First Impressions

from GalCiv3 Forums

So I got the Beta a little while ago but didn't get around to playing it because I was distracted by several other games including Civilization: Beyond Earth (a decision I am regretting somewhat by now).  I just finished a Beta 3 game playing as the Altarians and figured I should do my job as a Beta tester and provide some feedback.

First, let me say that I love the GalCiv series and think it's one of the best games of its type around.  I truly appreciate the amount of work the designers had to put into making an AI that's actually clever rather than just a cheating bastard.  The Universe is generally well crafted, if a bit Babylon 5 like, and the characters are always interesting.  Plus, ship design?!  F**king awesome.

Regarding GalCiv 3 itself, I, on the whole, enjoyed the game.  It's a worthy addition to the series and introduces some interesting innovations like resources that do specific things rather than just being general "this is a Research resource.  Yay!"  The graphics are excellent and the sound is great too, though, I'd appreciate some level of background music with some variety playing on the main map screen.  Just a personal preference.  That said, being a Beta tester, it's my job to criticize so here goes...

UI

  • I don't know if it's just my computer but I've found that in a lot of the menus, when I mouse over an object, a small data box pops up with some text.  90% of the time, the text doesn't fit properly in the box and I lose out on information.  If that could be fixed, it'd be great.  If I've just missed some obvious fix for this, please let me know.

 

Culture Mechanic

  • I love just taking over other cultures with mine and watching whole empires rebel but this needs to be tempered somewhat.  There is no reason in the world why I should be able to steal five planets in a six planet empire and take *no* diplomatic penalty whatsoever.  That's silly.  I can understand them not declaring war because it would look really bad for them and maybe cause planet-wide demonstrations, but I don't think they should be quite so eager to hand over techs or make good trades with me.  Furthermore, I would expect them to be working behind the scenes to screw me over in whatever ways they can.  Instead, I completely overwhelmed the Yor and Iridian cultures while they were foaming at the mouth enamored with me until their respective demises.  I - a goody two shoes organic - got the organic hating, evil, eat your babies and turn them into robots Yor government to love me while I was stealing planets from them.  -_-
  • Second, the cascading manner in which this can occur is frightening when left unchecked.  After overwhelming the Iridian capital, within twenty turns, I had pushed through the Yor and almost demolished the Terran cultural influence (on the largest size map available!) were it not for the fact that I switched to pursuing a Tech victory mid-game.  I might suggest making it so that another civilization's capital in your empire actually subtracts somewhat from your total influence rather than adding to it.  The in game thought being that the last holdouts for the old culture are likely to gather on the capital planet and whine as loud as they can about the old days.  That should introduce some problems due to multiculturalism.  Or, on that thread, perhaps civilization capitals should introduce an empire wide approval hit to help blunt the inexorable advance of super-religious blue skinned alien babe culture due to the inherent tension multiculturalism introduces.

 

Technology

  • The age system seems a bit contrived.  I like the basic idea that it makes no sense for a civilization to be able to barge straight towards a tech victory without having figured out how to so much as run an interplanetary empire but the execution bothers me.  It seems somewhat arbitrary.  Perhaps some level of interdependencies between techs or resource requirement would help?  Unfortunately, I have no solid suggestions on this - just a vague sense of unease about the tech age system.  I know it's been used in other games but I've never cared for it, myself.
  • On a positive note, I love the specialization idea.  My only complaint is that there aren't *more* of them!  It's really nice to be able to fine tune your empire on the fly through specializing in one variant of tech over another.

Tech Victory

  • It really would be nice if the Ascension Gate (?) final building necessary for the Tech victory were a separate structure that needed to be built rather than just an extension of the research building tree.

 

Resources

  • Can we please make the resources more critical earlier in the game?  I feel like there ought to be a serious resource rush almost as much as there is a colony rush so that a lack of nearby planets can be off-set by an overabundance of resources.  Again, unique trade goods or tech advancement being dependent on resources makes empires a bit more ornery about the whole thing and leads to more interesting diplomatic situations.  

 

I think that's all for now.  If I think of anything else, I'll be sure to post.  All in all, though, awesome game and I look forward to the next round of Beta.

6,248 views 15 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

A "newly conquered planet" influence penalty that gradually fades away would fix the culture flipping domino effect.

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

As far as tech victory, I always thought that instead of researching a specific line of techs, it should just be an overwhelming number of techs or points more than anyone else. I just thought a tech tree was no fun next to a larger number of techs.

Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top
[quote who="iboto1"]
  • 1. ... text doesn't fit properly ...
  • 2. [Influence] ... steal five planets ... and take *no* diplomatic penalty whatsoever.
  • 3. The age system seems a bit contrived.  ... It seems somewhat arbitrary.  Perhaps some level of interdependencies between techs ...
  • 4. Can we please make the resources more critical earlier in the game?
[/quote]

Thanks for the fresh eyes!  Some of these issues have a bit of history, as Stardock navigates toward a solution.

1.  Known font problem.  This is at least iteration 2 (or 3?) of a new DX11(?) font that fixes some prior issues on some graphics cards.  Obviously, it's not perfect yet (but it's better than it was, when the popups were totally blank for some players).  It's on their list, and will surely be fixed.

