lyssailcor,

I love the simplicity of your suggestion. I would make these changes.

First remove the double population requirement for special resources, so every building requires one population.

Then each citizen produces 1 output. If they work in a factory, or labs or whatever, their output powers that building. Then the excess population have excess output. If a planet/colony is working on specific item that output rolls over into taxes, 1 credit per excess pop. If a planet/colony is not working on a specific item then they can work on a special project which converts that output into one or more of the other types. There may be a project that converts all output into research, or production or a equal combination of the three, or influence, or food, or whatever. It would be nice to be able to import food from breadbasket worlds to completely urbanized worlds, like Coruscant from Star Wars for example.

I did not think about the food mechanics yet.

Apart from that, my suggestions are just that, so I'm sure if my suggestions would be the base of a new system everybody would have his or her own preferences what should be altered to fit their desires

I think the simplest solution is to have Factories give a flat bonus. No population requirement. It's easy to implement, it doesn't change the system, and it doesn't break the AI.

I'm in the camp that would prefer to see Improvements as the main driver of production, not Population.

It feels wrong that you're better off building farms and cities than factories/laboratories/banks etc for production purposes. Why would an "untrained" population be better at research than population at a Research Laboratory? How can your 9.5b population on a colony with only Farms and Cities give more research than your 3.5 population on a colony with a Research Laboratory?

Furthermore, the improvement in Research that you get from building additional Research buildings should be significantly higher than any improvement you get from increased population.

Add me to the camp that thinks that as improvements get better ie from Basic to Xeno etc that the new improvement should give the boost the old improvement gave + a certain %

Frogboy, why obsess on what specific features to include and keep beating this horse to death? I played over 1000 hours of GC3 and what kept me coming back and kept my interest is the efforts of the community, Horemvore, Gauntlet, Gen pants etc .. to tweak the game in ways the developers could not due to time/budget constraints. What's missing? A real modding system that is easy for players to implement via Steam workshop as opposed to Nexus. 

I just clocked 400 hours on Stellaris and although in some ways it is an inferior game to GC3, the availability of over 8000 mods is what makes it such an exciting game since you can tweak it to your hearts content. Every possible game mechanic has a mod available for players to use and that makes a huge difference. The devs add a few features here and there but the mod community is where the real heavy lifting is done. You cannot be everything to everyone, mods do that

My recommendation for GC3 is simple, stop tinkering with the game basics, fix the bugs that remain and get mods to work on Steam. Your call for modding tools was an awesome start, how is that going BTW?

That's specific advice for GC3 and get people to play it. You went as far as you can with this one and it looks like you hit the point of diminishing returns. To gain a wider footprint you need to start appealing to a wider market segment. Stellaris has a huge Chinese and Japanese market, how do you get that footprint? Go with GC4, a new name may even be needed so branding does not trip you up and start from scratch. I know reuse is a good business practice but you are in a rabbit hole and you keep digging deeper. Time to get back in front of a blank whiteboard, a couple good old fashioned SWOT and Porters five forces diagrams might be a good place to start.

I actually would like to see one more expansion like you talked about.

Im definately not in the camp of less citizens. 

Im in the camp of improvements being more important than raw production to the point of about 40n. 

Love the game. Love the debate. Love the fact civ3 is still is receiving a great amount of the devs attention. The opening cinematic will ever get old for me. I won't quote but so much said so far. I struggle to remember who said what and where, if I had the same idea or just taken it on board as something I believe is worthwhile looking at. The are a two major issues that many have identified that I wish to further discuss and explore.

One main issue is pop and raw production. Improvements and their value tied in closely with this. Always hard to fully flush out but a few things (combinations or all of the below) could be tried to offer more flexibility and variety in gamestyles.

Personally RAW is everything. Only thing that is really worth optimising and focus when playing. A great raw always equates to good manufacturing, research and economy. The bonus pop brings for raw transfers into pop-centric empires. A direct 1 to 1 is just too much and needs a little adjusting so the AI isn't left in the dust. Morale could be a little more dynamic as well. Might try having harsher morale penalties (neg growth?) and/or have so that is is a little harder to attain big morale sustaining a large pop.

