Galactic Civilizations III - Beta 4 changelog

Published on January 20, 2015 By DerekPaxton In GalCiv III Dev Journals

–RELEASED 01/22/2015–

Galactic Civilizations III Beta 4 is now available! See below for details on the battle viewer, ideology revamp, extreme worlds, and more:

Features

Added a prototype version of the battle viewer, now you can see your fleets shoot lasers, launch missiles and blow each other up in glorious detail

Added the ability to pause, restart or change the battle speed

Added a free camera so you can view the battle form whatever angle you’d like

Added a cinematic, top down, side, chase, orbiting and front camera to the battle viewer

Added the ability to click on any ship in the battle to see its stats

Added a full battle log if you want to see the log of what is happening

Added lots of explosions, weapon and defense effects. There are more to come.

Added lots of sound fx for the various shots and explosions, more to come.

Added a new ideology system. Instead of the old pyramids new paths have been implemented and lots of new ideology unlocks that do crazy things from giving all your fleets free fighter escorts to allowing you to discover a hidden planet.

New Benevolent traits:

Pioneering- Grants a free, fully loaded, colony ship.

Explorers- A previously unnoticed class 10 planet is revealed near your home system.

Prolific- All new colonies start with 5 extra population.

Adept- Each existing colony receives 1 additional tile.

Beacon- Grants a Class 16 planet.

Dignified- Home world Approval increased by 50%.

Elevated- Unlocks the Elevation Foundation achievement.

Appreciative- Your first 5 worlds receive an Approval bonus.

Noble- All colonies receive a 50% Approval bonus.

Mindful- Planets with a high Approval receive additional production.

Admirable- Doubles the Influence of your first 3 worlds.

Eminence- Unlocks the Missionary Center improvement.

Enticing- All planets and starbases within our Influence join our civilization.

Alluring- All starbases generate Influence, regardless of type.

Radiant- All worlds have their Influence increased by 50%.

Educated- Grants 125 free Research points.

Skilled- All starbases give an extra 10% research bonus to colonies in their Area of Effect.

Breakthrough- Grants 250 free Research points.

Enriched- Unlocks the Temple of Enlightenment Achievement.

Quantum Leap- Grants 500 free research points, and all colonies gain 5 research per turn.

New Pragmatic traits:

Prepared- Unlocks the Preparedness Center improvement which grants Pragmatic Ideology for each center that is built.

Favored- Anyone at war with us receives a 25% penalty to Approval.

Reserved- Enemy ships in our Zone of Control receive a 25% penalty to their sensor and ship range.

Cautious- All planets receive 3 free defending ships.

Watchful- All our ships receive a free Escort fighter when in our Zone of Control.

Constructive- Grants 3 free constructor vessels.

Coordinated- Our shipyards operate at 100% at twice the distance from your colonies.

Resourceful- All mined resource yields increased by 2.

Efficient- All construction modules now gives 2 points instead of 1.

Inventive- All existing starbases get one free construction module.

Exporters- Grants a free freighter and trade license.

Merchants- All trade income increased by 25%.

Luxury- Allows Civilization to establish luxury trade routes.

Indispensable- Improves relations with civilizations we have trade routes with.

Shrewd- Diplomatic trades for credits pay an additional 25%.

Neutral- No one will declare war on us for the next 100 turns.

Amiable- Improves relations with all races.

Popular- Races that declare war on us anger all other races in the galaxy.

Arbiters- Unlocks the Arbitration Center improvement.

Venerable- All civilizations declare war on any race that invades our home world, unless they are allies.

New Malevolent traits:

Militaristic- Grants a free frigate.

Eager- Every planet we conquer provides our people a permanent boost to Approval.

Threatening- Grants 5 free, fully loaded, transports.

Dangerous- Unlocks Advanced Transport Modules that come with their own escort fighters.

Bloodthirsty- All planets receive a fully armed Overlord class ship.

Relentless- Grants free production to our home world.

Intimidating- Unlocks the Intimidation Center improvement.

Ruthless- Doubles the Military production of our home world.

Implacable- Unlocks the Death Furnaces achievement.

Unforgiving- All colonies receive a 25% Production bonus and unlocks the Culling planetary project.

Uncharitable- Provides a 10% increase to planetary income.

Utilitarian- Improves the class off our first five worlds by 1.

Slavemasters- All trade routes now bring back slaves in addition to credits.

Tightfisted- Unlocks the Citadel of Revenue achievement.

Relentless- Each planet receives additional usable land.

Scary- No penalty from sharing borders with another civilization.

Unnerving- Enemy ships in our Zone of Control suffer a 25% penalty to their hit points.

Undaunted- Our planets and starbases are immune to culture flipping.

Feared- Minor races in our Zone of Control will trade more favorably with us.

