Sense of accomplishment comes from hard work, not from pressing a button that says "Conquer the galaxy. It will be hard for people who actually do it, but you just press that button". Indeed, it does not matter if the fleet looks grand, but actually was easy to acquire – it is far better to have a couple of poor, rusty looking ships if it took sweat to have them. And then, if you encounter destroyers, you look with awe to them. The same applies to planetary development. So let us look how hard it is to achieve anything in GalCiv3, shall we?
What kind of effort it takes to colonize a planet? Actually, none. You just rush a colonizer there and thats it, no matter if the planet is green or rocky, no matter its conditions. There is only 1 obstacle in best case, namely, extreme colonization, that must be achieved, but thats about it. Is that all the effort that could be there to EXploit the Universe? Is that all there is to make us believe in the insane complexities that the Universe actually have? Imagine that there actually could be tension among the players at the very early stages - who will get to colonize those juicy, empire-important planets... Who will put the right effort - put work to colonize or to conquer and so on... Who will balance their work properly... That sprint to rush-colonize has made GalCiv 3 more like sports, not a strategy game. A strategy would be when there are candies on the table, sooner or later everybody sees them but who will get them is yet to be decided.
Easy experience is poor experience. True EXploitation cannot be imagined without struggles and achievements against the nature. No struggle, nor achievement is gained if you just have to press one button. On the contrary – you have to overcome extreme hardhips to subordinate the nature. Well, for green planets that may not be the case in the 23rd century and I get that. But other than that...
In GalCiv 3, where all planetary tiles are perfect and even in nature, its just pressing those "Conquer the galaxy" buttons. The same "Conquer the galaxy" buttons are abused when starbases instantly make everything work – it takes just one turn and no scientific effort whatsoever to gain those crucial strategic resources. Or relics. Or whatever it is.
As I have posted previously, the EXploration in this game does not exist, beyond the fog of war. But the EXploitation is almost as poorly designed. Not only we have EXploration destroying All-seeing eye, allowing us instantly see all the riches in the galaxy, we also have EXploitation destroying "Conquer the galaxy" buttons. You do not have to travel to stars to have a good inspiration what hardship means - take a look at our own Europe. The CERN project there exists, for the main part, to create particles/substances that do not normally exist in nature. It was a helluwa job, took billions of money, insane brainpower but after decades and decades, we made it. You can call it conquering nature with pride.
Take a look at Sid Meiers Civ for example. You have to work your ass off there before you could say you truly have conquered the nature. The nature of the Universe is and should be far more challenging, more diverse, more merciless. The conditions on most planets are deadly, they are extremly hard to colonize even with high tech. But the space isnt much more gentle either. One who actually is able to overcome natural hardships and to EXploit the nature of the Universe is greatly rewarded and envied by neighbours. Indeed, it is the difficulty of the achievement that lays proper context of the greatness of the empire. Only in this context you may want to avoid war, fear predators with actual fear. Enjoying avoiding fights is contrary to now existing management of monster fleets in monster maps at the late stage of the game.
There are dozens and dozens of ideas that are easy to implement that could make EXploration or EXploitation work as proper EXes. I will not come up with ideas, ideas are cheap. Its the implementation of idea that is hard. And if the idea is implemented improperly, it makes good result even harder. Perhaps GalCiv 3 is struggling so hard and for so long with game development because some ideas were not implemented so well. I think devs could admit that.
Of course, GalCiv 3 is a game to be proud of. Indeed, in some aspects GalCiv 3 have achieved heights no other game has. And perhaps because of that we are so desperate to see it improved time and time again.
Well after you colonise a planet you do have to give some thought to build order, positioning of buildings and allocation of citizens. So you do have to work at building up a good colony and empire.
In general I agree with you about exploration and it maybe being a bit run-of-the-mill colonising a new planet but you have to be careful about overall pacing and not to get too bogged down in certain aspects and I think the pacing in Galciv is pretty good at the moment for a 4x.
Not sure what could be done to make colonising a new planet more interesting or consequential. But could be interesting to flesh it out a little bit more.
Well i have to disagree with endless space 2s method where we will make you wait 50 turns to go from outpost to colony if that is your idea.
I think compared to what they do in civilization it is close. In civilization you have to improve the resource. The improvement doesnt come automatically, but you have to research it. There are different kinds of improvements from different techs for different kinds of resources.
In galactic civilizations you have to improve a resource to use it. They could have different inprovements for each resource. And different techs to research for different improvements. In this sense it would be more like civilization. But remember that galactic civilizations limits the number on each resource civilization doesnt.
The build is different in civilization. The build list in galactic civilization is further devided between inprovements and ships. In fact ships are seperate.
In civilization you have a singlebuild que for each city where you cant build multiples of a building. I heard galactic civilizations 1 was like this. I think it would be nice to go back to this. When i say go back to this i dont mean that you build one build. I like the shipyard idea. I mean i would rather use the planet build like civilization, or endless space over tiles. But you do lose the ability to build multiples of the same building. This would require a lot of retooling.
Under the current system i think a compromise would be that after the last terriform tech is researched you should be able to terriform all the tiles.
