My Feedback

No Galaxy Map issue plus a couple of ideas.

from GalCiv3 Forums

Finally I got around to opening a "Steam" account and with a little difficulty finally managed to download the alpha [as of a few hours ago].  Don't know which version of the alpha I've got, but after trying a couple of games, I've given up playing; because there is no viewable universe in which to see my ships or any planets or anything at all.  I did wonder whether you had to research the "Sensors" tech to see anything but dismissed this as taking much too long. 

I have windows 7, a GTX670, 16Gb Ram and an i7-3820 [4 core, 8 threads] processor.

The planet improvement screen works pretty well although, having built a colony ship and a constructor, they are permanently "stationed" with seemingly no way to launch them; not much point in doing so when you can't see where to send them.

The best thing about it is the opening video which is superb apart from the vocals not being loud enough or enunciated clearly enough for me.  But I struggle with my hearing anyway these days, people tend to talk much too fast for me to understand what they're saying although I can hear the noises that are made.

I'm not over-the-moon about having to use "Steam", the site mainly wants to sell games that I don't want or choose friends that will play on-line games in which I have no interest.  It doesn't appear to want to update GalCiv3 or allow me to use the 'official' feedback channel.

I vaguely remember that a version of the Altarian Prophecy had a 3D Galaxy which was never revived in GC2, it was an attractive feature which I'm going to suggest for revival for GC3.  And could you please make all planets have more useable tiles as in GC1 where a minimum requirement for a planet to be habitable was 15 useable tiles.

I am not impressed with the eventuality of having 100+ opponents/races, an absolute maximum of 10 major races plus a more diverse set of minor races would enable better playability for me.  To be honest I'm still impressed with Twilight of the Arnor and its sandbox and modding playability;  If GC3 was as good with a three-dimensional universe [say 7high/deep by 100 long by 100 wide], with the whole planetary system of sun and 8 or 9 planets within a cell-grid of the Galaxy, of which 1 would be instantly habitable and up to a further 3 which could be habitable by active terraforming not merely via technological advances, then I would be more than happy.  I like to be able to develop planetary infrastructure that creates generous resources.

Oh yes, Starships.  I always found the default models wanting.  All of my designs were multi-equipped with all three types of attack and defence capabilities, anything less just seemed stupid, illogical and asking to be defeated in combat.

Enough suggestions for Frogboy and the team to mull over I think.  Please let me know when you have developed the game enough for me to be able to view whatever galaxy the alpha can create, thankyou.

5,281 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I'm not over-the-moon about having to use "Steam", the site mainly wants to sell games that I don't want or choose friends that will play on-line games in which I have no interest.
End of quote

You can disable most of that in the options. That's what I did.

It doesn't appear to want to update GalCiv3 or allow me to use the 'official' feedback channel.
End of quote

Steam should automatically make sure, that GalCiv 3 is up-to-date (current version is 0.20), and these here forums are the official feedback channel.

I vaguely remember that a version of the Altarian Prophecy had a 3D Galaxy which was never revived in GC2,
End of quote

Last I checked, the galaxy in GalCiv 1: AP was in 2D.

And could you please make all planets have more useable tiles as in GC1 where a minimum requirement for a planet to be habitable was 15 useable tiles.
End of quote

Planets in GalCiv 1 didn't have tiles. You could build all your improvements on a planet, with no restrictions (except for maintenance).

I am not impressed with the eventuality of having 100+ opponents/races,
End of quote

The 100+ is referring to custom races, not stock ones. If you don't want that many opponents, then nobody is forcing you to make them.

Please let me know when you have developed the game enough for me to be able to view whatever galaxy the alpha can create, thankyou.
End of quote

They already have.

I've seen others reporting the same issue. Please make sure, that your graphics drivers are up-to-date. If that doesn't help, then please follow the remaining points outlined in the Support FAQ, so the devs can find and fix the issue.

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Thanks for the post/reply Gaunathor.  I knew my video Driver was up to date as Nvidia up-dates it practically every three months with the Geforce Experience paraphanalia.  I read the Faq and thought well I'll try running the Game 1 more time so that any dxdiag files were current, although the game never crashed and I wasn't expecting it to from a fresh game.

Well started up through Steam and what d'ya'know, it starts loading stuff, particularly DX9 which for some reason took ages.  When the game is up and running I have a viewable galaxy and the game plays without any major problems.  The only minor 1 was : when I had researched the Tech to modify and activate "Acid Deserts" it wasn't available to put in the planets build list or else it just isn't meant to work at this stage of the build.

And although I was expecting the "1-item" build queueing to slow things down excessively, it wasn't as aggravating as not being able to build "nothing" so I opted for one of the choices in the unactivated projects selections.

