Galactic Civilizations III - Beta 5 patch 2 changelog

Published on April 1, 2015 By DerekPaxton In GalCiv III Support

–RELEASED 04/13/2015–

Galactic Civilizations III Beta 5.2 is now available, bringing the good news of big AI and performance improvements to space emperors everywhere. The patch will download automatically when you connect to Steam. See below for the full changelog:

I have a tie for my favorite checkins when I put this changelog together. The first is "Fixing tabbing in moon shader" just because that sounds really cool, but I have no idea where or what the moon shader is, or how we tab in it. But my favorite was the "fixed the sympathetic explosion issue" which is that for some reason when one object in a battle exploded, other objects would explode too, hence our sympathetic explosions. The other objects wouldn't actually be dead, they would come back together and keep fighting, they just couldn't resist a good explosion (also known as the sneezing starbase issue).

Features

Added Prototype Survey Module (requires a strategic resource)

Added Prototype Elerium Weapon

Added Prototype Anti-Matter Missile

Added Hull Reinforcement module (requires Durantium)

Performance

We now only update fog of war when required (its an expensive calculation to run so this is a significant performance improvement)

We now only update the minimap if the moving object is visible to the current player (minmap updates are expensive too)

Only update the minimap during the local players turn to minimize interturn duration

Improved the speed of research progress searches (developers said something about adding a hash table, i have no idea how hashbrowns make the game faster, but apparently they do)

Improved game start speed (optimizations setting up player research)

Improved game load time (no longer uses a separate process to generate the atlas)

Fixes

Many multiplayer crash fixes

Fixed an issue where combo/list boxs may scroll out of the available area

Fixed an issue for the mood breakdown tooltip in the diplomacy window

Fixed bug where if an AI player attempted to attack an undefended player it would notify the player about transports

Fixed an issue where influence would be incorrectly calculated

Fixed a lighting issue in the ship designer and shipyard

Fixed a crash when UP voting

Fixed an issue where players cant unlock extreme worlds

Fixed the Adaptable ability

Trade Resource descriptions now fit in the field

Fixed an issue where ideological events could cause crashes in multiplayer

Fixed bug where the multiplayer lobby player faction comboboxes stopped working whenever the list of factions changed via another person joining the lobby, caused by listbox-in-combobox-in-listbox sizing not working correctly

Fixed a multiplayer desync caused by fog of war updates

Fixed a multiplayer desync after making a trade

Fixed a multiplayer desync when constructing a shipyard or starbase

Fixed an issue where players could be awarded Jupiter through an ideology trait

Fixed lots of wonky text clipping issues, now if the text doesn't fit in the area it will smoothly fade out, but fixed numerous screens so text doesn't overflow

Fixed a crash if a planet was selected when exiting to the main menu

Fixed a multiplayer crash if more than 3 custom factions are in the game

Fixed an issue with the upgrading icon not working

Fixed an issue where ideology points weren't being spent

Fixed two crashes that could occue when invading a planet

Several obscure crash bugs fixed

Fixed an issue where you could queue up a 1 per faction wonder on multiple planets at the same time

The AI now terraforms

The AI now trades ships with other AI players

AI Strategies updated to support more behaviors based on the faction traits

Minor modificatiosn to the govenor strategies

When the AI wants to kill you, it checks to see if it has transports, if it doesn't it b-lines for them if possible

AI Early game strategy now ends at 20 turns

Modified various AI strategies

Modified relation weights (generally lowered the amounts)

Weaker military is now a negative instead of a positive

Modified faction AI catregory weights so that they always equal 100 total and made them more differentiated per faction

Rebalanced the power calculation such that it weighs more on ones overall production and less on influence and such. (will continue to play with this)

Modified MorePowerfulThan and LessPowerfulThan to have a 20% give either way

Added a relation modifier if you are ripe for conquest, some AI players are strongly weighted by this (the Drengin), some aren't

AI is less likely to trade ships or propose ships, starbases and planets in trades (we know you have been exploiting them!)