2.  Placeholder AI.  The influence-flipping mechanism works :)  Diplomacy everything is basically in place, but untuned, with no brain.  It'll come later.

3.  The Age system is (as far as it's been explained/hinted to us, e.g. in dev stream comments) a compromise between being playable, fun, and feasible for their AI.  The obvious goal was to prevent beelining to Planetary Invasion (which I guess was the uber-strategy that solved GC2).  They know it's a bit of a wet rag for the player, but a strong AI is hard enough to devise even with this simplified mechanism.  The "obvious" alternative of a tech graph with many branches and multiple criss-crossing prerequisites might be exponentially harder for an AI to think through (or for the AI developers to code, which is also a relevant cost consideration).

Stardock also sees Ages as a nice scaffold for racial differentiation.  The way you encode a racial affinity for a tech branch is by pooching all techs in that branch leftward into the earlier Ages.  If the default is that tech level 5 = Age of Expansion in every tech, then you can slide the level 6 techs into AoE to imply a bonus, or push level 5 into AoW to imply a penalty.  The player of that race can choose to go for those higher tech levels earlier than other races.

Anyways, they know it's an issue (but it's useful to remind them every now and then, especially with fresh eyeballs).  It's rather deeply tied into the entire design, tho, so there are no easy rip-and-replace solutions.

4.  Placeholder resources :)  You're basically correct, and dev stream comments have acknowledged this issue.  It's one of the Major(?) Design Features that are still open.  Expect a big change in Beta 4+1 or so, when they tune everything.

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting leiavoia, reply 1

A "newly conquered planet" influence penalty that gradually fades away would fix the culture flipping domino effect.
End of leiavoia's quote

This would help a lot and is not far removed from existing solutions in other games.  My only addition would be that either the penalty needs to be really heavy for former civ capitals or civ capitals shouldn't provide influence bonuses to non-native empires that hold the planet.

 

Regarding Gilmoy, thanks for the reply.  I didn't realize that the Diplomacy AI was still being actively worked on.  I had some other thoughts on Diplomacy but I'll hold on to those until I see what comes out in the next Betas.  And I do understand about the resource cost to make the tech tree more complex.  The thing with the Ages is much less of an issue for me than how OP I could make Influence if the diplomatic AI doesn't stop me.  It's more of a minor annoyance.  That said, the idea of how that could fold into penalties and bonuses is actually really cool and helps to off-set some of my concern about that.

Finally, I'm glad to hear that there's still more to come on the resources front.  I look forward to that.

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I hope this time around they eliminate planet trading from the ai. I like that the ai  wasn't a diplomatic pushover in twilight except the ai trading away important stuff like Hyperion shrinker planets. Technological or economic capitals. Don't trade away survey ships unless you have the technology to build more. Don't trade away your resourses. 

Reply #7 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

It's cheesy you don't have to play the game as hard. That is my opinion. I notice the ai  didn't care what planets they traded either even if it meant trading away their empire, and becoming pirates. 

Reply #8 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting admiralWillyWilber, reply 5

I hope this time around they eliminate planet trading from the ai.
End of admiralWillyWilber's quote

I think the solution should be to make sure the AI correctly values planets rather than eliminating it entirely. Another solution that can be interesting is that planets can only be traded in a deal that ends a war.

 

The ages have been controversial since they were implemented. I personally like them and think that it is possible that it is actually more of a presentation issue than a mechanics issue. Seeing that tree go forward with that arbitrary wall blocking your path is frustrating.

Reply #9 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

What exactly does the ages do mechanically?

 

All they seem to me is fluff, but obviously they have some kind of effect I just haven't noticed?

Reply #10 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Ages prevent beelining.

There are other mechanisms that could also do it, but they're also tougher for the AI to handle.  It's a compromise.

Reply #11 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

<weird double post?  Forums Went Boom?>

Reply #12 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

It would help slow down how much more advanced you will be.

What are the other options.

Reply #13 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

How do they prevent drilling past an age?

While I haven't drilled a single tree yet in any of my games. I have come close to it.  And I didn't notice anything that stopped me from picking a tech across the age of war line.

Reply #14 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

You can beeline up to an Age boundary, but then you must research something else until you actually finish the previous age.  In Beta 3 and earlier, it takes 22 AoE techs to enter AoW.  You can beeline the 3 techs along the way to Planetary Invasion, but then you must research 19 others elsewhere in AoE before you can actually take PI in Age of War.

Other tech-braking mechanisms include:

  • Multiple prerequisite techs, creating a complex web or graph.  (Civ and FE:LH do this)
  • Penalties (increasing?) for outpacing your average tech level.
Reply #15 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

At firs i really hated the use of ages as i continually bumped into road block in my games.  However the more i played the i warmed up to the concept.   It forces a wide as tall thought process.  You can still 'kinda' rush a tech (like p invasion) by concentrating your research on the first & second level technologies (cheapest).  This will not be the smartest wide tech base but it will minimize the turns to the tech your bee-lining to. ... at least for now with the simplistic "age equation" where it is simply counting discrete tech's and not research points.