Greetings!
So the team is starting work on the next major expansion pack. But we also want to keep an eye on the base game.
Right now, the recent Steam reviews for GalCiv are pretty awful with most of the people reviewing it doing so because they don't like some of the changes in v2.5. So if there are changes you would like in 2.7 and beyond, this would be the place to ask.
The Steam review system is something I have and will continue to complain about because frankly, it absolutely destroys games. When it's less than 70, a game might as well not exist. So I'll be explicit, if you want us to keep working on GalCiv III, please leave a Steam review. If not, don't. If you already have, thank you!
As many of you know, I am AI biased. But I know I'm in a minority because there is another space strategy game outselling GalCiv III and, suffice to say, AI is not its focus.
It is clear that narratives in games matter. GalCiv has a quest system ala Fallen Enchantress/Sorcerer King. But we have tried to avoid doing that because we don't want the game to be a series of scripted narratives. We don't plan to change that position in the base game but we are looking at releasing DLC that will do that if players want it.
Now, the next major expansion pack focuses on politics and government. So we'll set all that aside for now. Otherwise, it's all open. What would you like to see?
I played probably over a 1,000 hours of Galciv2 and loved it, one of the few complaints of the game was the slider for research, military and social construction. I thought it could be improved. I bought Galciv3 in a bundle with all current expansions including crusade so I have not played the base game. But from what I gather if the wheel I hear of was like the slider, thank you for getting rid of it. Crusade kicks a... Keep up the good work!
Well please do hint at it at least.
Minors Gone Wild DLC?
Just get'm drunk and they'll do anything you want. Anything!
frogboy, you've got to get over this "living is my favourite form of existance" thing...
It's holding you back. We, your faithful forummers, can see it plain as day.
Feel the fear and do it anyway.
I'm hoping it's something to do with politics and negotiotions - nice ones and "Oh, that 20bc on the desk in front of you. It was there when we walked in the door. No, I insist, you have it!" ones (one Politician Citizen from your party to a Politician Citizen from another? I see a very interesting way of doing Cabinets, multi-party governments and I suspect it'd be very interesting but way way too complicated...anyhoo) -and revolution etc ie planets not flipping to another race, just breaking off from yours... Something that makes being a Galactic Ruler of those ungrateful damn colonies a PITA some turns ie Brexit-type, Scottish independence-type stuff...Nuke 'em all and let God sort 'em out!
Brexit
Someone asked on Steam a while back for promotion ideas for citizens. I think it was supposed to be for a mod that never materialized. I was pretty proud of some of my ideas so I thought I'd include them here.
Commander:
- Military Scientist: 25 Prometheon, allows the construction of a stable wormhole between two places on the map
Celebrity:
- Becomes philanthropist: 15 Prometheon, reduces by half the morale bonus offered but increases social production by 20%, Celebrity is spent.
- Influential author: increases the influence production of a planet as well as morale
Spies:
Political Infiltrator: Permanently reduces an opponent's interior morale by 5%, spy is consumed.
Military sabotage specialist: 20 Prometheon, will steal the best ship from X faction and deliver it to you within ten turns
Economic sabotage specialist: 20 prometheon, X factions credits are reduced by 30% for 25 turns
Cartographic espionage specialist: 10 prometheon, reveals to you only special surveyable items in non-friendly territory that pay out larger than average bonuses
Military Intelligence: 10 prometheon. Reveals the location of all of X faction's ships for 10 turns
Diplomat:
- Multi-lateral talks: 20 Promtheon to automatically declare peace between any two factions for 50 turns (including yourself), consumes the diplomat
- Ear of leadership: cost dependent on relationships, convinces a faction to go to war with another faction of your choice.
- The man from UNCLE: 10 prometheon, diplomat converted to spy
- Arms deal: 30 prometheon, generates 5 midpower ships that become a gift to a faction of your choice, does not consume the diplomat
- Seize Governorship: 25 prometheon, consumes diplomat: non-capital planet or starbase belonging to another faction switches allegiance to your faction
- Vassalize: 40 prometheon, consumes diplomat: faction pays you 5% of their credits for 100 turns. If they surrender during this period, they will surrender to you.