Changes could be made to the base pop given or the food needed or each city would could diminish the following cities effectiveness or increase following cities cost. Possibly even link cities to tech/era with when they become available, how many you can support and how effective they are.  Another road could be to reduce adj bonuses so farms/cities just aren't as efficient (extreme measure take all pop adj bonuses away).

Improvements are currently just not competitive. They really need to be a viable option against pure raw. Not sure on how but you might try looking into removing basic buildings like space elevator and comp core etc and giving a base buff to corresponding basic buildings that will upgrade with tech (eg factory will now give +1 to construction on top of previous bonus). Hopefully this might bring back specialised planet builds as a viable option.

The second main issue for me is the AI. Don't get me wrong, it is much better than other games but still lacks finesse. To put it bluntly, the AI is still making fundamentally bad decisions even at the highest level. It would be great to turn the AI from a sledge hammer into a scalpel. No more buffs, just better general gameplay. I dont even pretend to know how, or if, anything following is possible

First off, the AI just cannot compete colonising (seriously wtf is a trade ship doing approaching my homeworld only 15 turns in?). It needs to have a higher priority/easier for higher AI levels so they aren't hamstrung right from the get go. Might even suggest a slight admin buff (nothing too extreme) or even extreme colonisation as a starting tech.  Same goes for plopping starbases out to claim resources (not as bad but not great either)

The AI does not tech up efficiently. It would benefit to bee-line important techs a bit more (possibly link preference to race) and counter teching to nearby/bad relation races

Optimising ship builds. 2 constructor modules for one ship, tiny ships end of game, support ships not buffing fleet, need I say more...

Optimising planet builds. For gods sake, just build a few farms and cities. Together. Stop half arsing planet specialisation and put a damn comp core on a precursor experimental world and bomb the crap out of it with research centres or whack a space elevator on that wasteland tile with factories crowding around pumping it up. A couple of these and a couple of those leads to a couple of under performing useless planets.

Suicidal diplomacy (looking at you Drengin) The AI seems way too focused on military strength (see below). Period. There seems to be very little consideration for important aspects like distance and RAW and tech level. Couple that with unwillingness to treaty and all too often a godlike opponent is shown the exit door.

Lastly trading. OH MY GOD. Everything is available. Everything is cheap (nearly). Constructors, starbases, high level techs, resources, planets, wars on other civs etc. The AI should place a higher value on these, trade like for like and even have no interest or not appearing in trade screen for others (that said if raw/pop is reduced ergo less income then inherent value is auto increased). On the other end of the scale is the resource hard cap and ship value. I understand the AI needs to have some protection but the AI will not take an outrageously great deal if you break that 1/4 barrier and conversely well over estimates the value of its pitiful fleets that best used for cannon fodder.

I'll finish up with a few random ideas/tweaks/observations I have jotted down on scraps of paper while playing. Not saying anything is good here but has crossed my mind

Ship movement. First click show path, second click move. Even a shading to highlight travel range for turn/more. A waypoint system because the auto-explore mode is terrible. Just a few of the options for tinkering

Starbases. For an admin point they are way too easy to drop (a single ship to can all too easily strangle the AI for range and resources) . Military definitely need a buff for range extension tied into map size (plus one range per level size). Also AI needs to build more economic for planetary boost. 

On map size, influence needs a major buff on larger sized maps. Ludicrous map I have 50% of planets and 260 starbases and 350 turns in and still only 1%. I know my initial settings bu c'mon. At least give me 2%...

Another button for trading ie << and >> outside the usual < and > for a larger quantities eg 5/10 resource or 100/1000 credits.

Carryover. For research manufacturing and ship production. Seems any surplus is fully transferred to next project. Many turns storing surplus can just be pumped into an instant <insert project wanted>. Can happen a fair bit after early game, most notably shipyards just doing constant missions and later with planets. Maybe only 50% can be carried onto the next turn. Could even apply to when you cancel current project (and not just put on hold).