One thing i liked galactic civilizations over civilization is the fact that it doesnt take forever to build a colony ship in civilozation it takes forever to build a settler.
What you say is overexaggeration - Endless space 2 do not force you to wait FIFTY turns, plus, the actual time is dependent on conditions. But they have invented a good step back from "Conquer galaxy" button. The harder something is to achieve, the better.
What I am saying/suggesting more likely is to take example from Sid Meiers Civ - where you have to prepare tiles for the city (planet) to grow. With good/green planets there may not be necessary special preperations - the buildings could be built right as they are now. But there are dozens of planet types where it should be far harder. Some planets could be easy to make available for empire needs, some may be effortless (green planets) but some could be much harder.
Who knows, perhaps its not the tiles that should be transformed in the first place, but rather atmosphere. The exact method how to harden colonization is an idea, and, as I said, I will not come up with the ideas. Ideas are cheap.
Cell phone internet to slow. Im workin on being more patient about posting. Sorry.
Well i was thinking yesturday about what you said about endless space. Outpost idea. I would have to agree to disagree with you on this. The only good idea ive seen come from making you wait is like 1603. Where they went from colony to town. You could have something like this with from outpost to colony where you still build while you wait maybe different things for an outpost no upgrafe option.
Personally i like civs city screen where you position citizens on tiles to get bonuses. Bonuses get better when you improve them. Im not saying getting rid on the current citizen system i like that to, but maybe it could be more like civilization where if they are not working tiles they could specialize. Call to power had a nice idea where if you put citizens in buildings it would raise the bonus you are giving. The adjancency system would work with this well. Maybe one adjancency level per level of citizen.
Extreme planets already do what you suggest you are talking about further diversifying extreme planets.
Also if you dont make suggestions then dont be surprised when your ideas are miscinstrued, because i have to disagree with the op on something compared to 2 the base, and crusades have deffinately made some strides in the exploitation department. My guess you didnt play 2. So yes making a long list of ideas would go a long to helping you.
How about this idea - 2 or more players can colonize 1 and the same planet simultaneously and build buildings there, before certain cultural threshold is met. Of course theres always military option, but peacefully, the question about planet owner is decided through culture. It shouldnt be excluded that in some cases some planets could remain with 2 or more owners for a long period of time.
What it would add to the game: 1) extreme tension among players, already in the early stages. Huge importance to this or that decision as these planets tend to have only 1 owner in the long run, but in the short run, the ownership of planets is to be decided in early/middle stage and so each decision is that much more important. Right now the owners of the planet are cast in stone as soon as first sprinter in this sports game arrives. 2) less initiative to go to war/ military "solution" as political compromises still remain possible.
A HUGE gameplay impact could be gained.
You say I am talking about further diversifying extreme planets. True. But do you have a clue how different planets are there in the space? Endless Space clearly have better idea than GalCiv. I bet NASA could tell you so much that no 2 planets are even. Although, understandably we do not have to have such complexity.
What more diverse planets could add to the game: THere is no rational reason whatsoever that a player should choose only ONE OF the extreme planet types that he shall specialize, like it is now. It does not make sense whatsoever. But if there is more diversity, lets say 18 different types, a filter what planets what player can colonize emerges naturally. Moreover, Stardock can design truly unique properties to each planet then, and it would still be fair that some players can colonize some planets, but most planets they cannot. It would take immense scientific effort to get to know how to colonize all types, and if one attempts that, he seriously lacks behind in other knowledge.
Now existing order of dead planets is a waste of gaming experience and is kinda stupid, compared to my proposal, that there is no such a thing as dead planet, but there are a lots and lots of planets that a player do not know/is unable to colonize. Makes complete sense. And isnt that make envy a neighbor, if those small roaches colonize a planet right in front of your eyes, but you are left there like standing stupid, because that planet was there for all time, but you were unable to colonize it? Moreover, they will get to know all the riches, resources, artifacts that lie in that planet and that you are not aware of, because (now nonexisting) EXploration allows tham to. Awesome!
I am talking about huge differences from now existing order here. Not so hard to implement, great differences in gameplay.
Moot either way that means you could let multiple colonise planets. This could be decided by influence. If tjey like. When i said about endless space i was talking about the outpost. As far as planet types it is nice they dont have class zero planets. There are both sizes and types. In galactic civilizations they have sizes and two classifications on types. I guess they could add more. Why would you be able to colonise multiple kinds of extreme planets at once doesnt make sense to me, but tbat is the problem of tech we dont have. We dont know, so you might be right. What does make sense is that i should be able to drop an outpost. Not even endless space does that lets you learn multiple extreme planets at once, but one for each tech. The two games devide terran planets into different types, but asking for more types of extreme planets is doable.
I do like endless space build thingy. I like galactic civilizations shipyards. And the way they customise ships.
What is nice would if everyone instead of starting with terran planets, and being able to colonise terran planets. If different civilizations could start with different types of planets. Im not talking about torians being able to colonise aquatic and terran. It would be more like torians only being able to colonise aquatic. They would do it advanced like with regular chance of resources. That doesnt mean that terrans would be able to get resources of aquatic.
