We aren't ready to announce anything specifically yet but I wanted to give you a sneak preview of some of the things we have going on around here.
First, there probably won't be a lot more journal entries for GalCiv III. There will be more updates to GalCiv III but they will fall under bug fixing only. The team has been staffed up (and we're hiring more) to focus on "GalCiv Next".
So what are some of the broad strokes? In no particular order these are the things that have been on our mind:
How to have big maps and play tall. You're going to hear this concept a lot: A map of maps.
More player actions. We really liked the artifacts as a concept because they let the player actively do things in the world. We are looking at expanding on that.
Crazy big tech tree without it being a mess to manage. Like every GalCiv game we've ever done, we are going to be trying a lot of different new ways of managing techs. What I can say is that we would really like to have a much, much larger tech tree in the future.
Invasions. We don't like the invasions in GalCiv III. It's...fine. But I feel like I'm popping balloons rather than engaging in some titanic battle for control of an entire planet.
Combat. We would like to see combat move away from being an all or nothing thing in a single turn.
Citizens++. Citizens were introduced in Crusade. But we would really like the entire game revolve around citizens to the point where population = citizens and it is all about what you do with them.
Much, much, much bigger empires. In 4X games, including GalCiv, I think we've been approaching colonies backwards. We always default to forcing players to micromanage their cities, planets, whatever and then add some sort of AI manager system to try to automate planets. As a result, the game designs always try to discourage/punish players for having too many colonies which I find off-putting.
Instead, why not encourage players to have as many colonies as they want but by default, they are just simple resource generators? That is, they provide money, resources, research to their sponsor world. Then, when you find a particularly interesting world, you flip the concept of a "governor" on its head and assign a citizen to govern the planet which means THEN you manage the planet. And in doing so, we make sure that consuming a citizen to become a governor is a pretty big deal since that citizen could be doing something else important. So imagine a game where you have 400 colonies of which say you directly manage your best few yourself?
Because in GalCiv III, we basically made class 1 through 10 planets rare because who wants to manage these worlds? This was a missed opportunity. Now we can have lots of meh planets that simply act as the raw resource providers to their sponsor world which in turn you are managing to do super awesome stuff (think of the min-maxing going on there!).
Vastly bigger map differentiation. The smallest maps in the future will probably feel roughly the same as they currently do. But the largest sized maps will make the maps in GalCiv III look piddly with a lot more strategic depth to it as well.
We want multiplayer to be viable. Putting aside that most people don't play 4X games multiplayer, we would like there to be gameplay modes that you could play with a total stranger in less than an hour if you'd like. These special modes would be available for single player too.
NO CAMPAIGNS. All the story and special scripting would instead be integrated into the game as events and such to help make the sandbox game more interesting.
So that's just some thoughts. We'll be talking more about it in the future.
We might do something after release where people can get a lifetime upgrade so they get everything we plan to make.
Okay, then.
Kind of to be expected. Covid maybe has made a fair number of folk change their priorities. Why they'd put anything above GalCiv4 Foundership beats me, but each to their own, I guess.
Except I'd have thought Stardock would have jumped on the opportunity presented by the hugely increased number of people - which must include a fair number of us GalCiv3 Faithful - who have had to increase their "work from home" time.
"Yes, boss, I was up at and starting work at 8am as usual. I'm on my computer now . Um....I'm trying to log-in, but it's just not working....Nope. Tried everything. Oh well, I'll send an email to our IT company. Yep. Talk to you later. Bye."
Load up GalCiv4....
Like everyone else this
I'm hopeful that you do something, however, I understand in the end Stardock is a business, and they need to make money to stay a float. Why not just increase the founders edition price? I'd still pay $150, just so I don't have to worry about purchasing something later on. I wouldn't like it but I would, especially for a game I know I would play, not like some of the other games where I just bought the founders edition because you were making it versus someone else.
There are a couple games I purchased the founders edition for, that I most likely wouldn't have purchased expansions/dlc, as I have less than 50 hours played since release.
Star Control Origins
Offworld Trading Company
Both of which I had high hopes for but, they just never kept my interest. Not that they are bad games, they just weren't right for me, but you got my founders money for these games, and you wouldn't have received expansion/DLC money from me, or at least not to this point. So there are positives, it's a gamble either way.
So that's where you've been hiding. We need to talk... 'your boss' okay j/k, but you never know
I would also go $150 for a Founders. The number of hours playing and designing more then makes up for it as long as I take breaks and rememnber real life.
