1.6 Beta Opt-in (Updated 2/12)

from GalCiv3 Forums

1.6 Change Log

**Updated 2/15**

Hello! 

In this update, we've introduced some game play improvements, improved the AI, and fixed some bugs.  Updates from the previous version are marked below in blue.  We appreciate your feedback on the game so far!

To enable the patch, do the following:

  • Go to your GalCiv III item in Steam 

  • Fight click and go to betas.

  • Type: ToriansArceansMercs as the password.

If the game doesn't immediately start updating, please restart Steam.  

Please to report any issues you find to the Founders forum or via support ticket so we can address them.

Note: This build is English only!

 

While its fine to discuss your thoughts here on the Founder's forums, please refrain from discussing it publicly.  

 

Gameplay

  • Added Bazaar.  You must locate the Bazaar in the Galaxy before hiring Mercenaries.   

  • Added Mercenaries.  Go to the Bazaar to hire "Mercenaries", powerful ships to bolster your fleet.  More powerful Mercenaries are locked by Research Age.  Each game will have a different roster of Mercenaries to hire.  

  • Added new Arcean faction: The Arceans are an ancient and honorable civilization of warriors and long-time enemy of the Drengin Empire.

  • Added new Torian faction: The aquatic Torians are back and ready to escape from their enslavement from the cruel Drengin Empire.

  • Added new Torian campaign: Hire mercenaries and use them to help lead the Torians to freedom from their Drengin oppressors!

  • Re-balanced strategic resource placement values.

  • Re-balanced star systems to allow for more gas giants and look better overall.

  • Removed the "Weekly Payments" Diplomacy option as it was unbalanced.

  • Balance pass on the likelihood of encountering minor races.

  • Changed the default minor race likelihood to occasional in the game options screen.

  • Changed Coercion to have a max effect of 50% (was 25%)

  • Fixed an issue with the "Merciless" option of the Design Revolution Galactic Event. It was giving its bonus to the faction instead of the faction's ships.

  • Fixed an issue in "Unnerving Ideology" trait that was causing it to reduce player's hit points instead of their enemies.

  • Remove "Culling Project" from the description of "Unforgiving" trait as it had been previously removed from the game.

  • Changed the "Unforgiving" Trait bonus from +25% manufacturing to +15% Raw Production to make it more useful in late game.

  • Reducing the value of trading resources.

  • Adjusted planet and resource frequencies

  • Reduced starbase placement spacing from 5 from 4 hexes

  • Fixed the AI hugging/crowding bug in which the AI will try to "attack" your ships and planets even if they're not at war with you but only if you are a human player. Resulting in ships just sitting in front of your stuff never moving.

  • Precursor Worlds DLC: Slightly lowered the frequency of Precursor Worlds on all map sizes.

  • [updated 2/12] AI players will now focus on researching Invasion before going to war.

  • [updated 2/12] AI Survey Ships will no longer ignore Anomalies with Pirate or Precursor guardians.

  • [updated 2/12] AI players will no longer trade military techs with unfriendly, non-allied human players. You can still trade tech to them or trade techs to another human player.

  • [updated 2/12] Lowered the amount of Elerium slightly.


Graphics

  • Overall refinements to the lighting.

  • Added approach animations for the Newsbots.

  • Adjusted gradient colors for Drengin and Altarians.

  • Fixing "flickering" bink movie in conversation window in campaigns

  • Updated all faction ship thumbnails with improved graphics

  • Updated many faction's homeworld appearances.

  • Improved Battle Viewer camera shake.

  • [updated 2/12] Fleet stacks will preferentially show mercenaries on the map

  • [updated 2/12] Fixed a flicker on the bottom of some of the Arcean ship components.

  • [updated 2/12] The tactical map stars colors are the same for all races. Some faction colors resulted in stars that were hard to see.


Interface

  • Added Coercion to tooltips.

  • Changed Conquest goal and diplomacy modifiers from "We love war" to "We will conquer the galaxy!"

  • The default UI Size is now chosen depending on the user's resolution, instead of always defaulting to Small.

  • The Arena improvement no longer uses the Arena Map preview image.

  • If no ship is being built in a shipyard, the game will automatically highlight the first available ship for building.

  • Fixed issue where the ship name would end up on two lines if it's too long.

  • Starbases will now correctly report how many module points are left even if there are no modules to build.

  • Adjusted the "Cancel Planetary Focus" button on the Govern Screen to make it easier to find and use.

  • Clarified Diplomacy Window tooltips

  • [updated 2/12] In Medium UI scale, the first resource counter will no longer have an extra zero overlapping the the actual value.

  • [updated 2/12] Strategic resource tooltips no longer overlap in Medium UI

  • [updated 2/12] The influence graph now displays the player's total influence.

  • [updated 2/12] Selected Ship Details window now properly shows all abilities for special components

  • [updated 2/12] In the Govern Screen, if you had trade income, the trade income line was displaying the treasury total and the treasury total was missing.

  • [updated 2/12] In the Planetary screen, the Raw Production now displays the correct number. The effect of coercion was being incorrectly added to the display value.

