A new beginning
The story of Galactic Civilizations is the story of the future. Our future.
Galactic Civilizations III is actually our 6th edition that provides you with the framework to tell that story (we made 3 OS/2 versions back in the 1990s).
With each iteration, we get a little bit better at it. Sometimes, like when we change engines, it takes awhile to surpass where we were in previous editions. For instance, the OS/2 version of Galactic Civilizations was, in most respects, better than Galactic Civilizations II until we made the Dark Avatar expansion for it.
For Galactic Civilizations III, it probably wasn't until we made the Crusade expansion that we finally surpassed GalCiv II.
Galactic Civilizations III: Retribution takes us in a direction that the series has never touched before. It's a new beginning.
The Grognard's Guide to Galactic Civilizations III
From a sheer major feature point of view, Galactic Civilizations III had more than previous versions when it arrived in 2015. But it was lacking certain features that were a real sore point to players, which we began to address with the expansions. Namely:
This is my quickie non-marketing evaluation of each expansion. You can kind of see why Mercenaries was the least beloved. This is, by no means, a comprehensive list of features for each one. Just the ones that I think most players would agree were important. For instance, Crusade re-did the Invasion system. I don't think that feature is any better or worse than what was there before, so I didn't count it.
Crusade is widely considered to be "the big one," and it's easy to understand why: citizens.
This was a game-changer. It re-did the game's economy in a way that is both a lot easier to understand, and yet a lot more nuanced. It's one of those rare features that greatly simplifies the presentation of the game without dumbing it down. In fact, it makes the game a lot more sophisticated.
The other two features I mentioned, Espionage and the Civ Builder, are pretty big deals - depending on how you play. The Civ Builder is almost as important to me as the Citizen feature. The espionage part is fine. But it's not on par with the other features.
So let's take a second shot at this chart, this time assigning a value to each feature:
Now, this doesn't mean that I don't think Intrigue wasn't a really good expansion. It just means that Crusade was monstrously good.
So what about Retribution? As you can see, I don't think any of the new features of Retribution match the importance of the Citizens feature. Moreover, if you don't really care about the new species (Drath and Korath) or the new campaign, then Retribution only has 15 to Crusade's 16 points.
Of course, this is just my own rating system, yours might be totally different.
Right from the Start
The final version of Retribution should look better. We're still working on the visuals. But you will notice, right away, some changes. First, you start with an Artifact. You always start with one.
Your home planets are much different game to game. And if you look closely, you will notice that what's available to construct on turn 1 has changed.
Sometimes, there will be artifacts that can be enhanced so cheaply that you may want to use them immediately rather than building that shipyard.
The other thing you may notice is that there's a Colonization Center improvement. This is a new, one-time improvement that will increase production, population, and growth.
Population Growth
This will be the most controversial change in Retribution. Default growth has been reduced from 0.1 per turn to 0.01.
Population growth can be increased (especially later in the game via the new immigration technologies), but simply colony rushing early on is going to have consequences.
Here's the next thing you're going to notice:
The stars are substantially further apart. This makes the star systems feel more vast (before we had them practically on top of each other) and makes Hypergates interesting. You can still choose to go up the engine tech tree to make your ships faster, but investing in Hypergates provides an interesting alternative.
Same number of techs, more meaning
You'll also notice that most of the optimization techs (where you would choose one of three) are gone. Instead, there are new techs that help flesh out your strategic choices. For instance, you don't simply get Space Elevators - you research them. Spatial Manipulation gets you onto the Hypergate tech path. Ignore my spelling mistakes btw, they'll get fixed.
There are many more things you can choose to build than before (potentially), but they are delivered now via the tech tree moreso than before.
Space Elevators are important in the true Sci-Fi sense that we just kind of brushed off in previous expansions. The ability to cheaply get things into space is going to be a pretty big deal. Besides being able to build space elevators, you'll also be able to build supply ships that can send raw materials to your colonies. I'll talk about that in a second.
Building scouts is a lot more useful now that stars are actually separated by quite a bit of space.
Under the covers, we've modified our galaxy generation system so that what's near players when they start is a lot more balanced. So you won't have to deal with games where one player has tons of great planets near them, while you get nothing. Everyone will have a reasonably equally good (or crappy) start.
Building your civilization in Retribution
So now I have a class 12 (Earth is class 10) planet. Wow. That's great! can't wait right?
