I in advance apologize if any part of my post contains any previously brought up topics. I also apologize for any typos and meaning distorting grammatical mistakes.
So once gc3 came out i decided to start from the deep end and go bulls deep into the game.
Settings
So far in the game
No potato? How about fish?
I agree with most points, especially those involving micromanagement and map effectiveness for large empires. Your layers idea is great, I had never considered it, but it makes a ton of sense. Your triggers idea is also great. I've posted similar ideas, but it got little notice so I'm not sure anyone besides a minority of people care.
As I recall you could research multiple techs per turn in Galciv2. Now you just build up unspent research points. Stardock has doubled down on producing only one ship per shipyard or building per planet per turn, and I'm fine with that, but I'm not sure if they've ever expressed their thoughts with regard to research.
It sounds like we have similar styles. I agree with most of the points you raised, and especially like the idea of a display layer for player notes. I'm in the final stages of a game on a gigantic galaxy and I've been chipping away at the Drengin for over a week. It's easy to lose track of things in such a long game and notes would be a big help. Your suggestions for better highlighting in icon view are spot-on as well.
I would also like to see the restrictions lifted on the Starbase military ring, if only as an optional setting.
I feel your pain. I even detailed a lot of it too over on
https://forums.galciv3.com/466284/page/1
Hopefully Stardock will get on presenting strategic information in a strategy game better.
You make all of the planets identical. That's my solution.
Yep, that's essentailly what I end up doing on large maps. Generalize all planets and just use the global slider. Bores me near to tears.
My faction is called "The Swarm." From my perspective it makes perfect sense.
Numbers win wars.
I would agree with almost all of the point of the OP.
It is possible to research more than one technology of you select a technology further up on the tech tree. I'm pretty sure the game actually will try to give you all the techs to that point if you are able to research it. Otherwise excessive research is stored so it can be used to research more expensive tech much faster a few turns down the road. But you can't queue up research in any other way.
Since the AI are not really very efficient in how they manage their planets you might as well just use the empire wide slider to manage your worlds which make the game much less tedious and also more of a challenge. If you min/max your colonies the AI simply will not be able to compete with you and the game becomes too easy, at least in the present state of the AI.
So my recommendation is to NOT micromanage more than a handful of your most important worlds.
In larger maps you might also consider playing with uncommon or rare habitable worlds. It is also possible to mod the map files and reduce how common high class planets are.
I play with rare habitable planets but with planets being common. Instead of high class planet being the norm in my games the majority of planet you find will be class 8 or below and higher class is even more rare. So... I can micromanage a few planets even on Immense maps and feel they all have personality.
There are many ways to play the game. At least on the larger maps I like to have many AI and space to be a scarce environment in regards to habitable planets.
I can confirm what JorgenCAB said. If you go to the Tech Tree, you can select a technology a few steps ahead. All research that turn will get applied to reach that tech, possibly completing research on multiple techs.
First point, yes turns should go by quickly.
Ship designer is not for everyone, however, it's part of the core of galactic civilizations, and is nice for those that want to use it.
If you don't feel you're the head of your civilization, then who is?
You do research all technology empire wide, and this is fine, as others stated the points do carry over so if one tech is 1000 points, therefore you have 500 points left over, if the next tech is 2000 points then you can complete that in 1 turn as well because you use the 500 carried over plus your 1500 points, instead of it taking 2 turns. As far as your rake example, I get it, however, you need to figure that out before you can work on the next tech.
As far as implementing multiple techs per turn, I am completely against it, personally I don't think it takes long enough for technology to be completed. You stated you like to take your time in the game, "turtle hard all game", allowing you to research multiple techs get's you to the end faster making it harder to turtle.
This problem/point is meaningless, and this is why... First off the game is a sandbox, which means if you want many and lots of planets so they become so many it's hard to keep track of you play the largest maps with the most planets. If you want a slow meaningful game where, you know each planet then you play a game with very few planets to manage. You make the game what you want to get out of it. As far as it doesn't matter for future games, eventually we'll have more pre-made maps where one could play the same map over and over again so one knows where the different planets are and their names so it will matter for each game or, an alternative would be to start a new game, save it at map generation. Play a game through. Load the original save, play it again and so on.
As far as the second monitor option, I love the idea and it has been brought up several times, however, it is more difficult to implement than one would think. Plus you would still need a viable option without huge disadvantage for those who don't have a second monitor. In that case, I'm sure you could then make an argument for a third monitor as well.
Your research facilities should auto upgrade to the next level, now if you like to adjust the sliders on each planet that is fine, however, if you don't like the micro-management then you can just adjust the civilization wide slider to do the same. Will there eventually be more govenors to do this for you, yes, hopefully sooner than later but, once again the game is what you make it, you could play it with less micro if you wanted.
