–RELEASED 05/11/2015–
 

Galactic Civilizations III Beta 6.2 is now available. This patch makes enormous improvements to the AI and fixes the vast majority of the remaining crash reports we've been seeing. Since Friday, over 100 engineering hours have been put into finding and fixing the "black screen of doom" bug that was responsible for the bulk of the crashes players have experienced. Multiplayer is also rock-solid now thanks to a set of fixes in this patch.

Thanks for all your support!

Features

Added the Orphica Enclave minor faction to the game, the winner in the Design a Faction contest! This also adds a new (terrifying) model to the game that you can use to design your own custom factions.

Added the credits screen

Fixes

Fixed lots of crashes

Fixed "black screen of doom"

Fixed typos

Fixed a crash when you tried to go to the report screen for pirates

Star bases were not selectable on the diplomacy window (i bet you didn't even know that star bases showed up on the diplomacy window)

Fixed an issue where some ship model designs already had components attached

Fixed an issue where a players military power wasn't including stationed ships (this made for some wonky charts, but more importantly was hurting the AI who makes decisions based on military power)

Fixed an issue where particles from the prior battle flash when starting a new battle

Fixed an issue keeping star bases form showing the selection cursor when selected

Fixed a scrolling issue on the U.P. details screen

Fixed an issue that could cause edge scrolling to go the wrong direction

Fixed the broken hp slider in battle viewer

Fixed an issue causing the ship speed slider to always show in the top-left corner

Selecting an opponents ship will allow you to speak to that player or see a report on them

Fixed a crash invading planets

Fixed a crash razing a colony

Fixed multiplayer desyncs

Fixed a crash that can occur when loading a save game (a few of these, thanks for the saves!)

Fixed a stuck turn issue if the player saved after hitting end turn, but before the end turn actions had resolved

Fixed a stuck turn issue when attacking pirates

Fixed an issue that if you press Escape on the invasion screen the game goes to a black screen you can never escape from

Fixed an issue where if you are designing ships in game within a game the lights don't work

Fixed an issue where the resource and relics display area in the main game window may not size correctly

Fixed the missing improvement icon for planetary defense dome

Fixed a Tutorial issue where colonizing Precipice didn't clear the objective or the waypoint

Fixed a crash when using a mod that includes custom ships

Fixed the tooltip on map sizes o correctly state limits and memory requirements

Fixed a crash when clicking a command on a fleet of constructors

Fixed a bunch of stuck turn issues if you got simotaneous invasion, colonization and/or battle window popups at the same time

Fixed an issue where starting a new game would use the same seed (ie: you would get the same map)

Fixed a crash when attacking a ship without weapons

Fixed bugs accessing player classes that caused crashes

Fixed an issue keeping you from watching battles of AI players on the main map

Fixed an issue keeping the planets form showing as selected on the diplomacy window

Fixed an issue keeping selected ships/star bases/planets or ship yards from showing as selected on the strategic map

Fixed an issue causing the rebellion icon to stick around even after a planet stopped rebelling

Fixed an issue causing the ship yard and star base stats to not be shown in the confirm battle window (surprise there are a bunch of missiles heading toward you that you weren't expecting!)

Fixed Helios Ore (the bonus wasn't being applied)

Fixed an issue with improvements that modify ships built in shipyards they sponsor (fixed Hyperion Sensor System, Hyperion Logistics Farm, Hyperion Supply System and Hyperion Shipyard)

Fixed an adjacency problem on the Fighting Pits

Social Matrix now correctly gives a Research bonus instead of a manufacturing bonus twice (my archenemy copy/paste gets me again!)

Fixed the Farmers trait

Fixed several improvements that weren't correctly giving their food bonus

Fixed Diplomacy screen crashes

Fixed bug where custom ships were checking if ANY race could build it, not just the local player

Fixed even more mp crashes and desyncs

Fixed a crash that could occur when the AI surrenders

Fixed an issue where you could see multiple entries in the planet build list (most commonly seen with Cultural Festival)

Fixed an issue where the Information Warfare invasion type was being given out by the wrong tech

Fixed an issue where the Approval Relic wasn't showing its bonuses

Added other draw manager nodes to size calculation to prevent pool from casting a larger type than its nodes account for. (no, I don't know what this means either)

Fixed an MP crash when entering the lobby

Fixed the Research Matrix tech not unlocking the improvements and star base modules for Iconian, Iridium, Krynn and ThalanTechDefs.xml