Added a particle script for Promethion and Thulium

Changed engine colors for the Thalan and Yor

Added a new nebula graphic

LOTS of updates to the AIStrategydefs.xml

Support for using weapon tags in the tech tags

Diplomatic modifiers rebalanced

Drengin tech tree updated to use tags

Terran Alliance is now Diplomatic personality trait instead of Scientific

Diplomatic is a new personality trait (Diplomat trait means that those players will tend to research diplomatic techs and stay out of war via their diplomacy and/or manipulating others)

Cultural trait has been added (Cultural tech means that that player will tend to embark on cultural victory and taking planets through sheer cultural might)

Krynn are now Cultural instead of Spiritual

Yor are now Scientific instead of Opportunistic

Iconians are now Cultural instead of Spiritual

Thalan are now Diplomatic as well

Updated balances to change constructor behavior

AI contact with player increased (AI contact is now roughly every 12 turns instead of every 20)

Credits the AI will ask as a minimum is now 75 instead of 150

Minor tweaks to the governors

More types of AI ship roles added to provide more variation

Lots of work with the AI ship roles

Prototype modules made into Support Modules (for now) to keep AI from being unable to build stuff

New AI Ship types include Bomber, Interceptor and Capital ship

AI now has the concept of a weapon and defense strategy

AI updated to support new AI ship classes.

There is now a slight amount of randomness in what the AI thinks is the best battle rank for a ship class (so it may sometimes build an older unit)

New ship selection algorithm now goes through the ships it could build and rolls for the best one (no longer weighted to pick the first in the list)

AI will generate a weapon and defense preference strategy (The AI will pick beam, kinetic, or missile as its preferred weapon. Once it does this, it will zero out the military value of non-conforming weapon techs)

The AI will reevaluate its choices on weapons if they get a weapon tech that is much better

AI looks at its least favorite player and will tend to pick its defense techs based on what their least favorite player's weapon;n choices are

Rebellion points now takes into account the player's resistance and approval to drastically reduce the amount generated if those things are high.

Balance

Modified the map setting means. Mainly, fewer black holes, more habitable planets.

The normal research pacing is now 25% faster than it was to speed of the pacing of normal.

Starting credits reduced to 1000

Added some early terraforming improvements so that players can upgrade planets right around the time they start to run out of tiles.

Modified relation weights (generally lowered the amounts)

Only the top 6 factions are available to vote for UP leader

Adjusted the UP voting weights

UP meetings are typically every 25 turns instead of every 12 turns

Art

We liked Saturn so much we put a ring on it (ie: some planets have rings now)

Added new Ascension and Economic relic particle FX

Added 6 new weapon models

Asteroids are now lit by stars

Reduced the length of engine trails slightly

You can see ships flying around planets now

Moons eclipse planets when passing by them

Lord Kona moons planets when passing by them

Added oribiting ships for the shipyards

Added orbiting ships for the starbases

Enchanced 'rebelling planet' tooltip information to include influence ratio between colony and tile owner

Added a tooltip explaining why you cant save your custom faction if there is an issue

Added adjustable mini-map zoom increment

Comments (Page 2)

alphaprior

on Apr 07, 2015

Best addition: We liked Saturn so much we put a ring on it (ie: some planets have rings now)

Fixed an issue where players cant unlock extreme worlds : Means we can colonize Barren worlds?

Seilore

on Apr 07, 2015

I'm ready for this opt-in whenever you want to make it available lol....

Larsenex

on Apr 07, 2015

OMG>>>>>> YES!!!

"AI looks at its least favorite player and will tend to pick its defense techs based on what their least favorite player's weapon;n choices are"

(here is to being on the Drengin and Yor least liked list!)

admiralWillyWilber

on Apr 07, 2015

You fixed beams from being overpowering right. You have also fixed the altarians from being overpowering right. you've fixed the yor where they can breed, or at least build new robots again, becsuse you wouldn't want them where they can't multiply at all this would hurt them in every way not just diplomacy, and economics. Without some way in increase population wether superior, or inferior this would certainly cause s broken race again, and ypu don't want that do you. If you can't find a solution at least bring back the other. Infetior is better than nonething. Also remember since morale, and farming was combined with the yor if you replace farms with something else you will probably add a morale path also. I was thinking since yor doesn't use diplomacy maybe they could use intimidation instead. As far as manufacturing population I read about it sounded like to fix.problem all you needed to increase mp for population, and it would be fine with a seperate more branch techs. As far as the ai goes after building factories, and morale structure build population, and they will be pretty strong. Still build a lot of constructors. I see an issue here population cap with a few solutions, but first you could give them a lower population cap to make up for institaneous growth. Hopefully morevthan five billion. One way to handle this is to have a tech branch that increases population cap which is probably the best way. Another way to do this is increase population cap after so msnt turns.

I like the Idea of the ai having weapon preference based on who they are hostile towards, but in combat this might change based on what kind of weapons your opponent is using. Ie you prefer shields, and beams, so your opponent uses missiles to null your shields, and shields to null your beams. So you use chaff to null his missile while using mass drivers to null his beams. In warfare you need to do stuff like this.

