I too agree.  I feel like I overpaid for this "game" by at least forty US American dollars.  This should have had a longer test period and polishing period.  Too much to correct on what should not be re-inventing the wheel.  There is GC2 to compare to is it not? 

As of the 1.02 patch, my game has been completely stable in both single and multiplayer. This includes using custom races with custom images, but no other changes to the game.

As for the initial post, while I tentatively agree the game could have used some more time in early access, I also feel like throwing it "to the wolves" was the fasted way to get it to a stable, balanced state. The progression from the first day of release, which was as crash-a-riffic, to now seems to back this.

Many of your negatives seem like personal preference more than expectations for standard quality. Speaking from the perspective of someone who played Galciv 2 and was teaching the game to two complete new comers to Gal Civ 3, the UI and interactions are very friendly and easy to manage. Players can easily move between idle ships and looking through everything is pretty straight forward and painless (the only exception being the multiplayer auto-upgrade bug which is annoying).

Managing Star Bases can get tedious, but the call constructor button helps with that. If they made that button Queue up a constructor of the players choosing, that would pretty much solve my problems with it right there.

The 64 bit requirement was actually something that intrigued me very much.  I've played Sins of a Solar Empire, and while it is a great game, it invariably starts to suffer late game as you get too many trade ships and everything else.

So far I think I've given up on one game in GalCiv 3 due to the speed/bugginess.

But I mean - as for crashes, I had a replicable crash in just the first tutorial mission on day 1.  no mods, etc.  It was not a good omen.

I'm glad some people aren't having problems with it.  I don't hate the game.  Even with all the frustrations listed, I keep coming back and playing it. 

Yes, a lot of my gripes are personal preference - but seriously, you couldn't have one guy spend a day looking through the xml for typos?

As for the preferences, that's why I'm posting this in the first place - to let Stardock know what issues I see from a playability standpoint.

I'm amazed as the enlightenment unfolding for the developers here. This is the 3rd installment of the Gal Civ series, and there are numerous issues uncovering every day on here that more than likely would have been id'd and quashed in beta testing if they has actual open beta instead of you pay us $100s to play the alpha and tell us what you love about our design which is so great. LOL. Of course the game review sites are all going to help promote it and of course your own promotion would make the product a best seller and why not coming off of the sales and street cred of Gal Civ 2s numerous great incarnations. More to the point though Gal Civ 3 has issues, and it has shallow implementation in many areas. 

I just don't feel it appropriate for developers to stifle discussions, especially those that might produce positive ideas and the feedback necessary to improve the product to the point players will want to recommend it. PC Gamers are pretty wise when it comes to learning from those in their group who will say get it or don't get it. Just because you have a solid brand, and Gal Civ does, and reviews calling it Great, doesn't mean you didn't ship a pile in a box. 

https://forums.galciv3.com/466542/page/3

Really sad because the game clearly needs more development. What the forums don't need are censorship and proper feedback. But then I guess the developers can outright shut anything down they deem unproductive, even if true. 

I guess the question is, do you want the developers to read the forums at all? Because I've pretty much checked out at this point.  

If Stardock weren't releasing significant updates each week, I think you'd have a good case.  But that isn't the case.  

The basic problem with your argument is that you seem to passionately want Stardock to acknowledge that the game has some sort of fundamental problem.  We know what % of people playing the game have a CTD (because the game doesn't end with a WM_QUIT which we track) and it's a tiny %.  When you have tens of thousands of people playing the game and the game has serious problems for say 0.1% of them, you're going to get (justifabily) complaints. And those complaints need to be addressed quickly and professionally.

But that's not really the point here.  Your comment has more to do with what kind of forum community we're going to have here. 

At some point, the forum community has to decide whether they want developers in the forums. If they do, then some civility and courtesy would be helpful. If you want to treat developers as customer support people, then don't be surprised that they leave.  

I have to work on Sorcerer King for the next few weeks so I'll check back in when I have more time.  I won't be reading the responses.

What I'm saying is not how you attempt to frame it.

Furthermore I think if you can't handle the feedback from your customers on the forums maybe you need to take a break instead of suggesting I do that when I and others have some issues for you guys to work on with Gal Civ 3.  

I didn't say you need to acknowledge fundamental flaws, there is nothing game breaking really at this point. Let me say this again. No. Stardock does not need to admit a fundamental problem with Gal Civ 3 bceause there isn't one. If you can handle the turn stutters on larger maps, and who can't really? The game play is largely A-OK from a cpu systems standpoint. However no acknowledgement of the lack of polish is necessary as it is evident to anybody playing over the course of a few hours that the AI is incredibly deficient and that quite a bit of the game doesn't actually do what it is supposed to do. The simple fact is there isn't one fundamental problem there are many smaller polish and poorly done design problems. 

Over the course of a few days a player can see though that by how the AI acts stupidly, repeatedly telling the human player the same thing over and over, stupid AI diplomacy, which prevents interaction and design which prevents trades is war or shut up diplomacy really the hallmark of Gal Civ 3? Shallow space combat, one-shots? The king to late game starship development isn't finding balance it is load only weapons to be able to one shot first. What is that? Put only weapons on your ship nothing else? LOL weak, The combat viewer, how did that pass QA? I mean yes it shows combat, but it doesn't stay focused on anything, trying to drive the damn camera sucks too.  -Weak AI building on planets, I know its under review, in development, yada yada, but it isn't chessmaster 3000 either, you only have a dozen choices at the start and as you add techs it should become all about priority trees which once created should eliminate 10 farm planets should it not? So really that was a development that fell through the cracks, only instead of 8 races all 128 can do that now.  Poor strategic fleet groupings or lack thereof rather, and space micromanagement hell on larger maps, just how do you manage when you have 400 ships? This is all never mind the crashes which are largely fixed or in process. Memory management issues which I guess are par for the course on release but how about the features pulled from the previous incarnations without anything substantial to replace or embolden the new features? I do agree with the move to 64bit only but it appears that came at the expense of several other features from Gal Civ 2. 

