First impressions, galciv2>galciv3 0.61

from GalCiv3 Forums

initial thoughts on galciv III

  •  the galaxy sizes beyond huge (gigantic/excessive/insane) are great sign.
    •  I say this because I'm one of those players who enjoys the challenge of building at a sustainable stable pace & playing the long game where I get to enjoy maintaining that base while managing diplomatic/trade/militaristic bits & bobs with a significant number of other species but gigantic often felt a little cramped once you added in most of the other species. Hopefully galaxy size has a larger influence on aggressive tendencies towards neighbors during the slower expansion usually resulting in slower research speeds I normally set & larger galaxies
  • interstellar rifts
    •  with only "coming soon", the name makes me feel like worm holes, which is phenomenal for many reasons. While those larger galaxies are great, they also have a drawback in that allies are less like allies than some guy way the hell over there when it takes dozens of turns just to reach them. Interstellar rifts have the potential to make allies more random, varied, & solid than who is next door if my assumption is correct.
  •  research speed
    •  I mentioned above that I typically crank the research speed down & galaxy size up on galcivII, but playing the galciv3 alpha I'm starting to notice a lot of research items that unlock multiple benefits (i.e. multiple buildings/components/benefits/etc) I'm starting to wonder if there might be a better way than just saying research takes x% longer. Specifically a two part change might work really well as a result:
      • 1: make some of them fork out into a subtree pathways where you can research the individual bits resulting in x% more research needed anyways when you combine both & minor perks coming behind the brass ring itself... or perhaps even more to really expand out the tech tree in long games without really even doing much since a couple % here and there to this & that really adds up over time.
      • 2: set these newly created fork points to be untradable, but allow the end result to be tradable for the brass ring itself. Make the extra perks require having both the brass ring -and- the fork point in order to research them.
    • Technologically this makes sense, showing a group of people how to make something, but not the why's behind why it's made that way or why it works makes it very difficult to improve on the original design they were given. As the end result, it would be possible to do things like give away an older tech without giving another race a lg up on the tech tree itself
  • playing with a huge galaxy felt cramped, but (as stated) I normally played calcivII on gigantic & that could be why
  • Basic factory
    • It seems like basic factory is always available with more productive (and expensive) factories an upgrade(s?) away.  This is a vast improvement over galcivII where colonizing new planets became painful after a certain point unless you flat out purchased a high end factory or two.  In short, "OMG THANKS!!!!12121"
  • I seem to be incapable of making a mining station, looking over the forum seems to suggest that this is intentional & temporary pending real changes while others report them working.  If they are working, I'm missing something fundamental.
  • Orbital shipyards
    • These are a great improvement.  Being able to (slooowly) move shipyards around is pretty cool as a potential tactical option.  Being able to support them with multiple planets is likewise pretty neat with the option to divert extra resources to them when speed is of the essence or simply to avoid having a ship be likely obsolete by the time it finishes being built at a less industrial planet galciv2 style.  being able to pool several smaller planets rather than having a handful of massively industrial planets capable of churning out a useful ship(s) half a galaxy away from the action at a useful pace is great.
  • life support ranges I'm not sure why I don't remember it being an issue in galcivII, but I noticed it a couple times where I had nonconnecting islands of traversable space between colonized worlds for some of my ships (warships especially).  It would be great if you could cheat a bit by locking in a one way trip to  friendly planet  for a resupply similar to how taking a wormhole can result in a survey ship across the galaxy taking a locked straight path back to your space. Something like this could also allow the odd midgame colonization of previously inhospitable high G/ration/etc worlds that happen to be in another race's territory making for some interesting & more complicatedmutual defense /alliance possibilities
  • economic stimulus/cultural festival/etc are pretty cool additions to the planetary build queues that allow for neat flexability that doesn't involve knocking down buildings & making new ones
1,965 views 3 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

It would be great if you could cheat a bit by locking in a one way trip to friendly planet for a resupply similar to how taking a wormhole can result in a survey ship across the galaxy taking a locked straight path back to your space.
End of quote

You can already move ships freely between your disconnected island ZOCs.  Just click within any friendly ZOC and the ship will go straight there.  You're at the mercy of the path generator, tho.  You lose fine-grained control over it while it's out of your ZOC, but you can still somewhat tweak its path by clicking around within the destination ZOC (or make gross changes by clicking in any other ZOC).

You cannot click to select a destination hex outside of your ZOCs.  That's basically the only restriction on ship movement.

The standard way to exploit this is:

  • You find a wonderful system with 4 planets within single starbase effect, at range 41.
  • You build a range-45 single constructor, and send it there.
  • You build four range-11 colony ships, and send them on the way (to the edge of your ZOC).
  • Your single constructor arrives.  Construct starbase.  Now all 4 planets are in your friendly ZOC.
  • Freely order your range-11 colony ships to colonize the planets.  They'll jump right over the range gap.
  • If (by terrible luck) your colony ship meets a hostile Lost Defender, you can always click within your homeworld ZOC to have it turn around and come straight back.

For your survey ship beyond your ZOC (from wormhole, or auto-surveying an anomaly outside your ZOC), you can order it to return to any hex in your ZOC, from any distance.  Or just leave it on auto-survey, and it will happily ignore your ZOC and chase down anomalies anywhere.

I think with the new Rally Point system, you can even set your shipyard to automatically send all constructed ships to a rally point.  Every friendly planet is a rally point.  So you can auto-send a stream of ships to any friendly planet, regardless of ship range vs. actual distance (because the friendly planet creates a friendly ZOC around it, and so it's a valid destination hex).

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

The first time you upgrade a starbase you can choose mining.   If a resource node is in range of the starbase, you will mine it, and it will show up when you click on the starbase as a resource.   That's all the mining there is at present.

 

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Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

At this time, it seems that you can't build starbase modules that you can't use. For instance, economic modules far from any planet. If you are far something a mining starbase could mine, then the modules might not show up. At least, I couldn't build economic starbase modules far from my planets. For GalCiv 3, to mine resources, you need the resources to be within starbase AoE in order for the mining modules to work (which also means that a single starbase can mine many resources at once).

The ship ranges in GalCiv 2 were huge. As were the boosts from techs. I often didn't need to add range modules to my ships. I was also good at nabbing extreme worlds and getting my hands on galactic resources, so I rarely found places where I couldn't reach (once the colony rush was over).