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.
The number #1 thing I want from the next Gal Civ is for influence, territorial borders, culture, and social policies to be integrated into one mechanic as it is in the Civilization franchise. The ideology system in Gal Civ 3 was and still is its weakest point.
Citizens were a fun mechanic but it seems to me they should be tied to your civilizations approval, it would make sense that a happy civ would produce more loyal citizens and it would give the player a strong reason to focus on maintaining high approval.
The concept of giving players planets that are just resource sources is fine but I'm not sure using citizens as a necessary resource to make planets governable is a good idea. Instead I'd simply have low quality planets default to being unmanaged resource influence and income generators while higher quality worlds default to being fully managed governed colonies.
I'd like to see Combat become turn based possibly on a grid like XCOM lite.
I think Brad has some good ideas here. As someone who micromanages all of my planets because I can't stand not to take advantage of their full potential, I often find myself completely absorbed in the early game and then start losing interest as I achieve dominance and know the game is won. It often takes me three times as long (in days elapsed) to finish a game as to get to the dominant point, because I lose interest in having to manage more and more planets as I defeat the other players.
I look forward to seeing how these ideas pan out.
Modding.
Easier modding should be addressed as well.
I think GalCiv 3 is a big mess. I hope it can be all fixed, but I have my doubts. I think development has gone in the wrong direction for too long.I think the UI has been overlooked. It looks pretty but often it times takes a lot of work to do stuff. For instance, I can't change the repeat ship in my shipyards quickly. When you have dozens and dozens of shipyards, you have to go through them all one at a time if you want them all repeat building the newest ships. Upgrading ships in just a fleet is time consuming if you use a lot of tiny ships. Managing ships is also a chore if you tiny ships. There is no ctrl + a or hold shift to select a lot of ships at once. Rally points don't work well if you try to use them to create a fleet.I've been working on a document that has a lot of my ideas written down. I'll go compile and organize it, then post it later.
I'd love to check that out!
The ideas on colony system sounds great as it really does not get fun after 10 planets imo.
Some sort of tactical combat ala Dominions style would be cool and having the races play and feel different would be what I would like.
I also think the lego style ship builder should go as that gimmick has been played out and have top class ship models ala EndlessSpace2 instead.I know some players like this but I am betting the vast majority do not use it so it seems a waste of resources.
Brad,
Thank you for a great update on where things are moving!
I have played all incarnations of Gal Civ III and the current is the most enjoyable but I do agree its a slog late game.
Love Citizens > keep moving towards this concept as you stated.
Combat > the old viewer is a tad dated. Id prefer to have more hands on but in the same vein to have the option to have it 'auto' resolved' as late game again can be tough managing dozens of space battles.
Tech Tree > love it. Grab the idea from Civ IV and give us a 'randomized tree' option to screw with us!
I hope to be part of your outside team to find bugs and improve Gal Civ for everyone.
I agree the UI needs some improvement.
Looking forward to the future of Gal Civ
If there is one single UI improvement to be had, it is the list sorting mechanic-- it doesn't work. And some sorts don't "stick", either. Very frustrating.
If I leave a screen and come back to it, I don't want to have to re-sort the list.
Thank you for all your hard work. I very much look forward to your improvements in future releases,
Richard
If you're hinting at what I think you are, that would be amazing. But I dare not hope at this point....
I'm not going to argue with either of these.
Regarding the tech tree, one thing I would love to see is an option for it to be randomized. It would also be great if the next available technologies could be "hidden", like in Stellaris. (Sorry; I hate the constant comparisons to that game as well, but it's the only example I can think of off the top of my head.)
I've come to realize that I genuinely enjoy *not* planning out my tech research in advance; it simply becomes boring after a while. Instead, rather, having the techs be randomized and hidden brings a sense of excitement, and a genuine sense of discovery -- what secrets might my scientists unlock next?
Ground combat is rarely (if ever) done well, in GalCiv or any other 4x game.
About the only improvement/change I can think of is that I prefer it when invasions take multiple turns. It's never felt realistic to me that an entire planet could fall so quickly, at least on a regular basis. (I realize this is debatable, however.)
Of course, in the case of GalCiv4, I imagine that multiple-turn invasions (even if implemented) would only happen on those more important "sponsored" worlds that you mentioned.
