New version of GalCiv makes the AI more fiendish, bigger galaxies easier to manage and much more!
For those of you not familiar with Galactic Civilizations III a quick recap. GalCiv III is a game where you choose an interstellar civilization to lead in the 23rd century. One of these includes Earth in the year 2250. What sets it apart is the scale and modability of it. You can literally build up your own galaxy to play in. When people say it’s the ultimate sand box game, they mean it.
The game supports over a hundred different civilizations playing simultaneously on a vast scale all while starting out with just a home world. And there are already thousands of custom made civilizations and ships available to download right from within the game.
Solving the AI challenge in v1.4
As others have pointed out, space is big. It’s really…really big. It’s so big it’s as if it has some sort of inferiority complex about itself and it’s just screaming “Hey! You! Look how BIG I am!” So when writing a game that is part strategy game and part simulation, you have some unique challenges.
For example, how do you write a computer AI that provides a challenge to players without making it cheat like crazy? When GalCiv III shipped, the AI was “pretty good” but it didn’t take long for expert players to find ways to crush it.
So how did we solve it? Data mining.
We started looking at how these experts were playing the game. Sure, stalking YouTube players may seem wrong but then again, people openly posting their strategies are fair game right? And with GalCiv III being a 64-bit multi-core game, we can toss a lot of computing power at the problem. So we did.
No DLC for 1.4.
For those looking for a new DLC to go along with 1.4, I’m afraid there isn’t any this time. All our budget went into this free update. We hope you like it!
Lots of other stuff
The AI wasn’t the only thing we worked on of course. The multiplayer community of GalCiv III continues to grow and we’ve put in a lot of work to make that a much better experience since the game does lend itself to multi-day sessions of MP (though I wish more people would play the Arena maps but I digress).
Screenshots:
Nothing exciting, I just love the idea of starting in our home solar system.
Much better chicks to get information on your world.
Emphasize the production of a planet or turn it over to the AI to manage (with an all-new, written from scratch planetary governor AI)
The Ship designer remains one of the coolest features of GalCiv III. Remember: The AI will use your ship designs when you play against them. Also, these cool ship designs are available via Steam Workshop so you can import them into your game (or print them to your 3D printer).
Player designed ships leads to some interesting battles..(yes, that’s a space hair dryer)
Players can share their designs online for epic…Lonestar fun…
You can also zoom out to see your custom made galaxy fighting it out
Import alien races created by the community into your game for massive galaxy wide diplomacy, trade and warfare
The Full Change Log
Summary
The AI Strikes Back! The AI now does a much better job of building its planets and managing its economy. Player Governors are likewise better at building planets and the new Spending Foci allow you to manage planetary production.
AI
+ The AI does a much better job at building worlds
+ Added AI governors to better manage starbase construction
+ Improved budget management
+ Improved constructor movement logic
Governors
+ Player governors do a much better job of building planets
+ Added spending foci to the planetary screen. This allows players to shift their planetary production between manufacturing, research, or wealth.
+ Added a Balanced Governor type that builds worlds that are balanced between manufacturing, research, and wealth spending.
Change Log
AI Changes
+ AI creates specialized planets instead of generic worlds.
+ AI prioritizes building starbases around planets instead of strictly claiming resources.
+ If the AI determines that it is overspending and cannot support the fleet size, it will aggressively decommission ships. Older ships are decommissioned first.
+ Improved AI and Governor planetary project (e.g. Economic Stimulus, Cultural Festival, etc.) selection
+ After conquering a planet, AI will pick Governors based on the existing improvements.
+ AI now picks Governors based on planet bonuses.
+ AI now uses spending foci.
+ AI tech Governor now has a better tech order provided.
+ AI will no longer overbuild starbases and it only builds what it wants to build.
+ Add Governors for the AI to manage Starbases.
+Tweaked the AI War strategy to focus a bit more on Research.
+ Improved Constructor movement logic:
- Constructors will no longer get stuck in a logic loop when entering dangerous areas.
- Fixed weird edge cases regarding constructor building rings and resource capturing.
+ 10/27 Made the AI research weapons better by increasing the priority of all weapons types slightly to work better with tech governors.
+ 10/27 Added multiple new AI prototype blueprints and designs such that the AI is now much better at using Resources to kill you.
+ 10/27 AI ships now patrol their territory if they do not have a specific target.
+ 10/27 AI now use shipyards and planets as rally points.
+ 10/27 Adjusted levels at which the AI will start decommissioning ships
+ 10/27 Fixed a bug where the AI was being notified that a ship has stationed in a fleet when it wasn't.
+ 10/27 Weak ships will fall back to starbases.
