Galaxy Size?

Larger maps? Probably. They are going 64 bit for a reason (and not anything less). It was a struggle to find the processing power and memory to make larger maps possible in the Twilight expansion (because it was a 32 bit game). Previously, they were restricted to smaller maps because of memory limitations and the like. If they tried to use more, things like the game crashing or windows start writing to a page file on the hard drive (much slower than RAM) would happen. None of them were helpful when trying to play a game.

Perhaps you should read the FAQ before asking further questions though.
https://www.galciv3.com/game/faq

DOPE!! Wow, blond moment too many of those lately... thanks DW. 

On my other suggestion thoughts?

I mildly dislike the idea of an expanding galaxy. I like having clear victory conditions, or ways to end things quickly. I don't want the game to suddenly deprive me of a victory when I was playing a quick game.

However, some times I don't want things to end too soon. Influence victory is the one I most likely not want as it is the one I'm most likely to achieve without trying. It is easy for me to get considerable influence. You can avoid cultural victory by declaring war on a major civ, but I might not want a war at that time.

If anything, I would like to be asked if I still want to play if I meet the conditions of victory. There, maybe you could get your expanding maps, and I could opt out of a cultural victory (so I can go conquest instead, at my own convenience of course).

i like both of these ideas i always turned off all victory conditions except conquest at start of game but having it ask if i want to keep going.. kind of like reaching milestones or some such

as well going to the end game thinking your the big fish in the pond only to find out the ponds bigger then you thought and your not as big as you imagined

although this would mean that the other races that are added should start at a comparable level to where you are at when they start

Expanding galaxies seems like it'd be kind of weird to code, since you have to figure out how to seed the new galaxies such that the races in them start off both with similar tech level (fairly striaghtforward), and also a similar level of development & planetary ownership, while not just mirroring the existing conditions.

Seems like it's better to just use a really big galaxy. You're not going to know what's going on in most of it until later anyway, but it lets the game play out organically.

My big issue with galaxy size is the range scaling.  When you start an immense galaxy, the very first turn, you can reach almost a quarter of it.  That's fine if you have few, few, few for stars, planets, habitable, but if you have abundant, abundant, abundant, the galaxy still feels small.  Heck I normally don't even bother to research range techs.  I look forward to a larger galaxy but even if they were to fix just range scaling it would be awesome.  Have the scaling adjustable or manually selectable, it would go a long way towards making a larger galaxy feel larger for a change.

With the use of 64 bit, they can have a lot more stuff to work with. I'd hope that the "immense" size is a lot bigger as a result.

I'm hoping for two more map sizes beyond that, 'Where is everyone?' and 'I hope no-one is afraid of the dark.'

Just remember "In space no one can hear you scream"

Kinda useless stating how big you want the map to be. We don't know how big (or small) stuff will be on the map nor how fast ships can travel. A small map with a ship that can cross it in one turn seems a whole lot smaller than when that ship takes 10 turns to do so.

If map sizes are comparable between GalCiv2 and 3 then I'd like the largest map to be at least 4 times the size of GalCiv2's immense maps.

Map sizes larger than Immense? I just checked GC1 and GC2 and the largest map size went up one size between the Ultimate versions of each, from Gigantic to Immense. With the change to hex tiles in the map, I am wondering how sizes will compare with GC3. Are we talking about apples and Oranges here?

Another question: With the size names already up to "Immense", and "Gigantic" already in use, would SD like some recommendations for how to name larger map sizes? The names for the larger maps already have the sense of grandiosity, so maybe for GC3 StarDock needs to re-think about size names, perhaps using more names in the middle range to make room for larger sizes.

I just checked the map sizes in GC1 Ultimate and GC2 Ultimate, and sizes of the same name are not the same size. Here is the  chart I made:

Size                              GC1 (all sectors are 12x12 tiles)        GC2 (all sectors are 15x15 tiles)

                                    Sectors        tiles                             Sectors             tiles

Tiny                              4x4             48x48                          3x3                  45x45

Small                            5x5             60x60                          4x4                  60x60

Medium                         8x8             96x96                          5x5                  75x75

Large                           10x10         120x120                        8x8                 120x120

Huge                            16x16         192x192                      12x12               180x180

Gigantic                        27x27         324x324                       18x18              270x270

Immense                       N/A                                               22x22              330x320

I am guessing, but wasn't "Immense" only available after "Dread Lords"?

It was added in TotA. Also, we already know the theoretical size of the tiny map in GalCiv 3.

Edit: Linking directly to a post still doesn't seem to work. You need to scroll up a little, to reply #53.

