Yesterday was the long-waited big update to Galactic Civilizations III. Version 1.4 added many many AI and UI updates to the game based on months of player feedback.
You can see the news here: https://forums.galciv3.com/472349/
!! UPDATE !! READ THIS: https://forums.galciv3.com/472865/
We’re pretty happy with the response overall. But there is one change I’d like to discuss with you guys: THE WHEEL.
Who am I?
I’m Brad Wardell. I wrote the original GalCiv for OS/2 and much of GalCiv I and GalCiv II. I also designed those games and wrote their AIs. On GalCiv III I’ve been more of an executive consultant thus far as I’ve been focusing on Ashes of the Singularity for the past couple of years. But GalCiv remains my baby. I’ve spent over 20 years with it. So it matters a lot to me.
Background
In GalCiv III 1.0 through 1.3 players could go to the planetary governor and override the global spending priorities on a planetary basis. This made micro-managers very happy and people who don’t like to micro manage very sad.
Planetary Wheel: Love & Hate
I am in the camp of hating it. HATING it. Not because of the micromanagement because it completely violates what GalCiv has always been about: You are running a galactic civilization. It’s supposed to be half simulation, half strategy game. The wheel is totally gamey. No civilization functions where last being can be assigned a job by the government.
I have tried to stay reasonably hands off on GalCiv III but the planetary wheel had to go. I wanted it out for 1.1, then 1.2, then 1.3 but other things took priority and it was finally killed in 1.4.
It has NOTHING to do with the AI
I read the forums and I see people talking about the change being made to make the AI easier. That’s a ridiculous argument. Not to be mean but only a non-programmer would say that. Micro-managing is what AIs do best. I could write up an AI that could tweak planetary wheels every turn to a level that would make most micro managers weep.
Put another way: computers are faster and better at math than humans and the planetary wheel was all about math.
The reason the AI didn’t use the planetary wheel in previous versions is because it was supposed to be eliminated long ago. So there was no point writing AI for this if the feature was going to go away.
It is my game but it is also YOUR game
Now, that said, I write games for you guys. That’s what motivates me. I see people who really liked the planetary wheel. So we need some sort of solution that will make both groups happy.
What I’m going to ask is that a prefs.ini setting called planetarywheel=on be added. If that’s on, you’ll get your wheel. However, that won’t be the official version of the game. There will be no in-game UI option to turn it on. People who are passionate about this feature can still turn it on without everyone else feeling like they have to use this feature in order to micro-manage their empire to the nth degree.
I know that solution won’t make everyone happy. No solution will. But hopefully this will be a reasonable compromise for most people.
Thanks for the replies. Interesting reading and certainly food for thought.
Ziddim, as I take your argument: In GalCiv3, everything you do is coercion and therefore whatever you do, you'll be punished by the implementation of a coercion system that makes your population less happy because you're coercing them. Which you can't avoid so you're constantly being punished whatever choices you make...
joeball123, I gave up on realism a long, long time ago. The development of GalCiv3 seems to be a battle between: Realism, Game Balance, Fun and What The Developers Want The Game To Do. As, of course, all games are... But I guess it gets complicated when a game is presented in a certain state and players like yourselves and others go "So if this happens because that then surely X will happen if Y". Then the devs nerf/Overpower X because of Fun/Game Balance/What the Developers Want The Game To Do and aaaaarrrrrgghhhh... Anguish from everyone who thought they'd figured out the game's existing logic
Do what you feel needs doing Brad. You are the creator of this game, but if you hate it - how motivated are you going to be to keep working with it? First and foremost ya gotta keep yourself motivated. That's the hardest part of being a creator. Add all the criticism that comes w/putting stuff out there and its real easy to lose that motivation.
Lots of people have good ideas, and many others are highly motivated - very few manage to have both qualities together.
As long as you still love the game, you'll keep working on it, because its plain old fun - so keep the game in a state where you love it. We'll all benefit because the game will keep growing. Your love for working on the game will naturally result in more work being done on it. Not saying not to listen to customers, they come up w/good ideas some times, compromises, alternatives - and some times they might even change your mind about something, so keep the dialog going, but in the end - never let the game become something you dislike or we'll all lose out if you lose interest in it and working on it becomes laborious rather than a labor of love. Make it not only a game you like, but a game that you love, whatever that entails.
As you know, I am a big proponent of giving the end user as much control over customizing the game as possible. The wheel was not an issue to me; (as I'm still feeling my way through playing GalCiv3 to figure out how things work). But the principle of maximum customization is important to me and to many others. I am quite happy with your compromise to enable the wheel via an entry in the prefs ini. Years of playing modded Bethsidia games (Elder scrolls / Fallout) have taught me to be very comfortable with editing various ini settings. However, to someone who is new to ini settings (not a geek like me, but a potential newbie to gaming) it can be quite intimidating - even frightening. May I suggest you also include two things with the list of Stardock facilitated modifiable ini settings: (1) clear instructions on how to backup (and restore) the perfs ini - including an example, and (2) a small graphic that visualizes what the pre and post modified ini setting looks like. -e
Why would "a potential newbie to gaming" ever obsess enough about an obscure game feature to start mucking about with .ini files? They're busy tackling a hugely steep learning curve. That option is there in the prefs file only because experienced folk like us might have such passionately stubborn fixations. This is especially true for players new enough to the game that the present system of economy management is the actual norm they will learn.
The wheel is available again since v1.5, even without editing ini files. The Coercion ability makes the wheel available for all your planets, and the Bureau of Labor improvement re-enables it for the planet you build it on.
I don't think the wheel will ever work, with the little coercion we have now we are essentially back in 1.3, specialized manufacturing/research/money worlds are just way more efficient and the one slot for the building and the small approval hit is not compensating the immense advantage from those worlds.
You already control the planets output by building placement, why do we have to control it with the wheel as well? Changing the focus with the wrong buildings gives you almost no output anyway so the only reason to use the wheel is to adjust the output to the placed buildings which is just stupid.
Agree with this. While i wouldn't call it per se "stupid", i'm voting for a "buildings determine output" economy in future expansions.
One thing that might be interesting is changing buildings to add a flat bonus AND a percentage bonus, but reduce production or food by the same amount as the flat bonus. So, say, a factory would give +1manu, +15% manu, and -1 production. This simulates the fact that some of the population are now dedicated factory workers and so can't just be flipped over to doing science or something at the drop of a hat. Planets that are really heavily developed would have much more 'fixed' population and so their workforce would become increasingly inflexible, until the wheel is basically useless.
It might even be cool if this was just used for certain races - i.e., some races have flexible populations with +% based buildings, and others have inflexible populations with +flat+% buildings. The economic model is quite flexible for this sort of thing.
I've had this game for about a year and I play it every now and then, and I've gotta say that I'm really glad that you included the option in the preferences file for the wheel to be added back because I enjoy the freedom of being able to micro that much and control my faction. I know it's not realistic, but I prefer having total freedom to do what I want as opposed to being shackled to radio buttons with several presets. That way, if I mess up or something goes wrong, I know it's my fault completely and I can go back and see what I did wrong to improve myself and my strategies. The more control you have in strategy games, the better, in my opinion.
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