A trip through the fantasy worlds I enjoy

 

Dropping 32bit support was a huge change for Galactic Civilizations. On the one hand we know that it means that there is a percentage of potential customers that won't be able to play the game. On the other, we are able to do things we could never do before, such as play a game with 100 players, which is exactly what I did this week.  The following is the results.

*** Disclaimer ***

The following if from a super early version of the Beta 2 build. You will see some bugs and partially added features. The most noticeable bug is that the font text looks a little wonky and isn't showing special characters. This is because we are rewriting the font code, some players had issues using DirectWrite (the old solution), and performance was pretty bad. The new font code fixes all of that, but you will see missing character and font alignment issues in the following screenshots.

*** Disclaimer #2 ***

I am a modder and I did this as a mod which required 3 new xml files. One to add all the new factions, one to add names for the factions and one to add new colors for the factions. I didn't go as far as giving the factions all unique planet names, icons, etc. Which would have been cool, but this is really just to put the engine to the test.

 

Starting My Game

Here you sae the first evidence that I am using a very early beta 2 build, the Kyrnn have been enabled.  The reason you see a bunch of Terrans is because the first 20 new factions I added all use the Terran leader graphics (then 20 that use Drengin, 20 Altarian, 20 Iridium and 19 Krynn). That top bar scrolls so I could select any of my new factions, but I'm going with my personal favorite faction, the Iridium (I love their mirror ships and their research bonus).

 

 

I am starting on a Large map (i accidentally started on a Small and that was incredibly crowded). Paul is adding some map sizes above large which will be fun too, but for now I'm going to use Large and enjoy having other players all around me. To support all of these players I've set Star Frequency, Planet Frequency and Habitable Planet Frequency all to Abundant.

 

Here is where I get to pick who I want to play against. 99 opponents have been added. After I took this screenshot I went back and switch the Weeping Angels to Godlike Intelligence just to see if that would be enough to allow them to start conquering the galaxy. Bonus points to anyone who knows where these faction names came from.

 

In the beginning this doesn't look much different than any of my other GalCiv3 games.  I have my starting planet, my shipyard with which to make more and a selection of ships to explore with.  I'm going to assume that if there are other habitable planets out there in the universe then the other 99 players are going to grab them first, so I am going to colonize the one right beside my homeworld even though it isn't ideal.

It also seems like a good time to start researching some weapons technology. Unlike in Beta 1 we start at peace in Beta 2, but how long can that last?

 

 

I love making my 2nd planet into a research planet so that my first can focus on manufacturing and my 2nd planet is ideally suited for it. With this and the Iridium Research bonus I should be getting techs a good rate.

 

 

Only 5 turns in and I already have neighbors on all sides. Here we notice the first bug with running 100 players in one game, the ZoC code (that draws the borders around your empires) is having a problem dealing with that many players. Something we will check out. But the minimap correctly displayed all the owned territories I've seen so far.

My survery ship is pretty awesome for its range and sight, but nearly useless for collecting anomalies. I think I found 1 before these other factions scoured the universe like teenage girls at a Bieber concert (that reference seems dated, what do teenage girls go crazy for now? Kardashian mobile apps? Genetically modified ponies? Eric Estrada?)

 

 

Don't mind me busy neighbors stealing my anomalies, I'm just going to attach some purely decorative missiles to my spaceships.

 

 

Turn 9 and my survey ship has found an Antimatter and Durantium resource close enough together that I could get both with one starbase. It's not exactly close to my home planet but definitly worth it to get a Mining Base up here and working before anyone else does.

 

 

Turn 29. My survey ship hangs out in a dust cloud well within someone else's borders.  I love that the universe is full of all kinds of stuff, but very little of it isn't claimed by someone in this game. While I have been exploring I built and deployed my new Mining Base and have built a few bombers to help clear out the rabble between my home planet and my new Mining Base in some sort of Genocidal version of Manifest Destiny.

 

 

Turn 31, my bombers are ready to launch my first war and take out the shipyards of the neighbors between me and my Mining Base.  I know Paul plans to give Shipyards some defense (so you can't shut down players by wiping their shipyards) but for now they are easy picking and I'm going to take advantage of that.