Except...
If you look closely, you will see that its raw production is only 3, so it takes forever for anything to get built. This has been a challenge in all the GalCiv games. This is why some players find the game a little boring at this stage. Sure, your capital planet is doing just fine, but your other planets just are a grind to get going.
Before Retribution, you'd just wait for the population to grow, build a bunch of cities and eventually, hours later, it's kicking butt. But from our logs, we know we lose a lot of players during that period because it's just not interesting.
Moreover, if anything, Retribution would aggravate this problem because population growth is 10X slower by default. So you can't just turn-time your way out of this problem. This is where Supply Ships come in.
Players can build Supply Ships that carry 100 production with them. When they get to a colony, it's quickly unloaded and used. If there's nothing to build at that moment, it stores that production for later. This is a game-changer because previously, if there was some boon to production, it was wasted after a given planetary improvement was constructed. Now, it gets stored and used later.
Having planets store excess production materials was crucial to add to the game because we didn't want players to have to micro-manage sending out supply ships.
Supplying your civilization
So now you can build up your worlds a lot faster thanks to sending Supply Ships. However, there's that tricky distance issue.
Do you design each Supply Ship (which is consumed when it reaches its destination) to have a bunch of engines? That's expensive but it'll get them there.
Or...
Do you build a Hypergate?
The Stellar Architect is a new type of ship which allows for the construction of Hypergates. It takes two hypergates to create a hyperlane between them. But doing so will double the speed of any ship on that lane.
Hyperlanes
Now you build a Stellar Architect who can construct a Hypergate. You will need to build a second one to create the other end.
Once you build that second Hypergate, it will ask where you want to link it.
And now you can fast-track supply ships.
Using hyperlanes is automatic. You don't have to do anything - just click on a destination and your ship will find the fastest route there, using hyperlanes whenever available.
Meanwhile, my planet is still slowly building up, thanks to having some asteroids nearby to help. It's still very slow going, but help is on the way.
The Supply ship arrives with goods from Earth. Each turn, it will use whatever it takes (until it runs out) to finish the current planetary improvement being constructed.
So instead of it taking 12 turn to get through the Factory, Space Elevator, and Shipyard projects, it only takes 3 with the Farm being finished on turn 5 (instead of it adding an additional 14 turns).
Hypergates also make it a lot more viable to send citizens around your territory because they get there twice as fast, which makes traveling far less dangerous.
To conclude: sending a Supply ship built at Earth to Viola drastically reduced construction time.
Now this planet is built up enough to be reasonably self-sustaining.
Pacing Pacing Pacing
Hypergates and Supply ships not only expand on your strategic options, but allow you to customize your civilization a lot more specifically while simultaneously reducing the mid-game doldrums of waiting for your planets and ships to be worthwhile.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments! Still lots to talk about.
______________________________
Retribution Journals
Journal #1 (Current)
Journal #2
Journal #3
Journal #4
Journal #5
Journal #6
Journal #7
Journal #8
Journal #9 (Coming Soon)
In Retribution a lot more attention has been put into the setup environment.
For example, we take more care to ensure that each player has reasonable destinations nearby. This is partly because of the stars are further apart and making a "wrong guess" is more frustrating than before so we needed to increase the odds of rewarding early exploration.
Colony rushing should be a choice, not a requirement. And a choice means that there was some other options available that you did not choose.
So for example, let's say you want to colony rush. Ok. Like CB mentions, you can only do 5 colony ship rushes by default now before you are out of population for awhile. However, if you go up the colonization tech tree, you can build Tyron's Destiny which gives you a fully loaded colony ship (5 more population). If you choose benevolence, you can get another fully loaded colony ship. In effect, within 15 turns you could have, in theory, enough population for 15 colonies. That's pretty dramatic and arguably, even faster growth than before at the start.
But that requires making some choices. You're researching colonizing techs instead of building up your infrastructure. You aren't getting war techs. You aren't grabbing galactic resources and your tech progress will be quite a bit behind other players who may take those new colonies from you now that planetary invasion is moved up.
By contrast, colony rushing was the only viable strategy no matter how the map got set up. Got a bunch of cool artifacts and resources near you? Colony rush. Have another civilization starting nearby? Colony rush. Lots of stars near by? Colony rush. In an isolated pocket of the galaxy? Colony rush. I don't think this is a good thing.