Manual toggle to turn on repeat projects, like missions in shipyards  and recruiting on planets (personally I hate the auto repeat on a planet). And auto govern on acquiring a planet, don't even get me started

Buildings that give civ wide a bonus might have production cost tied to the number of planets you own. Makes sense if you get more out of it you are willing to pay more for it

After researching one of the cap techs might it be possible to a single branch tech that has a (for lack of a better word) "sister" tech already discovered. One for one only

Economic starbases are still overpowered. A reduction in range techs (only one not two range per tech/module) and increase cost (double credits) would mitigate that somewhat. A balance for just in case for a slight misplacement could be a drive module for each major drive tech that allows one movement but is burnt out after said single tile is moved. And wouldn't hurt to pay a little more credits for all economic modules. Lets face it, they are more than worth it

Orbital institute and interstellar collectors. Why so expensive? Cheaper (and more beneficial) to just recruit citizens (orbital) or do a few missions for more constructors (interstellar)

On missions, constructors and survey ships pop up quite often. Designed quirk so admins aren't capped or just oversight?

Also with orbital institute costing 25 promethion, it might just be the way I play but even with an abundance of promethion, it disappears faster than a cheesy poof in front of Eric Cartman. Elerium is not much better. Resources on the whole are well balanced and it adds another dimension forcing me to prioritise which is fine and I dont mind but was that intended?

Citizens should cost way more. Only 2.5k production is just too cheap. And spies costing 1 snuggler is a bit high (not too bad though).

Also slower citizen accumulation/production.  Arbitrary 10 turns is a bit off (bit quick for slower/larger maps IMHO). Might link in with map size or game speed or era. Even boost with techs if massively slowed. Could help against colonisation rush at start of game

Survey ships can survey planets. A quick glance of the layout might be nice every now and then

Colony Capital can often be in a downright nasty spot. Would love a one shot move. High price (production and resources) and maybe linked to a mid/late tech (like gal governance for example). Might even cost ideology points (colonising gives 10 points and use 10 points to shift)

Just me or ideology points are slow to generate? Will take forever to get that achievement. Design? or might buildings get a little buff? Not to worry, I'll eventually get there...

Back to missions, seems to be a few I use constantly (see above) and others that are just a waste of time. Seriously pilgrims? But might just be me...

A button to re-find my friggin fleet. So often I would love to just click on say the fleet image (or anything) to re-centre the screen on the fleet I have selected

Ships in my borders. I just want to kill. Seriously, get out, go away. If no relations set (like ally or friend), ship is non-trade and within your coloured influence, can't we just pop them at the cost of a bit (or a lot) of diplomacy?

On the diplomacy screen, is it at all possible to see all of something (eg all current wars) at once not just a single civs everything. Just makes looking at galactic politics before GC meetings a little easier

On the GC, more options would be nice. Might I suggest diplo consequences for unfavorable resolutions and maybe even a lobbying period to win votes (not they are really needed due to AI not having any pop ie voting power). More thulium is not what I need...

Is there something along the lines of a Notification journal that has eluded me? The board is a little"bare" and I would like to see what events are active not just when they finish etc so a more in depth journal of sorts to go into would be nice and get a full rundown of current galactic affairs

100% decay is set to 1 for shipyards 0.1 for asteroids. We all use this whether its by accident or not. Might be more reasonable if it set to 0

Anomalies are far too abusable. Capsules giving 15% tech, artifacts giving 10% treasury and the powerful precursor anomalies poorly defended. Capsules need to change (maybe 100 research per era level) so they cant just blow through a huge tech early (huge hull v med hull AI). Artifact could be capped at a lower value (5K to match citizen). And precursor should have a little more def than my admiral's exhaust fumes (bump up every era to give a little challenge). And to top it off, the AI doesn't seem to be interested in anomalies at all. And also are they slowly spawning? Don't mind events making them but I think they should be a finite resource

The tech eras go way too fast. Research a handful, move up and repeat. Next thing you have huge hulls while it seems the AI is still struggling with the concept of the wheel. More points per level is needed, possibly even a fourth era (4 eras - one for each X of 4X maybe)

Commanders and admirals etc so very much in need of upgrading components. Being they are restricted by hull size, can they just simply auto upgrade and be at least useful eg you reduce life support mass, so now there is space for another or hull capacity is increased so lets use it and gain another drive module. Also an admiral and commander per fleet (singular, different ranks so ok in my mind). It was possible (fixed maybe? anyone?) for as many commanders as you want in my last game (my fleets dont need more superiority)

Also the military score ranking you against the computer needs a bit of an overhaul. I am regularly outpointed/outranked yet the AI fleets are softer than microwaved butter. At the games end, when I actually decide to build my final assault fleets I have totally outrageous mil score pumping my overall to obscene levels. Needs a big wind back. Might help ground lofty/ambitious AI and ultimately prevent suicide.