 

 

No more shipyards for you.  I'll be back when I can invade planets, until then just look up at my bombers in awe.  You are no longer a space exploring people.

 

 

Turn 49 and the more I uncover the more factions I find. I have still only met a fraction to the players in the game (there are entire empires rising and falling that I will probably never meet in this game) as my range limits will only allow me to explore this little corner.  But there is certainly enough to do even within it.

 

 

By Turn 66 my Mining Base is up and working and I'm collecting both the antimatter and Duranthium. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to collect them even though they aren't in my ZoC or not.  I'll have to ask Paul. Either way my fleet of bombers has stared picking on another player and I can see that the Weeping Angels are #3 in the faction power rankings (I'm pretty low on the list) so I'm very worried about what happens when they find me.

 

 

But that is it for now. It's a crazy experiment, but it was fun and it made me so glad we are able to do this in GalCiv3.

There are more crazy experiments to come. And I am looking forward to getting the custom faction stuff in so modders can do what I did and a lot more to make all of the factions more interesting and unique.


Comments (Page 1)
4 Pages1 2 3  Last
on Aug 30, 2014

That is insane. I love it.

Edit: Question: Are you going to limit the number of players allowed on a small map. Namely, 100 players shouldn't be in a small map, but 99 is perfectly fine

Have you thought about having upper end restrictions.

on Aug 30, 2014

I don't want it to always be a blood bath where I research weapons. I like a economic approach then I buy a blood bath.

How much space will I have on a immense map before space runs out? Like how many planets will I get?

anyway good work friend, I can hardly wait to play!

 

DARCA

on Aug 30, 2014

Fantastic read...I that that having a crazy number of factions along with the bigger map sizes is going to be something that really sets the game apart from other 4X.

 

Also liking the Dr Who (??) faction names 

on Aug 30, 2014

Warhammer 40K.

on Aug 30, 2014

OMG 100 races... insanity...

Love it! 

on Aug 30, 2014

Gotta ask about the races though, are they just going to be renamed repeats of the same races? Am i going to start on earth and somehow discover hundreds of human civilizations starting up?

 

My solution would be a sort of randomizer for creating races, including their portrait (different head shape, eyes, skin colour etc). Diplomacy could be conducted with just a static picture instead of creating the animated leader for every one (and it would be a bit of a treat to find one of the main races somewhere in that big ocean of generic alien scum)

on Aug 30, 2014

BallinLikeStalin

Gotta ask about the races though, are they just going to be renamed repeats of the same races? Am i going to start on earth and somehow discover hundreds of human civilizations starting up?

 

My solution would be a sort of randomizer for creating races, including their portrait (different head shape, eyes, skin colour etc). Diplomacy could be conducted with just a static picture instead of creating the animated leader for every one (and it would be a bit of a treat to find one of the main races somewhere in that muck of alien scum)

This is an engine test. The important thing for us to find was that players can create their own custom factions, or modders can create whole universes of aliens (or you can get race mods from 20 different modders and use them together). I did copy the existing factions 20 times to run the test, but my intent wasn't to create a bunch of interesting races to explore (though I'm very tempted to do exactly that) , only to see what the game would be like with all those players in it.

 

on Aug 30, 2014

Where is the video lol I want the dev stream lol

on Aug 30, 2014

Very cool, even, or maybe especially, in a smallish galaxy 100 factions is an exciting prospect. I also like the that you made the Weeping Angels the most powerful.

DON'T BLINK!

on Aug 30, 2014

I believe that we will get 4-5 square sectors for each empire. If the maps are going to be four times bigger than galciv2 than that's what it about comes to, 4-5 square sectors before planets runs out.

I think that's a good size.

Now I have a interesting suggestion, can there be a way to make every planet habitable like in galciv2 (cheats was the only way back then)? That would make a great game to play. :3

 

DARCA

on Aug 31, 2014

DARCA1213

I don't want it to always be a blood bath where I research weapons. I like a economic approach then I buy a blood bath.

 

I am hoping that various diplomacy functions can address this issue.  One of the things that always bothered my about GC2 was that I was always interested in making a race whose strength was just doing research and then selling it to stay out of fighting - like a "hen that lays the golden egg" sort of race - except more like a bunch of eccentric autistic savants...