Combat doesn't have to be an "all or nothing" prospect at all, if retreating is made a viable tactical option. Of course, this would then mean implementing some form of tactical combat...which I really, truly hope you're finally doing this time around.
I like this concept. A lot.
...And I *love* this concept! It would allow empires to feel genuinely epic in scale, whilst introducing a common-sense mechanic limiting the micromanagement hell that plagues the genre. Man, that's honestly kinda brilliant.
I'm just gonna repeat what I said earlier: Sounds flippin' fantastic, but I'm not going to hope for too much at this point. Keep expectations on the ground...
Nice. Although I'm still compelled to ask: Any idea yet how many folks will be able to play in a "standard" long game of MP?
Yessssss!
The sandbox game has needed this (or something like it) for a long time now. This makes me very, very happy.
I would love to see the continued level of customization offered by Galactic Civ 3. Ship and civilization design has given it high replay value in my opinion.
Improved combat mechanics would be great! One of the biggest problems with Galactic Civ 3 is that in the late game everything devolves into a carrier battle at the end. Hopefully this gets balanced, but it makes for some pretty bland battles that follow the same formula. I'd like to see multiple strategies that all have strengths and weaknesses. There are a lot of cool strategies in Gal Civ 3, but right now carriers act as a trump card with not a lot of answers.
There are also other combat strategies you could explore. For example you could have modules that improve a ships targeting and allow them to score critical hits, but at the cost of a reduced rate of fire.
Other than that, it sounds like you guys have a a lot of great ideas for colony management, and I'm excited to see this franchise continue.
I like the concept of Meh Planet = Automatic Resource Generator and I'd suggest a switch where, at any point, you can decide that the precise resource you want your Meh Planets Population/Citizens to provide is Wealth/Production/Research. I see that as being preferable than each planet proving 1/3 boost to each of those 3 areas. If you didn't want to implement my switch idea, you could scale what they provide with their Level rating - which admittedly would still mean everyone ignores the Level 1-4 planets, but I think unless those planets have a really useful resource/artifact on them which helps your plans move along, they tend to get ignored anyway. Also, if you're going to go with the Meh Planet = Automatic Resource Generator concept, how will that affect the need for asteroid mining? I know I'd rather take a Level 2 planet than mine the asteroids around it, if I had to make a choice.
Invasions: How about a system where different race types have different technologies at hand (so basically, when you create your custome race or even play one of the standard races, you can specialise in Propaganda Warfare because of another trait you've picked (ie Sneaky), or specialize in Biological Warfare because your race is already good at colonizing Toxic Worlds so it stands to reason you know how Toxins work. I'm not suggesting cutting off Invasion types, more that certain races are better served by focussing on one certain type, given their abilities and traits. As a counter to this, how about making certain planet types more or less resistant to certain Invasion techniques? For example, it stands to reason that a Planet that provides bonuses to Research isn't going to be populated by stupid folk, so Biological Warfare and Tidal Disruption will take longer to work (due to knowledge of how to deal with/live with their negative effects, if it all. But they can be swayed by Information Warfare. Planets that have high approval have the opposite problems - small brains, big hearts. They Love Their Leader but that biological stuff kills 'em dead quick.
Increasing the usage and depth of Citizens sounds like a great idea. My only proviso would be that if you really want players to focus on Population = Citizens = Usage, I can see a point where, if only for simplicity's sake, you do away with Buildings, given the maths involved with what a Citizen would provide versus what a Building would provide, especially if you wanted to go with the idea of Citizens "levelling up" over time (kind of like the Kittens in Kittensgame - if you keep them in, say, Farmer mode, they become better Farmers over time). If you want to keep the option of sending a Citizen to Planet 34 or building the lastest, greatest Research Labs there, that maths balance will be important.
I definitely think fleet management and the like needs to get a lot better. There's been plenty of internal UI talk about making sure we're not still designing UI with habits from 1024x768.
If you look at a lot of the UI stuff in GC3, I think you'll find that a lot of its weaknesses because it is still designed thinking of 1024x768 thinking -- click X and then click here).
This list is a good start.
GalCiv3 went from "okay, let's rebuild Galciv2 but better and slowly reintegrate old features in new ways" to "Okay, this isn't quite working let's throw some stuff at the wall and see what sticks" with mixed results. Some of it great! Some of it...works but isn't that fun.
