Galactic Civilizations II concept thread

from Stardock Forums
I want to keep a running public journal on some of the thoughts we have on Galactic Civilizations II which won't be out for over a year but the beta should show up early next year.

# Fleets #
You will have fleets. Not just grouped ships but fleet battles. They won't be fancy though, more akin to Warlords type style. But nubmers will matter. However, the # of ships you can have in a fleet will be dependent on your logistics ability. So no "mega" fleets (unless you put your research in that direction).

# Ship Design #
You will have ship design. You will be focusing on the actual components. You will have X number of "class slots" (we will have this for ease of refitting ships in space on the fly for you). X will probably be something like 8 or 10. The way your ships look will depend on your components. The 3D engine will put the pieces together for you visually.

# Ship Battles #
Ships will have 3 classes of weapons: Beam weapons, mass drivers, and Missiles. There will be tech trees on each pattern of this. The defenses will be shields (for beams), armor (for mass drivers) and point defense (for missiles).

This will be where much of the strategy will come in for the warrior. Which technologies do you try to go up? You'll have to pay attention to what your enemies have. If The Drengin have Mark VI phasors and the Arceans have Mass Driver Mark VI then you're likely only going to have enough technology to fully counter one of them.

# Sectors #
Planets will be natively part of the sector. Not a seperate screen. That means we'll have things like asteroids and nebula which will SLOW you (to simulate having to fly around them in 3D, it's going to be a 2D map in a 3D engine).

# Cultural Influence #
Instead of looking at numbers, you'll look at the map. The 3D engine will have irregularly shaped boundary lines. If your planet is surrounded on all sides by a particular player's "space" then you can watch is zoom in on your planet turn after turn. When it touches your planet, it changes sides. So it'll be up to you to battle that sort of thing with your star bases and such.

# Planets #
Planet quality # wont' be the end all, be all thing. Instead, planet quality will determine the POTENTIAL of the planet. Planet building will be based on slots in a randomly generated surface (i.e. planets will look different from one another in this). A class 20 planet has more grids than a class 10. But someone working really hard on that class 10 is going to have an advantage over the guy who's barely making use out of his class 20.

This will add to the strategy: Guns or butter. Improve your worlds or put your energies into other things?

# Budgeting #
You'll have much more fine tune control of your budget on a per planet basis (now that we have planets in the sector we have a lot more freedom).

# Races #
There will be 12 races to choose from of which 8 can be active at any one time. Our current PRELIMARY plan is that you will be able to play as any of them.

So those are some thoughts for now on what we have planned. The game's release date is scheduled right now for 4Q2005 but we're not promising that as we won't release it until it's finished. And while that phrase has become cliche, in our case, since we do open betas with our customers, it'll be you guys who largely tell us when we're done. I.e. none of that vaporware nonsense.

I hope you like some of the things we're hoping to do with it. BTW, thank you to all who have purchased GalCiv and especially the expansion pack Altarian Prophecy (whose sales are funding GalCiv 2's development :) ).
51,949 views 192 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
:CONGRAT:
hang on what's

Warlords type style.
End of quote


again?

:notsure:

the beam/shield, mass driver/armor, missile/pd sound MOO2. will the battle screen play like that?

wonder what happened to those wicked SSI engines......

anywayz

:CONGRAT: sound GREAT
Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Hmmm... sounds great so far! :)

I noticed a few things weren't mentioned. Specificly diplomacy, espionage, and planetary combat come to mind. What are the tentative plans for improving these?
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Specificly diplomacy, espionage, and planetary combat come to mind. What are the tentative plans for improving these?
End of quote


good point!

:)
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
Sounds very promising. :)

Looking forward to taking part in the open beta.

The only thing I worry about is that with the increase in the number of variables, it will be tougher to come out with a challenging AI without relying on giving them bonuses.

Will the AI be able to:
1) Manage fleets effectively for both offense and defense
2) Produce good ship designs to cope with opponents
3) Navigate through space intelligently with the new terrain
4) Deal with cultural aggression and dish out some of its own
5) Optimise planetary development and production

The AI was the main reason why I bought Galciv and I believe a strong AI would be the best selling point for Galciv2.
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
This is great news and it does sound very interesting.
:CONGRAT:

I think Ray's concerns about the intelligence of the AI are spot on (Allthough i'm confident Stardock will succeed).

My own personal dreams would be a development of AI intelligence.
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
Excellent news.