+ 10/27 The AI will now prefer to build up transport fleets before building attack fleets. This will make AI invasion fleets stronger and invasions easier for the AI.
Governors
+ Added spending percentages to the manufacturing, research, and wealth tooltips. For the manufacturing tooltip, also added social and military percentage information. This help clarifies the effects of the new spending foci
+ Added spending focus to the planetary screen. This allows players shift their planetary production to manufacturing, research, or wealth. Choosing a focus diverts 25% of the planetary production to that area.
+ Added a "Direct Control" governor that allows players to manually place planetary improvements (similar to the old "remove governor" button)
+ Added a Balanced Governor that builds worlds that are balanced between manufacturing, research, and wealth spending.
Gameplay
+ Added new Military Subsidies Planetary project that funnels excess social manufacturing production into a sponsored shipyard.
+ Created new Moral Allowance planetary project that funnels social manufacturing production into boasting the planet's morale.
+ 10/27 Lowered tech weights on some defense techs.
+ 10/27 Drengin are now able to build Approval starbase modules.
+ 10/27 Tweaked the common medium habitable planet from 25 to 22
+ 10/27 Increased the priority of life support on most blueprints.
+ 10/27 Lowered mass of several components slightly
Diplomacy Polish
+ In the trade window, added the relations slider underneath the Leader's name
+ Diplomacy Trade screen: added confirmation before declaring war
+ Added mouse tooltip to the "speak to" button if the opponent wasn't available for trade
+ Add an "available to talk" icon to faction power list on the main screen
+ Trade screen: collapsed ships stay collapsed each time between screen transitions
+ Trade offers should properly consider the credit value of a stack of items.
+ The cancel button in the "Home Star System Window" now works properly
UI / Graphics
+ Minimap no longers shows ZOC influence under fog of war
+ Added gel background to the Load Map screen and fixed some text overlap issues
+Search results in Research Technologies are are now flushed between games
+ Added new tooltips for faction power list
+ Fixed an issue where the production wheel does not always update the values on the screen when previewing new values on the wheel.
+ Revised the Collect Gameplay Data tooltip text to make it clearer what it's doing.
+ Removed the "Quick Move" game options screen as it didn't do anything.
+ The rename object dialog did not have a message or icon. Fixed it so it looks a little better.
+ Fix line artifacts on the Research screens
+ Fix Medium UI sizing issues in the Relic list.
+ Fix issue where Approval stat on planet list entries was popping out of grid in Medium UI.
+ Fixed lines on medium UI in the battle report entry.
+ 10/19: Clicking on sorting icons in the main UI again will reverse the sorting order
+ 10/27 Cleaned up the Relationship `sliders on the Interaction and Diplomacy windows.
+ 10/27 Added new diplomacy icons for war and ally
+ 10/27 Cleaned up unused assets
+ 10/27 Re-work icons on for Planetary Governors.
+ 10/27 Added "Low Res Textures" option to improve performance.
+ 10/27 Setting up lean textures for dread lords texture set to improve their appearance
Balance
+ Reduced decommission idle time from 30 to 10.
+ Lower Manufacturing planet requirement to class 7
+ Updated planetary projects. Boost birthing subsidies to 10% from 5%
+ New Military Subsidies project, (Requires feedback work)
+ Adjusted Life Support modules to be cheaper in general and scale better with advancement.
+ Nerfed Factories slightly.
+ Balance Drengin, and Yor manufacturing and Research improvements, to better balance against Terran improvements
+ Lowered Tech inflation exponent slightly
+ Rebalanced Starbase modules, primarily boosting bonuses
+ Increased the influence generated by starbase modules
+ Techs will now increase in cost in late game
MP
+ Fixed several desync issues
+ Addressed issues that made the Host seem unresponsive.
+ New Lobby messages will appear on new lines. Messages were sometimes bunching up.
+ Added a Cancel button to the loading screen for multiplayer games.
+ If either player has the universal translator, then they can now speak to one another and trade.
+ Fixed a bug where the middle "For" section on the trade screen would appear when a trade is canceled.
+ Fixed a case where the "start button" was appeared disable when it was not.
+ In some circumstances, the game was incorrectly sending multiple match reports for the same game.
+ If a peer exited the game or lobby, the host was not always getting the disconnection request.
+ Restored game: Fixed a problem where a player's faction was changed to Terran.
+ Restored game: Joining the lobby will no longer occasion create an extra slot.
+ Fixed a case where starting a multiplayer game would have visual gaps in the player list
+ The game can now load player created Gigantic maps in multiplayer.
+ Added support for private multiplayer games
+ Host can now set the number of human players in the lobby.
+ 10/19: Fixed a multiplayer crash when attempting to de-select a spending focus
+ 10/27 The fixed a bug introduced in the previous opt-in that prevented players from choosing different factions in multiplayer.