Exalted- A foreign colony near your borders defects to your civilization.

Added extreme planets which are planets that can’t be colonized until a particular tech is unlocked like Aquatic, Frozen, Radioactive and Toxic worlds. New worlds give midgame colonization opportunities for the players that research the correct techs and can offer significant advantages to the players that own them.

Enabled Gigantic and Immense map sizes.

Added a new option for Yor players for a fixed population manufacture amount (instead of using an open ended project for it).

Fixes

Lots of crash fixes

Fixed an issue where Ascension points weren’t being calculated and tracked correctly.

Balance

Generally lowered the cost of starting ships to get players into the game faster.

Decreased the amount of techs required to get to the 2^nd age (the Age of War).

Map generation significantly altered to make tight clusters (the default map type) create more interesting pockets of inhabitable worlds instead of the more even process it used to use.

Lowered the maintenance of ship components slightly.

Lower influence growth of capitals.

Lower starting influence of starbases

AI now creates and sends out trade ships.

AI will now try to max the range for colony ships and freighters.

New AI process for determining a research strategy that does a much better job of having different AI player pursue different tech goals.

AI is much better at pursuing a Conquest victory.

AI logic added for dealing with extreme worlds.

AI logic added for selecting ideological traits.

Added a new intro window that introduces the player to the game and the faction he/she is playing as.

New full screen research unlocked window.

Added support for dynamic adjustment of particles from strategic to normal view (so black holes transition to a less hot color when you are viewing the universe from strategic view).

You can no long see other players rally points (we were using this to watch the AI).

Sarah went and added real code to show the planet description instead of my modtastic weekend version (modtastic sounds like a compliment, but I think the programmers here use it to refer to any time I’ve added a feature that they will then rewrite correctly).

Comments (Page 2)

DerekPaxton

on Jan 21, 2015

Rand Johnson

reply 13

All I want to know are a few things:

1. Was the ship disappearing act bug with ship designer and shipyards menus, even when ships are still listed in designs folder fixed??

2. Was the player made custom exports parts game crash fixed when building ships with exported ship parts?

3. Was text crunching in tool tip boxes fixed?

I would really like to see a list of everything that was fixed. I really do not want to lose all my ships again.

Thanks

1. Yes that was fixed. The reason for this was that some parts were changed, and if you were using that part then your ship was invalid and it wouldn't show up in game. That won't happen with this beta. If it does happen the ship will still load, but that specific piece will be missing.

2. Yes this was fixed.

3. It is better, we went through a lot of text and corrected them, but it's far from perfect. It is something that is still on our list.

I should warn that this is a beta. We love and appreciate all the feedback everyone gives, but at this point if we find a structural issue that we have to address by breaking player designed ships. We will think hard about it and try to find a way not to do it (like adding the code that allows ships to stay even if they contain obsolete parts), but we do prioritize making the release game as good as possible over maintaining the existing structure (after release that will switch).

Gilmoy

reply 15

At the end of today's Wed Jan 21 SK Dev Stream, Derek(?) leaked the news that GC3 Beta 4 ships tomorrow Thu Jan 22

Yaay!

And much productivity shall be lost this Friday.

Yay! I wasn't on the stream today so that was probably Adam (who is awesome).

admiralWillyWilber

on Jan 21, 2015

After reading the ideology tree I realised it is imperative that the ai research this right.

androshalforc

on Jan 21, 2015

so a couple of thoughts with the ideology tree

1) could you imagine the yor with popular?

2) scary seems like it should be re-titled and moved to the benevolent tree '

3) slave masters does this mean that the slave trade will actually play a part the game economy or is this just a population growth mechanic?

if an actual mechanic apart from pop growth this could be useful. if tied to pop growth i think it would be useless, most people would probobly try and focus thier trade routes on one world with large economic/trade bonus's and by the time trade is unlocked that planet would probobly have a fairly high population it could help to boost colony ships but most of the expansion will be done by this time.

4) eager would 2 malevolent civ's be able to abuse this by flipping a single planet back and forth?

5) what happens if a benevolent civ gets enticing and a malevolent civ with undaunted is in their ZOC ?

Tetrasodium

on Jan 21, 2015

[) could you imagine the yor with popular /quote

A race that has average military units, average research rates, average trade capabilities, a diplomacy hit, an industry bonus, and unique population mechanics that allow them to fund it & the required huge but average stick of "go attack someone else fool" needed to offset the diplomacy hit with tourism revenues to a significant degree? Toss in the industrial capacity to cheaply play kingmaker/arms dealer to useful nobodies at war with threatening somebodies?... I can hardly image the yor without it toss in favored & some others? Ohhh myyyyy............

peregrine23

on Jan 21, 2015

Tohron

reply 8

One potential problem with the Shrewd bonus for pragmatic ideology: in Multiplayer, couldn't two players with Shrewd trade money back and forth to generate limitless cash?

