Island Dog

Join Date 06/2003

+1037

Stronger, smarter, faster - v2.8 for Galactic Civilizations III brings major AI improvements

New update adds balance adjustments and other features to the base game for a better experience

AI for the massive-scale space strategy game now more
human-like thanks to v2.8's "supreme commander" system update
For a complete list of changes, see the changelog at the bottom of the post!

Galactic Civilizations III is the largest 4X space strategy sandbox game ever. Set in the 23rd century, you’ll compete against humans and all manner of aliens for galactic domination. Research new technologies, explore the galaxy, and colonize new worlds while engaging in diplomatic intrigue - or, sometimes, all-out war - with other races and answer the question: how will you rule your galaxy?

What's new in v2.8:

v2.8 leverages one of the greatest advantages of Galactic Civilizations III: its new, 64-bit, core-neutral game engine. Since most PC gamers have at least 4 CPU cores, we took the opportunity to develop a semi-genetic algorithm based AI that allows the computer to play much more like a human would.

GalCiv III is already known for its good computer opponents. To continue creating new depth of experience for our playerbase, the new asynchronous “supreme commander” AI will observe and send priorities for computer empires, which will feel much more like playing against another human.

We want players to have lots of viable strategic choices. To that end, we have been making lots of balance updates over the past year. v2.8 will help players play as a “tall” empire as well as a “wide” empire by giving them the potential to tilt the balance of the galaxy through smaller empires and well-run nation states.

The final focus of the new update has been in the ongoing drive to make the game more approachable without sacrificing its celebrated depth. A number of new UI elements to streamline gameplay, additional in-game descriptions, and more. Some changes are minor improvements, like moving rarely-used features to a different place, but other changes like defense modifications for ships will make the game even more intuitive and satisfying.

v2.8 is now available
Don’t own Galactic Civilizations III yet? Save 10% when you buy direct!
Also available on Steam.

www.galciv3.com

v2.8 Changelog

Required starbase spacing reduced from 4 to 3.
Balance pass on defenses based on new combat update that makes defenses a lot more worthwhile.
Updated AI ship blueprints to reflect the changes to the battle system.
Pacing improvements for the Crusade tech tree.
Industrial Sector maint reduced from 2 to 1
Recruit Celebrity requires an Aurorus Arbortetum instead of Helios Ore because, uh, why would any celebrity be interested in raw ore? How does that even work? Hey, famous movie star, here's some metallic ore for you. Please do a USO tour. Because... you know, you'll get some ore! As the famous saying goes, you will attract more celebrities with flowers than...ore.
Torians can once again increase their population cap (opt-in bug)
Restored missing improvement and tech text that was missing from the opt-in.
Commander ships are no longer stackable in a fleet
Mega Resort -- changed the bonus from +25% bonus to a flat +4.
Financial buildings now provide +1 to influence growth
Major boost to defenses: Defenses are now reduced by the squareroot of damage rather than full damage making defenses much better.
Base Research Lab returned to base game
Cultural Festival now requires Cultural Influence
Peacekeeper event won't trigger until at least turn 200 (instead of 100)
Defenses on Peacekeepers reduced so that they can be worn down faster.
"Go to" renamed to Auto Pilot.
More AI research focus attention
AI improvements to planetary improvement choosing.
Cosmetic change to the FOW color.
Cosmetic change to the size of ships on the main map.
Cosmetic change to the starbox visuals.
When receiving messages from a Civ, it names the Civ in the title bar.
Added tooltips to the various "idle" button states.
Added tooltip support for notifications.
Clarified message for insufficient population to eject a colony ship.
AI better at early game administration resource and late game invasion legions
Upgrading to a ship to a colony ship class penalty increased.
You can no longer colonize planets with empty colony ships. This also addresses a problem where the Yor AI could quickly colonize the entire galaxy.
You can no longer launch colony ships from a starbase without population