Fixed the Hyperion Matrix unlock

Fixed the Universal Soil Adapter unlock

Fixed an issue where all players in a MP game would see the "You cannot Survey" message when anyone tried to explore an anomolly with a non-survey ship

Fixed an issue you could get a "Flavor Text Not Found" when the AI noticed you were readying yourself for war

Fixed an issue keeping colonization events from happening in MP games

Fixed an issue where you would see a black background on the united planets if you played with a custom faction with a non-video background

Fixed the Brutal +2 trait (it wasn't applying its bonus)

Fixed an issue causing Toxic worlds to be unlock by Radiation Mastery and vise versa

Fixed the Slaughtertorium improvement

Fixed the Skilled Ideology trait 

Balance

Changed planetary projects to be % bonuses instead of flats. For example the project that produced credits used to give a credit per 4 production, now it gives a percentage boost to how many credits that planet produces (so you are better off producing research on research focused planets, etc)

Reduced the large empire approval penalty

Removed starbase maintenance form modules

Increased starting trade routes

Lowered the max trade routes

Durantium Refinery provides +3 (instead of +2) bonus to surrounding factories

Thulium Data Archive does +3 instead of +2 bonus to adjacent research tiles

Changed costs from 151 to 150 because I'm anal retentive (this is from Brad)

Rebalance of the mass driver weapons to make them competitive with the others

Missile cooldown increased from 7 to 8

Kinetic cooldown increased from 3 to 4

Yor population cap lowered from 16 to 12 by default

Decreased the default resistance of planets slightly

Unhappiness now has greater resistance

Ongoing Research, Cultural Festival, and birthing subdsidides, etc. now convert 10% instead of 5% of manufacturing to the goal

Carriers are now classified as capital ships instead of assault ships

Replaced the Curious ideology trait with a Loyal ideology trait

AI

Improved logic for when the AI keeps ships as planet defenders or ejects them to go chase down threats

If the sponsor is under threat, the AI will rush build (or try to if it can)

AI will reduce the weight priority of a ship project to build based on the number of turns it will take to build that ship

AI will tend to focus only on its primary opponents and is less likely to go after "that guy" (reduces spreading himself thin)

Rewrote the surrender code

AI much more likely to surrender if it is basically out of the game.

AI can now try to bribe other AI's to declare war on players

Lots of new checks to make sure the AI behaves as you would expect based on their relations with you and each other

AI checks relatiosn before trading with each other (no more tech trading with people they don't like)

Eliminated the use of the wealthslider setting in AIdefs in determining balanced budgets. Balanced budget request to AI supercedes its wealth slider preference (translation: the AI now has logic to control its spending and won't be constrained by the xml guidance values if it needs to do something extreme)

Shared borders is no longer a negative issue if they have an open borders treaty

AI won't suggest a player attack another player if that player is stronger militarily

If the AI is losing a war it will build ships even though it might go beyond the maint' cap

AI more prone to building scouts to explore early on

AI greatly reduces freighter building priority if it is losing a war

At higher difficulty levels the AI is more likely to aggressively rush build

AI determines how many ships it should have in orbit based on how good the planet is (instead of caring about the logistics)

Reduced the number of ships a planet thinks it needs in order to feel defended

Reduced some of the bonuses the gifted AI gets

Gave a range bonus to the higher difficulty levels

Rebalanced the defense importance modifications (how important a given object is to the AI)

Increased the valuation the AI gives to building assault shiups

AI takes into account the cost of a ship when deciding whether to build it

AI keeps track of enemy faction power

AI is made aware if it is starving its military of funding

AI is much less likely to defend starbases and shipyards with new units than preivously

Modified the rate at which the AI starts diplomacy with the player

AI is more sensitive to military buildups by players

AI doesn't demand tribute or tech unless it has a stronger military

AI now decommissions shipyards that it isn't sponsoring anymore (most likely because it lost the planet that was sponsoring it)

AI less sensitive to maint costs on units (will build larger fleets and raise its taxes)

AI strategies take more into account if they're at war

General balance improvement to AI economics

General improvement to AI logistics handling

AI is less likely to reinforce starbases with units

AI more sensitive to trading lots of techs at once

Easy target threshold is now 1.5X instead of 2.0X

Rebalanced the open borders trade treaty value and when it'll be offered

Rewrote my buggy BribeOtherAI() function

Open borders treaty takes a lot more into account to determine its value

AI much better at reinforcing threatened planets

Fixed bug that caused the AI to value attacking a unit simply because they were close

