The planet computations have become much more complex. While this seems "rich" on the surface in terms of developing a more complex game - and it is - this also creates a lot more headache for the player to consider in building planets. Between this, governor management, planet level citizen management, etc. the early game is much more complex even for an experienced GalCiv player!
Frankly, I find the early game a lot more tedious and all of the citizen and governor management really really annoying. The need to "buy" governors in the early game also makes early game credits management a lot more annoying.
I love the graphics upgrade, mostly I like some of the "immersion" of interacting with planets and shipyards, etc.
I agree, it does feel a step backwards from GC3 There are a few things that feel that way. Like the combat system, while just visual in GC3, doesn't even appear to be part of the game, there are so many opportunities there to expand on the combat of the game. I hope it's just because it's in a beta stage that even GC3's visual combat will return if not something more developed there.
They are adding battle viewer, so that has still to come.
I find the governor and citizen planet mechanics a more interesting step forward than what was in GC3.
Completely agree with you. In my mind, this is MUCH better than GC3
I also agree. Like this system way more than GC3 so far.
I prefer it over 3 too - i guess though this is where the saying 'you cant please all of the people...' comes in
Personally, I think citizens aren't landing as much as I like (I like it but it lacks the umpf I was expecting). I really like different species on planets and citizens having different things that impact their approval. It's the specializing process that feels soft.
But I have been surprised how much I like the District mechanic for making it so easy to visually read my planets and specialize them.
And I do like the governors a lot, though I'd love to see more done with them.
Speaking of governors, I do think the penalties for replacing them or moving them to different positions are way too extreme. I understand a little bit of a penalty, transitions can be a little shaky sometimes; but the current penalties seem way out of hand. It's not like game breaking or anything; but as a comparison to like the "real world", we would damn near be having a civil war every time a state changed governors, if we were going by GC4 current mechanics.
I think planet management is a major net positive. Do I think citizens could use more "oomph"? Yes. Do I think that the penalty for firing governors is too severe? Yes. The thing is that as I approach 100 hours in this game, these "balance" issues are nowhere near the top of my gripe list. The large number of mystery mechanics are a far greater concern. There are 5-10 key mechanics that are completely unexplained and dozens more that, while explained, either require mental calculation or guessing. These issues, if not corrected, will doom the game to failure no matter how good the mechanics are or how pretty the game is.
I agree, Derek. I am thinking about system going bit more into CK3 direction, with more dynamic loyalty development and deeper interaction with leaders (governors). Of course, it should not feel too overwhelming.
Now it feels rather static - you put governor on a planet and it feels like from that time on, he has forever the same loyalty, the game does not prompt you to deal with low loyalty (pop-ups, events) and gives you very limited tools to do so.
For example, many executive actions could have impact on loyalty. Essentially, that might be their main downside, along with the specific costs like control, approval reducement etc. You could somehow give higher autonomy to governors increasing their loyalty but giving you possibly penalties, like setting the tax level on their planet etc. There are many ideas here to play with.
Love all the leaders… of course, I’m expecting that the dev team will enhance their uses. I think commanders are very cool, diplomats are mehh as they don’t seem to make much of an impact except for the diplo gain. Factions seem to be just noise to me for the moment… maybe I’m just not understanding their uses ?
As for governors, I think they’re very fun and have a huge potential for becoming very useful and fun. I love the option to present them with Harmony Crystals to upgrade their loyalty. Of course, it’s currently unbalanced as there seems to be too many crystals avaible and the cost is too low, so I now have ALL my leaders at close to 100 loyalty, but I’m sure that this will be better balanced out by launch
Yeah gifting loyalty seems a bit easy at the moment. Instead of +10 I would suggest maybe +5 but with a shorter cooldown. Is there any loyalty decay or does anything decrease loyalty in leaders? It seems when you gift it up you don't need to worry too much about it.
With citizens if changing specialization cost some control it might make that decision feel a bit more weighty and realistic. It seems a bit too easy to be able to change their specialization on a whim at no cost.Perhaps too if a citizen is in a role for a long time, maybe 10 turns or so they could get maybe a +1 bonus for that specialization stat which they lose if their specialization is changed. Or maybe they could get a small "Experienced specialist" approval buff after a while at the same job or a small "Trainee specialist" approval nerf for a few turns after change.
I would suggest that at the end of the day - its all about what the dev team is going for.
I will tell you now, this game as it is crafted is not going to be a 9/10 game. Its good. I love this universe and the flexibility and the level of customization in creating the game experience you want (shaping the galaxy, win conditions, races, etc.) Reviewers are not hard core 4x GC players. They have to look through the lens of general accessibility as well as the deeper mechanics over a dozen or two dozen hours if you are really lucky as a developer or have a particularly dedicated review outlet. They will call this too much management and it will end up a 7/10 or 8/10 if the combat gets better and/or the reviewer persists some games into mid/late game experiences.
