Turn 197 with 184 colonies. 3 crashes to desktop in last 20 turns (trouble ticket submitted), but only 3. Had to reduce graphics to Low after first crash. Performance is lagging ("jumpy" movement on main screen). Game is now using 6.7 GB of RAM according to Task Manager. I still have 5.6 GB RAM available on my machine.
Some new bugs I've never seen.
Save game bug: When I save a game, a "~" appears before the save file name. These games cannot be loaded. If I delete the "~" save name twice, the regular save name appears. Wonky.
Shield symbol over starbase when no ships present: I am seeing this on several starbases but not all of them.
Next "bug" has no image attached. My approval tanked at 174 colonies, dropping to 20% empire-wide. Then, I built the Entertainment Capital on my homeworld and my empire approval jumped to 83%. Seems like a major shift for just a 25% approval bonus. At 184 colonies, it stands at 82%.
Have met all but three major races and all but one minor race (to give an idea of insane map play). UP just met for first time. Average turn takes between 10-15 minutes not including ship design or diplomacy. No major fighting yet (just pirates and one war that never saw a battle). The other major players have 92, 87, 66, 56, 51, 50, and 38 colonies. I have completed all of the Benevolent Ideology tree, about 1/3 of the Pragmatic, and about half of Malevolent. I am about in the middle of the Age of Ascension tech bar.
Really love the feature of setting shipyard production to repeat. Believe it or not, that saves a lot of time when you have 184 colonies.
I'm loving the game, but I don't think the game would be playable to its conclusion on an insane map right now given the performance and stability issues.
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Playing on Insane Map (I love big maps and I cannot lie) with all major races, all minor races, and two custom major races (including a Snathi Major); everything set to abundant (to see if the game can be broken); playing as Terrans; Spiral galaxy; and, difficulty set to Challenging.
By Turn 150:
I've only met 4 major races and 2 minors, if that's any indication of how the game on an insane map will play. I have 68 colonies. Of the races I've met, the closest major race to me in number of colonies has 38.
Have had two crashes to desktop (trouble tickets submitted), both either opening or in the diplomacy screen.
Had a black screen after selecting population size on a colony ship which required closing the game in Task Manager, but that left no files for a trouble ticket. Black screen has not repeated. (I did turn off auto-saves after the black screen.)
Could not colonize barren worlds even after researching Extreme Colonization and Barren World Mastery. When hovering over a barren world, the popup says in red “Requires Extreme Colonization.” Aquatic and frozen worlds work fine. Even after researching Atmospheric Cleansing, no difference. Can't colonize barren worlds.
Ship movements are jerky, not smooth; really noticeable when ship movement is 10+. Tried turning off Lean maps but made no difference.
In my ship designs, I place engine parts (not actual engines) on the designs as thrusters for 6-axis movement (adds realism to design). However, engine trails in this build trail from ALL engine parts, which makes my custom ships have long, thick, many streamed engine trails.
The Artocarpus Viriles trade resource tile is empty.
Ideology points are better balanced now. Benevolent and Malevolent are better balanced. Still don’t know why anyone would want to do Pragmatic as their first or second choice. Benevolent improves early colonization (and is the first ideology I work on), and Malevolent boosts production, economy, and military. I really couldn’t care less about extra constructors, trade, mining, or diplomacy early in the game compared to the other ideologies.
A major power declared war on me but was out of range of my planets. After about 20 turns, I offered a Peace treaty, which was so valuable to the AI that it traded all of its techs to me. But later, when hovering over the AI in the Diplomacy "wheel," the relations popup claims I am paying tribute. I checked and cannot find any tribute I am paying.
Suggestion on Starbase Queuing: The current "Request Constructor" doesn't work well in game play. It only selects the nearest shipyard (I often use two or more to construct a single starbase), and it selects only the base model constructor, not a custom constructor I made. I would prefer having a tool where I can select "Sponsoring Shipyards" (just as shipyards have sponsoring planets) and then any constructor I build in a sponsoring shipyard will then go to the starbase. That way, I can select the constructor I want to use (and, yes, I often have multiple constructor designs (i.e. short range and cheap, long range and fast, etc.) depending on what starbase I am building).
Overall, having fun. The QA team did a good job considering only 2 crashes so far and no performance lag.
Well, still have lots more playing to do and will add more when I can.