Gameplay

AI now will adjust how big its fleets need to be based on the assignment of the fleet. Thus, scouts and survey ships don't need escorts while mega fleets now need larger fleets.
AI smarter at picking quality ship designs.
AI much better at going after key technologies based on the conditions of the game
Streamlined the base game tech tree.
Tweaked the AI fleet governor to use defenders.
Adjusted the culture tree to be more in line with the planetary improvements
Set default colony ship population to 1.0
Minimum population for colony ships increased from 0.5 to 1.
Decreased the spacing between civilization starting positions and pirates
Base game laser weapon now comes with Militarization tech.
Nerfed several of the crazy Lost Treasures DLC rewards
Navigation Center is now a Galactic Wonder
Eliminated ship moves going up based on the level of certain planetary improvements
Galactic Navigation Center global moves decreased from 3 to 1 (yeeesh!) ...and it now longer provides an additional 0.5 points per level! (double yeesh!)
Galactic Navigator's Guild benefit reduced from providing 4 moves per turn to 1! ...and it no longer provides an additional 0.5 points per level in moves!
Galactic Mainframe research bonus increased from 0.3 to 0.5
Starport level benefit increased from 0.5 to 1
Synthetic Race population increase Promethion cost reduced from 10 to 1
Synthetic Race population increase Duranitum cost reduced from 5 to 1
Synthetic Race population increase improvement increases by 0.5 instead of 1
Changed default invasion from 1 legions to 2.

Bugs

Base Game: Custom factions with the "Raider Ship Style" will now get the proper ships awarded by events and anomalies.
Fixed crash in battle tooltip if privateer is stationed by itself in a starbase or shipyard
Fixed several improvements tooltips that were saying they were both "one per player" and "one per galaxy"
Fixed typos and sTough
Added dialog if the game fails to start because the graphics driver fails to initialize. This is usually caused by out-of-date drivers.
Crash fix in the event that the AI can't negotiate with another AI for a tech trade.
Fixed AI related multiplayer desync bug
Fixed shipyard window to always show the military production generated by the sponsors regardless of if there's a ship in the build queue or not
Fixed issue in influence system where it was displaying "Foreign ship in your ZOC" alerts for ships owned by allied players
Fixed typo. Near bay ships...to Nearby ships.

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hawkeyebf1
Taragashi

Seilore

Join Date 10/2006

+154

How does that even work? Hey, famous movie star, here's some metallic ore for you. Please do a USO tour. Because... you know, you'll get some ore! As the famous saying goes, you will attract more celebrities with flowers than...ore.

Hmmm what is this feature? I think it describes the above point, however, I found it interesting that it had it's own point.

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Larsenex

Join Date 04/2009

+212

Very nice job Stardock, Thank you!

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EvilMaxWar

Join Date 10/2007

+49

This is great but I still Cannot add Random civilizations to multiplayer games!

I also cannot pick random for myself

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Great Update!!!
Debating whether to start over my current game to dive right into this.

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Old-Spider

Join Date 04/2006

+139

Fixed typos and sTough

Commander ships are no longer stackable in a fleet

When trying to put two or more in a fleet, the tooltip shows "two ore more".

Did you know that typos are like anomalies in the game? When you find/fix one, another one appears.

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Yes, continuous and persistent emergence of typos is a natural phenomenon, just as observable and provable as say, gravity.

For some reason this is largely ignored when the various forces of the universe is listed in the textbooks. It is a mystery... ! But at least the terminology is still very space oriented!

You could for example say that, "Near Bay" ships, strangely worked in most large fleet situations. and for starbases. For a squadron of fighters, maybe not so much... But never enter any kind of epic space battle with a tiny little scout ship, at any rate!

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All this is great and all, but I hope 2.9/Intrigue promises to develop the cities mechanic more. There's nothing more frustrating than hitting the population cap upon making planetfall, or having a massive approval hit on Turn 1 because you have 10 pop and only capacity for 5. Or eating up oh-so-many tiles to make a settlement halfway useful (and thus negating their usefulness). As it stands the mechanic only seems to make an already slow-paced game slower.

