Hello,
We have prepared a patch for you focused on squashing bugs and improving balance. Read below for details
Performance
Gameplay / Balance
Multiplayer
Bugs
in file improvmentdefs.xml under ManufactureLife; change value
<EffectType>DurantiumCost</EffectType> <Target> <TargetType>Improvement</TargetType> </Target> <BonusType>OneTime</BonusType> <Value>10</Value>
Be sure to put the modded file correctly in your mod directory
There are numerous balance issues with synthetics, and IMO, they need a solid nerf. I'd start with the innate pop cap, as 100 is crazy high compared to what other civ types can achieve (~25 feels much more balanced). Now consider their "innate" bonuses: no traits need to be dedicated to farms, growth, or morale, so that is 6 extra bonus trait points allocated somewhere actually useful. Next, they have no need for farms, cities, or morale buildings, translating into more usable tiles per planet. There is no cost adjustment that will balance out these gains. That the Yor aren't bottoming out their rating on Content, Fertile, and Farmers traits seems kinda silly (or just disable these traits for synthetics, which I think is the better option). Similarly, Silicon-based shouldn't be able to lower the Fertile or Farmers traits, as those also equate to "bonus" traits for a custom civ.
Has the AI been fixed so that trading is a viable option? Last I checked, the AI still offers ridiculous ratios for goods, and there is no "what will you give me for this?" option to see what the AI feels a "fair" price even is. Their offers are typically "give me 1/3 of your goods" for ~270bc...sometimes I've seen offers in the 1200bc range, but even then, IMO, 1200bc for 20+goods to WAY too low. Not sure if the AI using any kind of supply and demand kind of logic, but I can say I've yet to see a reasonable offer from the AI (sometimes they offer me a rare good for low amount of bc, but that seems equally silly to me).
The trade system is surely not ideal, but usable. You just have to learn to use it. I also see the AI sometimes request 100 Durantium plus a bunch of techs for two or three techs of them plus a couple of 100 BC, but that I simply ignore or adjust more to my liking. Also you have to know that the AI never gives away more than 1/4 of a single resource.
But what you can do quite reliably is trade special resources from them. 6 Monsantium for 240 BC or so is something that I consider ok.
If you try to sell them resources then the price for those tends to be dependent on how many of the resource they have already. But normally it doesn't make sense to sell them more than 2 or 3 of a single resource because the price diminishes quite sharply with rising amount.
Well I have 3 save game files of completed games against Gifted AI, games that lasted about 200 turns, on large maps, and there is not a single AI farm or city to be found on any planet in any of those games. Not a single one. Then there are the dozen or so other games I've played where not a single AI farm or city could be found.
I bought Northgard a month after GC3 and have spent more time playing it than this game. Northgard is in beta and is far more polished, balanced, and accomplished than this. GC3 could be amazing if you would put your ego aside for one moment and listen to what people are saying. The AI won't grow it's population and that makes playing this game pointless, beyond about 30-40 hours or so. It's not the fact that this bug escaped your notice initially that frustrates me. I have experience in programming, I made mistakes too, everyone does. What frustrates me is your sheer arrogance. You must earn arrogance with talent and competency. Right now you have a broken game on your hands. It doesn't work and your incompetence is showing. You have no right to be arrogant at all when a tiny company like Shiro games can make a better product on a far smaller budget. You need to adjust your attitude and fix your game. I know I'm not the only one who thinks this way. As it stands right now I doubt I will ever spend another penny on anything you've touched. I'm open to changing that position, though, if you just fix this one problem.
yeah but what he is saying is the base game which is mixed at 53%, but not overall which is 76%. But crusades is at 90% which means crusades still gets updates, not the base game. Personally it should get set back to the classic game before trouble started. Im talking about the base game not crusades. Frogboy please chime in on this.
Sorry about not replying properly.
I think software developers in general do a sloppy job of turning out a product. It seems like more and more they are to busy just getting stuff out the door so it will start making money. It's too easy to just "update" or "patch". Before everything was downloadable over the internet products seemed to have quite a bit more polish, because you could not simply "patch" things over the internet. Some might interject that things were a lot simpler back then. Yes and no. You would think experience over time would help developers to make an even more polished product. But, the opposite seems to be true. I think that Crusades should have been the first beta that was released. GCIII didn't even start out close to were GCII left off. That really disappointed me. I feel like III should have been beyond were II left off. Then the game should have got better from there. What I mean here is all the features that were missing like espionage, ect.