I look forward to the beta test. Will obviously have to extend my subscription though :)

Just a few quick points

a) Galciv has that great easy to play but hard to master appeal. I hope that all the extra features don't detract from this. I love playing short fun games so options to disable fleet combat or ship design could be welcome.

b) Like the new ship design concepts. My favourite ship design was Ascendency where each ship has X spaces (depending on size) and you could fill those as you saw fit. Add lots of engines and the ship was fast. Add lots of shields and the defense was strong. Add lots of weapons and the ship was powerful. Add special module for special abilities. You had to choose the right balance for your needs.

c) Will ship combat be manual or still automated? Automated will be easier on the AI and better for gameflow. Manual would appeal to the MOO crowd.

d) You say that fleet combat will depend on number of ships. What are you current thoughts about this will work. Obviously once fleet battles are in place people will want to design ships for various roles within the fleet (eg. point defense ships, fast flanking ships, heavy firepower ships). Will this be possible. Secondly, people will want certain tactics for their fleets (eg have missile ships shoot at ships with no point defense from long range then flee, flank enemy ships, close for close combat). Will this be possible. Again computer AI may be a limit in what is and is not possible.

paul.

~SDC~
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
My own personal dreams would be a development of AI intelligence.
End of quote


Obviously you have not seen the Terminator movies ;)
Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
This definitely looks nice. `

I'm not sure if I understand what the sentence "planets will be natively part of the sector" means? Could somebody try to clarify a little bit?
Reply #12 from Stardock Forums Top

Ray, I'm not sure how to answer that. Of course the AI will be able to handle these things. What other answer would it be?

"Actually we expect the AI to not do anything at all. Rather, it'll just run into an obstacle and sit there until the end of the game with whatever default ships the came comes with.: ;) !FROGCARE!

Reply #14 from Stardock Forums Top
# Ship Design #You will have ship design. You will be focusing on the actual components. You will have X number of "class slots" (we will have this for ease of refitting ships in space on the fly for you). X will probably be something like 8 or 10. The way your ships look will depend on your components. The 3D engine will put the pieces together for you visually.
End of quote


Does this mean that ship's design will be like Ascendancy where the point was to always put the most powerful weapon since any weapon take always the same space, or will thre bea tradeoff like MOO between using new weapons that need lots of space instead of keeping old weapons that requires less space and less power when finding new weapons (ie chose between few new weapons or use lots of old weapons for the same space)?
Reply #15 from Stardock Forums Top
This is great Brad. I love the list.

Personally, I'd like to see a more interactive planetary combat missions.

Diplomacy could also be a more in-depth procedure. Honestly, I don't have any ideas. But if it is possible to improve it, could it be added to the list too?

On the types of weapons, the ideas are good, no question. But would the energy weapons have limited energy banks, or would it be unlimited? Also, would the missles have the same ammo limit, requring resupply, or is that not planned?

Races, all I have to say is I love it! :HOT: These are great improvements. I would love to beta test this. :CONGRAT:
Reply #16 from Stardock Forums Top
This sounds wonderful, and this is just conceptual, yes? I do assume that the seven alien races [and the humans, of course] in GalCiv will be among the twelve races mentioned. :)
Reply #17 from Stardock Forums Top
Here's what I think about some of this.

if Ship Design works anything like Alpha Centauri (Which it sounds like) you better make sure the AI can handle it (crippled the SMAC AI, we banned foil probe teams and almost banned choppers in our MP games of that for that reason)

I think a MP aspect would be nice, even if rarely used.

Another possibility- limit sticks based on command capability- which would be a function of a racial bonus, ship design, war party bonus, and logistics.

Bigger ships could have command posts to increase fleet size.

Fleets could have general orders like best, strongest, weakest, and leader. (stolen from Ogre Battle- simplistic enough for a competent AI to handle, and having the command ship out would be BAD if you didn't have a backup, a fleet that is oversized should carry a penalty that grows steeper)

All ships in a square should be considered to be part of same fleet. best might need to be customized as best overall, strongest as strongest threat, Weakest as weakest defense. Leader wouldn't work against twin-command fleets too well, so there would be a counter, and leader tactics would have a penalty.

There needs to be a chance of all ships being damaged by an attack, not just one ship all at once.

Ship design I'd like to see based on slots and ship size. AKA battleship class might have 8 slots, cruiser 6, etc. Ship slots might be increased with miniturization techs.

Perhaps some small ships like fighters could be added and bigger ships could have carrier decks that could carry 5. Fighters would be limited to 1 weapon slot and 1 engine slot, so races with good weaponry tech might go carrier heavy over races developing a lot of battleships using bigger guns and more hullpower to counter a tech inferiority.