There should be times when colony rushing is a good idea and makes the most sense. But it shouldn't be the only choice.
Another option (choice) could be to make improvements exponentially powerful.
Example (simplified, not useing the actual mechanics in the game):
basic factory -> 1 production
advanced factory (can only be built on top of a basic factory) -> 2 production
superior factory (can only be built on top of an advanced factory) -> 4 production
mega factory (can only be built on top of a superior factory) -> 8 production
So a developed planet could easily be worth several freshly colonized and rather undeveloped planet.
ok im not appreciating the SJW leftist agenda in the game , it is baked in ,ie. the crisis that promotes ANTIFA and your not benevolent if you dont like this criminal organization - seriously ?? why do you have to promote leftist propaganda in a video game !? I won't retract that...and there are several other examples..no thanks and I am ready to be ignored, "misinterpreted" or criticized since that is the order of the day rather than admit I am right..
I do like some of the changes but TAKE out biased propaganda
instead of limiting and regulating starts FIX the bugs PLEASE
Are you being serious right now? Because if you are that is like saying how “Taken” promotes sexual purity.
although I agree I would love to see some bug fixes or at least some clarification. If refinery world’s are suppose to give 5 of the resource upon colonization. And if cities can be made destructible without editing the XFIN file or whatever that is because honestly I don’t feel comfortable doing that and it is incredibly vexing for synthetics to have useless cities I’m ok with a “are you sure” and “are you really sure” prompts but cities were destructible and I jumped for joy and now they are not and I’m like why.
wow that took less than 5 minutes to attempt to discredit...excellent
Okay, let me see if I've got this straight:
Retribution (Beta) has a violent anti-facist, anti-far-right organisation that as a race, whichever Ideology you've chosen, you have to support, otherwise you get negative Malevolent points and other races hate you?
So, in the context of GalCiv3, I assume this group is Anti-Malevolent? What kind of Government do they support?
Again, this is Stardock's game, and if they want to put some kind of political spin into the game that reflects their real-world political view, well, they can and all we can do is: ignore it/like it because it reflects ours/hate it because it doesn't reflect ours and play another game.
And SJW, like political correctness, has quite quickly become a totally meaningless term.
jabberjaws, I respect that you're pissed off at what you see as leftist propaganda, but some explanation of precisely where and what would be great, please. Not just "throw a grenade and run away before it explodes"....
Thanks.
Yeah... a game that allows you to build Death Furnaces is just ... way too politically correct.
I don't want to get too off topic, but I want to share a brief synopsis of some game play I did last night (while listening to the State of the Union address--so about an hour... plus a little) that illustrates that the game does currently allow for other strategies beyond colony rush--but they aren't necessarily the best strategies...
I played on an immense galaxy as Terrans with 6 other factions set to gifted. I decided to make only one colony ship (for Mars). I was surrounded by a number of good planets, but I ignored them. Instead, I focused 100% on being the top researcher. Within the first 20-30 turns, I climbed to the #1 spot for research (#7 in everything else).
I acquired a colony ship through an event, one through benevolent ideology, and one colony (later on) through the observatory improvement. So I had four colonies for most of the first 100 turns, then a fifth.
I built about 15-20 starbases for resources, economy, and culture--and to claim asteroids.
Other than three or so administrators, I focused solely on getting scientists. I also aimed toward a government with missions, and later with missions and the market. I aggressively traded techs and resources to convince the other players to be in two- or three-front wars, each. The Krynn didn't like me for a while (about half way below center on the relations bar), but nobody ever bothered me, and by the end of play last night (turn 150 or so), I'm allied with 3 factions, neutral toward the other 2, and 1 was conquered.
I'm in 5th out of 6 in terms of points, my research has dipped a bit in rank (3rd), but I used epiphany to plow through massive hulls and carriers (most of the other factions don't even have large yet). I've traded for other military tech. While I haven't built a single military vessel, my military is ranked 4 through mercenary acquisition and commanders/admirals. And I'm ready to build massive hull carriers.
I may play this out a bit more, but I'm pretty sure I'll have no problem either winning through diplomacy, tech, or military because I have only 7 planets (culture flipped 2 planets) to defend and am way ahead technologically in terms of hulls and carriers.
Okay, that about sums it up.