- Cultural attache: 10 prometheon, increases by 100% the influence generated by a given planet or starbase for 25 turns
- Ambassador: 10 prometheon, allows you to establish free-trade, research and cultural treaties with X faction, even if you don't have the requisite relationship level
Entrepreneur:
- Lengendary Trader: Immediately establishes valuable luxury Trade Route between planet on which the entrepreneur is stationed and X planet.
- Become Smuggler: Must have pragmatic or malevolent, 20 prometheon, consumes citizen. Produces a small amount X resource every turn as if it were being mined from one of your planets
- Raider: Must have malevolent, 20 prometheon, consumes citizen. 15% of all trade route value generated by X faction goes to you instead
- Libertarian Governor: Consumes citizen, 10 prometheon. Credits increased by 50% but morale reduced by 10%
- Deep Space Architect: 15 Prometheon, consumes citizen. Allows for the construction of a super-powerful economic starbase with double raw production, consruction and economic bonuses.
- Tech Company Founder: 15 Prometheon. 50% of planet's credit production also contribute points to research
- Modern Day Explorer: X Prometheon, 5 antimatter: brings back X of Y resource where X equals the amount of prometheon spent. Resources are not returned immediately, it takes X turns for them to arrive.
You are quite a teasor Frogboy, aren´t you! Looking forward to it.
BTW What´s up with that Dread Lords DLC you promised in the meantime? Hopefully it was not this Mech part tiny bit
I am sure you are wracked with frustration.
Compared to knowing and not being able to share, not knowing and not being able to share is worse.
Most of the expansion pack stuff will have things I think should have been part of the game from day 1.
With GalCiv III v2.5, we tried to brings a lot of Crusade stuff back to the base game and we got absolutely hammered by the Steam reviewers. So I'm not sure how best to handle things with the next expansion because there are certain elements I really think should be part of GalCiv III v3.0 as a free update.
Look at it this way. You've already been hammered. Now forge ahead with more good stuff. It can't get any worse.
Oy!
I'm curious to see what the next expansion holds. I want to like this game. It just hasn't been happening. I'll make sure to comment of what I think once we get to the big show and tell.
You may need a higher difficulty level or play a less militaristic race for conquest to not be possible. I managed to get an alliance with a civ that considered me "ripe for conquest".
I was playing Cybernetic, Xenophobic Dogs in a ludacris but sparse galaxy with slow production and a difficulty higher than I'd played before. The first two civs I met, the Galactic Federation and the Council of Ricks declared war because I was ripe for conquest. With my poor production it look a long time to surpass their fleet strength, but then I met the Ricktatorship who had three times my strength! I was outside their range though, so I sent diplomats, trade ships, tribute, and accepted and request and worked my way up to being allies we were opposing ideologies too. I could never beat them but diplomacy neutralized the threat. I paid for peace with the Council of Ricks and did the same with them. Now I can take down Tammy and the GalFed if I can just get a big enough fleet built that can hit fast enough to avoid losses that take forever to replace.
Definitely a tough choice there. I noticed from looking over that period of review scores that the majority of those who took issue with the 2.5 update were long time players who were somewhat 'set' in their ways with the game. While I vehemently disagree with a lot of their complaints, it is kind of understandable given that, until Crusade, the overall fundamentals of the game hadn't actually changed all that much since its launch in 2015. That's a fairly significant time horizon in video games these days.
2.5 added a lot of great things (imo) to the base game, and I think it speaks well of a company that wants the vanilla experience to be fresh even if you don't have the expansions. However, I observed that when taken in the broader context of reviews scores, the recent reviews scores that were negative were a comparatively small number compared to the life-time review scores, which are quite strong. Since I've been supporting GalCiv 3, we've seen recent reviews scores vary quite wildly at times, and it has had the tendency to bounce back into the blue. This has been a similar phenomena I have observed for other 4x titles, and I think an unfortunate aspect of being a relatively niche genre and steam reviews in general. I know this does not help you in terms of maintaining visibility on the store.