AI more sensitive to not attacking fleets that are substantially stronger

Rebalanced the threat to planets based on the actual combat rating of units rather than a defined value

AI much MUCH smarter about what to research

AI is conscious of ship hull sizes at a technology goal

AI won't trade with civs it hasn't met (oops)

Opposing culture matters more over the course of the game

AI looks at military power instead of faction power for deciding whether a player is military weak

AI attackers will no longer attack stuff that is too strong for it

AI attacks will now ignore shipyards and starbases unless it's much stronger than it

AI defenders will now account for all the defenders when figuring out how to distribute the defenders

Defenders take distance into consideration when deciding which planet to reinforce

AI does a better job of using all available tiles on its planets

Updated AI strategies

Made a series of AI ships based on data from early access (using their designs against players)

Fix to AI in which the colony ship itself knows where the planets are

Trading with other players weight increased

AI strategies greatly improved for using the spending sliders

Drengin now Paranoid instead of religious zelaots

Drengin now unwavering instead of unrelenting

Krynn are now religious zelaots instead of Patriotoic

AI builds more scouts on larger maps

AI more likely to build defenders if it is feeling threatened

AI less likely to build transports if it is being crushed miltiarily

AI will try to build larger ships if it is trying to catch up militarily

AI better at jumpstarting new planet economies (with improvements()

Fixed bug that causd Yor not to increase their population readily

AI smarter in handling when and how to build a shipyard in a new star system

Fixed bug that caused AI to not get medium hull ships when it should have

AI will avoid declaring war on someone if they are already about to declare war on their primary opponent

Fixed bug that caused AI to not target starbases and planets when it should

UI

You can no longer cycle through all fleets if you are looking at another players ship

Shipyard no remembers the last tab you were on

We now grey out improvements you cant build because you don't have the resource they require

On the diplomacy screen the animated movie of the leader is now adjusted based on their mood towards you

Diplomacy screen filters friendlier aliens closer to you

Added the number of defending ships to the shipyard tooltip

Performance

Improved framerate performance when you are zoomed way out on large maps

Memory leak fixes (these are technically fixes, but the real impact is that the game uses less memory over time)

Fixed leaking starbox in battle viewer
Fixed leaking shipyard and starbase nodes in battle viewer
Fixed leaking node in battle when getting bound boxes
Fixed leaking node in battle viewer when positioning the fleets
Fixed leaking ship node in battle viewer when creating ship nodes
Fixed leaking nodes in battle viewer when removing nodes from the scene
Fixed leaking nodes in battle viewer when selecting/deselecting a ship node with the mouse
Fixed leaking node in battle viewer when target and untarget ship message is processed
Fixed leaking node in battle viewer when creating the FX sequence
Fixed leaking node in battle viewer when resetting the damage fx on a ship
Fixed leaking node in fleet details when framing the camera
Fixed leaking node in fleet details when getting the bound box
Fixed leaking node in fleet details when centering ships and shifting them
Fixed leaking node in fleet details when cleaning up nodes
Fixed leaking node in invasion viewer when resetting damage fx
Fixed leaking nodes when playing a main map battle
Fixed leaking node in shipyard when showing hidden components
Fixed leaking nodes when unhiding star graphics
Fixed leaking node when clearing ship FX
Fixed leaking node when getting battle bounds for camera
Fixed leaking node when ship battle controllers are initialized
Fixed leaking node when ship battle position data is initialized
Fixed leaking beam nodes in battle animations
Fixed leaking trail emitter nodes when pausing and unpausing the battle scene
Fixed leaking weapon projectile nodes
Fixed leaking nodes in CFXSourceObject fx elements
Fixed leaking nodes in CFXTargetObject fx elements
Fixed leaking node in battle viewer update damage runnable element
Fixed leaking nodes in CSceneDescription::CalcOrientationFromSourceToTarget
Fixed leaking nodes in creating death animation for ships
Fixed leaking node in battle camera node
Fixed leaking nodes when cleaning up fleet gfx
Fixed leaking trail node in CSceneNodeUtil::CreateTrailEmitterNode
Fixed leaking starbox in battle view window
Fixed leaking nodes in DXSAS object view windows