Hello,
We are happy to be releasing GC3 v3.9. We've included community inspired balance changes, made significant improvements to performance, and updated how the zone of control works. We're also launching the "Villians of Star Control" DLC which includes new playable races, traits, and ships. Read below for details.
The Villains of StarControl have invaded! New playable races, traits, and ships. Read about it here:
https://www.galciv3.com/article/496599/available-now-villains-of-star-control-origins-for-galactic-civilizations-i
Special thanks to Horemvore, Old Spider, and the modding community. Brad/Draginol reviewed his mods to evaluate whether some of those ideas should make them into the game. We love seeing players that are passionate about the game and it's great to see their work making the game better for everyone.
No more fog of war in your empire. All territory in your Zone of Control now is always visible. This helps you keep an eye on what other factions are doing in your backyard.
We've made a substantial improvement in performance. This boost is especially noticeable in the shipyard screen and in late-game turn times.
Balance
Fixes
UI
AI
Crusade and Beyond
Intrigue Only
Retribution Only
A
The special thanks should go to the modding community, not just myself. Spacing changes came from Old-Spider for example. Many of the other changes carryed over were also from discussions by the community that I felt were sound ideas.
Updates 8/26
Just posted a small update
Scorched earth
Surrender change: Surrendering players now destroy their worlds upon surrendering unless they are surrendering to a particular player in which case they will transfer their homeworld (and only their homeworld) to that player. This reduces the late game sudden explosion in micro-management of worlds the player may have no interest in. AI also destroys its ships.
"My hand itches a bit... Please cut it off!"
Instead of removing one of the more interesting changes in the later-game playing field, how about tackling what makes planet management such an unwelcome chore?
"We've been defeated... Let's kill almost all of our people, billions of them, wreck the worlds that we've cherished, and destroy all of our ships!"
Insanity.
I dont now if I am sold on the new surrender mechanic. The rationale for this change, was to eliminate micro-management. I dont know how many people complained about that specifically, but I rather liked fixing up surrender factions empires. Not only that, it gvies a chance to even up the scales against overpowerful factions on larger maps. But the one thing I noticed right away is, you only get the players homeworld. That is nice, except for one thing that the play-tester? failed to notice. In almost all instances, when a faction surrenders, they will likely be some distance from the players holdings. Meaning, they will be surrounded by other factions (influence). The upshot is, the planet they gift you, will in almost all instances, be culture flipped in fairly short order making it kind of pointless. And that is before you take into account, all the worlds taken out of play by the rest of it. Not very realistic or a well thought-out change.
Ive lost every surrendered HW to culture flipping the last 3 trial runs in the last couple days. So yea, Ive experienced it first-hand.
Also.
Not sure if this is feature or what, but hovering over un-settled worlds is really hit and miss. Sometimes, you cant get any hover box no matter what. Other times, you have to zoom in map and it works. Hard to describe but, it is not working very consistently. Maybe it was always been that way and Im just noticing now.
Years ago, after getting frustrated with AIs surrendering to other AIs that they weren't even at war with, I turned off AI surrender in the game options. It's been either complete victory or the AI begging for peace ever since.
So after reading about the changes mentioned above, my first reaction was that I didn't care. Now after thinking about it some more, I think I might turn the surrender back on and try it out, see how it works. I'm sure 3.9 will go live before I'll have time to provide any feedback, though.
I see that Retribution with 3.9 has those values as 0.33 and 0.175, while the old version of your mod that I'm using has 0.35 and 0.175. Are you finding that 0.2 and 0.13 work better? Thanks.
Here's an example of why the surrender mechanic was interesting:
My civilization was at war with the Snathi and had taken all but three of their worlds. The Snathi surrendered to the Krynn. Now I had a choice: Declare war on the unfriendly Krynn to prevent a sharp rise in their power, or not. To further complicate matters, my civilization shared borders with the Krynn, and a significant number of our military ships had been battling the Snathi and were far from our core worlds.