WindowBlinds - Free yourself of the default settings, customize your desktop.
Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

So having played the game some more, on a "large" map, researched all the War Techs, quite a few Research Techs, Farming Techs, etc. but not all the Defensive Techs [why are the latter in the Diplomacy section ?], I've found that you can conquer the opposition with fully loaded standard Transports without any difficulty and just a check box type acknowledgement that the planet is now yours instead of any battle mechanics and straight into the planet infrastructure screen and choices. 

In other words, You don't need the Spaceship Builder as the game stands.  There are only perhaps a dozen or so habitable planets, so you're practically forced to invade the opposition, especially as you're given no choice but to be at war with the other three races.  With the help of Paladins and Transports I could probably conquer the remaining two races before maxing out the Tech tree researches to make any ship development useful or achieveable.

I've decided that I really don't like the "single build" system, after so long being used to having the ability to build infrastructure and ships at the same time when needed, I can't get used to being without this ability.  It will make the game harder and thus make it really unenjoyable for me.  Am I the only one who liked being able to play "Twilight" modded in sand-box mode to make the most of the micro-management of planets' infrastructures ?

I was very unimpressed with the planetary combat viewer when you invaded in "Twilight".  If anything needs better visuals and graphics where you're a part of the action, this is it.  I want to be a trooper landing on the planet, making tactical decisions that your troops can carry out, e.g. capturing the Spaceport as well as the Capital city with a Ground-based viewpoint [not quite "Far Cry" but very much along those lines of which I've only seen trailers, a game of just combat RTS/RPG/FPS mixture just isn't my cup of Coffee]. 

And can we please separate the Civilian population from the Military on the invaded planet that you conquer, rather than having to commit mass genocide before you've conquered it.

 

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I was happily playing Version0.03Alpha when it crashed for no apparent reason. trying to find support to whom to send Err.file

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

We're now into Beta1 with an update patch already giving us Version 0.40 .

I played, whatever version the initial Beta1 was, for 5hours quite happily, saved the game and then did the auto-upgrade via steam.  I wish I hadn't.  The game works without C-T-D's in V.0.40 but they have tweeked the Approval values and mechanics which cripple the productivity and research to something you're able to just about achieve.  I believe they've even disabled the one economic tech that improves Approval by 10% in the update [I'm sure it was functional before Version 0.40].  You still need to research this tech to get at functioning techs further down the branch that do work.

So at the moment I'm somewhat disillusioned with the game as it now stands.

In the previous Beta version I even managed to research the "Soil Improvement" tech, the first of the Terraforming techs, although it didn't seem to function if you had any unimproved Hexes, and then once it was active, it gave you a choice of new Yellow-outlined hexes to improve but once you'd chosen a hex to improve, then the rest would disappear [not like in GC2, where all the new tiles were revealed and remained visible].  Another disappointment as is the absence of the old system of mouse scrolling about the map [mouse-pointer to the edge of screen in the direction you wanted to travel].

I'm definitely no longer thinking "Yippee", and as you should be able to tell I'm no longer playing the game. 

I was hoping the new Terraforming techs and abilities would be unrestricted, in the sense that you could choose any Hex/tile and improve it, especially if it was one next to somewhere that had an adjacency bonus, but that doesn't appear to be the case.


Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

According to one of the more recent dev streams terraforming is different in 3 then it was in 2

now many of the techs give you a one off tile improvement requiring a certain % of usable land in the tile with one of the latter techs allowing you to improve all tiles with a certain % of usable land

 

as for the production it is beta and testing balance is one of the major aspects of this stage

Reply #7 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Shaef, actually it is anywhere but you have to remember the rules on that. 

 

The first Terraform unlock lets you place a tile on any 'normal' land mass.

 

The second unlock combines the first along with any tougher one such as desert, or swamp or broken land.

 

The 3rd lets you put it anywhere including ocean tiles which the first two do not. 

Reply #8 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Thanks guys.

I know it's Beta and they're trying to balance the game, that's why I posted my feedback.  IMHO they've gone from making it a little easy to making it too hard to be enjoyable.  Puzzles me why they've left the bug console "cheat" mechanism in, but then it is useful if you put a Starbase in the wrong place, it's the only way to remove something by using the 'destroy' command.  Although you delete it from the map, it still seems to hang around somehow in the appropriate database so you cannot put a replacement on any adjacent hexes [within it's normal sphere of influence], just like it was still there on the map only invisible.

Anyway it was nice to have a break from the game and get some objectivity back.  Hope they've released another rebalanced patch , I'm about to find out.

Cheers.


Reply #9 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

has anyone else noticed that :

making ships obsolete in the ship designer has absolutely no effect on what you can build in the starports.

and maybe it's me but :

when you have a stack of ships, especially Constructors, the "Build Fleet" command and those along side it are greyed out.  Also selecting all the ships on the same hex doesn't form a fleet [maximum number of ships I've tried this with is six].