It sure makes lots of sense if some races could colonize aquatic planets only. Some races could colonize, say, methane planets only. I do not think we shall worry that these different races will begin to exist in paralel living spaces and never go to war, because they still seek the same resources, be it strategic or survey. It is also important what they ally with.
You got something called an imagination, my man? I figure that 2 out of every 3 of my colonists never see their 5th year. They get shredded by razor rain, or eaten by some sort of mouth-tree, or forget to blink every 6 hours when the mirror lens on the moon swings the sun's reflection like a laser across their cityscape (frying their irises & making it far more likely they'll succumb to the mouth trees). I'm not sure any of that is in stardock's animation budget, but guess what: it should be alright if it's not. Let's everyone try and meet the game dev's halfway...
I love the idea of having races with different colonization needs. It would be great for immersion and game play.
The example of a methane breathing race colonizing a methane planet in a system that also had an aquatic planet colonized by a race like the Torians is awesome. Early in the game neither would have any pressure to infringe on the other which could lead to a lasting friendship. As neither could colonize either, influence upon one another should be minimal. Beware of the alliances each choose however. Some races could colonize multiple planet types, but there should be a range of difference in races in space. The all races are equal mentality is boring.
I agree with OP here there are a lot of small things that can be done to make colonization more interesting, bigger changes at this point are sadly better left for a new game I think.
In GalCiv a planet is either good or it isn't. Look at Master of Orion 2 for example, in that game you can colonize almost everything right at the start of the game. The problem is that some planets have more potential then others and some are more easily colonized. There is also a difference in the map here that yellow stars more often have planets with life and the hotter blue stars have better access to minerals. The exploration of GalCiv could have this too. The Stellar Cartography tech from GalCiv II was a huge help to determine where to scout next. What if another tech could show what colour stars have so you have an idea of what you might find. This could guide you in the exploration fase. Perhaps strategic resources and habitable worlds could be a bit more clustered in map generation with blue star systems having a higher change of resources. This could help because stars are further appart now an I get the feeling resources are too, this leads to a decrease in miningstarbase effeciency.
During the phase were you start to colonize more and more worlds there could be a bunch of technologies that open more possibilities for colonization during the game (give a lot of existing techs across all trees a terraform purpose). For example Master of Orion had planetary shields those helped with defending planets but also helped in the first step of terraforming radiated worlds. Or the toxic processor that reduced pollution but also helped terraform toxic worlds in MOO (2016). If the planet itself is highly radioactive perhaps armour technology would improve the possibility of construction buildings there. Conversely specific conditions on planets could give certain bonusses like in Endless Space 1 and 2, cold planets improve science and hot planets improve industry. The reasoning is that cold planets give free coolant to computing processes and hot planets give free heat for certain industrial processes.
I also like the way Endless Space 2 handles colonization because not all is lost when a colony ship arrives a turn too slow. If you make the effort by either sending more money or food or troops you can still get the planet. You can even blockade the planet and starve the outpost of the other empire without even the need to decleare war for it, because it happens on neutral ground and without having any formal relations with the other empire at the start of the game.
GalCiv has a lot of things that make it amazing but in my opinion GalCiv III didn't fully utilize the strenghts of GalCiv II.
The 4x genre has remained quite stagnant over the years but there have been some developments in recent years with Endless Legend and Endless Space, even Stellaris. I like the political system of Endless Space 2 that changes based on your choices and the changing map of Civ 6 Gathering Storm (Alpha Centauri *cough*). I think one of the reasons GalCiv III didn't live up to it's legendary predecessor is because it didn't do anything really new. If GalCiv expands on it's strenghts and if there are some minor changes to III, I think III would be a great game and 4 is going to be amazing.
What size map are you playing on and with how many AIs? I play on a larger map with only a few AI I think about what worlds I am going to colonize. Definitely delay colonizing worlds close to my home world.
I do really like the idea of races having different worlds they can colonize I feel this would be a drastic good change and make the game more interesting. I do hope it will be something considered for GC4.
I play on medium maps because my computer is somewhat old and I don't want to upgrade just for GalCiv III. But I have the feeling that the game is not really balanced for different sizes anyway. You have that one mercenary ships which will help you scout half the map by before turn 20 on smaller maps. I feel that the pace of the game would be better if you could potentially colonize everything, but the return you get in more difficult biomes increases over time with better tech. Like giving different techs and buildings a double purpose instead of putting all terraform tech in one or two branches.
Take the new Master of Orion for example, you still have a early colony rush but you will be colonizing the entire game. You can colonize increasingly more hostile enviroments because you have better tech or because you already have a base nearby that helps. And in time you can terraform most worlds to look like your homeworld. The increased number of tiles is a good system but I can't remember if there was also a visual cue in the form of showing more cities if you zoom in or the planet becoming more blue or green. On the other hand making a small change like variable sizes of stars and black holes (maybe add some other star types like pulsars) could make the map a lot more fun and immersive. A certain planet is far more memorable if you know it's that special Ice world where you had your labs in that system with the giant blue star.
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