Thanks, Brad. A lifetime upgrade would be good as well. Count me in.
Of course, naming a star was pretty cool, too. I named one for my wife in GC3.
Like others, this news makes me sad.
I understand this business plan, as, perhaps, Stardock does not need this pre-funding, and prefers to monetize the "lifetime comfort" at a later stage of the releases.
But the founders, in my case, gave 2 invaluable things :
- The pleasure to join a project in its early stage. Be part of something that will be your future of fun and relaxation.
- the pleasure to look for my Star ("LiLi"). I am now at 1502h on gc3. In all my games, I just found "my" star 1 time. And it was after 1072 hours of game...
Finding your star is probably a sort of spiritual quest for GC3 aficionados.
Having a goal in your (virtual) life and reaching it after a loooooooooooong journey ... what a reward !...
Yea, we definitely plan on having something after release (a life-time type thing).
What we're working on is pretty radically different from any thing we've made before (same core stuff but a lot more meat).
It's interesting the philosophy that made GalCiv III which was to make it as "mainstream" as possible which meant not having "too much" deep stuff that would turn off the less hard core. Whereas, with IV, we are focusing on the hard-core and hoping that our increased budget and UX improvements still make it somewhat appreciated by "mainstream".
That's one of the reasons we are going to end up making alpha versions available rather than Beta. Because the changes are so dramatic. No one is going to be saying that it's just III with better graphics or something.
Any chance for some preview pics?
I hope you guys aren’t going all the way to Crusader kings level of complexity or even endless legend.
Like the sounds of all of this
I have long argued for the combat system you are now proposing
Why combat should result in the complete destruction of one fleet is illogical - it should potentially take many turns - and one fleet should be able to escape (assuming they are fast enough)
Further - fleets should perhaps be limited to the number of each class they can support as well - so you cant just stack a fleet with capital ships (I also like the Stellaris idea menitoned by someone else above)
Also - make sure the UI provides all the information relevant to the action being asked/requested
But the MOST important thing you could do is make the next version multi OS - I want to play this on my Mac
Yeah, and DOS, or Android. Okay, I'm joking, honest I'm not a troll. But yes, let's hit as many people as economically possible without taking away from the game. I do truthfully like the idea of an older or 'more basic' form of a gal civ game would be be created for android. I'd pay $20-$30 for galciv 2 or 3 on android even if it was smaller maps with more basic features. Kind of like the way they did it with some of the total war games.
I would love multi-monitor support especially being more and more of the average player are getting multiple monitors. Make the highest/map/ai count require 128gb of memory, I need a reason to upgrade from 64 Let it use all 32 threads of my processor. I want to see this beast get maxed.
Anyways, is there a rough time frame, are we looking at first quarter 2022 or 2023, or something sooner like 4th quarter 2021? How will we gain access to alpha builds with no founders edition? And I've always been good with testing galciv games as well as some other stardock games, how do I get on the exclusive list .
Me to I want in. From the tme they annoynced three expect two years after they release alpha.
Well that's a pisser. Anyway, sign me up for whatever you come up with as I've been hooked with the series from day one!
From that I get a sneaking suspicion a new, impoved Ship Designer will not be included bright and early in the development phase before actual game-changing ideas like a new mechanic that underpins the economic system etc,. Fine with me.
I'm not saying I'd be overly thrilled with graphics and sounds that are the equivalent of those in Candy Box or A Dark Room, but I'd take that and decent, well thought out and implemented concepts over flashy graphics and flashy sounds and bad ideas.
Brad,
I have followed Stardock for years and will continue to do so for many more.
I am eager to assist as an outside player/tester and to give as much productive feedback as possible.
Put me on the list of folks who want a life time price point package and lets get going!
If the release time frame works out I would love to help with the alpha/beta testing.
Founders was possibly too good a deal,heh,
I have a few ideas; some could help solve late game pains.
Keeping with planet classifications from 1 to 10 you can say people can only manage planets of class 9 and 10, that way when you grow your empire to 100 planets you only have 20 planets to manage. The other 8 planet classes that you cannot manage are purely to grow your income, population and research points, that way you will be able to grow a wide and tall empire with little micromanagement, even in late game. That would also make smaller planets a lot more valuable.