After we took their new acquisitions and one of their original colonies, the Krynn surrendered to the Korath. Now I had a choice: Declare war on the unfriendly Korath to solidify our control of this section of the galaxy and prevent that distant genocidal empire from having a foothold in our corner of space, or not.
We took their new acquisitions and destroyed their nearby starbases, and the Korath asked for peace. We accepted.
Time to solidfy our holdings and focus on other matters... Or not: The Thalans had been at war with Korath and surrendered their four remaining worlds to us. Three of these poorly developed and poorly defended worlds bordered Korath space, and one was located within Korath space. Now I had a choice: Potentially overextend to develop and protect these worlds, or give them to the friendly Terran Resistance in hopes they'd able to keep the Korath in check.
Under the new system, the Snathi would have suicided, and this chain of events would not have happened.
Before I turned surrender off, my typical experience with it was my current enemy surrendering to one of my allies. When invaded by Germany, did France have the option to surrender to Japan, halting the Nazi armies in their tracks?
@Publius:
Sounds like an easy fix for Stardock, if it still happens: If all other remaining civs are friendly to the enemy, the defeated civ should not be able to surrender to any civ except that enemy.
I haven’t used surrenders since the Iconians surrendered to the Yor. Yap that makes prefect sense let me go ahead and turn this setting right off. This was a few years ago. Maybe the lack of surrenders is why I experience such a late game grind problem funny I hadn’t really considered it until now.
also the late game grind has been drastically reduced thanks to repeatable queues. Thank God and Stardock
I haven't seen it in action, but I will add that my initial reaction to scorched earth surrenders is not favorable.
Otoh, I'm not all that happy with the AIs surrendering to another AI with the same Ideology at the drop of a hat. This game I was at war with the Iconian for two whole turns before he suddenly turned Altarian blue. The Drengin didn't last a lot longer before surrendering to the Yor, who I doubt he ever met.
There must be a middle ground.
I despise the new surrender mechanic and don't really care for the new fog of war mechanic either. Both take away from the game in ways that fundamentally change it for the worse. Why on earth (or Drengi if that's how you roll) would a surrendering empire not only destroy all of its colonies, but completely render the planets uninhabitable for any future colonization? But leaving in-game realism aside (this is a game after all), this new "feature" has serious consequences.
In my most recent game I had been targeting a particular planet for some time because it contained the only Precursor archive in the galaxy AND the only source precursor nanites (sp?). Just as I was massing my transports to attack it, the opponent "surrendered" and the planet was toast. All of that game time (and it was considerable) a complete waste. I'm not even certain what this mechanic is intended to accomplish. What's the point of it? How does it make the game better? (my answer to that one is it doesn't-quite the opposite) Is there a way it could be made optional? I was able to somewhat live with this new "feature" when the planets were still colonizable, but apparently that was a "mistake" and it's been removed as well. This is really a game breaker for me.
The fog of war is less dramatically bad, but still something that removes a key aspect of the game for me. I happen to like the idea that one has to use various sensor stations etc. to monitor what's going on in one's empire. Removing that feature makes most sensors for planets and starbases irrelevant. I stopped building them as there's no point to it in most cases. The sensor enhancement random events also became pretty much useless as does the Precursor Satellite planet choice. Those previously made a big difference in the game and now they don't. So this new "feature" has taken player choices away. I liked it far better the way it used to be and would like to see it returned to that or this "feature" made optional.
^ I agree with Max2411. From a game immersion and realism standpoint, a civilization would not magically be able to see everything in their ZOC without sensors. Make this a setting option so players can decide. And realistically a surrendering civilization would not kill all their citizens and destroy their planets. Unpopulate them or make it an option.
Agreed.
Unfortunately this seems common practice for Stardock: instead of carefully refining current mechanics, to make a (sometimes major) change without properly considering its effects on other parts of the game.