This is one point of your post I agree with, yes, it would be nice to have an option to see where your ships are headed what starbases are doing what and so on.
Simply look at the map, you can see your starbase and see that it's affecting said planet, once you get in the game you can tell about where the border of the starbases range is and when in doubt you can click on the starbase to see for sure. Tied in to your previous point yes, it would be nice to click and see the starbase coverage on the map.
Most of your post was complaining on the fact that you want to play large maps with many planets but, don't want to manage said planets. Also at that same time you want to feel in control of your civilization. So tell me this, if you don't want to manage your planets, isn't that one way of feeling in control of your civilization? If you don't want to manage that many planets, you said there should be more tools to help you manage them, yes, there will be, however, you don't have to go down to the sliders for each planet if you don't want to, if you don't like adjusting 100's of planets right now then maybe a map with 100's of planets is the best choice for you.
As a wrap up final thoughts. I too, love the largest maps with the most planets. I can tell you that I adjust the civilization sliders and leave them be, I will only adjust a handful of planet sliders and usually not until that planet is done building for the most part. Yes, do I loose some potential, absolutely, does it take anything away from my game, no, I know I can micro manage it if I want to, and love that it's there but, it doesn't take anything away from my game play to not use it or not use it much. I also would not take anything away from the game just because I don't use it (ship designer) in fact I'd add more things to the game, if one doesn't use it then so be it but, there are always many that do. I hope you continue to enjoy the game and once Stardock puts in more govenors I hope that aides you in your galactic conquest.
I have to say that i am pleasantly surprised with the amount of replies and general consensus on the points i have made.
Allot of player made guides that i red so far point out that worlds have to be developed as all round worlds and not specialized, and i can see the convenience factor in that you can just use empire wide setting to adjust all worlds and thus save time. But as appealing as this sounds its not efficient especial in the early game when you have a handful of open sectors spread thin over entire planet with very few possibilities for adjacency bonuses. Also most of those guides come with late game screenshots where a planet has almost all the hexes opened up.
I did know that the multiple research in one branch is possible, but what i really like to see is being able to research multiple low level techs from different branches or even trees. Also knowing exactly how much research points each tech costs and some UI that could tell you what you have currently selected and how much left over points you have for the week would be greatly appreciated.
Also could someone please tell me what +military bonus does?
I just rename my planets to a number of informational monikers. They are, in alphabetical order: Birth (make colony ships), Cash, Influence, Research, Ship (make constructors and sensor/survey boats). That way when the queue for my 200+ planet empire brings up random planet X as idle I can just look at its name to see what I'm trying to accomplish there. With 200 planets the split would look something like this: 6-10 Birth planets (two shipyards sponsored by two clusters of planets for population draw), 3-6 Cash (depending on planet class), 3-5 Ship (clustered for max manufacturing), Influence planets vary as I only put them near borders of my opponents, and everything else is Research. Birth and Ship planets, because of clustering, I number (so Birth I, Birth II, etc...). But, Research and Influence I just name them all the same.
One thing I will say. Patriotic is so insanely strong on large maps.
I'm currently playing a game on challenging (I've modded the difficulty to give +4 morale to AI on this difficulty). I'm playing with the base races + 20-25 custom races.
I have 3 custom synthetic races all of which have patriotic. In any given game one or all of them will be super powers. In this one in particular, one of them snowballed. Their military score right now, is about 5x higher than the rest of the galaxy combined. For a long time the Drengins had more than 2x the rest of the galaxy combined, but they hit the wall on large empire penalty I believe.
Patriotic is almost too good on crazy big maps.
Patriotic isn't too good. The Large Empire Penalty is waaaaaay too much and needs to scale with map size/habitable planet availability.
Quite totally this - I've been playing an insane map with everything set to 'Abundant', and the AI has basically capped out at a maximum of 80 worlds (and that's with me feeding them approval techs). I've carried on expanding to well over 100, and now there's just no way for the AI to catch me.
Approval is a terrible mechanism for limiting empire size, and should be replaced - probably with economic problems instead, since getting money on a giant map is pathetically easy. I have about ten 'bank' worlds, which give me a surplus of well over 1000bc a week in addition to supporting a fleet of 200 huge vessels and 100+ research and production planets.