As a someone who used to be seriously deep in 4x but then had kids and is more casual about gaming - GC4 is just not as satisfying an experience. It takes longer to get through the initial careful management and burning lots of quick turns to get to the fun.
And the AI in the early game can be REALLY frustrating. With a galaxy allegedly setup to provide some spacing to other races, right out of the gate in the period of the first 10 turns, AI took down a scout when I found them for the first time and two turns later took out my colony ship before I had any of the tech - let alone the construction capacity - to get something else in space with guns on it.
And that was with EVERY AI player on easy!With the buy a governor mechanic, I like the mechanic of stats influence to deepen planet production but might suggest paying for a governor on every single planet you found is overly burdensome. Why not a governor per sector? Or star system? The way it is now, it feels like two colony ships at the start are absolutely useless if I have to burn 600 of my starting 1000 credits just to buy up a couple of people to make the planets marginally useful.
Would be nice if there was a toggle so you know can see the tiles under districts/buildings. You can kind of see what's under them but not well and not with detail and sometimes it's worth demolishing/rebuilding...
Districts are a nice change though but upgraded districts need a visual clue if there is one I haven't noticed it yet though I think I've only upgraded morale so far maybe I missed it.
You should NOT be putting a governor on every planet. You should not even put a governor on every GOOD planet. Most planets you should just keep as colonies, and just put a governor on one really exceptional planet that those colonies feed into. Putting a governor on every mediocre/good planet is actually harming your production in all stats (mineral, tech, wealth, food, influence) and effectively seriously reducing the effects of your percentage bonuses. As kind of an example in my current game I have like 10 core worlds and 22 colonies, and I probably should have just left a couple of those core worlds as colonies. Basically find the best (usually most tiles) planet in a cluster, make that one your core world, then all nearby planets just turn into colonies to feed that core world.
I really suck at explaining this stuff. Maybe one of the experienced min/maxxers around here could write up some sort of tutorial about core/colony world management techniques, and get it pinned. I see this coming up as a recurring theme on the boards, so obviously a lot of people are falling into the trap of thinking this is like previous Gal Civs and other 4x games, where you want to make every planet a core planet. I hope the devs end up making a decent in game tutorial to help players at least understand the concept of the core/colony world balancing act that is needed.
Happy Sunday !
Food for thought:1) Legendary Citizens. Very few to be special. Maybe gain less than a handful per 100 turns. Player decisions influence probabilities of Legendary Citizens gain.2) In addition: Need transports to travel to another world. Spy system. Notification (diplomacy less than friendly plus military not too far away) plus marker on galaxy map. Take them as hostage (big diplomacy malus, trade back, execute, trade execution to third party (Hey ho Iconians! I could execute this Yor Master of Engineering...).3) Special improvements that need a minimum number of citizens of their type during construction. After finish and number drops below requirement reduce efficiency.
It's a bit tricky because early on you kinda want new core worlds, but they become obsolete once you get past your starting sector
I like the district management, but the citizen management seems unnecessary.
You should NOT be putting a governor on every planet. You should not even put a governor on every GOOD planet. Most planets you should just keep as colonies, and just put a governor on one really exceptional planet that those colonies feed into. Putting a governor on every mediocre/good planet is actually harming your production in all stats (mineral, tech, wealth, food, influence) and effectively seriously reducing the effects of your percentage bonuses. As kind of an example in my current game I have like 10 core worlds and 22 colonies, and I probably should have just left a couple of those core worlds as colonies. Basically find the best (usually most tiles) planet in a cluster, make that one your core world, then all nearby planets just turn into colonies to feed that core world.I really suck at explaining this stuff. Maybe one of the experienced min/maxxers around here could write up some sort of tutorial about core/colony world management techniques, and get it pinned. I see this coming up as a recurring theme on the boards, so obviously a lot of people are falling into the trap of thinking this is like previous Gal Civs and other 4x games, where you want to make every planet a core planet. I hope the devs end up making a decent in game tutorial to help players at least understand the concept of the core/colony world balancing act that is needed.Happy Sunday !
Good post. I've played a few games and I've definitely fallen into the trap of having 2 core worlds in the same system. At the time I justified it by the fact they were both good worlds, however I see now this approach can potentially gimp both worlds.
The tricky decision is if both worlds have useful resources to harvest.
I agree that we need to be able to see the tile under an improvement.
There is a visual queue for district upgrades in the right panel where you upgrade them. They all upgrade together (on that planet), not independantly.
I've played a few games and I've definitely fallen into the trap of having 2 core worlds in the same system. At the time I justified it by the fact they were both good worlds, however I see now this approach can potentially gimp both worlds.
This is one reason that I want to be able to assign colony worlds and asteroids to support specific core worlds. Because sometimes those two worlds are both Really good, or one is Really good and the other has a particular trait that you need.
I learned my lesson the first game, scratching my head as to why I was getting poorer yet I had several core worlds. Read some posts, lesson learned, choose core worlds wisely and make sure you give it a lot of colonies.
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