–RELEASED 03/26/2015–

Galactic Civilizations III Beta 5 is now available! See below for details on custom factions, planetary invasion, minor factions, diplomacy improvements, and much more:

This is the beta where the game becomes yours. Being able to create custom factions, modding the game, having access to game settings which dramatically alter the type of game you want to play all come in here. There is a lot more content, and the game has gone through a significant visual update. But the ability to fill the universe with your own creations and designs is so much of the fun for me.

We look forward to sharing this all with you shortly, but in the meantime we wanted to let you know what was coming.

Features

Thalan Contingency Faction added

Iconian Refugee Faction added

Added the ability to create Custom Races. Design their leader, art style, starting star system, traits, abilities, UI theme, ship designs and colors, and AI priorities (when the AI plays as them). You can read more about it here: https://forums.galciv3.com/461709

Added faction abilities for the base factions and for any custom races you create.  These are:

Engineers- Shipyard production does not decal with distance
Ancient- Precursor relics provide research
Patriotic- Immune to the Approval penalty from large empires
Starfaring- Starbases get the first module free and immune to nebula effects
Colonizers- Colonies get their first improvement for free
Unwavering- Colonies take twice as long to culture flip
Prolific- Colonies start with twice the population supplied by the Colony ship
Paranoid- Free drone defend planets, shipyards and starbases
Zealots- Gain an ideology point each time you invade a planet
Entrepreneurs- 2 extra Trade Routes and trade Routes generate an Approval bonus for both parties
Synthetic- Disable Food and natural Growth, instead an assembly project is used to produce citizens (was in Beta 4)
Intuitive- Starts with free Research
Unrelenting- Invasions never cost credits
Wealth- Starts with extra Credits and Tourism enabled
Adaptable- can colonize tier 1 extreme worlds
Knowledgeable- Starts knowing the location of other home worlds
 

Added 11 new Minor Factions to the game. Minor factions are like a normal faction except that you can't play as them, and they are unable to build colony ships and they don't have inlfuence. So they will generally be minor players in the scope of universal domination, but still available for trading, diplomacy (or for "appropriating" their already developed home worlds)

New planet invasion system, decide if you want to invade with soldiers, or a variety of other methods with different tech and credit requirements. Use propaganda to attempt to get the citizens to convert to your cause, or dump biological weapons on the planet to wipe them out entirely

New Diplomacy Display with 3D planets and lines to reflect the relationships between factions

Excessive and Insane map sizes added

New Nebula art available on the main map and in the Battle viewer

Enabled the Game Difficulty slider as an easy way to configure your opponents' difficulty level

Enabled the Game Pacing slider in game settings, this modifies production for all players (ie: setting the Game Pace to Very Fast gives everyone a significant production boost)

Enabled the Research Rate slider in game settings, this modifies research for all players

Added Trade Resources which can be found on some planets and used in diplomacy, as well as providing adjacency bonuses

Pirates can now be found in the game causing trouble (everyone is always at war with the pirates)

Ship combat roles can now be set and are used in determining the ships behavior in battle

Enabled modding support. You can read about it here: https://forums.galciv3.com/461766

Fixes

Lots of crash fixes

Reduced memory usage by roughly 40%

Array optimization/data optimization to help increase performance

Autosave fix to help with turn times

Multiplayer now routes all disconnects to 'restore session'

Fixed issues with the Ideology Screen rewards

Formations now center around origin in center of battle field

Fixed an issue with rotation speeds, they are now per-hull-size

Fixed issue with particles under fog of war

Fixed an issue with Starbases and Shipyards not appearing at their appropriate places behind the ships in the battle viewer

Fixed beams to support fade-out

Fixed an issue where shields only worked on first hit

Fixed an issue with Starbases in the battle viewer

Fixed an issue where "battlefield distance" between fleets needed to be adjusted

Fixed an issue where Weapons/Particles FX did not appear in proper place for fleets on main map

Fixed an issue to now properly apply modifiers when invasion is successful

Fixed issue with replay bug in invasion screen

Fixed an issue to correct speeds for defended ships

Fixed issues to the background Nebulas

Fixed an issue where mass drivers didn't withdraw when they stop moving

Fixed an issue where missiles moved in a strange way and turn at precise angles instead of a smooth turn.

Fixed an issue where missiles didn't withdraw the trailing FX at the proper time

Fixed an issue with missile hit FX timing

Fixed an issue with beams by rescaling them in the mainmap vs battleviewer

Fixed issue where shield, beams, armor would 'pause'

Fixed minor tweaks to the battle camera viewing angles

Fixed loading screen text to "generating map" for clarity

Fixed issues in reference to planet surface rendering

Fixed an issue that occurred where the pop-up screen would not go away when loading a transport with population

Planet screen and tooltip updates

Fixed some audio crash issues

Fixed an issue where particle were remaining on screen

Fixed some performance and crashing issues in reference to hitting max graphical objects cap

Fixed an issue where ships would fly through resources

Fixed an issue with carriers to handle new ship roles

Fixed an issue where ships did not cost currency to upgrade

Fixed an issue to now shows stars under the fog of war on minimap

Fixed an issue where stats were wrong when attacking a planet

Fixed an issue with the particle halo effect

Fixed text size on galactic events

Fixed typos

Added more typos

Fixed the map seed to randomize for Quick Start

Fixed an issue where ships didn't always explode when they died

Fixed an issue where clicking on a ship after directing them where to go would redirect their path

Balance

Design change to convert the Approval bonus/penalty for production to resistance

Balance pass on weapons

Balance pass on defenses

Balance pass on faction-based traits

Added overflow to production (so if you produce more manufacturing than required to finish something the excess production goes to the next thing you build)

Added overflow to research (so if you produce mroe research than needed to complete a tech the excess research goes to the next tech)

UI

Massively redesigned the Diplomacy screen

Added a Fleet Battle Report screen

Ship Battle advanced UI implemented

Update to the planet surface icons

Added ship role tooltips

Added improvements to the Shipyard manufacturing queue: Move up/down, copy design, update design to latest

Implemented the Diplomacy screen Relations tab

Added a tooltip to the Quick Start button showing the options it will use

Add tooltip warning on map size drop downs

Added a low graphics setting

Added Colonies tab on the Govern screen

Added engine trail particle effects

Added faction-based research bots

Added point defense systems

Minor Research screen tweaks

Implemented strategic icon for black holes

New and improved fog of war

You will occasionally see shooting stars back in the star field

AI

Implemented AI-initiated conversations

Implemented better diplomaitc interaction with AI

AI will now request help or threaten depending on the situation

We installed a spine algorithm into the AI and it will no longer beg for mercy after every turn

AI is now making trade routes

AI is doing a much better job of pursuing alternative victory conditions (other than just conquest)

Sound

Balanced SFX volume

Balanced music volume

Fixed issue with the SFX slider not working

Added the UI sound controller

Replaced the turn complete SFX file