The game crashed on Turn 144, so seemed a good time for an update. Game has crashed 4 times so far (trouble tickets submitted).
I have no idea how the Drengin are able to have so many colonies, way more than anyone else. I made a comeback by spamming colony ships and making a beeline for the malevolent ideology that gives an overload ship on every planet.
Race Colonies Ships Score Ideology
Drengin 396 518 4,140 Malevolent
Terrans (Me) 178 264 2,182 Benevolent (with 7 malevolent ideology perks)
Macians 136 220 975 Malevolent
Iconians 115 166 818 Benevolent
Iridium 80 292 651 Pragmatic
Snathi Major 78 60 614 Pragmatic
Thalan 91 117 610 Pragmatic
Yor 82 42 522 Malevolent
Krynn 53 106 419 Benevolent
Altarian 62 19 337 Benevolent
Okay, so the first question is: Why do the Drengin have so many colonies? At 178 colonies, my approval is down to 24%, so I don't know how they're managing it.
Also, can the AI select perks from a different ideology? I certainly use all three, with Benevolent and Malevolent being my favorite combination.
And, the colony rush from GC 2 is back. I personally don't like the mad dash. I prefer the Civilization model where happiness, economics, and barbarians act to slow empire expansion. Maybe that's just me.
Some requests:
1) Please change the button on the bottom left to bring up the Tech Tree. That way, those of us who prefer the Tech Tree can skip the other screen.
2) If possible, please make every clickable item larger in the UI (especially the scroll bar) at 1920x1080. I frequently have trouble grabbing the scroll bar (like when I want to add a shipyard to the build queue).
3) If I accidently click "Cancel" on the colony ship pop up asking for population, how can I find that ship again? It was really hard to locate it when I have over a hundred colonies and lots of colony ships on the map.
4) Minor races really don't seem to have a good role in the game. City States in Civilization 5: Age of Kings are fully realized elements in that game. Diplomacy matters. They provide resources and are powerful enough to help as allies in wars and can even take enemy cities. GC 3 minors need more to really bring them to life.
Bugs:
1) When loading a saved game, the main screen flickers (really noticeable with the stars, asteroid fields, and Thulium). I also saw flickering in the ship Designer in the menu at the top right, Finally, had a similar bug after clicking end turn and having some idle ships that needed moving. The end turn button would actually cycle through all the possible messages really fast before settling on Idle Ship.
2) On the Diplomacy UI, when making a trade that requires money, the game would select an amount but the race wouldn't accept it. When I click on the money again, a larger amount appears, but the race still won't accept it. This can go on up to a dozen times. This may be a "feature" but I find it really annoying and a waste of time.
3) On an insane map, I think trade resources are too numerous. They can really shift the balance of the game when you get 2-3 dozen of them each through colonization and trade with other players. Toward end game, this would become ridiculous.
4) The battle viewer action is not consistent with the results. I had ships armed with missiles and thus had no reason for them to close on a shipyard. The battle viewer showed them closing and getting hit by beam and kinetic weapons. When the battle was over, my ships had taken no damage.
5) Approval is still a mystery to me. Morale relics are still not showing up as bonuses on the planet UI, but they do seem to have some affect.
All that said, the new AI is proving to be a lot of fun.
Thanks!