In reply to Sailore
Quoting Seilore, reply 10PROBLEM - Another issue is that when you are in control of countless planets and new ones being colonized on a turn by turn basis they individually become nameless soulless dots that i look at from max zoom distance. For instance i click on idle colony button and it takes me there, i look at it in i go like "wtf is this planet?" where exactly is it situated in my empire? What other planets, borders, resources, shipyards and so on are around it. All of this is relevant information that determines what i am going to build next on this planet. So in order to find out all of this information i have to exit the planet view screen. BAM and i am back to max zoom view and i have like 10 planets in my view so i have to zoom in, in order for naming to appear and look around for the name of this planet(which i did not bother to remember because first of all i cant remember them, and secondly its going to be irrelevant in the next game).Slider on the side menu does not help either because scroll speed is glacial and dragging gets my cursor stuck on all manner of pop ups that just pop out of no where with information i don't care about. POINT - Option that everything that has to do with colonies must snap and zoom on them while opening planetary view. A flip up minimap/or actual map would be nice while on planetary view screen, then you don't have to exit the planetary view screen to look around and then go back in to continue. IN FACT make it a point, if you ever make multiple monitor support for the game, make it so one monitor ALWAYS shows the galaxy and everything else opens in the additional monitor. This problem/point is meaningless, and this is why... First off the game is a sandbox, which means if you want many and lots of planets so they become so many it's hard to keep track of you play the largest maps with the most planets. If you want a slow meaningful game where, you know each planet then you play a game with very few planets to manage. You make the game what you want to get out of it. As far as it doesn't matter for future games, eventually we'll have more pre-made maps where one could play the same map over and over again so one knows where the different planets are and their names so it will matter for each game or, an alternative would be to start a new game, save it at map generation. Play a game through. Load the original save, play it again and so on.As far as the second monitor option, I love the idea and it has been brought up several times, however, it is more difficult to implement than one would think. Plus you would still need a viable option without huge disadvantage for those who don't have a second monitor. In that case, I'm sure you could then make an argument for a third monitor as well.
This problem/point is meaningless, and this is why... First off the game is a sandbox, which means if you want many and lots of planets so they become so many it's hard to keep track of you play the largest maps with the most planets. If you want a slow meaningful game where, you know each planet then you play a game with very few planets to manage. You make the game what you want to get out of it. As far as it doesn't matter for future games, eventually we'll have more pre-made maps where one could play the same map over and over again so one knows where the different planets are and their names so it will matter for each game or, an alternative would be to start a new game, save it at map generation. Play a game through. Load the original save, play it again and so on.As far as the second monitor option, I love the idea and it has been brought up several times, however, it is more difficult to implement than one would think. Plus you would still need a viable option without huge disadvantage for those who don't have a second monitor. In that case, I'm sure you could then make an argument for a third monitor as well.
I don't want a large map with many and lots of planets for the purpose of loosing track of them, i play largest maps with lots of planets for the purpose of immersion so that i feel that i play a game called Galactic Civilizations, this is why i make the game like this because this is what i want to get out of it. *because when i play a smaller size map with few planets i feel like i am playing a game that should be called Galactic Sector Communities.
Now that i have my immersion sorted by making a big map with lots of planets, i need to get my OCD of min/maxing everything at all times sorted, while having fast turns. And this is a problem because with the current in-game tool-set you cant optimize a large empire with specialized worlds FAST. Optimal and real time fast is what i want, but cannot get, that's the problem.
Also facilities do auto upgrade yes, but they don't actually upgrade if you set the slider to 100% science or money on specialized worlds, which they all are with the way i am playing. Then the worlds just sit there having the upgrades queued up but not actually upgrading themselves and i have no clue about it until i spontaneously come across one world like this set the slider to 50/50 split between production and sci/eco, and then remember that i probably should check up on all the similar worlds as well.
Quoting Christian_Akacro, reply 12 Quoting eviator, reply 6 Quoting marigoldran, reply 5 You make all of the planets identical. That's my solution. Yep, that's essentailly what I end up doing on large maps. Generalize all planets and just use the global slider. Bores me near to tears. I just rename my planets to a number of informational monikers. They are, in alphabetical order: Birth (make colony ships), Cash, Influence, Research, Ship (make constructors and sensor/survey boats). That way when the queue for my 200+ planet empire brings up random planet X as idle I can just look at its name to see what I'm trying to accomplish there. With 200 planets the split would look something like this: 6-10 Birth planets (two shipyards sponsored by two clusters of planets for population draw), 3-6 Cash (depending on planet class), 3-5 Ship (clustered for max manufacturing), Influence planets vary as I only put them near borders of my opponents, and everything else is Research. Birth and Ship planets, because of clustering, I number (so Birth I, Birth II, etc...). But, Research and Influence I just name them all the same.
This is kind of how i go about it, i only have 3 types of planets SCI, ECO, FORGE, i put that in front of the planet name and it makes things easier, and slightly faster to manage each planets output slider, but not fast enough.