  • [updated 2/12] Improvements are disabled if they cannot be placed if no tiles are available.  Terraforming tiles are never disabled.

  • [updated 2/12] Players now can to cancel an upgrade after it has been started. The cost of the upgrade is returned to the player

 

Campaign

  • [updated 2/12] Removed Aggressive and Opportunistic personality traits from the Campaign Version of the Arceans, so they will not be so quick to anger.

  • [updated 2/12] Fixed problems with Torian tech tree.

  • [updated 2/12] Updated campaign intro text

  • [updated 2/12] Added missing campaign short description for the Torian Planetary Improvements


Bugs

  • Decreased the loading time for starting the game for the first time or installing DLC.

  • For Modders: the game no longer rebuilds the campaign bins unless the startup command /CAMPAIGNBIN is used.

  • In some rare cases, the diplomacy system was not properly releasing the graphics. This was causing game-within-game crashes.

  • Fixing issue where shipyards and starbases incorrectly displayed zero hit points after loading a save game. even though they had full hit points.

  • Fixed a crash in the Yor "The Return" tech tree. The lossless life support tech had itself as a prerequisite causing an infinite loop

  • Adding checks to prevent crash after attacking an enemy Shipyard

  • The Steam achievement "There is a Crusade" no longer unlocks with after completing "The Revenge of the Snathi" campaign

  • Govern Planet Window: auto-upgrades will now properly apply after every turn.

  • Fixing a stuck turn in which a fleet was following a target that leads them outside of the fleet's range.

  • Fleets now remember who they are following after loading a save game.

  • Fixing problem in the conversation trees with personality types referencing custom types causing the wrong text to be displayed.

  • Multiplayer: We are now clearing the state of the game for the host when a player disconnects during a "handshake" state, such as while waiting for a turn to end and the "game menu" is open to prevent a potential crash.

  • Fixed a conversation tag issue that sometimes caused the wrong listener flavor text to be shown.

  • Fixed: Selecting some large hull designs in the ship designer crashed the game.

  • Improved font loading process to improve stability.

  • Fixed a timing issue-related crash where the graphics are trying to redraw a brand new ships before the HP has recalculated yet.

  • AI freighters can now have drive systems.

  • [updated 2/12] Fixing a crash that assumed all objects destroyed in battles were ships

  • [updated 2/12] Fixed a crash related to defeating Pirates.

  • [updated 2/12] Fixed typos

  • [Updated 2/12] Opening the options menu on machines with certain video cards will no longer crash the game.

  • [Updated 2/12] The Torian war music now plays correctly

  • [Updated 2/12] Removed flickering from the Torian "angry" animation

  • [Updated 2/12] Changed descriptions on Mercenary colony ships to better explain their function.

  • [Updated 2/12] Fixed a problem where the "generic" life support was replaced with the "aquatic one".

  • [Updated 2/12] Fix missing tech in the Iconian tech tree.

  • [Updated 2/12] Fixed invalid techs that got inserted into some of the minor race tech trees.

  • [Updated 2/12] Created custom tech governor for the Arceans

  • [Updated 2/12] Updated Torian and Arcean ship names

  • [Updated 2/12] Arcean Navigation Tech and Arcean Weather Control techs now work correctly

  • [Updated 2/12] Added Torian appearance swatch Icon for the customize faction screen.

  • [Updated 2/12] Removed static Arcean and torian leader images from the custom factions "load image" directory as they were not being used.

  • [Updated 2/12] Players can now use the Arcean portrait image for custom factions.

  • [Updated 2/12] The player can no longer upgrade mercenary ships.
786 views 12 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I originally put this in the support forum, but decided to put it here since you made the comment to keep all beta talk here. :)

 

=====================

MINOR ERROR IN BRAINY'AK TECH TREE

Was checking through all of the tech trees to see what is different (and for modding purposes), when I noticed an extremely minor error in the tech tree for the BRAINY'AK minor race (that is part of the Mega Events DLC).

In it, their Power Matrix tech is defined as following:

<!-- Begin Tech -->

<Tech>
<InternalName>BRAINY'AKPowerMatrixTech</InternalName>
<GenericName>PowerMatrixTech</GenericName>
<DisplayName>BRAINY'AKPowerMatrixTech_Name</DisplayName>
<TechTree>BRAINY'AK_Tree</TechTree>
<ShortDescription>BRAINY'AKPowerMatrixTech_ShortDec</ShortDescription>
<Description>BRAINY'AKPowerMatrixTech_Dec</Description>
<ResearchCost>0</ResearchCost>

----STUFF SNIPPED---

<Prerequ>
<Techs>
<Option>PowerSpecialization1</Option>
<Option>PowerSpecialization2</Option>
<Option>ResearchArrayTech</Option>
</Techs>
<TechAge>
<Option>AgeOfExpansion</Option>
</TechAge>
</Prerequ>
</Tech>

it is supposed to be: 