And I am happy that insane maps will be tackled because it just doesn't work that well in GalCiv3. Which is understandable, because it takes a huge time sink to test macro-scale gameplay on large maps. Small maps are fast and tactical.
But let's tackle the elephant in the room of 4x gameplay: Stellaris. I can get my empire shattered and broken in Stellaris and still have fun. In fact, part of the fun is that random events can hose your empire and the challenge is digging out of that hole. In GalCiv 3, I can end up drudging for a good hour only to abandon a game because events are in a death spiral. So, a few things:
1. Interstellar War should be hard but not in a way where it's just a time-sink to build up to it. Maps-within-maps idea can kind of come into play - War can be fast and tactical in near-space/within the cluster, but fighting someone on the other side of the galaxy is nigh impossible without being high on the tech tree. One way would be Range/Logistics. The further away from your star nation you are, the more expensive ship/fleet maintenance becomes. Large ships and fleets can only be sustained either in your territory or near your territory, while smaller ships/fleets can have longer supply chains.
2. More Civ building less Fleet building.
3. Megaprojects that are actual megaprojects and not just an icon on a planet map with stats. More stuff like Gates, Starbases, etc. Habitats! Trade lanes!
4. Wild and crazy minor races! Hire the Dark Yor to steal tech, the Snathi to pirate, etc!
5. Interstellar "Road" Hierarchy. How cool would it be to zoom in on a gate-chain and see traffic cues! Kinda like City Skylines traffic.
6. Also, like City Skylines, more overlays! Or at least more useful overlays using gradient maps for things. Like resources.
Okay, I'm tired so things went a bit off from where I was going, but these are some ideas.
Thanks Frogboy for the update...
Don't Want to Lose Control
What I'd like to see, lots of planets to colonize, if I choose. Space is vast with much distance between stars, however, if I want to tightly pack my galaxy I want to be able to do so. I am one for micromanagement. I want to feel in control, even if I have citizens running my planets. I don't want to lose control. One reason why I never use the comonwealth system. I like to feel in control. I agree it gets to be a drag managing 100's of planets late game.
Tech Tree
Love the tech tree idea. One thing with playing the tall game is allow one to slow the tech tree to a crawl based on the number of planets in a game, not just by size of the galaxy. If my tech tree is taking time to research, I'm going to be more focused on infrastructure and not as much on rapid expansion and conquering. Another way to focus on the taller game, is to not force war. Right now in Galactic Civilizations III, if I have a below average military, everyone under their sun in the galaxy is declaring war on me. This forces me to focus on defense or offense, but either way on military and military techs. Therefore I'm not going to be focused on the tall game building up my colonies because lets face it, I have no resources to.
The New Campaign (Even though there won't be an official Campaign but this could replace it.)
One idea I've always had is play the small game and turn it into a large or extreme game. Now I don't know from a programming point if this would be possible. Today I have an hour or two to play, I want to start a new game. I start a tiny map versus a few opponents at the beginning of the tech tree ect... I win and conquer the galaxy. Now the game would give me an option, end or continue... If I choose continue it generates additional sectors to the galaxy with a few new opponents at about the same level of advancement I've achieved in my 150 turns it took me to conquer the previous tiny game. Now in this slightly larger game (small map maybe) I can continue my game. When I win this game, it will again give me an option to end or continue. If I continue it does the same with the next larger map adding additional players. This would keep doing this until the map would be just too big.
Game Lag/Turn Time
I love both Galactic Civilizations II, and III. They both have their positives and negatives. One thing with Galactic Civilizations III that has plagued me since the beginning is lag with 100's of starbases, which has improved over the years with different patches but still exists if you go overboard. Another thing is the turn time. Even with a 16 core/32 thread processor AMD Ryzen 9 and 64 gb of memory, on extreme games turn times can still take several minutes to complete. Now I thank Frogboy for all the additional time he's put in to help me with this concern including one weekend last year where he directly worked with me and my game to figure out how he could cut down turn times drastically reduced them by about 50-70%. This was a game changer. But in the end it still exists. I would love to see an option that doesn't take away from the complexity of the game but reduces this even further or almost eliminates it.
