It's definitely a twist from GC2.  Thus far I don't think that it's good or bad per se.  Just different.

I think I'll need to play GC3 a bunch before deciding good/bad.  But honestly I'm not all that opinionated on it.  Generally I find hard choices to tend to make the game fuller and each instance unique.  Most of the time I haven't found myself caring all that much which specialization to choose because it's either obvious (I'm focusing on X, so I choose X) or spurrious and I'm just trying to get to the next step in the tree.

There's another post where everyone claims to hate having to choose, so apparently people don't like it or something, but it really does take the tedium out of having to research crap that you don't want.  A lot of them seem to be situational buffs, which are nice (I'm continually having morale problems and here's a juicy 20% empire wide morale boost at a low cost, for example (for all you haters out there, the cost is a low direct cost but the full cost is higher because there's an opportunity cost of giving up the other 2 things you could have specialized in -- that's where the leverage of choosing comes in - it makes it a much higher all-or-nothing trade-up  -- the ability to double down on one thing and forego the other produces a lot of leverage and a lot of risk -- this is why the choice is interesting)).

Just my take, I only have a handful of hours in on beta6 though, many others have played a whole lot more than I have.

cheers

Quoting JorgenCAB,

reply 5

Having certain tech excluded and forcing you to make choices and games somewhat different every time you play is a good thing.

 

I just wish you could not trade the techs to get them all...

Can't you disable tech trade now?

Yep, love it, you have to make tough choices which can have significant consequences on your future empire.

Not that it doesn't need some tweeking and balancing, but this is definitely the right direction for the game. Though I fully understand those who want it all and to research everything and build everything, and I'm sure there will be mods that let them do that to their heart's content.

For to have true relevance it needs to be that you cannot trade them or receive them as gifts from other factions, that just makes it only slightly more difficult. I built dreadnoughts that have all possible tech combinations, I traded with the Yor and Dregin who had the other specializations I was missing 

I think the decision to limit the specializations is great personally, a vocal minority are broadcasting lots of hate about this decision but as far as I'm concerned it's great for the following reasons;

1) Forcing the player to make a decision adds another strategic choice to the game, always good in a strategy game.

2) It is great for modders as it enriches the possibilities for custom tech trees.

3) It can be modded out by editing the tech trees to make the current specializations normal techs instead, and no doubt someone who doesn't like this decision will quickly make such a mod available, pleasing those that don't like this.

One of the main objections I've heard is that this reduces the amount of tech there is to research, and they don't feel there are enough, to that I say the answer is to add more techs as they no doubt will with the spying expansion and others. Modders can also extend the tech trees if they want to.

So yes I think this was a great decision.

I like it, but there was a discussion around boosting the power since they ar now exclusive.  I feel there is, in most cases, a single correct choice and the other two fall by the wayside.

I don't think it's bad, I think like for many ideas they've implemented in the game, they're just throwing it in the pot without wondering if it will integrate well with the rest of the game, or how to make it work well with the rest of the game. 2 weeks before release.

For instance, if you trade a specialization tech before researching one, you can't research another. But if you do it the other way around, you get both... this is the sort of thing that needs to be cleaned up when integrating a new design choice.

Like it.  Love it.  Want more of it.

I checked before trading for this reason, which is a bit cumbersome but okay IMO. It would be nice if for specializations there was an additional section on the bottom of the tech trade tooltip saying something like "The other specializations in this tech are X (not researched) and Y (researched)"...

I get the sense based on some changes that this is a work in progress and that more balance-changes are on the way here. I do feel that this should be implemented before release (since a big change to this after release might be too little too late for newbies) and I hope that is the plan.

I really like the idea of exclusive specialization (something I advocated/hoped for at the beginning along with exclusive ideology choices...)