So, in my relatively uninformed estimation, I might ask you the question: how big and fundamental would the changes you would look at porting from Expansion 3 to the base game be compared to 2.5? 2.5 changed a lot economic aspects of the base game, and a bunch of players stuck in their ways responded negatively. I might wager a conservative players may respond better to a feature add to the base game, rather than a feature redesign if you follow my distinction. Maybe you could focus on releasing the expansion, wait until initial buzz and sales die down, and then approach the base game with another refresh?
I'm noticing among the community recently, that people are appreciating and commenting about the continued support that has been put into the game. Even I've seen people who don't particularly enjoy the game acknowledge this quite positively. It may not always be immediate, but I think these things do tend to work out in the long run if you have a fundamentally good game (which GalCiv 3 is).
Keep up the great work!
Definitely a tough choice there. I noticed from looking over that period of review scores that the majority of those who took issue with the 2.5 update were long time players who were somewhat 'set' in their ways with the game. While I vehemently disagree with a lot of their complaints, it is kind of understandable given that, until Crusade, the overall fundamentals of the game hadn't actually changed all that much since its launch in 2015. That's a fairly significant time horizon in video games these days. 2.5 added a lot of great things (imo) to the base game, and I think it speaks well of a company that wants the vanilla experience to be fresh even if you don't have the expansions. However, I observed that when taken in the broader context of reviews scores, the recent reviews scores that were negative were a comparatively small number compared to the life-time review scores, which are quite strong. Since I've been supporting GalCiv 3, we've seen recent reviews scores vary quite wildly at times, and it has had the tendency to bounce back into the blue. This has been a similar phenomena I have observed for other 4x titles, and I think an unfortunate aspect of being a relatively niche genre and steam reviews in general. I know this does not help you in terms of maintaining visibility on the store. So, in my relatively uninformed estimation, I might ask you the question: how big and fundamental would the changes you would look at porting from Expansion 3 to the base game be compared to 2.5? 2.5 changed a lot economic aspects of the base game, and a bunch of players stuck in their ways responded negatively. I might wager a conservative players may respond better to a feature add to the base game, rather than a feature redesign if you follow my distinction. Maybe you could focus on releasing the expansion, wait until initial buzz and sales die down, and then approach the base game with another refresh? I'm noticing among the community recently, that people are appreciating and commenting about the continued support that has been put into the game. Even I've seen people who don't particularly enjoy the game acknowledge this quite positively. It may not always be immediate, but I think these things do tend to work out in the long run if you have a fundamentally good game (which GalCiv 3 is). Keep up the great work!
have you reviewed the game.
I reviewed the game in 2015, and updated it recently.
I think this problem is solved easily enough. Simply release the new expansion pack and leave the base game untouched. That's what the Civilization series does. If you owned Civ 5 and never bought the GnK or BNW expansion packs, your gaming experience wouldn't change.
These are people who paid for a product and got what they paid for. You don't owe them any more than that. When you release an expansion they can pay for it or not. If they don't pay for it, you're under no obligation to modify their game. Just leave it alone.
Didnt they make a classic version which everyone can play. Maybe they should make it an optional game on the menu.
Currently the AI is broken, it cannot play the game.
In the current version (2.6), population is everything. Whoever has the highest population wins the game. Cities and morale buildings are all you need to win. The fact that this is out of balance is a problem on its own, but it's not the worst problem. If the AI understood the way the economy works, one could still have a good game.
Currently, however, the AI ignores population growth. I am now playing the game on 'Incredible' difficulty, and I have 11 games on that difficulty under my belt. For the first 100 turns or so the AI presents a challenge because it can keep up with me in output and technology and can send threatening fleets.
Once I survive until turn 100, though (which I basically always do because of military base turtling), I win the game in a big snoozefest. In every single game if you look at the timeline you will see my population explode around turn 60-90 and keep growing exponentially, while the AI's population stays flat. (With ONE exception - the Yor. They are the only AI that grow their population.)
Anyone other than synthetic does not grow its population, and so the game because boringly easy because I pull away in production and technology and leave everyone else behind in the dust. When I capture AI planets, I never find any farms or cities.
The minor problem is that farms/cities are not balanced with factories/labs/markets, but the much more major problem is that the AI ignores the former and is thus not at all a threat.