I like the idea of automating constructors. What I'm talking about is setting a starport to a resource, or a starbase. Or multiple starports to multiple resources, or kultiple starbases. Or setting a starport in case you discover a resource fron expIoring. Instead of prompting you at the end of each build automatically sebding these to the designations selected. Building one constructor per resource, and then movingto the next resource untill you are done claiming all the known resources you can before Improving them further. Automating shipyards for starbase building is nice.

On customisation. I would like to se more customised tech trees this time around. I would like to be able to build tech trees from thecustomisation screen. My idea is having all the different tech paths from all the different tech trees. I do agree that you would have to initially have to catagorise this to at least have what you think is a minimum required tech paths ie farming, economic, industry, weapons, defence, and morale something like this your choice. After minumum it wouldn't matter what techs they picked. Except that tjeir would need to be a balance on how many super projects, one per planets, galactic achievements, and trade goods you have. Ideas on how to fix this give all techs something else kind if bonuses will be needed in this case. The wonders will have to be able to be classified on several tech paths for this to work. Let the player pick the wonders seerate after they picked theircustomised tech tree. Or when a limit is reached for each catagory he's cut off from that type of wonder. Or after the fact if he has to many of one type of wonder he has to eliminate some. Or have a preset list of wonders to add afterwards, or there could be a selection of multiple lists to pick from.

I can see where on a limited scale some branches would have eliminate others whereif you pick a branch you can't pIck this other branch you mightof wanted. A good example if this is the engine techs, and the arceans navigation techs. These a would be under yhe initial minimum selection anyways. Where the other eould not show up again when ypu get past the minimum required trees. In moat cases picking redundant trees wouldn't be a big deal, because all it would donis give you fluff. But in some cases some paths would have be set to eliminate others bo matter where you pick them.

Bloodlust1983

on Apr 07, 2015

And not a word on abscence of a ship's painting tool. Maybe I should make a ticket on this? Someone plz post a link to submitting tickets.

Whyld

on Apr 07, 2015

Might want to prevent buying ships period. No good way to stop that as a way of disarming the AI.

Seilore

on Apr 07, 2015

Bloodlust1983

reply 20

And not a word on abscence of a ship's painting tool. Maybe I should make a ticket on this? Someone plz post a link to submitting tickets.

Stardock has asked that we please respond with exactly what is happening; exact steps on how to reproduce the issue; map size and at what point in the game it occurs. Please also supply any screenshots \ video clips that may help illustrate the issue. Jing is a free app for that can be used for this:

http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html

For support where examining saves is required, names of ships, planets and starbases, etc, are extremely helpful in their attempts to reproduce the issue.

Link to forums for explanation:

https://forums.galciv3.com/452855/page/1/

Link to support tool:
http://sd.stardock.com/Support/supportToolTest/SDSupportTool.exe

Oh! Here is the location for dmp files!
"C:\ProgramData\Stardock\Galactic Civilizations III"

hajmyis

on Apr 07, 2015

any ETA on when we can use the map editor

alphaprior

on Apr 07, 2015

hajmyis

reply 23

any ETA on when we can use the map editor

I doubt extras are gonna released anytime soon.. more likely near August before the final release.

Seilore

on Apr 07, 2015

alphaprior

reply 24

I doubt extras are gonna released anytime soon.. more likely near August before the final release.

Final release has been stated May... Unless I'm missing where this changed.

Avatar137

on Apr 07, 2015

Well, I have tomorrow off so you can release the patch then. I'll be happy to test the heck out of it! Thanks.

Nastytang

on Apr 08, 2015

we`ll get this today or tomorrow!

LoknarGer

on Apr 08, 2015

today please, today please

alphaprior

on Apr 08, 2015

Seilore

reply 25

Quoting alphaprior,

reply 24

I doubt extras are gonna released anytime soon.. more likely near August before the final release.

Final release has been stated May... Unless I'm missing where this changed.

Right I was confused with Steam which has a release date August but 2014!
I thought Betas are not official releases..

samuraiu

on Apr 09, 2015

Werewindlefr

reply 2

Improved the speed of research progress searches (developers said something about adding a hash table, i have no idea how hashbrowns make the game faster, but apparently they do)

Employees work better when you feed them, that's why. Otherwise you get a large turnover due to starvation, very nasty, many businesses make that mistake.

Minor modificatiosn to the govenor strategies

"Added more typos... to the changelog" .

For large collections of data (which i assume is the case here) hash table is faster then simple lists or collections specially when accessing individual known keys/values.

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