That being said. I have not posted a negative review. I thoroughly loved II enough and had faith in Stardock enough that I figured they were going to work on it until it had all those features and more. Now it does.
Stardock has good product support. This shows me that they do care and want a good product. I think a lot of negativity was started in peoples minds with what GCIII lacked when it first came out and now some are still super critical.
You don't have much need for morale buildings as a regular civ either if you are smart about it. Food you only need a single planet. Agree they don't need cities and the pop cap is probably too high but 10 durantium is crippling and by the time an artificial civ can make use of their higher pop cap the game has already been lost or won. I could see 4 or 5 durantium but no higher.
So here is something for everyone.
Anyone remember the very bugged version of Master of Orion 3?? The developer only did a few patches before giving up on the game. Game breaking bugs were left in it and so what could have been the best of that franchise was left to rot if not for the games community. There were two members of the community that patched the game as best they could to fix the worst bugs while the rest of the community modded the text files to make the game better than what the devs left. Be thankful for the support that you get from the GC3 devs. Yes there are issues. Yes the AI does not make enough food (my last game I only found 3 farms on a single planet). And yes, support will not last much longer. Maybe they can do some more cheap DLC to cover the cost of future bug/balance fixes...
Devs, if you want the community to fix balance issues (such as food) then you really should provide us with better tools to mod the game. Using Notepad++ to search and edit the xml is too much of a PITA. We need real tools to quickly and painlessly get the job done. If you have the tools release them. If they are part of the code game engine source then at least release the xml loading classes so we can build our own tools. There are A LOT of files to figure out and having the source code for loading the files would make new community tools that much easier. Even a dll with instructions on how to use it would be enough (I think). Right now there are not a lot of mods.
And last... my own gripes
1. Research, Culture, Free Trade Treaties don't work. Nothing in the UI and no changes to the colony or empire values. They are great for gaining credits and resources from the AI.
2. AI doesn't produce food, or not enough of it. This seems to be game dependent
3. Modding the xml is tedious and a real bear. It would have been nice to have some real tools or a list of values and what some of them do.
4. Galaxy generation will leave an empire with no habitable planets within a reasonable distance. I have had this happen several times, even when setting habitable planets to abundant.
Kudos to the new ground invasion though, much better than GC2 but still not on par with MoO3 (which I still prefer for ground and space battles).
3) While modding i tried a few programs that read xml files and convert them into csv (to be open in a spreadsheet). But the result where not ideal. Is there a program that can read schema and it's associated xml file to be put into a spreadsheet ?
When making global changes, i will extract from a particular file(ex. MasterTechDefs.xml), all data related to a specific value (ex. ShipRange), then put this information in Notepad++. Then once i have a complete view, i will start making changes.
They do work, but they only affect the civ that receives the treaty.
there is a mod that makes them 2 way
That mod didn't work last I tried it. Also, the treaties are supposed to be both ways.
@Franky999 What I am after is a program that already has all the base information so I don't have to type everything out or copy/paste what I need. I can write a program to do this but it is very tedious and I would rather have the source code from whatever tools are used by the GC3 devs to load/save the information so all I would have to do then is build the GUI in VC++ or QT. Having a ready made modding tool for GC3 would make modding the game and fan balancing much much easier.
weird, the TwoWayTreaties mod works fine for me, i can see the buff in the tool tip
Odd, maybe there was a conflict. I don't think any of the other mods changed the treaty file at all.
Nolite te Bastardes Carborundorum, Frogboy.
Having said that, some stuff is a bit too "big picture" to mod and fully understand the effect. And since I don't have a "following" I can't get much feedback on changes. I'd take some work off your hands but I'm not sure I have enough "vision" for it.
I have plenty of "quotes" though.