I am also seeing AI planets with lots of land that would be good for farms, but 200+ turns in there are no farms. Also a nice +3 population tiles that they start building a lab on, then switch to a factory, then back to a lab, and take quite a while before they settle on one.
I think the is true for both script-based and procedural AI.
I remember the AI in GC2 would grow its population. But then, now growing one's population is a 2 step process for most civs, one needs farms AND cities. I bet this is much more difficult for the AI to handle.
I myself made the mistake of building too many factories and labs because I would unlock those buildings long before cities and wanted to avoid having empty tiles. I have since taught myself how to play well in the current version. I beeline the tech that unlocks farms and cities, perhaps right from the beginning of the game, or perhaps I grab Artificial Gravity first. Only after I've unlocked farms and cities do I research anything else. I will start building farms almost immediately, so as to ramp up food production ASAP, and cities come soon after. I'm actively growing my population very early on.
On planets, I will build one of the early production buildings, such as the core mine, starport, space elevator, but after that I will start building cities.
I suspect what is happening with the AI is that when it claims a planet it begins to decide what to build on the tiles. In the early game, cities aren't even available, and then when they are available, there is probably no food to build them and so the AI just fills all the tiles with other buildings. If the AI ever did build farms, by the time it built them, all its tiles would be full anyway and thus it would have no room for cities.
I have done a little AI programming myself back in the day. Speaking from that perspective, I think it would be a lot easier on the AI in this game if 1) farms and cities were unlocked by default, as in, right from the first turn, and 2) if everyone started with some base food, say 5-10. That way the AI could much more easily be programmed to get farms and cities going right away.
As for balance, farms/cities need heavy nerfing. One thing that I think should absolutely be done is to get rid of population adjacency bonuses. I think cities should retain their adjacency bonus to other buildings, like production and science, and that way cities can act as hubs, but cities should not boost other cities. I've had planets with 8 or so cities on them with 120 population. Each city is only supposed to provide a pop cap of 3, so 8x3+3 = 27. Where does 120 come from? All the adjacency bonuses. This is just nuts. Even without adjacency bonuses, cities would still be better than factories/labs/markets most of the time. Giving them adjacency bonuses just puts the balance into double facepalm territory.
From what I can tell from the moddable files and having worked with them some months ago, the AI does something like this:
The AI kind of has a shopping list (GovernorDefs.xml). There items are addressed like 'Manufacturing', 'ManufacturingHub', 'ManufacturingUnique'. These types are linked to the PlacementTypes in the 'ImprovementDefs'. The AI will pick the highest available item on its shopping list, select an improvement of the right PlacementType and build it in the spot witht he highest adjacency bonus for the improvement. '-Hub' and '-Unique' Types can actually replace normal types, so no the AI isn't helpless when the planet is full.
Farms and cities have the PlacementTypes 'Food' and 'Population'. 'Food' is not an item on the recent 'GovernorDefs.xml'.
It does not even consider building farms, and what few cities it considers, it is out of food for those.
On a sidenote: don't remove city adjacency bonusses. I like the minigame. Just make them something reasonable like +.5 population instead of +10% again.
Apart from that I can only really repeat my previous suggestion on balance:
Well the game is just not playable right now if the AI will never build a farm. I know it sounds harsh, and I know they put a lot of work into this game and I appreciate that, but this is not just a small oversight, it's massive. I guess there are a lot of people who don't mind playing "sim city in space", they don't mind playing a game they are guaranteed to win, where there is no challenge at all, but I'm not one of those people. As it stands right now the AI is just unable to play and presents zero challenge, and so I see no reason to fire up a game. This is very frustrating. I think I'm going to leave GC alone until this issue is fixed and I definitely won't spend any more money on it until this issue is fixed. I really hope it is fixed soon.
Is there any way to fix this via modding?
Agree.
I haven't fired up a game since May. Still waiting.
Yes. But is it worth the bother? The shear mass of data that needs combed through is just too much, especially with the specter of the next update, whenever it comes, invalidating the modded changes with who knows what sweeping changes to core game mechanics.
(Sigh)
double post
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