Carry Over of Galactic III items, Factions/Ships
Several of us have put a lot of work, me early on with many different Factions, I wanted to play 100 player map... I wanted to modify them over the years and add custom ships to each but never got around to it. Life is busy. As many of you know though I have many different factions out there in the workshop to play including 1 top rated one. I would love if these factions can be easily moved over to the next generation of the game. I understand there may need to be tweaks ect... But this would be great.
Duel (plus) Monitor Support
Finally create a game that I can put things on the second monitor. This would be a great spot for the mini map, colony lists, research que ect...
Last Thought
Frogboy thanks for including the community in your games. This is the main reason why I continue to play and purchase Stardock's games even if I don't always play them. There are several games that I own that I have very few hours played but, I believe in how you create your games and support them, and you. Please continue to do what you've done in the past and keep us part of the process. Thanks for all you do.
So basically I should stop harbouring any expectations of further improvements to the GC3 gameplay, and really should quit bitching about the current state of carriers like I've been doing for the past month or so?
Alright then. Message received, expectations calibrated. It's a shame, but c'est la vie. Time to shift focus onto the next iteration of GalCiv.
Yeah, about that. We know the Ship Builder is already accessible from the main menu. Can I ask for GalCiv4 that the tech tree also comes incorporated with it as well, specifically a version where we can toggle individual techs off and on at will?
It will really help players like me, who like to design entire series of ship module loadouts before starting a game.
Do you guys already have an idea for what that would look like? If not, here's mine; do away with the Battle Viewer altogether, and have all combat take place in the Galaxy view.
Give individual ships an effective range of fire of several hexes, within which they can initiate an attack on an enemy ship. Enemy ships that move within your ship's effective range provoke an Attack of Opportunity; this should make ships "stick" to each other in combat, while giving them the option to retreat if things get too hot.
In addition, restrict stacking such that the number of ships that can occupy a single hex decreases with increasing size, all the way to the point that only one Large or Huge ship can occupy a hex at any point in time.
In place of entire fleets occupying a single hex, make it possible for a designated command ship to establish a "formation" of other ships, which will take up positions several hexes away in a pre-determined location, facing a specific direction. Kind of like how it works in Ashes of the Singularity, actually.
Carriers should probably work differently from other warships; perhaps they could act as "artillery" units, sending fighter swarms to strike individual combatants in an enemy formation from the back line of their own formation. These could be countered by "destroyer" type ships that are built specifically to be effective against groups of Tiny/Small ships.
All this should probably work to give you the "line of battle" I vaguely recall you mentioning some time back.
Let me know if you want me to dabble in Paint or something, to illustrate what I'm talking about.
I never tried the MP, so take my words here with a grain of salt. But have you considered persistent galaxy instances, hosted on cloud servers instead of requiring players to act as the host?
Basically what I'm thinking of here is a 4X version of EVE Online. So an MMO4X? I dunno.
To keep players' required time investment down to a manageable level, you could make it so that all players can only complete one turn every, say, 12 hours or so.
This would get you games on huge maps with multiple players that could last weeks, months or even years. Sort of the epic empire-building experience, instead of quick once-and-done games. But I'd argue that's the point of 4X games like these.
Just reading through DivineWrath's very detailed report:
First thing that comes to mind: Is it possible to make everything that requires a Resource to work/happen reliant not on, say, a predefined Resource like Durantium, but on the most common resource as created in map generation? So, let's say I start up a game and GalCivIV creates a map with Snuggler Colonies the most common resource in my galaxy. Thulium is second or third most common. The system then tells me that to build a Manufacturing Capital, I need 5 Snuggler Colonies and 5 Thulium, of which there are plenty in the my game's Galaxy, as opposed to how it works now, where a Manufacturing Capital requires 5 Durantium and 5 Antimatter, of which there are approximately nada in the my game's Galaxy. Note: These resources might well be in reality very common in every galaxy ever created by Galactic Civilizations III, I'm just using examples here. I'm sure those always-bountiful resources in III will remain so in IV.
Essentially, everything that requires resources can be built, no matter what the Galaxy setup is. But what you can do, is have a system where the more powerful an upgrade/improvement/mercenary/whatever is, the harder is it find the resource/resources to make that thing work. It does exist in the Galaxy. Somewhere. You'll just have to find it. Or buy it. Or steal it.
