Galactic Civilizations III - v1.3 Changelog

shaw

Join Date 07/2015

+96

Galactic Civilizations III - v1.3 Changelog

v1.3 Changelog

***Released***

Overview

We are addressing issues with micromanagement of your growing empire. Here are some of the improvements we're providing:

Planetary Governors Choose Governors to rule planets in your place, freeing you focus on grander strategic goals. These Governors decide what Planetary Improvements to build.
Improved Ship and Fleet management We've introduced numerous UI enhancements to help manage large numbers of ships and fleets in your empire.
Improved Ship Destination Interface A newly redesigned Ship Destination Interface will help you organize the movement of large fleets across the galaxy.

Please note that some of following changes are only enabled if you begin a new game.

Full Patch Notes

Visual / Audio Improvements

Added new background music track
Added new news robot animations
Added orbit and follow cameras to the Battle Viewer

Micromanagement Improvements

Governors

Governors build Colony Improvements for you. To choose a Governor, first research "Interstellar Governance". Then choose a Colony and press the "Manage" button. A list of available Governors appears on the right-hand side of the window.
You may remove a Governor and take back control of a Colony at any time.

The Colony Window now allows you to sort the Colonies based on Name, Manufacturing, Research, Wealth, Population, Influence, and Approval.
Ships are now grouped into Fleets under the "Ships" tab instead of being listed out individually. You can expand the Fleets to inspect individual ships within each Fleet stack.
Added a "Fleets" category to the Governs > Commands window. This allows you to redirect large groups of ships all at once.
Redesigned the Ship Destination window to add tabs for each destination type and included a minimap.
Shipyard and Starbases now have their own tabs to Main Game Window

Balance

Lowered the cost of larger hulls slightly
Fleets are more likely to dogpile on desirable targets.
Fleets will be less timid when picking targets.
Added a Game Settings option to disable the AI surrendering.
AI should build more Economic Starbases
Increased turn lifetime of strategies that were 5 turns to 10 turns
Eliminated the free stuff bonuses gifted AI was receiving due to improved overall AI improvements
Removed the free techs and free ideology points from Genius AI due to improved AI behavior generally
Made Incredible difficulty level get more goodies for those who want to be punished
Made Godlike AI difficulty get more goodies to punish the crazies
AI only updates tax policy fully when a new AI strategy is chosen (instead of every turn)
AI is more likely to use colony ships to explore unknown stars in the hopes of finding a planet
AI gradually adjusts its spending ratios per turn rather than trying to do it all in one turn to give time for other civilization-wide measures to have a chance.
Fixed bug that caused the AI to min and max its spending every other turn under certain AI strategies
AI puts more effort into keeping its people happier
AI does better dealing with ship maintenance and its effect on its economy
Planet project production is now capped at 100% now.
Changed all Planetary Projects to 5% from 10%
Removed Ultra Transformer improvement.
Remove all techs that give adjacency bonuses.

Bug Fixes

Fixed bug that caused the graphs to appear corrupted
Fixed broken progress bars for shipyards in colony screen

Fixed missing ship image and ship name in the upgrade window.

Game checks to see if Steam is online before allowing the user to register.

AI will now pursue more specialized/expensive techs than rather than always going for the cheaper tech.
If the network connection is slow, the game will no longer crash when trying to access the Hall of Fame.

Fix to a bug where AI would sometimes see a planet that was outside its vision if it was close enough to another planet
Fix to a bug (LONG overflow) that could cause the AI to not expand as quickly as it should
Fixed bug that caused the AI to sometimes zero out its research when it felt economically weak
The Colony Manufacturing and Influence sort buttons now sort the colony lists correctly
Increased turn lifetime of strategies from 5 turns to 10 turns

