–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