From a design point of view, tooltips would need to be redone so that they look at the galaxy created and tell the player "To build this Improvement/upgrade this Improvement/Hire this Mercenary/Do Thing That Is Low Grade Powerful, you need 5 x (MostCommonResource) and 2 x (SecondMostCommonResource)" and "To build this Improvement/upgrade this Improvement/Hire this Mercenary/Do Thing That Is High Grade Powerful, you need 5 x (LeastCommonResource) and 2 x (SecondLeastCommonResource)" when they hover over it in the appropriate screen/menu.
Would it ruin people's "immersion" too much to know on game startup that their galaxy is full of Antimatter and not Elerium? I know it wouldn't bother me in the slightest, I have no problem starting Turn 1 with a fair amount of knowledge (I prefer to regard my Race, whether a Game Race or Custom Race as "I'm taking control as your New Leader" so my Race gained certain knowledge before I took over rather than "I am your First Leader" and everyone's clueless until I tell them to find things out), but others might prefer the "I have no idea what's going on here, I'm just going to hunt for Elerium and hope for the best. Without that Elerium, I'm going to have to think of something else/go without those upgrades." approach.
That is a good list Divinewrath. I agree with most of it. On the point of Beams. I just removed the resource cost and made the cost for all three types of weapons equal which helps the interceptors. Id like to see carriers removed in GCIV.
I think carriers should exist. They should just be late game units that are very expensive to field. They should only be able to be built in the largest hull size.Also they need to be kinda like Starcraft carriers where when interceptors are destroyed they needed to be rebuilt. It would make small planets with limited manufacturing into small fighter producers. It would also make it so for your fighters to have the latest and greatest you have to upgrade them.
I haven’t used a carrier since I went on and endless rampage with a single carrier and decided it was broken as fuck. I do buy them from the bazaar just to make sure the computer doesn’t get an early bullshit unit.
If this can’t be done then or doesn’t feel worth it then they should be removed I hate current carriers. They are overpowered as fuck and have no drawbacks.
I truly hope something is going to be done about carriers and I don’t think I am alone in that regard.
I don’t know about buildings changing cost based on galaxy creation. I would prefer more balanced galaxies and for the love of god missions for every resource type so at least you can use production to acquire scant resources. I have also voiced my support for a secondary market a black market with overly inflated prices but endless supply. With cost either 4 or 10 times the amount of the regular market so that people won’t use it unless they have to.
I’m excited about IV.
To me you either make carriers are proper mechanic ala WW2 or just keep it to ship vs ship warfare.They just end a mess with either overpowered or underpowered with years of moaning ala like most other space 4x games that have them.
I second this. It'd be difficult to keep track of resources of they're changing names all the time. I would also prefer more consistent galaxies in terms of proportions of resources. In one galaxy I had three sources of durantium (I think, it may have been another critical resource) which reduced building to a crawl, even after I seized two of the three .sources. I was drowning in thulium and antimatter though.
So I think just having more rigid proportions would be beneficial. The forced scheming and war the rarity provoked was fun, but it was too rare, resulting in a very slow game, and a more rigid ratio of resources would help.
I always thought that Master of Orion II as the turn-basd 4X was strongly influential on GalCiv. But Master of Orion in terms of hitting that optimal spot between less micromanagement but the ability to pivot resources for targeted management was never replicated well in later 4X games. The AI working alone is fairly consistent and a human is self-consistent, but a Cybrid is tricky to program to have the AI follow the human leader.
An empire that is too vast to micromanage is appealing like how Master of Orion late-games were, but the AI standard to avoid frustration or artificially stupid bottlenecks is a hard barrier to overcome. Also Master of Orion also had a randomized and skippable tech tree. There was stress involved that with the presented technologies to research, you might not get another pass at it.
There is also one feature I hope carries over in terms of Worlds in Crisis where adsorbing a world into your empire might not be as easy as expected.
In terms of the resource issue, I hope that there is a branch of the tech tree/production buildings devoted to ersatz solutions to resource bottlenecks. I mean in real history, we got the Haber process from Germany being starved of nitrogen. There were too many random maps where there was just one resource that bottlenecked the campaign and made the map too deterministic. You want the resource if you can get it, or else, you pay a huge alternate cost for a half-solution.
Technologies that could be used to bring about more of a missing resource would be interesting. Also allow a secondary source to reduce bottlenecks.
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