No, players trading with each other choose the terms. Shrewd just means the AI will value your things at 25% more credits.

Edwin99

on Jan 22, 2015

Looking forward to the AI update that will make the races play differently and the speed up in early game ship construction.

Thus far I really like the graphics and the interface that I see in the beta, when its not crashing, I miss the racial differentiation that I experienced in Sword of the Stars - where each race plays really differently in terms of movement mechanics, strategy and battle tactics.

http://www.alteredgamer.com/strategy/62484-sword-of-the-stars-race-guide/

Example:

Humans - Uses a means of propulsion called a node drive. The node drive is like hyperspace in Babylon 5 and other... The node drive allows access to node space, which can transport ships at very high spends between specific destinations. The advantages of node drive are those of speed and range. Anyone playing the Humans should take advantage of this. It allows for explosive early game colonization which turns into a large and power late-game empire. The downside of node drive is that it restricts movement. Other races may be able to go directly from one star to another, while humanity has to jump through several stars because no direct node space path exists. Also, node drive creates a strategic disadvantage in that ships using node drive can't be communicated with and so can't have their orders changed. If you send a fleet off to another star, and learn during the next turn that it is being massively reinforced, there is nothing that can be done.

Hivers have no faster than light drive. To travel at FTL speeds they need to use gates. And those gates must be deployed to other worlds by traveling to them at sub-light speeds. (aka the books in the Lost Fleet Series). However, once the gates are constructed they can travel between the worlds instantaneously.

Morrigi use a FTL drive which becomes faster as more ships travel in a fleet. This mechanic makes the Morrigi rather unique in that it is often easier for the Morrigi to respond with massive force than with adequate force.

Another example of a different AI would be based the replicators from the Star Gate Universe - these intelligent nanobots do not engage research, but steal technology from captured enemy ships and planets. Building new ships, factories, population drains the resources from a planet.

"In the military science fiction series Stargate SG-1, the Replicators are antagonistic self-replicating machines that are driven to replicate by consuming both alloys and technologies of the most nearby most advanced civilization and constructing themselves and their progeny accordingly." Wikipedia

MrStarTrek

on Jan 22, 2015

Larsenex

reply 14

Rand,,,..

You will lose your ships again...

/snickers...

Not this time Bro! This time I only made hulls only and nothing has weapons, defense or export parts modules attached. WOOT!

Nenner Nenner Nenner!!!!!

Borg 4 update will not assimilate me. Resistance is Fruitful!!!!!

ckhenson

on Jan 22, 2015

Yes! Finally! Getting better all the time. I'll have Steam up early tomorrow.

ScrivenerOfLight

on Jan 22, 2015

Derek Paxton

reply 16

As much as I really love some of my designs, I would prefer losing designs for a superior, bug-free designer. And while I agree with Rand that losing designs from previous betas really stunk (I haven't made export parts since then either), I must say 1) I expected issues with the designer throughout alpha and beta and 2) the lack of major problems in the designer is really commendable. Keep up the great work!

I'm really looking forward to this beta release!

jirkaesch

on Jan 22, 2015

Derek, how about planetary invasions and political partie s?

jmccrea

on Jan 22, 2015

Sweet news!! Time to start downloading Star trek sounds and seeing what Star trek ships I can find. i wonder if you can use the same ones from GC II? Could you move thoe right on and GC III would assemble them?

Bl4ckSh33p

on Jan 22, 2015

Nice changelog. Hope it will be released soon.

Is today still planned for release? It's already 3PM here in Europe.

Ryat

on Jan 22, 2015

jmccrea

reply 26

That is a no at this time. Too much difference between the too engines.

peregrine23

on Jan 22, 2015

jmccrea

reply 26

weet news!! Time to start downloading Star trek sounds and seeing what Star trek ships I can find. i wonder if you can use the same ones from GC II? Could you move thoe right on and GC III would assemble them?

If you look through the ship design thread (pinned at the top) you can find a bunch of AMAZING Star Trek designs. Once the game is live they'll be able to put them in the Steam Workshop. Let's hope Paramount isn't too aggressive in protecting their IP.

jmccrea

on Jan 22, 2015

Ryat

reply 28

That is a no at this time. Too much difference between the too engines.

Drat, but sorta figured that...oh well, lets hope someone else loves ST ships as much as I do and can make some. There was one guy who had been doing some, awesome ones, but he had quit because the engine couldnt handle them and he didnt want to make crappy ones. Lets hope he picks back up for GC III!!

Also,, anyone heard any ETA yet for this? Combat was the one feature I was wanting most...even with bugs!!

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