Except that mormegil disclaimed knowing, even though he is an SD employee. So maybe they are keeping it a secret so they can surprise us.

i would imagine that the map would look something like this

meaning that a sector would have 167 tiles as opposed to 225 in gc2 and the smallest map would probobly have 7 sectors so 1169 tiles as opposed to 2025

this is based on the size of a starbase in gc1

right now i have to rush off but later i can see about tweaking this to match more closely to gc2 sizes

Except for the previous post from that SD employee stated hex sectors are 12 tiles on each side which would mean approx 372 tiles not 167.

Don't forget that the StarDockers have a wonderful sense of humor. Frogboy and Mormegil are probably rolling on the floor laughing at us (and I will gladly join them) over all of the speculation they are seeing on this forum. Really, it is really humorous.

No, mormegil did not actually say that sectors are going to be 12 tiles on a side. His "theoretical" example did, indeed, have 12 tiles on a side, but he said "OK, so theoretically, a tiny map, would look something like this, not that i would know.  ". Note that he is talking about a theoretical example, not what is going to be, and that he is disclaiming knowledge of what it is going to be. So far, all we really know is that the map is going to be made up of hex tiles. Nothing more. Also note that he used a smiley face with a mouth taped shut, meaning that he really, really, really is not allowed to tell us.

I am, of course, waiting very impatiently for the alpha start to find out exactly what they DO do.

He actually said in reply #36, that sectors currently use 12 tiles on a side, and that the smallest map uses 7 sectors. No theoretical there. Only facts (with the disclaimer, that it might change, of course).

sectors use 12 tiles on a side, with the smallest using 7 sectors meaning that you have a 7x7 sector galaxy with 12x12 tiles in each sector which the galaxy has 7 of, which I agree he did say may change and that is the current working model. not that a sector was 7 tiles... there is a big difference here...

Just did some quick math while waiting for the bus 

@9 to a side there would be ~ 210 tiles slightly smaller then gc2

@ 10 to a side there would be ~ 260 tiles a little bit bigger than gc2

@ 12 to a side there should be ~ 374 tiles about 150 tiles more then gc2 or a 2/3 increase

Ah yes. Reply 36. What I quoted was from reply 53, so perhaps something changed between his two posts (or not) and we will be surprised when we finally see it.

perhaps you guys should think outside the box, for example maybe black holes and white holes could be one way portals for multiple universes in one game. Maybe multiplayer will allow somebody to link their single player game map with another map in someone else non modded universe.

Then again, this has been tried and only works with smaller scale maps.

so im back at home and looking at some better numbers

so comparing this to an immense galaxy from gc2

484 sectors and 108900 tiles vs

469 sectors (best match) and  101773-186193 tiles based on side size

of course this speculation on size is purely based on linear growth of the galaxy

hex tile -> hex sector-> hex galaxy

it could just as easily be 7 sectors in a hex followed by 5 sectors in a line connected to 7 more in a hex   (a dumbbell shaped universe)

or random "dead" sectors

I would hope we would still have the smaller map options, so people who want smaller maps can have that option. Why not make the largest map to take full use of your memory for the largest map. U don't have to play the biggest maps. Now here is my idea for a shorter game give u turn limits and score u on points. This can still apply to victory conditions or it could just be a war game for the short game. I'm guessing the size of the new map is going to be something like 10000 planets, stars, wormholes, astroids, resources, and anomolies; because, the new engine will be able to support this the same way the old engine could. There will still be different sizes of maps. I say bigger the better map. A bigger map should have more species. I don't understand the argument u can always pick a smaller map right. As long as this don't affect graphics. Is graphics the argument.

I would like to see an expanding universe where new players start on the outside where they would get their share of planets. This would be a unlimited number of players. This is a multiplayer game.

Referring back to the game I remember reading a post that the Gigantic map on Dark avatar had more habital planets than on the immence map in Twilight of the arnor. I felt ripped off. I hope this doesn't happen with the new game. Oh yeah the engine that could easily manage 10000 elements on the map is the stardock funded oxide. I do know that to the computer blank spaces mean nonething. Its the objects that affect it. I want large maps with habital planets. The biggger the better. if u want u can always play a smaller map.

Expanding galaxies? (not universe, since the game is played on only one galaxy.) I don't know. I think if it were to be considered it would have to match the expansion rate of the Milky Way. Since WikiPedia doesn't mention anything about our galaxy expanding (it only gives an approximate size of 100–120 kly) then perhaps any expansion is only observable over periods of thousands of years. Since a game spans only from 1 up to 30+ years, I think the idea of having an expanding galaxy in the game would be too far from reality to be acceptable by players,

I think this is not a reasonable idea for this game because it would stress the credulity of many players, since the period of game time would be much to short to have an observable expansion of a real galaxy.