For example, both the Ancient Precursor Device and Mysterious Outpost events create a colony with five population, which is two over the initial colony limit and immediately causes very low morale. Stardock changed population limits some time ago but hasn't bothered to fix the events (despite the release of multiple patches since the change). Instead a player needs to have a colony ship (with only the minimum one population onboard) ready to relocate the excess population to the homeworld.
(Edit: Thinking about it, the Mysterious Outpost event might actually be worse than described above - because of planet class limiting population (which might have been one of the changes that caused the problem with the events), the population was actually *four* over the initial limit if I recall correctly.)
And didn't Stardock nerf sensors *hard* some time back? But now it's "see everything within your borders, no investment needed!"
How about restoring the previously-deemed overpowered sensors as a trial instead of jumping straight to drastic change?
There is a lot to say here... but I'll try to be brief.
Sensors/etc. is yet another element that could be handled better if Influence and Borders were two different things. Hard borders created by your planets and assets that don't continually expand, could certainly have "free vision" without causing nearly so much disruption. Influence can truly become massive. There are other issues with "Influence as a border" that are discussed elsewhere at great length.
The new surrender mechanic. Since surrender in GC has always been intended as a way to speed up the end-game, it's not terrible that it just destroys all the planets/etc. BUT it is a missed opportunity to take surrender more seriously.
1) Personality type could influence the type of surrender and to whom. (With some empires electing to blow everything up, and others offering you direct control, and yet others declaring all their planets independent, etc.)
2) Big morale penalties could come from a surrender.
3) Option to install "vichy" government, that, is akin to a commonwealth for the next 50-100 turns, but then becomes a truly independent faction again.
So point is... there are plenty of opportunities to improve surrender mechanics, but only if it's seen as something more than a late game wrapping up mechanic.
I agree it could be handled better, but making sensors largely irrelevant inside one's own influence isn't the way to do it in my opinion. I don't have an idea on how to handle the border/influence issue better, and in fact don't think the way it's currently done is a series issue; but I do know that I don't like sensors being made irrelevant inside borders/influence as they exist in the game. The new surrender mechanic. Since surrender in GC has always been intended as a way to speed up the end-game, it's not terrible that it just destroys all the planets/etc. BUT it is a missed opportunity to take surrender more seriously. It's all subjective, but I think it is absolutely terrible. It's a pretty ham fisted way to speed up the end game for one thing. If the game is too slow in end game and a player thinks that destroying planets is a good way to speed things up, then he or she can simply destroy the colonies when the other player surrenders. It can be done on the governor's screen. That takes care of the alleged micromanagement problem too, which I don't think is an issue in this game for my part. There are multiple ways to avoid micromanagement, including the aforementioned governor's mechanic.1) Personality type could influence the type of surrender and to whom. (With some empires electing to blow everything up, and others offering you direct control, and yet others declaring all their planets independent, etc.)
This could be interesting.2) Big morale penalties could come from a surrender.
Also potentially interesting if it was limited to the surrendering planets. In fact it makes perfect sense.
I wouldn't mind this if only because you propose it be optional.
So point is... there are plenty of opportunities to improve surrender mechanics, but only if it's seen as something more than a late game wrapping up mechanic.The devil would be in the details.
I think realism would be you could only rsurrender to someone you are next to. The Vichy option is historically accurate. Look at Germany. A mechanic that turns a surrendered civilization into class zero planets is a bad mechanic.
When surrendering, the AI destroys worlds now? Does that mean "abandon" or does it mean "the planets are gone and it's a wasteland?"? If the latter, it makes things a lot more boring. I don't want to destroy other empires, I want to conquer them.
The entire population and all improvements are annihilated and the planet rendered an uninhabitable wasteland. For game purposes it is another dead world.
Well that sucks. If I disable surrendering will they fight to the bitter end? I hope this doesn't change behavior in my current saved game .
@Stardock - Please make surrender behavior a toggle in game settings.
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