I'd like to see the three sorts of weapons kept generic
phasers
photons
missiles
might work well

I'd like to see more sabotage options, or more control over destabilization money. Perhaps it would bring up events like the morality screen- where you could choose to "assassinate X and get war+bonus, assassinate X and try to blame Y- random chance of success, abort mission (which may not be abored anyways)

The map thing may be counterintuitive to new players- people do not like thinking in 3d that much. Might hurt sales some.
Reply #18 from Stardock Forums Top
Ray, I'm not sure how to answer that. Of course the AI will be able to handle these things. What other answer would it be?
End of quote


The AI would undoubtably be able to do all those at a certain level but as alluded to in my last sentence, I hoping to see AI that surpasses that of Galciv 1.

If we can get even better AI than Galciv 1 with all these additional layers of complexity added, I'll be over the moon. :)

~SDC~
Reply #19 from Stardock Forums Top
What about multiplayer?

Is it being considered or has it already been thrown out?

~SDC~
Reply #20 from Stardock Forums Top
I hope the zots are spent on better single player, as MP will almost never be used, but single player will be the primary way to play the game.
Reply #21 from Stardock Forums Top
# Cultural Influence #Instead of looking at numbers, you'll look at the map. The 3D engine will have irregularly shaped boundary lines. If your planet is surrounded on all sides by a particular player's "space" then you can watch is zoom in on your planet turn after turn. When it touches your planet, it changes sides. So it'll be up to you to battle that sort of thing with your star bases and such.
End of quote


This was my favourite feature of Rise of Nations and Civ3. I'm glad to see it will be making an appearance in Galciv2.
Reply #22 from Stardock Forums Top
I would like to throw my hat in with a suggestion I think someone else brought up that I thought would be great and would enhance gameplay:

Permanent wormholes. Randomly generated at the start of the game, but permanent. These would especially be effective using a large map. Defending these wormholes would be just as important as defending planets almost...ala DS9. :) The only problem I see with it is the 'range' factor of ships. Perhaps if the scout had unlimited range (does it already? I forget...) that ship could find the destination...and somehow get a constructor through the wormhole to build a station on the other side. Or enable the calculation of the "range" to include the wormhole to eliminate that problem...

Anyway, I think it would be cool. LOL
Reply #23 from Stardock Forums Top
What I really want in mutiplayer and better grafics for the most part... And a lot more detail in the game.

For example maybe no two planets look exactly the same. Or maybe an option to click on a planet and view its many different surface areas. Like scroll around the selected planet and view an island, or a continent, so you can have close up views of your planets different areas.

And maybe more movies in the game, like when there is an event on the planet and animals have escaped from the zoo, show a video of them taking out your people! :)

I just would like to see things like this that would give the game a lot more detail and personality. That is all probably a little too much ask for though, as that would be a lot of work. But it would be very cool :)

Forgot to add one thing. Showing videos of ground battles taking place would be really neat. Show the 2 sides battling in a short video, but alittle longer and more action packed than the current ones :)

Oh, and an option to play either a 2D or 3D galaxy. I would love a 3D galaxy, but keep the 2D option open so as not to alienate the people who loved the 2D galaxy in GalCiv 1.

Also make those stars really shine, if you have ever played Halo you know what I mean :) Near blinding.

Also dont just show the Star, show the tiny planets orbiting the stars, and be able to zoom in closer for a better look at the planets...

And on the dark side of the planets show the glowing cities, that would be really cool.

Ahhh I have so many ideas I would love to see go into galciv 2..

I'm not sure if this was an ideas thread but.. Lol I need to get my ideas out there!

Well im probably expecting too much heh... oh well


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Reply #24 from Stardock Forums Top
Also dont just show the Star, show the tiny planets orbiting the stars, and be able to zoom in closer for a better look at the planets...
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I think that this is what Brad meant by the planets being natively part of the sector. I really like that idea.
Reply #25 from Stardock Forums Top
Lets see, I would like......

1. Multiplayer
2. Ship Design
3. Better planetary battles (strategies, multi-turn battles, planetary assult ship support through bombardment)
4. NO 3d map, like a mean real 3d, where you have to circle around and stuff, that would really suck.
5. Multiplayer ;)
6. A better minor race system, including oblivious minor races (like the ones often featured in the random event now) that are primitave pre-space flight, and that could eventually grow into "real" minor races (or be helped there :) ) and more minor races.
7. A realistic galactic planets where you can choose if you want to enter in the first place (and people will still trade with you if you don't, especially other non-members) and where you could actually bring proposals to the table, and where smaller races could ask the council members for protection against a large and agressive enemy, some thing like the actual united nations, good races will tend to want to be in it(for the protection, influence, etc), and bad ones will tend to be out (because they don't want there wars or anything to be regulated, and have the chance of getting trade sanctions against them)
8. Multiplayer.......... :p

thats about it, just some ideas that I think would really enhance that "real" universe feel to the game, while keeping it fun.
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