 

However, in GC2 one would invariably have to militarize sooner or later - the AI itself didn't ever seem to figure out that killing the hen that lays the golden egg actually wouldn't benefit the attacker all that much.  It might be an ultimately untenable situation for all races involved, but in a classical case of the prisoner's dilemma, it's difficult to see that it would be tenable for any other race to end the arrangement.

I think of Japan's situation during the Cold War as described in "A Japan That Can Say No" ...

 

-tid242

on Aug 31, 2014

tid242
I am hoping that various diplomacy functions can address this issue.  One of the things that always bothered my about GC2 was that I was always interested in making a race whose strength was just doing research and then selling it to stay out of fighting - like a "hen that lays the golden egg" sort of race - except more like a bunch of eccentric autistic savants...


Actually, this already can be done. I've been doing that in GC2 and managed to get the whole galaxy at war with one another. It takes me some time to do it since trading 10 techs for 1~2 techs is damm hard to take in psychologically. But, once I get over that psychological barrier, I managed to win a few max AI, insane, immense games. Here's a printscreen of how a galaxy at war looks like (I'm Torian).


Try it, it's fun.

But cautions. It takes a lot of micromanagement, since the diplomacy UI for GC2 is a little poor. I'm going gives a lot of comments on GC3 UI especially the diplomacy UI once Beta 2 is out since I would like to have a game of Galaxy at War again (except with me ). The possible improvements to the UI alone is enough for me to invest in the alpha. I really looks forward to the improved UI.

Edit: How do I reply outside of the quote box?
on Aug 31, 2014

BallinLikeStalin

Gotta ask about the races though, are they just going to be renamed repeats of the same races? Am i going to start on earth and somehow discover hundreds of human civilizations starting up?

 

My solution would be a sort of randomizer for creating races, including their portrait (different head shape, eyes, skin colour etc). Diplomacy could be conducted with just a static picture instead of creating the animated leader for every one (and it would be a bit of a treat to find one of the main races somewhere in that big ocean of generic alien scum)

Unless I misunderstood, the latest stream said we would get 16 major races by 2020ish distributed via DLC or expansions. This news kind of bummed me out as I was hoping for a ton of races being released over the next several years.

Now I do understand that major races are difficult to make due to game balance issues, development of new animations, complex dialogs, custom ship designs, unique tech trees, unique planetary improvements as well as race specific music - and all of this is most likely the reason the major race plans are not massive in scope. With all of this said we all still have the ability to create our own races through modding but I do not like to play the game with alien images that just don't match the rest of the game. It really ruins it for me. Even the minor races not being animated is kind of a bummer.

Even though I am an Elite Founder - I would be willing to pay for packs of animated aliens that don't necessarily have the rest of the major race treatments. Just unique, cool looking and sometimes bizarre alien animation sets  - that fit in the developers aesthetic of the game - which we can use in the game - especially when we are playing on these massive maps.

How about a yearly Stardock contest amongst GalCiv3 owners to choose 12 animated races from submissions from fans that would get full animated treatment to use in game. After six years the pool would be huge. If this is something Stardock cannot do - is this something we can organize and conduct in the fan community? I would do it but even though I am a good artist I am not very good at 3d rendering. I think it would take a collective effort anyway.

When playing GalCiv2 below are the only custom races in the metaverse that I ever used in my game. Most are by the same guy Formis6. He did a good job of matching the aesthetic of the game and were fun to use. Any others races on the metaverse just didn't do it for me. This wasn't such an issue with GalCiv2 as there was a hard limit on opponents but now with the massive maps in GalCiv3 it is more important than ever to have a bigger pool to pull from. I plan on buying a brand new computer for the insane galaxy option - but it would be a bummer to spend all that money so I can encounter human #8 or Drengin #12.

 

on Aug 31, 2014

Major stock races will yes be held at 16 but minor races will be another story. Also there are already plans for user content of major races to be easily uploaded/downloaded for ease of spread. Stardock may only give us 16, but the world will give us thousands.

on Aug 31, 2014

The minimap from this game reminds me of what Innerspace factions from Battletech.

4 Pages1 2 3  Last