Galactic Civilizations III
Version 2.0 = Dangerous levels of fun
When I rejoined the GalCiv team back in November I warned you that I was out to destroy your lives.
Part 1 of the reign of terror was version 1.9 which made a lot of major AI updates to the game, balance changes, and pacing updates.
But 1.9 was really just a sampling. 2.0 is where things really get into high gear.
You can read my journal on this here: http://forums.galciv3.com/481386/
By far, the biggest change will probably be the arrival of Administrators. The purpose is to let people play vertically (small, powerful empires). The one planet victory challenge has been going well. I got very close to doing it on a large galaxy until I disobeyed the rules and didn't give away planets that were given to me by the Altarians which sparked the Drengin to come calling.
We also did work on various UI changes and diplomacy changes. The big diplomacy change is something that some of my fellow old people reading this will understand: Redlining.
From a coding perspective, when you are negotiating with the AI (or any AI is talking to another AI) the trade deal gets passed around and evaluated.
Seeing that, I decided to add a "redlining" vector to the trade deal where the different AI appraisal functions could comment on the deal and add some of their own vetoes to the deal. This is like in contracts where you send it over to someone and they make changes or comment on it (redlining).
Thus, the AI will start to explain why they not only won't agree to go to war with someone (a previously easy to exploit system) but why.
The feature is implemented but only a bit of text was added (translation has to be done).
By far, my favorite change was also to the diplomacy system. The biggest problem I ran into when I played was that once I reached a certain point, it was all a mop up. If I was the most powerful, nobody would touch me.
Well, now, the AI greatly takes friendships with others into account. This not only helps the AI players resist a powerful player conquering everyone but it is actually quite awesome for those of you who try to play nice only to get the someone declaring war on you. Now, others will go to war with them even if they are less powerful.
This sort of thing will get further tuning but overall, the changes are pretty obvious in a short amount of time.
This update should be publicly available on Thursday.
Massive v1.9 Update Now Available for Galactic Civilizations III
Your Holiday Present is Here!
Faster Start-Up Times, AI Improvements, New Capstone Techs, and more in v1.9Do you like a good challenge? Then buckle up your space seatbelt and get ready for a ride. Our CEO Brad Wardell has been working on the game and has some serious updates to share! If you’d like to read a bit about his process, check out his posts here and here.
To see everything that went into v1.9, make sure to check out the full change log below.
Some of v1.9’s highlights include:
- Capstone Techs: Research new techs in the Age of Ascension! These techs provide large (though temporary) empire-wide bonuses that stack as you get them
- Performance Optimization: A newly enhanced multithreaded system dramatically improves load times and reduces memory usage.
- A.I. and Balance: The AI has received a bit of a boost! You’ll notice that they are smarter about expanding, building fleets, and spreading influence, and more. Ready for the challenge?
- Rich, Unique Galaxies: Performance optimizations have allowed the addition of more stars and planets, making galaxies feel even more vast than before.
v1.9 is now available and waiting in your Steam client.
To see the full list of changes, please check the change log here.
For more information on Galactic Civilizations III, please visit www.galciv3.com
Galactic Civilizations III v1.83 Update Released
New hotkeys
Shipyards
Arrow left / right --------Next / previous Shipyards
Shift left/ right ----------Next / previous IDLE Shipyard
R --------------------------Rush buy
DELETE -----------------Cancel building selected Ship
Starbases
Arrow left / right--------Next/ previous Starbase
Shift left/right------------Next/ previous Starbase that has an available module
Ship designer
Spacebar-----------------Hotkey to toggle the visual display of anchor points on and off.
Planet Screen
Arrow left / right --------Next / previous colony
Shift left/right -----------Next / previous IDLE colony
R --------------------------Rush improvement
U ---------------------------Upgrade selected Improvement
DELETE ------------------Destroy selected Improvement
DELETE ------------------Cancel building selected Improvement.
Strategic Map
C-----------------------------Center map on the selected object
Ctl+S------------------------Save game
R ----------------------------Rush buy on the selected Ship or Improvement
U-----------------------------Upgrade the selected Ship
DELETE--------------------Decommission the selected Ship or Fleet
Change Log
Gameplay
- Planets with the manufacturing slider set to 100% Military will no longer be considered idle.
- Stationed ships now are properly having their maintenance cost reduced by 50%
- Manufacturing points now being properly updated after reordering shipyard queue
- If AI is significantly stronger than you, it will no longer accept bad peace treaty offers from you.
MP
- Jumping through a wormhole will no longer cause a desync
- The AI can no longer decommission ships during battles. This would cause lots of weird issues, including desyncs and crashes in MP.
- Battle preview window no longer causes a desync.
UI
- Updated appearance of keyboard input window.
- Added new keyboard shortcuts suggested by our fans.
- Command Window: Added cost and turn information for upgrading ships.
- Metaverse button is now disabled if there's no internet connection
Sound
- Ship sounds will no longer disappear in the middle of the turn.
- Added new ship sounds
- Shipyard are no longer missing ambient sounds
- Fixed a problem where the "turn" button sound didn't play after a battle.
Bugs
- Starting the Altarian Prophecy Campaign no longer triggers the "For
- Arcea" Achievement.
- Fixed typos
- Altarian Prophecy: One of the mission rewards was not properly giving the ideology bonus
- Added a sanity check that makes sure we add in a valid waypoint in for our travel to prevent a stuck turn.