I have mixed feeling about this. You shouldn't take Steam forum seriously for one. Place is like a pile of toxic wasteland. I'm sure you have your reason why you going to abandon GC3 and start a new one. There is so much updates, fixes, improvements you could make before it hit it's limit, to the point that starting over and reconstruct the entire thing is better than sticking with the old one.
GC3 has big race customization is yes, i would say it is the main factor why i like GC3 more than Stellaris or ES2, but aside from that, there isn't anything else. Comparing this to Stellaris or ES2, both of those providing more variety of options for player to play with than GC3, even most players not going to touch or understand it, players some what like the feeling of "open-end options". You can tinker with an individual pop in both Stellaris, and ES2 but GC3 doesn't has that. There is political power, and representative in those but not in GC3. When talking about this kind of stuff, it feel like those games offering more than GC3. Look at Minecraft, how many percentage of people actually build a mega structures that the game proudly advertise and promote? Not that many but it is great to use it for advertising, and leverage players decision because you "could" make this if you want. Even you don't, it easily to use those screenshot of mega structures and boast about it to other people. GC3 has so little things you can tinkering with aside from race creation menu.
GC3 also goes through many changes, to the point it made certain group of people uncomfortable with it. The changes between vanilla, and Crusade is just way to massive for those people. Those are the people that mostly leave negative review from what i seen.
You do have a plan to start anew, that is good to hear. You'll get to develop your own vision fully this times since you'll be the designer in it. Brad, i like your work in GC2. I am waiting to see more of those.
Damn. I'm sharing my house with family now, which means the internet is constantly hogged by my Netflix watching brethren, which means I can't play online games, which means I really want to play some good offline, 4X games, and I'm all played-out with Civ. I wish GC3 was playable. I'm not asking much, I really just want the AI to be able to grow it's population. That's all I ask. Why is this seen as too much? I just want the AI to be able to play the game at a basic level. I could even live with the AI not being able to understand the ship role system (which it doesn't). If the AI could just understand how to build a farm and a city I could actually play this game. And considering I spent like 70 bucks or so on it... I mean, come on.
Go here and DL this file. AI builds cities, farms and advanced farms fairly early (by turn 125). I've tested it on all of the larger maps.
If you want pop growth and a lot more, check our Franky999's excellent mod here.
As far as your Netflix-watching family, I think I saw a mod somewhere that makes them go away.
Or, as we say in English, "as I contributed 0.0001% of the total money spent on GalCiv3, you should do what I say."
I really don't see what part of the equation you guys don't get so I'll explain it again:
1. Stardock announce Galactic Civilizations 3 and offer a Founders Edition
2. A certain number of people - me included - buy into the Founders edition because it - in theory - sounds like if you buy GalCiv3 and play it in Alpha mode (which was, as others have pointed out on here, seriously not fun, it was basically seeing if things worked, not if the gameplay experience was enjoyable) and have an input into how the game is developed - features put on, how those features work etec etc. The free DLC and expansions for life plug is - possibly - a bigger factor in Founder uptake, who'd know?
3. Over time as Alpha becomes Beta becomes Gold some of what we want comes to pass. Some of it isn't even implemented in the Gold release - Espionage, for example, which is my thing. And even although frogboy and co have implemented it into the game, they aren't doing it how I'd like it done. They wasted time on the ship designer? Who damn well cares, undermining your fellow races, making them go to war with each other because of what you did is where it's at!
4. Non-Founder People buy the Gold version of GalCiv3, join the forum and have their say on features and how they do work/shouldn't work/shouldn't exist etc etc.
5. Reality starts to set in when Frogboy points out some realities like:
Everyone who works on GalCiv3 is, ultimately, letting you play their game. They'll design it - by and large, obviously they'd be a fool to ignore the majority clammering for this or that thing - the way they want. So he agrees with some of the complaints posted on the forum but not others.
(This bit will have really put the forum into a spin, I betcha): According to statistics captured by Stardock - none of them published, but I see no reason to claim porkies are being told - 90%+ of GalCiv3 players play on Easy or lower (there might also be a galaxy size those 90%+ like but I haven't read any mention of it.) So, that's the majority. And it's a silent majority. That's the folk frogboy and co are really aiming at. Not you min-maxing/Immense galaxy/Godlike difficulty folk who I admire for your dedication (all the maths talk about adjencies, buildings etc) and put me off playing multiplayer because I don't like getting my head handed to me very much.