It would be nice to see a bit more with Citizens, possibly there could be some special Citizens linked to ideology. Benevolent, Pragmatic and Malevolent traits could unlock citizens that could provide a boost to your empire. Giving the ability to buy some types of ships, possibly colony, constructor or transport ships with ideology points would help to remove the case where you end up with a huge stockpile of ideology points in late game as you have unlocked all traits in your chosen ideology tree. There could also be more ideology specific buildings, some of the Galactic Achievement buildings could be linked to the ideology tree.
Instead of creating trade ships how about allowing the AI handle creating the trade ships after researching trade. Could have other research options to increase the number of trade routes, create convoys to increase the value of the trade routes, research patrol ships to protect your trade routes. Could even introduce trade stations
Could have a fleet manager screen listing all of your fleets and their stats, this would make building fleets and upgrading them a lot easier.
I would suggest limiting influence range from planets and stations as I find that in late game my influence expands and swallows the whole galaxy.
Adding the ability to buy and sell ships on the black market would also be nice.
Randomised tech-trees could potentially cause some technologies to become unavailable negatively impacting the AI. Cross dependency links to technologies and restricting certain engines, weapons and modules types to certain Hull sizes could be an idea. Could also have race specific tech-trees.
I know a lot of people talk about tactical combat, but given how ship designer works it could be difficult to merge the two. It could even come down to having to choose between ship designer and 3D combat, however I have a fantastic idea that could work. How about a turn based, chess style combat system in 3D, with a set amount of moves per battle. It could be in a grid format, weapons can fire so many squares away, ships can move only so many squares in 1 turn, with options like fire then move, or move then fire, retreat from battle, you can have objects in space that effect movement, firing and all kinds of stuff. That way we could have metaverse tournaments, people could design there owns ships, customise the weapon loadouts and fight it out in a one vs one, or fleet vs fleet or whatever you decide. With an auto-resolve option as I’m sure many people might want to just skip the battle.
This is all I could think of at the moment, I’m happy to throw more ideas at you, if you like.
I think one big issue is going to be how much time does combat take? Personally as much as I do enjoy tactical turn based combat, it isn't what I play gc for. One thing about auto resolve from another game was it showed you a rough idea of the results and you could either accept them or chose to replay manually then be stuck with those results. Something along the lines of your fleet will be slightly damaged, damaged, heavily damaged, destroyed ect. For those curious the actual game is Thea: 2 and it is largely based on combat card game and I still auto every battle I can without too bad of losses.
If combat takes 2 minutes per planet or fleet that is still hours and hours of it if your talking about a multi hundred turn game. Please don't go the route of forced manual combat.
As for trade, it has never seemed worth the bother to me in gc3. I would say if your going to implement diplomatic penalties based on who you trade with that the player should have to agree to be a trade partner, cause the whole galaxy being mad that you didn't notice that freighter heading your way is not a pleasant gaming experience. Or be able to set some kind of rule, allow similar ideology or government trade ships, deny others. Probably in all honesty it could just be done away with and would just make the game better. Replace it with an economic treaty, bam still get money, still have diplomacy options and the players gets more control. You could tie it to government types, ideology ect similar to bazaar and market place.
I love the idea of dropping campaigns altogether and having an added value quickie version for multiplayer! As far as micromanaging, a game that reduces it greatly is AOW3 with the vassal mechanic. That would be fantastic in GalCiv.
One of the things I really enjoy about AOW and similar games is the turn based tactical combat. Getting invested with your units and watching them level up (possibly with a shot of dopamine each time) makes the game more enjoyable. Galactic Civilizations, though, even though it does have unit level ups, has never had the same kind of investment in individual units, mainly because the emphasis has always been on the 4Xs rather than a hero stack or stack of doom. And for GC4 I think that continues to be the correct emphasis. GC has its own rewards.
I could never get into AoW 3 it was a little slow for me the combat. And playing multiplayer was just ......... not doable for us. Civ 5 strikes a balance with us taking our turns at the same time. We play coop vs AI. I am hoping to get my friend into this game. I hope some consider is taken for people who play 4X games cooperatively I know there isn’t a large amount of us but there is something fun about ruling the world / galaxy with your buddy in a game you invest a few weeks into.
Late to this forum party but a couple of things on my mind that I'll toss in:
Those are my thoughts off the cuff. Happy to hear the news, GC has always been one of my (the?) most favorite series, and I've always enjoyed playing immensely - even when it seemed like it was nothing but complaining on the forums.
cheers,
-tid242
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