- Fixed a problem where a destination tile was invalid when loading a save game.
- If more than one freighters are completed on the same turn, the popup dialog for the second one was sometimes getting lost, causing a stuck turn.
- This same fix will unstick save games with this issue.
- Fixed a stuck turn where a ship is trying to leave a station the same turn that its faction surrenders.
- The "Speak to" button will no longer be disabled in MP for the rest of the turn after trading with the AI
- Fixed a case where the hotkey tooltip wasn't getting cleared.
- Fixed a crash in the event processing
The elf is back and more
It's an exciting time to be a GalCiv III player. We've staffed up over the Summer and have been working on the next big expansion along with what will eventually be called v1.9 of GalCiv III.
There's no particular theme for v1.9 other than trying to make the galaxy a bit more organic. Smarter AI, better diplomacy, tweaks to balance and performance.
On the expansion side, well...that's a different story. The next expansion, due out early next year, is designed to revisit pretty much everything in the game, particularly in the area of economics and foreign policy and planetary invasions.
We've been having a blast talking to GalCiv fans. There's a wish list thread that we mine heavily for ideas. We usually don't comment but we regularly will print out forum comments from galciv3.com or from the Steam forum and discuss them.
Stay tuned!
New Campaign, Ship Parts and Styles in The Altarian Prophecy DLC
Face Down Enemies and Forge New Alliances in The Altarian Prophecy DLC
Check out the new campaign and explore new ship parts and styles for more customization
New Campaign
Discover the story of the alliance between mankind and the Altarians! Spanning 3 missions, you must do whatever it takes to overcome the Dominion of the Korx and their mysterious masters, the Drath.
New Ship Styles
Customize your ships with classic ship styles! This DLC includes the Drath and Korx styles.
New Ship Parts
Explore dozens of classic ship parts and build some of your favorite Galactic Civilizations II ships.
The Altarian Prophecy DLC is now available over at Steam or Stardock.
www.galciv3.com
Galactic Civilizations III v1.82 Update Released
Overview
UI Stability improvements: We've increased the number of UI widgets by 4x. Extreme games (e.g large maps, hundreds of fleets, etc.) will now be more stable. We have also fixed numerous issues with the new notification system.
Gameplay: We've fixed a ship trading exploit and several gameplay bugs. In addition, we have made some treaties free for alliance members.
Rise of the Terrans DLC: Updated campaign to use a new United Earth "classic" ship style that better represents ships of that galactic era. As part of that change, you now can select United Terrans ship style for your custom races and choose from over twenty new "classic" ship parts for your ship designs.
Change Log
- Increased the number of UI widgets by 4x. Extreme games (e.g large maps, hundreds of fleets, etc.) will be now be more stable.
- Removed a previous change to the autosave system from 1.81 that was causing crashes and corrupting save games in multiplayer.
- Stray particle effects from battles were traveling across the galaxy before timing out. This appeared to be a stuck turn. This should no longer happen.
- Adjusted AI evaluation of the "Open Borders" and "Non-Aggression Pact" treaties such that these treaties are free for alliance members.
- The "ignore defense" ability (from tech such as "Shield Punch") were not properly applying their damage. This has been fixed.
- Gave Pirate faction traits user-friendly names since they are showing up in some campaign diplomacy reports.
- Ships with "One-Per-Player" components are no longer tradable. This prevents an exploit that allowed players to get around the "One-Per-Player" restriction. These ships are disabled on the trade screen and include a tooltip explaining that they cannot be traded.
- The shipyard button "continue making this design until further notice" wasn't checking prereqs when deciding if it should be enabled for a build queue entry.
- Notifications no longer interfere with game inputs on the left side of the screen.
- Notifications are now refreshed only at the start of the game and start of a new turn. This prevents creates gaps in the list in the mid-turn.
- When adding a ship to the build queue, the list will automatically scroll to the bottom.
- Clicking on shipyards in the Shipyard List now centers the camera on it and select it.
- Fixed staked ship bar scaling issues for normal and medium UI
- Renamed generic tech tree to "Generic Tech Tree". It was mislabeled as "Terran Tech Tree".
- Unowned asteroid fields now say "nearest owned planet" rather than "assigned planet" in their tooltip and selection context.
- Fixed a crash caused by alerts that have no tooltip.
- Added tooltip to Ship Level entry when viewing single ships on the Fleet Details Window.
- Fixed a bug where the Invite Friends dialog would do nothing if the Steam Overlay was disabled. The button is now disabled with a tooltip explaining why.
- Fixed bug where a player who dies in a mp game but stays around to watch the other players play would send an invalid match report.
- Mercenaries:
- Added warning if building a starbase upgrade will consume a constructor with mercenary components on it.
- Building a starbase using the Mercenary ship "The Crux" now provides the correct influence bonus.
- DLC
- Rise of the Terrans: Updated United Terrans to use a "classic" ship style that better represents ships of that galactic era.
- Rise of the Terrans: Added United Terrans ship style.
- Rise of the Terrans: Added over twenty "classic" ship parts.
- Rise of the Terrans: Fixed assorted typos.
- Rise of the Terrans: fixed bad Xendar homeworld name in diplomatic report screen.
- Lost Treasures: Fixed a misleading bonus description with the Atomic Polarizer event.
- Lost Treasures: Fix incorrect description on the Elemental Extractor Lost Treasure event.