6. Is there a game more moddable than GalCiv3? That's Stardock's fallback position - which, to be fair, they have used here and there - when players complain: Don't like it? Change the number/line in question. Heck, we'll even do a Youtube showing how it's done.
I admit I looked at the price of the Founders Edition and it meant no movies for a few months (helps there weren't any good ones!), I guess if you've got to genuinely make a hard call as to where that $70 or whatever you paid goes (if you've got kids, for example, they might not like that Daddy spent $70 on a game he spends hours playing at night and why can't we go to the movies and see The Force Awakens, all my friends have seen it? etc) you'll be a bit more resentful that things don't work how you'd like but my basic point still stands:
We contribute a negligable amount to the total money spent developing GalCiv3 and are treated accordingly.
The Forum is full of min-maxing/immense galaxy etc people who know how the make their point. Sometimes on several different threads. And in caps, too.... The Easy/Small galaxy 90%+ folk probably just play a quick game of GalCiv3 and if they ever read some of the complaints on here you can bet their eyes glaze over with all the maths/details etc...
And, lastly, it's unplayable because you choose to not play it.
The point of the math is for the devs to do it well, so the 90% doesn't have to do it. Why? Because whatever one comes up with in their spreadsheet is <5% better than what they would have done intuitively anyways. The devs doing the math levels the playing field between min-maxers and the normal players.
But the devs are entirely oblivious of this point for all I can tell and the reality is, that the best research planet is now one with tons of cities instead of tons of research improvements, which would be the intuitive choice for a reasearch focused planet.
But whatever.
What I write here will be heared just as much as the long demanded button for turning off auto-upgrading for all planets at once. This whole discussion is moot, because Froggy is gonna do whatever he pleases. Everyone should just cut there losses. Who doesn't mind shouldn't think too hard about it and enjoy it and who does should just leave this ship. Froggy is not gonna change his mind.
GC3 was fun for 400 or so hours and worth the bugs I threw so far. It is just sad to see it is not gonna improve from this point on.
go back to post #79 in this thread and take a look at the turn 140 screenshot i posted. Is the AI gonna salvage this round by starting farms and cities then?
I didn't phrase my reply properly. Using this modified file, the AI builds farms very early, starting around turn 30. By turn 125, the AI has built multiple cities and advanced (upgraded) farms. Obviously it will only work on a new game tho.
Tested on map sizes Huge and above, 4 - 8 Gifted/Incredible players, using the AI vs AIi cheat. On occasion, the AI doesn't grow its population because they didn't have any Durantium (best to set Resources on Abundant when setting up game).
I have thrown my '2 cents' in about this issue before.
Tie population to production buildings **, this is key! - problem solved.
Remove special resource requirements from city buildings,
Balance pass, make sure AI is building correct buildings.
**Each factory, Research, Wealth building has a population requirement (WorkerCap)
Colony Capital has a WorkerCap that matches its PopulationCap
Add up the WorkerCap per colony,
if WorkerCap > PopulationCap then calculate based on PopulationCap
if PopulationCap > WorkerCap then calculate based on WorkerCap
Building factories etc still yields the % bonuses they provide, but to get the best out of them you need population to drive them
Building just cities will result in a lot of unemployed people, which should effect moral.
link to spreadsheet.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1RwsAteC8CX-HRIoyAbx2T4TvhrELJqQ7
Do I understand this discussion right (beside bug discussion) Frogboy and Co stops dev of GalCivIII??? That means this game is dead because some people left negative reviews at steam???
The promise of the devs was, if we buy this game it will develop for much years and there will be add ons for years!
So what is the current status of developing GalCiv III? Will the devs go on???
BTW perhaps there were much people they wrote bad reviews for the game but there are also very much people which play and love this game very much and supported it for the last years!!I
Its a fault to ask the devs if its possible for the game to use there own mechanics?
Iam very sorry!
As far as I understood what was written Frogboy only wants to stop development of the base game, but not of Crusade. I hope I didn't misunderstand though ...
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