I haven't found too many problems with mercs so far as they stand. AI seems to only have a fleeting interest and needs to recognise the opportunities here. Only overpowered merc is really the Praxis and its malevolent point generating ability. The rest seem not too bad but it wouldnt hurt if they cost more resources.

And I'll finish with a couple a small bugs. Two (of the three) benevolent point generating buildings don't match description (think may have been mentioned before. Hate the fog not clearing when movement is offscreen (clears on save/load) and why oh why oh why is it my overall civ morale seems stuck 99% yet I have every planet running 110-140% morale ie well over 100% (very annoying).

Probably missed plenty but others here will surely fill those gaps. All of this is just from my personal ingame experience so guaranteed is not true for all but I hope you find something that might be useful. Also should be noted I was playing an earlier 2.6 build so some things may have already been addressed and if so I am sorry for including them. Bit long for my first post and I hope it is coherent enough but wanted to have my 2 cents

To the devs, great job so far and I hope you keep going.  Just remember, the empty can rattles the most. Remember those who play at a lower level on a casual basis. For us here that try to find challenge can cause others heartbreak. There has been so much put forward in this debate from everyone it will be difficult to foresee all consequences for any/all tweaks and balances. Moderation will be key. Either way I will adapt and optimise and push the limits.

-maintenance: Civ 4's maintenance system should be considered a gold standard. In addition to paying maintenance for ships and buildings, each planet itself should have a ramping maintenance cost, so the marginal cost increases as you add more planets to the empire. That would make a hard colony rush more expensive to pull off, as the player would need to build more markets to cover the costs of expansion. As it is right now, a hard REX (rapid early expansion) is basically always the best strategy in GC 3, which is boring. 

-citizens: I like the fact that leaders are in the game, their strength is flexibility, but they should pay for that by offering a reduced benefit from the other citizens. For example, scientists, workers, engineers, etc, could boost their stat by 5% empire wide and leaders boost it by 4%. The leaders offer a slightly less powerful boost in exchange for the fact that they can be swapped to other areas when priorities change. Also, citizens on planets should level up more quickly. Finally - forcing citizens to travel in undefended transports was a dumb design decision, imo. You can't even properly protect these transports because you can't add them to fleets, you need to watch them every single turn and they can be destroyed by a wandering pirate sniper - stupid and unnecessary. Just have citizens take 2 turns to transfer to a planet and do it behind the scenes. 

-carriers/ship sizes: I don't know why weapons destroy defenses in battle now. This needs to be rebalanced because carrier launched fighters are just far too powerful. Conceptually there are many ways to do this, such as making high defensive values take very little damage from many instances of low attack power weapons, but I haven't looked into the coding of GC3 to see exactly how it is calculated. So I'm not going to recommend a mathematical solution to this problem, just a conceptual one - there should either be a defensive technology that drastically reduces incoming damage from small fighters, or an offensive technology that allows for some kind of splash damage (has that ever existed in GC?), or both. 

-Ground combat: Why would anyone bother building expensive legions or hiring generals just to need to build station garrisons and defend a planet on the ground? The attacker can just use invasion technologies and nullify any defender bonuses. You're better off just building ships and blocking enemy transports, and if your planet does get captured, use your own transport and take it back. Defending a planet is always a losing proposition. 

       This wasn't always the case in GC2. If you had good soldiering and a high population planet, it might have proven too difficult to capture, and that population served a purpose, so you could defend your planets passively with larger populations. 

        Requiring a planet to build a legion, and then build a "station garrison" on top of that to defend itself is nonsensical. One should be able to build garrisons without using up their supply of legions. Garrisons and legions should be separate. A garrison is permanently stuck on a planet and cannot ever leave, but for the purposes of ground combat is equivalent to a legion, and much cheaper. In that case, there might be a reason to build them, although it would still always be a better option to just fight your battles in space. 