It is a more refined game in the areas that saw full development. Clearly you can use more than 4GB or RAM playing, and it does have hex sectors super cool and the ship designer which you guys build in Gal Civ 2 is even better now.  But how it actually plays and how it feels while being played. -Huh You made the compare of MOO 1.0 and Gal Civ 3 1.0 and that MOO 1.0 probably wasn't as polished either, while it wasn't the bugs it had wouldn't be seen by most players or in most situations. Saying that the above listed things are only issues for 0.1% is laughable because everybody that played 1.0 experienced this or continues to experience it with 1.01 or 1.02.

We are patient, fix it. But please don't take offense because we find things that suck and need to be fixed. Was Elemental a cheap shot sure, but you have a jet man, what the hell do you care about a post like that really meanwhile the rest of us were talking about the reviews and how none of the reviewers seemed to think the AI repeatedly begging for money from every damn AI was an issue, or that the studders between turns were an issue, Or the fact the AI doesn't actually know how to legitimately compete against a human player was an issue because it is. Fifty shades of Gray is a best seller too but its not going to win the Pulitzer Prize. 

The problem is that most don't pay attention to the fact that the AI in this game is different from a lot of strategy AIs in the past. Thanks to new technologies developers can now see how most players (some will opt out of this option) play the game and can now modify the AI to learn and play better. Is the AI currently a bit stupid? Yes, but in the way a baby is stupid not in the way a fully grown mental deficient person is. Thus, this is why many of us hardcore players defend the way the game is as regards to the AI. IT. WILL. LEARN! (in a sense). Something that (that I am aware of) no other AI has done.

As to other issues. Some are preference and others are being worked on. Stardock has always taken care of its games. That's why I had no issues dropping $100 on this game before even the Alpha was released when I am very much anti-early access.

I can't stand how the AI knows exactly where all the habitable planets are from the get-go. Their colony ships b-line it for them without ever exploring there. Super lame.

Also, I could rant on and on about what a mess research is but how bout two simple, found in every 4x game things:

1) Display project costs in points (Maybe I only need to eek 1 more point from 1 planet to reduce the time by an entire turn but there's no way of knowing this!)

2)Queue Research (not sure how it made it past beta without this) If your'e lucky your excess points will go into the next tier project (which is rarely where you want it to go, usually you'd want to do several lateral projects before moving up an entire tier which takes much more research to complete)

Can't believe I'm the only one making noise about these issues.

You are correct.  It is much worse.  You have made it a point to interupt several threads with you strident complaints that do come off as saying the game is broken.  When you get confronted about the way you presented possibly valid complaints, you responded with even less courteous language.  Then you respond with commennts about personal preferences and you were trying to help and the world always misunderstands you.  The world understands you just fine.  You obviously know how to speak in literate gamer hyperbole, therefore you know how obnoxious and conversation killing it is.  Therefore I cannot see anyone in any business needing to be courteous to you in return.  Stardock has been much more courteous to you than you will ever deserve, and you will always see it as an attack. 

Anyway, whatever good things you had to say have gotten lost in the shrill noise generated.  That part is a shame, and it isn't Stardock's fault.  It is most obviously yours.

Just so you know how someone else would frame it.  Do what thou wilt.

You could but, 0.82 sucked in comparison.  This game is fun and exciting as it is.  Might there be things that can be improved, changed, or added; yes.  If you are still having major issues with crashing or freezing please submit a support ticket so it can be addressed.

https://esupport.stardock.com/index.php?/default_import/Knowledgebase/Article/View/496/161/general-galactic-civilizations-iii-troubleshooting

Now, I caught the negative bug as well, however, lets try to turn this conversation positive and provide "real" solutions to the issues that you may have with the game or get any actual issues your seeing fixed.

Erm, I am fairly sure that excess points are saved and automatically allocated to the next project you choose. Certainly that's how the devs have said it works, and how it seems to work in the (admittedly simple) tests I've done.

Dude, if you are not happy you should walk away and return after a few DLC/expansions. Your opinion about playing for an hour or two is just that (your opinion) and obviously is NOT shared by the thousands of players who are enjoying the game. The game was NOT rushed in fact it could have been released earlier.

I never once saw you in the developer streams. They are every Friday at noon. You are quick to complain about a product but have nothing to say about solutions. The game plays well and has been doing so for a while. If you are having crashes than your computer sucks, period. Many of the design features were actually chosen by the many hundreds of Elite Alphas when (we) were participating in the Developer streams. If you don't like a feature than I invite you to participate in the direction of DLC and expansions going forward. 

About the ai, you come off as some kind of gaming AI expert. Please post here, all the games upon vanilla release that has superior AI to this game.

The ai is far superior to ANY 4x game every released and yet you have the audacity to sound like you know better. So I will ask again, please post here a BETTER Ai that you found to YOUR liking in a 4x game upon its initial vanilla release.

My post sounds like I am making an attack on you, however I do not mean to. I am just tired of you coming here and stating that the game is terrible and should not have been released. You did not spend the past year Alpha and Beta testing so you really cant talk about how the game was developed. The features you dislike are the result of well over a year of thousands of us who said yea this is different and fun. Clearly your opinion is just that.