Adding fix to the slider code where the sliders would sometimes go negative.
Improved general stability of games with large numbers of AI players
Fixed a crash when assigning teams in games with a large number of AI opponents
Fixed a crash when checking and unchecking the "add random opponents" repeatedly.
Fixed a crash that would happen if you deleted a custom race and then immediately started a new game.
Fixed a crash for restoring multiplayer games
Resources at the top of the screen are no longer being trimmed
The tech tree specialization nodes were using the wrong square background.
Addressed a UI problem where some drop down lists were appearing behind buttons
Fixed minor text layout problem with Starbase Context Window
Fixed a number overflow problem with improvements with 0 manufacturing cost.
Updated appearance icons for custom races. Removed some duplicate entries and updated colors for others.
Spaces are no longer allowed for save filenames where space was the only character.
Removed the white streaks in the Iconian faction leader movie when choosing it as your custom faction foreground movie.
Fixing a minor issue with the Terran colony and Terran constructor ships where hyperdrive modules weren't appearing on both sides
Removed the yellow hex ring around the Approval Relic
Planetary defending fleets with zero attack power are no longer invulnerable to attack.
Set the default AI difficulties to Normal instead of Easy
Mega Events are now disabled in the Campaign and the Tutorial.
Tutorial and Campaign will no longer hang when loading if mods are enabled
Added a diplomacy modifier that calls out other races as warmongers when they declare war too often.
Changed the game so anyone with a transport can invade with conventional warfare if you don't have the tech yet. This solves a problem where a player who unlocked the "Malevolent - Dangerous " Ideology, received a transport, but couldn't use it to invade a planet because they hadn't researched the invasion tech.
When fleets merge they now attempt to take on whatever move directive is currently issued from the incoming fleet.
If an AI leader is busy with another player, it won't make a trade offer to a second player.
Fixed Fog of War bug where objects in a row that goes from visible to exposed were not hidden.
Added a Browse button to the Custom Faction Choose Picture Screen that will open an Explorer window directly to the location for copying images.
Map Editor: fixed problems with the preview thumbnails
Map Editor: Do longer allow players to set a "recommended players" count of more than 100 when saving their map
Loading a custom map screen now displays the selected map's size.
Fixed a crash that occurred when the map editor tried to access DLC ships.

Fixed a problem with that would cause planet icon tooltips to break and show invalid data

Fixed a couple game-within-game lobby crashes
Fix an issue where "Unlikable" trait causes you to actually be liked.
Address a problem with uploading custom factions to Steam.
Fixed a crash when moving a fleet into shipyard at the end of turn

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jdblue82

Quoting BuckGodot,

reply 75

Quoting Walhallawalhalla,

reply 74

No answer to my question i guess. And here comes another game I will play maybe with mods. great.

*checks question*

As of 1.3 opt-in 2, the Planetary Wheel is available at the very beginning of the game.

Enjoy it while it lasts.

ty for the info. Still kinda unsure if I want to start another MP game, would like to know what the plans are before doing as in our group we r all micromanagement freaks .

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1.3 is live now I guess? I just got a download.

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Avatar137

Join Date 06/2004

+48

Quoting Ralle2,

reply 77

1.3 is live now I guess? I just got a download.

Yes, it would appear so.

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Has AI fog of war cheat been fixed yet?

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Quoting cstorvold,

reply 79

Has AI fog of war cheat been fixed yet?

No.

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Ryat

Join Date 06/2006

+429

Quoting cstorvold,

reply 79

Has AI fog of war cheat been fixed yet?

Fix to a bug where AI would sometimes see a planet that was outside its vision if it was close enough to another planet

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The old interface was better for ship control. It made it clear who was in a station and who was moving. I have over a hundred ships many of whom are in dock waiting for a war to be called up and fight. With your changes to the interface I cannot tell which ones they are without clicking on them one by one. I micro manage the routes my active ships take so they don't walk into an ambush. Before I could ignore the "stationed" ones until they were needed. Now I can't tell who they are at a glance. With a large fleet it is too time consuming. Either go back to the old interface for ships or have the computer stop movement when an enemy is sighted. Space Empires 4 does it that way so you don't blindly have your colonizer park next to a pirate. Thank you (it was not broken but you fixed it till it was) --Kjas Long

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Quoting Ryat,

reply 81

Quoting cstorvold,

reply 79

Has AI fog of war cheat been fixed yet?

Fix to a bug where AI would sometimes see a planet that was outside its vision if it was close enough to another planet

not what I thought. The AI can still see everything on the map, knowing where are the resources and planets to colonize without the need to explore them first.

Yet, somehow, it seems blind to the fact that there are ennemy ships and bases right in front of him.

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2411

No. AI can't see everything on the map. It's one of the reasons it's required so much effort to get them to expand well.

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 84

No. AI can't see everything on the map. It's one of the reasons it's required so much effort to get them to expand well.