I share this to say that, even now, the game can be won at least on gifted difficulty without engaging in the colony rush at all. I'm not going to say this would work with any galaxy configuration--or on higher difficulty settings--but it is possible. And it was fun.
If that is the case now, and Retribution will add even more potential for success outside of focusing on colonization, I am more excited now for the expansion than ever.
OK yeh , thanks for the consideration and thats funny about the grenade...I had not thought of it that way
I thought another instance was the general approach to equalizing starts, I am not sure what SD means by this, so I also saw equal starts as a leftist idea since communism ideally believes in equality .. the equal distribution of stars , resources etc. true equality does not exist , we all start with different skills , intelligence, aptitudes, health, and economic circumstance... I think I mentioned at one point, that starting with difficult or luxurious situations made the game more like life..... I thought that should be settled , as I and another poster put it, by settings.. so no matter the personal belief in how things should be, is customized not legislated by authoritarian means. If a player wants equal starts or stars far apart then all is handled in options..
However , a counterpoint to this would be, "if" what I say is true, then that will invariably create different results based on the individual attributes of the player, and I could not argue with this as a point.
I am not concerned about malevolent pragmatic or benevolent per se ... I thought pragmatic should be less penalized for switching around choices of the three. I thought the antifa thing went too far , maybe if I knew how to redefine the event , but I think its hard coded. It just didnt taste good to me personally.
there is so much friction between groups these days... there has been so much trouble in the world over suspected ...obes, and ...ists, yknow "bash a fash" etc... in Europe , "hate speech" is a criminal offense and this is defined by whom ? In the US you arent allowed to speak against or criticize protected groups which is authoritarian in nature , and heavily favors leftist philosophy. So, this has likely made me sensitive to anything I perceive as leftist..
Perhaps a crisis with ending wars like our troops in foreign countries should or should not come home.. I think most people would agree that we dont want our men and women dying in foreign wars...I hope.
Finally , I wish there were a training course on how to mod the game, with details on what things do, the variables and such .. I would like to attempt it in order to fix a few things that I see as problems. but several players suggest fixing war , carriers, AI government ships, ship roles, etc.. I thought those were the best suggestion before adding new content...
the players have had consistent complaints in certain aspects, why aren't they addressed ? should it take years to fix things ? a couple good programmers and WOW the game would go from great to the BEST game ever tbh..I have a hard time believing that SD cant afford to pay someone to fix basic problems that have existed for years...
SD could make the player very happy if they addressed the most annoying and constant complaints about bugs and AI clueless in areas..
those red balls in battle ! are they going away ?
I hope this is better than a grenade !
Thank You
JJ
I will reconsider my position on some changes based on your tests, I cant play the beta
thank you for your post
My death furnace gave no adjacency bonus !?
Nice writeup. I haven't really tried playing tall before, but It's worth a try every now and then. Personally I end up playing pretty moderately wide... I don't go for anything extreme. Once I think I can start (or have to) engaging in wars, I often capture enemy planets in a string of rapid conquests, knowing full well I won't be able to sustain and protect those worlds... I think destroy them, rendering them uninhabitable. This reduces the enemy's ability to reach my territory and of course, makes it impossible for them to recover that strength. Sometimes I'll obviously keep some planets, but only if I think I'm ready to really hold them.
I'm not saying its optimal, but it is pretty fun and it helps me from getting too overwhelmed with management. I also never establish commonwealths, as I always want to customize them and if I do that the game immediately crashes.
Just a curiosity , what level do you play on ? success ? fail ?
personally I usually play on incredible with pretty good results unless...
also 1 less than ludicrous with 35+ races, that was another concern for lack of planets , less opponents possibly , what do you think ?
I like ludicrous but it takes me 3 months to play it,because I micro manage
how many colonies do you like to play with ? what is your favorite mod ?
thanks !
I don't know if someone already asked this (couldn't read all the replies), but have a couple modding questions.
As far as I can understand "Retribution" will add 3 new customizable ship designs (Cargo and Architect ships and Stargates). If I create a "Retribution"-ready custom shipset complete with template files (FactionShipStyleSetDefs and ShipClassDefs) that contains these new ships, it can be used by those who don't have the expansion?
And old custom shipsets (without the new ships) can still be used by those who have the expansion (or need to be updated to include the new ships)?
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