I wonder if it mightn't be worth upgrading your colony centre into a city instead (sort of how you can upgrade your other improvements, but this one long-term eats food as maintenance rather than costing food outright (and maybe not cost an eternity or enough BC to clone your first-born)

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Will you please make the colony and civ capitals into spaces that we can build on? Like the tile bonuses (caverns, wild grain etc) are?

https://galciv3.gamepedia.com/Tile_bonuses

This would be a simple change and it would FINALLY get rid of the continual annoyance of the capital being randomly placed in an annoying spot.

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Quoting EvilMaxWar,

reply 3

This is great but I still Cannot add Random civilizations to multiplayer games!

I also cannot pick random for myself

This.

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Are the bugs in the 'ideological traits' going to be fix?

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Rhonin_the_wizard

Join Date 10/2009

+183

Quoting xmare6,

reply 10

Are the bugs in the 'ideological traits' going to be fix?

If you would describe them I could pass them along to the devs.

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+152

Quoting implodinggoat,

reply 8

Will you please make the colony and civ capitals into spaces that we can build on? Like the tile bonuses (caverns, wild grain etc) are?

If this means 'let us choose Colony Central as part of colonization procedure,' I would really like to see that. I'd settle for yet another AI tweak that would eliminate the painfully common Stupidest Spot Imaginable choices that have been reliable through every version of GalCiv I've played.

Oh, and I forgot--three cheers and three luxury trade routes for all the 'little things' in this update. I hope Brad took the team out for a very fine meal after y'all bumped this up from opt-in.

P.S. The clear responses to player feedback give me hope that someday soon we might be able to again choose launch directions for shipyards.

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Quoting Philocthetes,

reply 12

We've been asking to let us choose where the capital goes forever and it doesn't happen. What I'm suggesting is that the capital becomes a tile you can build other improvements on and it has bonuses for building on it and adjacency bonuses.

I think that would be easier for them to program than giving the player control over where it goes. Worst case scenario its in a stupid spot that doesn't really help you; but you can still build an improvement on it so its not going to screw up your adjacency bonuses.

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+152

Quoting implodinggoat,

reply 13

We've been asking to let us choose where the capital goes forever and it doesn't happen.

I know, I've seen the requests now and then for over a decade

But I've also seen that the devs/managers have some mystical tipping point that when triggered yields the results 'you/me' want. One of my favorites from GC2 was the advent of the turn-count alternative to the Week of thing.

I'm no coder (unless you count simple VB macros and Access expressions), but I can imagine choose-your-capital could be built by adding an option stage after the founding event that adapts the code used for place-a-spy view.

I think it might be more fun for Brad to apply some of the AI improvements for tile use to capital placement. And probably better in terms of time-to-code.

p.s. I quite like the combination of your screen name and your forum pic. The film's a masterpiece and imploding goat's sound like a hyper-horrifying weapon of mass destruction has been at work.

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Sorry if this is a dumb question, because I don't remember seeing this in other versions, but are the other civs supposed to be able to send more trade vessels than I have planets (and I have a lot)? I'm talking at least 50 vessels on a large map, and not that deep into the game. It's nice to get the extra credits from trade, but it REALLY slows the game down.

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admiralWillyWilber

Join Date 05/2009

+99

Yes depending the number of ais.

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That's 50 per ai, not 50 total.

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Rhonin_the_wizard

Join Date 10/2009

+183

Quoting stykman22,

reply 15

The limit is for trade routes, not trade ships.

Still I think this is something the devs might want to take a look at. So would you please upload a savegame file to something like Dropbox so they can check it out?

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Quoting stykman22,

reply 15

It probably feels that way, because the AI ship range is unlimited. Maybe not for all ships in all cases, but it is most visible for freighters. This bug (or AI cheese) spoils the game for me at the moment. AI should be limited to the same game mechanics I have to use as a player. Getting more production points and research points and similar stuff is OK in higher settings. But unlimited AI ship range is not (maybe on the highest AI setting, but not on normal, gifted...). If they want me to buy Intrigue, they have to fix it...