Quite totally this - I've been playing an insane map with everything set to 'Abundant', and the AI has basically capped out at a maximum of 80 worlds (and that's with me feeding them approval techs). I've carried on expanding to well over 100, and now there's just no way for the AI to catch me. Approval is a terrible mechanism for limiting empire size, and should be replaced - probably with economic problems instead, since getting money on a giant map is pathetically easy. I have about ten 'bank' worlds, which give me a surplus of well over 1000bc a week in addition to supporting a fleet of 200 huge vessels and 100+ research and production planets.
I do not fully agree that there is any direct problem with the LEP. If you play on an Insane map with abundant planet you will need 100 AI to balance it out. You can't play on such a map and think it can be balanced otherwise.
Insane map with abundant planet and abundant habitable planets are going to break the AI big time no matter what, unless you have enough AI so that the number of planets per AI becomes more balanced.
They will never be able to balance the game for that type of map setting and at the same time cater to more normal maps and settings.
I play on insane maps with about 20 AI with common planets and rare habitable, makes for a pretty decently balanced game and I have no big issues with LEP and neither do the AI.
Saying I have to design my game around the AI is just wrong. The AI has to learn to beat humans if it wants to compete with any settings, don't give me settings and say I can't use them. We didn't make chess computers that could only play if you played in the same way every time, we made them to be able to deal with us.
I've read about someone who gives a bonus to the AI morale and the AI suddenly can cope with larger maps just fine.
Insane map with abundant planet and abundant habitable planets are going to break the AI big time no matter what, unless you have enough AI so that the number of planets per AI becomes more balanced. They will never be able to balance the game for that type of map setting and at the same time cater to more normal maps and settings. I play on insane maps with about 20 AI with common planets and rare habitable, makes for a pretty decently balanced game and I have no big issues with LEP and neither do the AI.
No, just no. The AI is hitting the approval wall at 60-80 planets. That means that even on smaller map sizes abundant is unplayable - in a medium-scale game where the average empire is just 40 planets, one side conquering another is enough to clap out their approval. That means the AI can cripple itself from expansion disapproval in even relatively small games.
Large Empire penalty simply doesn't work unless it's scaleable. It's currently fixed at 0.2 per planet. This should be a setting determined by the multiplying a constant from the habitable planet setting by a constant from the map size. And both should be moddable. And, preferably, the multiplier should be alterable via tech, too (the government techs would seem better suited to this than the huge dollops of industry they presently give).
I tend to play just like Jorgen does here. One thing that really helps me with micro is to decide what that planets purpose is. When the Pop up says, 'Colonize Dorkboi586'? I say NO and I look at it first. Is it class 12 but will not grow influence? Hmm sounds like a research planet. I will then colonize it and immediately rename it 'Research Delta' or whatever alphabet I am in,..alpha, beta, Ceta, Delta, epsilon, Fama, Gamma, ect. I do the same for Money planets except I call them either Frengi (for trade planets) or Banking alpha for pure market center ones. I will also have a few planets that planets that pump out influence.
For super specialty planets that get mega buildings (Tech,banking, or trade capitals) I call those 'Prime'. This lets me know at a glance that those planets need to get up and doing what they do quickly and they need to be defended.
I see they tweaked habitability and the number of planets based on map size. Does anyone have any numbers/values for 'uncommon'?
If you want a balanced game now you need to do that, that is just the way it is. It does not mean it can't be tweaked... I just don't think it is possible to make the LEP work with every possible setting and balance it to good effect since you warp other aspect of the playability of the AI.
I'm not telling you I'm in favor of it... I just don't see how it will be possible. There are so many other thing in this game that is completely unbalanced, why should this be any different?
That is why I'm not in favor of balancing rather extreme map settings. Of you play on maps with many habitable world you also need to add enough AI on the maps. Hopefully the AI will be better taught to deal with the LEP, it currently is not up to the challenge.
I disagree. It's just a matter of fine tuning. There are a limited number of variables that effect the AI to the point of tanking them in the mid-late game. By adjusting the LEP and how the AI deals with it is just a matter of tuning the settings for the limited sets of variables. I might be missing some but I'd imagine: Galaxy size, habitable planet frequency, and number of Major races are the big three.
We will see... I'm not overly hopeful it will be enough or cause other balance problems.
It helps with the planetary defence eg the space cannon icon and the military academy as a bonus against planetary invasions and helps you look tougher than you are. Also regarding the large galaxy map with lots of planets have lots of planets but cut down the amount of habitable planets? you still have a lot of planets but each habitable planet becomes that much more valuable to you as not every planet can support life as our own solar system only has 1 habitable planet out of the 9 (Yes I still count Pluto as a planet)
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