    -the Iconians/Xenophobic trait: When I read the description of this trait I thought it was a joke. What were you guys thinking??? Can you imagine such a trait in Civilization? It's totally broken. The AI doesn't appear to understand how to exploit it, so I haven't noticed the Iconians totally dominating my games, although they do manage to stay ahead in research for the first 2/3 of the game when no one attacks them. In the hands of the player it's just ridiculous. If you get attacked early, you're in big trouble. If people leave you alone, you win the game in a complete snoozefest cakewalk. 

  I don't even like the concept of this trait, but if it's going to remain in the game, it needs to be changed to something more reasonable like +40% research/social production and -25% ship production. 

 While these are my gripes, I want to add that you have made a great game, overall, and I applaud your efforts. It is precisely because I like this game so much that I hope to see some tweaks and improvements. 

 -Cities/population: rebalance this but NOT with a square root formula. Make raw production = 50% of population, increase city food/durantium cost, increase the build cost of cities. I'm not sure what to do about synthetic civs... you opened a can of worms with that one.

-Ideology: as others have suggested, Do NOT make ideology all about conquering planets. Once again, this leads the player to focus on colony rushing above all else. The ideology buildings (like the missionary building) should be more important in producing ideology points, and planetary events should be far less important.

-Reduce starting cash

 Anyway, that's my two credits' worth. 

Of course you would still have a reason to use them (leaders). Given my example, let's suppose you generate 10 citizens over the first 100 turns of the game. 

You could a) hire 10 scientists for a 50% boost to science, or hire 10 leaders. Your leaders could be boosting science by 40%, so it's a slightly smaller buff. But then, let's say you want to switch priorities because you've just been attacked. Now your leaders could switch to a ship production boost of 40%, which is something your scientists could not do. 

As it stands right now, there is no reason to choose any citizen other than a leader for an empire wide boost. One choice is strictly superior to the other, which is nonsensical. For one thing, it's bad for the AI, because the AI might do something stupid like hire 5 workers for a 15% empire boost to SC instead of just hiring 5 leaders for a 30% boost. 

Also, I think the empire wide boost needs to be nerfed anyway. On a large map it's quite common to have 15-20 planets. When you have that many planets it's basically always better to get a 6% boost to all of them instead of a 30% boost to one of them. It should be rebalanced. As I already said, citizen leveling should be sped up too. As it stands right now, you could settle a citizen on a planet right at the beginning of the game, and their bonus would only rise to ~40-50% by the end of the game. Most citizens won't get much beyond the initial 30% bonus. Leveling should be MUCH faster imo, close to 2x as fast. That would open up strategies to play tall.  

Ive used diplomats and spies.

Before, a city would give you a +1 population.  Now it's 10%.  I see what you mean though about the 10% stacking up.  It really should be more like 0.1 population flat rather than the %.

Ok, since crusade introduced new aspects to the game, it missed adding other basic UI options based on those aspects.

• Colony Filtering
  • Under Govern I can sort/view the colonies based on planet class, population, etc, but I cannot sort based on food production. Need to add column for food production.
  • Same goes for under "Planet and Colonies" tab from main screen.
  • Sort by Type of planet(Barren/Water/Frozen/toxic/Radioactive/Other), this is critical for determining what type of planet specialization is needed.  Otherwise you need to go through and count the number of planets.
• Resource Listing
  
  • When you mouse over a resource it lists the locations/planets where you are collecting this resource, but then I have to go to other menus to try and find said location/planet. I should be able to simply click on the planet from the popup and it should take me there. 
• Diplomacy to TECH tree
  • I should be able to quickly look at my tech tree when making a trade, otherwise you need to cancel the trade, then click all the way out of the diplomacy screen, Into research, find the tech in question, then navigate all the way back to the trade.
  • Search Factions who are offering specific tech or resource for trade. When you have 30+ factions and need to go through each one to find a specific resource, it is extremely painful (do you guys even play the game?)

Frogboy, this nerfing of everything and killing of potential strategies really bugs me.

Natural counter to population exploiting should be approval. It should be really painful to maintain morale of high-population planet and low approval should have severe consequences. Not some minor effects as it is right now, but severe production maluses, damage to buildings and eventually, rebellion.

Killing everything that is "overpowered" doesn´t seem to be much of a solution for a game like Galciv is!