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Still have the issue where an enemy ship/fleet follows your ship/fleet all over the map once it detects it. Even though the enemy may have only 2 range sensors, it invariable follows you like a puppy dog - even if you first move 'east' to get out of it's sensor range, then dogleg north and are 6 or seven squares away...the enemy ALWAYS seems to choose the right direction to go instead of picking a random direction to search.

This is cheesy and can be exploited too easily...i can make an uber strong fleet chase one of my tiny scouts endlessly as long as it has 1 more move than they do.

Issue has been around for a long long time....

Other things I have discovered:

- I cannot interact at all with Minor Civs, though the AI can.

- Tech tree is buggy - lots of times in the diplomacy screen (and on the main Technology window) it will show N/A for tech times...you have to go to the tree and double click on the tech you are researching then go back to the diplomacy screen to see the correct values.

- When you open up an opponents world through the espionage screen, annoyingly it kicks you all the way back to the main window when you close the planet view instead of returning you to the espionage window - adds multiple clicks and slows the game down and it is quite frankly clunky and amateurish mechanics.

- Same vein - you cannot cycle through enemy planet screens like you used to be able to - you have to close the planet screen, reopen the espionage screen, reselect the race and reselect the next world - quite frankly a feature breaker for me - too darn many clicks and takes way too much time to see what the AI is building and where you want to place a spy.

- Can place a spy on one of your worlds but cannot remove them.

- Cannot promote or move diplomats - how the heck are you supposed to place them and what do they do?

- Lack of example tutorial for citizens overall - I love the feature but damn if I understand it entirely.

- On Commander promo screen it describes the type of ship you can upgrade to but there are no stats. Would be nice if the rollover had ship stats in it so you can make an informed decision on promos.

- Tool tips in general are vague and lack enough detail to really figure out how to do things. I have spent too many hours saving and trying out different actions to see what they do - really slows the game down and I am sure I am missing some really cool stuff...which brings me to the last point:

- Lack of a 2.8 player manual documenting all the cool new features - 3.8 is really a different beast compared to earlier versions.

- Those are the ones that come to mind for now...but let me say this is by far the best version of GC3 so far, love playing it.

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One more biggy - on the trading screen you cannot remove credit or resource/trade items easily - you have to click on the item, then manually type in '0' in the amount screen to get it out of the trade item list. Way too clunky - should be able to just double click on that trade good or credit amount and it cgoes away just like the tech items do. Also, the estimated credit amount for an acceptable bid is buggy - often it opens up with a random number that is no where near what the AI will accept - say it may open to 125 credits but the real amount the AI will accept may be 600, 700 or more - no way to guess without clicking the up or down arrow multiple (and I mean multiple) times to see what is a good bid. This is almost a game breaker for me - it is a diplomacy breaker. takes forever to determine a successful bid. This behavior comes and goes, even within the same turn - it may say 100 is good, then when I add then remove another item it says 100 is not acceptable when it was just a few clicks ago. Frustrating and mega annoying to the point of tedium.

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admiralWillyWilber

Join Date 05/2009

+99

Quoting stykman22,

reply 17

That's 50 per ai, not 50 total.

that sounds like a bug.

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Great game. Good work guys. Best version of GC iii yet, making one of the best games ever even better!

I haven't played since we got the Snathi, so some of my comments may be outdated:

The new playstyle is so much better. Admins + new production/adjacency mechanics + resource mechanics completely revamp how to face the game, and make planning much more complex. I'm two days in and my play still isn't optimized.

(I wish each improvement explained what gave that improvement an adjacency, i.e., list type or have it color-coded... in some cases I need to terraform, and I want to know what bonuses will occur BEFORE I pick the tile to terraform... i.e., how will the pragmatic temple impact the malevolent one? Should I blaze that tile or not? Obviously I'll learn this over time, but its a b---- first time through).

Summation = game is incredibly good!

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Malevolent- Aggression-Bloodthirsty "All planets receive a Overlord class ship." No they don't.

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Does one have to purchase this update OR is it installed automatically Or does one have to manually install?

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