Bugs
+ Fixed a startup crash caused by system variables.
+ Medium UI: In the Tech Tree screen, the player was in the "Age of Expansion" but is seeing a yellow bar as if they were in the "Age of War".
+ "Wish upon a Relic" Mega Event no longer spawns hordes of pirates.
+ Fix an issue that was stopping the Drengin from getting Tech and Manufacturing Capitals.
+ Fixing crash when removing a custom part from ship design if the custom part does not exist on the local machine. The most cost
+ The Dread Lords were unable to build fighters for the orbital defenses. However, the game thought there should be fighters and prevented players from invading.
+ Some Dread Lord controlled planets could not be invaded if the Dread Lords built an Orbital Defines Platform. That defense would try to generate fighters that the Dread Lords could not build so the battle would never start. The Dread Lords can now build the fighters and their planets can be invaded.
+ Fix missing Icon on Hull Mastery Specialization.
+ If the logo for a custom faction is not found, use the "random faction" logo is used as a fallback inside of entire texture atlas.
+ Fixed a bad prerequisite for Yor Lossless life support technology that was causing an infinite loop.
+ Added a check for "Windows\system32" in the environmental path variables at the start of the game. Some users are missing this in their path and the game would crash on start.
+ The "Wish upon a Relic" Mega Event was incorrectly spawning pirates in addition to the Relic.
+ Fix issue that was stopping Drengin from getting the Tech and Manufacturing Capitals.
+ Fixing crash when removing custom part from ship design if the custom part does not exist on the local machine
+ Fix missing Icon on Hull Mastery Specialization.
+ Fixed bug when loading a game with custom factions and the faction logo image was not found locally on the machine that loaded the saved game. It would not display the strategic icon properly and render the entire icon atlas. If a cust logo is not found, the "random faction" logo is used as a fallback.
+ Ship movement debuffs are no longer clipped in tooltip
+ Fixed the number suffixes for the End Game ranking.
+ The first planet in custom made maps are now the player's homeworld.
+ Planetary screen wasn't displaying the proper number of Manufacturing, Research, and Income icons.
+ The Register and Free DLC buttons now become disabled (with a tooltip) the same way the Multiplayer button does, so if the internet or Steam cut out while the game is running there won't be any confusion about the state of those buttons.
+ Added missing component icons
+ Prevented a crash with wonders and players with custom data.
+ Fix bad thumbnails on some Drengin Ships
+ Removed the spending wheel from the Govern Planet screen. Use the focus buttons to adjust spending levels instead.
+ Fixed several stuck turn problems
+ Added next and previous arrows to the shipyards window.
+ Adjusted the height of the Map Editor description box to allow more room
+ Shipyard: Improved "required resources" tooltip Buy button to be more informative and friendly to the player
+ Starbase list now only displays filters that are needed. That is, don't show a "mining" filter unless you have a mining starbase.
+ Planet lists will now properly sort at the beginning of each turn
+ Fixed a problem that made the game unstable if you had hundreds of ships.
+ Typos
+ Pressing T while the input box does not have focus will now hide the chat window.
+ Rally point and Fleet numbers will no longer appear on top of the UI.
+ When choose a Civilization, the the factions appear in the following order: default factions, DLC factions next, and custom factions last.
+ The game now verifies if the user is logged on to Steam when attempting to show/hide the DLC Available button.
+ Fixed a crash when a dead AI is the last player in the turn list
+ 10/19: Renamed the improvement "Moral Allowance" to "Morale Allowance"
+ 10/19: Human player can longer initiate trade before other player has universal translator
+ 10/19: Getting or setting player stats will now not work if the user isn't logged in to Steam
+ 10/19: Updated registration UI and text.
+ 10/19: Fixed startup crash with generation of the texture atlas. As a result of this fix:
- Atlas files are now in the steam game folder
- Modders: Atlas files can be generated by adding /atlasgen to startup command line. This puts the atlas files in the "my games/galciv3" folder. The game will now check the "my games/galciv3" folder first, and fall back to game dir if not found.
+ 10/19: Updated batch files to prevent a crash with systems with specific path variable settings.
+ 10/27 Starbases no longer give +100% to beam weapons.
+ 10/27 On the Planetary Governors screen, the auto-terraform is no longer disabled the first time the screen is opened.
Known issues
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There are some cosmetic text issues on the Hebrew version of Windows in some of the tooltips.
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If you haven’t run the game since upgrading to Windows 10 and the last time you played was earlier than 1.3 the screens directory might not work right resulting in launch issues. If this happens, delete the GalCiv3 directory in documents\my games.
The Links
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