not be offered." Although not an exact quote as verbage is slightly different is the generic phrase given by Stardock support once an issue is identified. I would suggest an e-mail or reply back once they have fixed the issue with a response such as follows. We have identified and fixed this issue, it will be updated in patch 2.11. ect... This would at least give us as customers a warm fuzzy that the issue was handled.
I agree with Seilore on many points, and I can support at least some them from personal experience:
RE: Map Generation
The probabilities simply do not work. Very rare star systems show up too frequently. Planets with 0% probability show up in my games (like the Precursor shielded planet); mods that should produce 100% planets with traits do nothing of the sort, and strange phantom planets with red moons and small halos are extremely abundant, but are not governed by any of the .xml definitions. I suspect that some of the problems referred to by the OP (as far as abundances) may be related phenomena.
RE: Fog of War
I can confirm several FOW bugs. Fast ships leave a trail of "revealed blobs" rather than a complete, continuous track of revealed space. Intervening hexes, which the ship clearly "saw" in passing, are not revealed. Also, the boundaries of 'revealed space' do not always match the 'boundary' graphic. Revealed but not immediately visible space is portrayed as being beyond the FOW border, such that the FOW border divides light [EDIT: dark] grey hexes.
RE: AI
I agree the AI is still weak later in the game, and is relatively easy to exploit with good diplomacy skill and tech brokering. Especially on dispersed maps, all one needs do is send probes to meet distant civilizations, then trade up with them to make tons of money and get all the techs so far researched. No one seems the wiser. In general, diplomacy seems to be a bit over-powered (as the kids say).
Thank you Seilore for putting all of this together. It is great to see so many people who love the game as much as I do!
[Many edits, most typographical/ formatting errors.]
Image of FOW bugs:
once the bugs are fixed, I usually receive this kind of message from tech support to my tickets.
I have one or two times but, most of my tickets just get the canned answer and I never hear anything about them again.
The times I have used the bug ticketing system have been immensely frustrating and generally unproductive. After the initial form-letter e-mails, Support gets back to me with a brief, also generic note asking me for a video demonstrating the problem, even when the problem is perfectly well explained with words, and can be reproduced in a vanilla game just by doing what I described in my initial report. Or worse, they want my saved game, which you need to download about 4 gb of mods to run... again for a problem that could have been reproduced by a 12-year-old with a fresh install on a second-hand laptop from Sears. After a couple runs at this, with very little success, I just gave up. I love the game, but trying to fix it shouldn't take up my precious playtime... bugs are frustrating and they aren't my fault; I don't feel I should have to be even more frustrated in order to get them fixed when I already paid for the game. Sure I have to restart a lot of games, but from what I have heard that is pretty much the rule for those of us who play the Big Game.
This is why I don't file customer service tickets anymore. I have placed my trust in the wonderful staffers who lurk on these boards. You don't know if anyone is listening, or if your report is at all a priority, and you typically only find out the problem was fixed by accident a few weeks later, but StarDock has proven (to me) much more reachable and responsive through the forum than through the bug report process. At least this way it feels like there is a real person out there who genuinely cares and doesn't just want to close a ticket, even if they can't get to your problem now (or ever). I'm sure StarDock won't like hearing that, because it probably takes THEM a lot longer to find the problem without those videos and saved games, but, again, I am the customer, I pay for this game to work. Folks like Seilore put a lot of time into improving the game already, I don't think they should have to deal with this kind of frustration either.
Yup that was the first year of me playing the game, start game, find unrecoverable bug, report, support (after the run around) states issue may be resolved in the next patch, patch released, (support says you need to restart game fresh to make sure) restart game (even though 40 hours into insane game), play 40 hours only to reproduce same error, repeat process...
I can understand your frustration as I've been frustrated off and on over the past 3 years with the process. Yes, they are fixing things it just would be nice if it appeared they actually play the game, not just watch the game being played by the AI against each other on soak. But, like I've said many times I'm sure they just don't have the budget to pay a few people to play the game in a controlled environment for days/weeks on end in different scenerios just to reproduce different bugs that pop up with AI/crashes/freezes in "Big Games". Then once they think they fixed it repeat... That's what we (the customer) are for... To find these bugs, describe them and report them as, frustrating as it is.
Crusade will be out in a couple months, hopefully it's very stable and other issues are ironed out on release (Mind you there are always some that slip through) but, here's to positive thinking. Also I hope there is a release for founders a month before release (two weeks to help iron out any remaining issues, two weeks for Stardock to fix)... Help keep negative reviews away...
Agreed. However, I am not at all sure that the issues I've run into are necessarily Big Game issues. All I said was that it is normal for Big Game players to have to restart. From anecdotal evidence, there are still lots of problems with non-Big Games, and I would be just as frustrated having to go through all this on a small game. In fact, if I played more small games, I might even run into more bugs, which would make me even more frustrated!
This is a testable assumption, and if someone wants to do an actual comparison of bugs/ hour played on big vs. little games, please by all means do so. More data are always good! I myself would prefer to keep playing the game while I still can.
Again, agreed. And, speaking of positivity, I don't mean to get down on StarDock, especially not the folks who are earning their beans checking off service tickets! It is just frustration, and it is a frustration I pay for in my own way by not getting games "fixed." If the market would support it, I would pay a little more if it would help them out. And I am flat broke, so that would be MY bean money.
That is great for those of you who had money and computers when they were selling Founder's subscriptions; you will have to bite the bullet and do my playtesting for me . If it takes them too much longer to release, though, you may have to do ALL my playing for me. My computer has a time limit on it!
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