<!-- Begin Tech -->


<Tech>
<InternalName>BRAINY'AKPowerMatrixTech</InternalName>
<GenericName>PowerMatrixTech</GenericName>
<DisplayName>BRAINY'AKPowerMatrixTech_Name</DisplayName>
<TechTree>BRAINY'AK_Tree</TechTree>
<ShortDescription>BRAINY'AKPowerMatrixTech_ShortDec</ShortDescription>
<Description>BRAINY'AKPowerMatrixTech_Dec</Description>
<ResearchCost>0</ResearchCost>

---- STUFF SNIPPED----

<Prerequ>
<Techs>
<Option>PowerSpecialization1</Option>
<Option>PowerSpecialization2</Option>
<Option>PowerSpecialization3</Option>
</Techs>
<TechAge>
<Option>AgeOfExpansion</Option>
</TechAge>
</Prerequ>
</Tech>

With the bolded parts differeing.  I say it is an extremely minor error because the research cost for them is 0, so they get it for free anyway.  Still, thought you folks should know about it, if only so it stays consistent with the Yor tech tree. :)

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top


Updated all faction ship thumbnails with improved graphics
End of quote

Cool. However check if any of them are broken. For example I found a mistake in the Altarian ship thumbnails: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197992370530/home/ 

Also something that's been bugging (no pun intended) for a while. Could you remove the default faction's colour from their ship set? When I choose it for a custom faction it's awkward having different colours for thumbnails than my own!


Removed the "Weekly Payments" Diplomacy option as it was unbalanced.
End of quote

Agreed, although it allowed me to fine tune my offer against the AI. Could we have an option to ask the AI what's best offer they can give us for something or what they want for something we offer? Now it's a bit tedious having to adjust everything manually until it's "a fair deal".

 

:thumbsup:

 

EDIT: Also, the tooltip for starbase placement still says 5 tiles.

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Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top


[updated 2/12] AI players will no longer trade military techs with unfriendly, non-allied human players. You can still trade tech to them or trade techs to another human player.
End of quote

 

^^^ Does this mean we can only get weapons techs (Beams/Missiles/Defenses) only if we are allied with the ai in question? 

 

In this case ally means the diplomacy type of alliance?

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top


[updated 2/12] AI players will no longer trade military techs with unfriendly, non-allied human players. You can still trade tech to them or trade techs to another human player.
End of quote

 

They will if they initiate the trade.

 

 

 

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I found a problem with the display of negative resources.  In the galaxy map it displays correctly. but in the shipyard it is almost blank.  If you look real carefully, you should be able to see a very faint minus sign to the right of the number.  My resolution is 1920 x 1080, and my UI size is normal.

 

 

Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Larsenex, reply 3



[updated 2/12] AI players will no longer trade military techs with unfriendly, non-allied human players. You can still trade tech to them or trade techs to another human player.



 

^^^ Does this mean we can only get weapons techs (Beams/Missiles/Defenses) only if we are allied with the ai in question? 

 

In this case ally means the diplomacy type of alliance?

End of Larsenex's quote

Sorry that change not wasn't clear.  The AI will only trade military techs to you if you are allied with them OR if they aren't unfriendly with you.  

Reply #7 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Achronous, reply 2


Cool. However check if any of them are broken. For example I found a mistake in the Altarian ship thumbnails: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197992370530/home/ 

End of Achronous's quote

I can't view that screenshot.  Can you repost?

Reply #8 from GalCiv3 Forums Top


[updated 2/12] AI players will no longer trade military techs with unfriendly, non-allied human players. You can still trade tech to them or trade techs to another human player.
End of quote

Interesting change. Will see how that works! BTW, the red color is really necessary? Isn´t that too much tutorial?

P.S.: How about the notorious missing tooltips with tactical speed? :)

Reply #9 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting jirkaesch, reply 8



[updated 2/12] AI players will no longer trade military techs with unfriendly, non-allied human players. You can still trade tech to them or trade techs to another human player.



Interesting change. Will see how that works! BTW, the red color is really necessary? Isn´t that too much tutorial?

P.S.: How about the notorious missing tooltips with tactical speed? :)

End of jirkaesch's quote

We colored it red just so it was clear to the player before they tried choosing it. 

Can you refresh my memory on the e notorious missing tooltips with tactical speed?

Reply #10 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting pshaw, reply 7


Quoting Achronous,
reply 2


Cool. However check if any of them are broken. For example I found a mistake in the Altarian ship thumbnails: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197992370530/home/ 




I can't view that screenshot.  Can you repost?

End of pshaw's quote

Reply #11 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

    • Changed Coercion to have a max effect of 50% (was 25%)

End of quote

This is a good change.  I feel far less inclined to 100% specialise worlds.  Strategically, 50%/50% seems like a great option as there is only a 10% penalty.  The benefits of this are far too good to pass up and vastly outperform the AI.  I assume the chances of getting the AI to actually use the wheel properly are low (sigh) but perhaps increase that 10% penalty at 50%/50% a bit.

 

Reply #12 from GalCiv3 Forums Top


Updated Torian and Arcean ship names
End of quote

 

I haven't noticed this. Do we need to delete any designs to be recreated?