I am pretty sure I have definite proofs, over&over again that the AI sees everything on the map. In all my games since 1.3beta, my neighbours travel huge distance to gather relics and colonize planets they haven't discovered yet. Once or twice could be luck, but so often, so many times per games? Nah.

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You should document it in some way. Screenshots or a video or something.

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Quoting RKade8583,

reply 86

You should document it in some way. Screenshots or a video or something.

I've already done it once, with screenshots, save games, locations. I'll do it again.

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2411

Quoting redviper37,

reply 85

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 84

No. AI can't see everything on the map. It's one of the reasons it's required so much effort to get them to expand well.

I will submit another report then, because from the beginning, the AI knows exactly where are the best planets to colonize and where are the important resources&relices to mine. I have recorded another set a of games that I will submit, but I have already submitted information about it in my support ticket about AI behavior #XBM-948-27889.

I am pretty sure I have definite proofs, over&over again that the AI sees everything on the map. In all my games since 1.3beta, my neighbours travel huge distance to gather relics and colonize planets they haven't discovered yet. Once or twice could be luck, but so often, so many times per games? Nah.

Are you unhiding the FOW to do this test? Because if you eliminate FOW, then everyone can pretty much see everything.

Since I personally coded the fixes for this, I know, for a fact, 100% that they do not see everything. Now, on higher difficulty levels, I unhide FOW for them but at that stage, it's fair game imo.

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 88

Now, on higher difficulty levels, I unhide FOW for them but at that stage, it's fair game imo.

Genius AI, no option to remove FOW, I have it myself. I thought it was removed for Godlike only, and the level before that (incredible, I think, I keep forgetting the names)? I thought you removed cheating bonus from Genius, as it is only 2 levels above normal.

In my latest game, the Drengin and the Altarians, my closest neighbours knew exactly where to go. Drengin grabbed relics and mineral resources between me and the Altarians, far from their territory. Altarians colonized far away from its territory, and tracking the movement of the colony ship, it knew exactly where to go.

In previous games, I saw the same happenning constantly. Heck, I'm even wondering how can they reach such far away points so early in the game, without colonies or starbase to extend their range. I figured you gave the AI a bonus to their range?

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Exhibit 1:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4ppe64pcosczv37/omniscient%20ai.GC3Sav?dl=0

The Drengin built Starbase Tomomaru 1 right between me and the Altarians. They knew exactly where to go from the beginning and immediatly sent a constructor there.
They also have another hidden starbase right beside it, but we can see the influence.

I have yet to discover the territory of the Drengin at this point, but they are south-south-east of this position, in the next cluster group, following the empty space.

You can also see that the Planet Akarumei II is not visible for now, yet, the Altarian LS M9-2 is aiming directly for there, instead of colonizing the visible Ada III, wich happen to be less interesting (higher class but no bonus). That's no luck.

You can also look at the general spreading of the Altarian colonies. They quickly colonized the planets bordering my territory early in the game, without even having sent an explorer ship there. There's just no way they could build an explorer, explore enough to reveal the fog of war and aim colony ships over there while still colonizing the territory south of them. They immediatly knew where to go.

Exhibit 2:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4ppe64pcosczv37/omniscient%20ai.GC3Sav?dl=0

The second involves the Altarian colony Akarumei II. It's a follow up of the same 1st game, after the ALtarian colonized it, in case the first one gets stuck. There was an empty planet, visible from the moment the Altarians sent their colony ship, but they picked Akarumei II first because it was the best planet available in this sector, reserving Ada III for their current LS M9-4 colony ship.

I don't consider 'Genius' to be a very high difficulty, my main problem has been this AI behavior, the stuck game issue that leaves me unable to complete a game, and the AI weird behavior with its military fleets.

One particular thing of note: I set the Drengin and the Yor to be Allied at the beginning, and I allied myself with the Altarians.

EDIT:
ticket ID #ERF-569-22130

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 88

Since I personally coded the fixes for this, I know, for a fact, 100% that they do not see everything. Now, on higher difficulty levels, I unhide FOW for them but at that stage, it's fair game imo.

Just thought I`d pop in and say, this is really great if you`ve managed to program the AI to do this. Ai has always been one of the most important parts of any strategy game for me- And too often it`s neglected. I know doing a non-cheating AI isn`t easy, but I know it`s possible to do something approaching as non-cheating as possible!

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