Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2394

GalCiv III v4.5 [released] and other Stardock Stuff

When I say “Learn to code” I really mean it because man, ever since Covid hit we have just been behind the eightball on getting things done in a timely way. We need more engineers.

Star Control: Origins on XBOX Series X is in Certification, Galactic Civilizations IV is about to get a major overhaul, Sins of a Solar Empire II just had a technical alpha update and we have a huge new game in development that hasn’t been announced. And this doesn’t even count for the software side that makes things like Start11, Fences, Object Desktop, Multiplicity, etc. We are spread thin.

We promised a GalCiv III v4.5 and we mean it and so here is what we’re working on.

So without further delay here are the changes in GalCiv III v4.5 (now released):

Note: Most of these updates are for the latest expansion: Retribution. It is the ultimate version of GalCiv III and has gone through a lot of improvements since its first release.

AI’s will now merge with the weakest other civ if they are hopelessly behind after 75 turns.
Turns before an AI can surrender changed from 100 to 75 but odds of surrendering in a given turn reduced..
Yor Fusion Matrix improvement pop cap benefit reduced from 2 to 1.
Yor Anti-Matter Matrix improvement pop cap benefit reduced from 2 to 1.
Yor Quantum-Matter Matrix improvement pop cap benefit reduced from 4 to 1.
Earth planet class increased from 12 to 16 (4 additional starting tiles to build on)
All other starting planets also given +4 starting tiles.
Yor (Synthetic civs) can now build more population starting turn 1.
Yor manufacture population now only requires Durantium.
Yor starting base population cap reduced from 16 to 8.
All players now also start with a Scout ship to help get exploration moving a bit faster.
Most starting trade resources on planets require Promethion to upgrade. This was a bit of a newbie trap before where new players could find themselves with several things to start building on their planets that have little near-term benefit.
Theocracy Government Colony Limit increased from 5 to 50 to make it more attractive.
Unity Government Colony Limit increased from 7 to 32 to make it more attractive.
Republic Government Colony Limit increased from 16 to 32 to make it more attractive.
Emergency Coalition Government Colony Limit increased from 12 to 50 to make it viable
Empire Government Colony Limit increased from 36 to 72 to make it more attractive.
Several other government types tweaked slightly.
Like with planetary Trade Resources, most artifacts found on worlds now require Promethion to upgrade to avoid the newbie trap, new player overload.
Going over colony limit from government penalty reduced from 25% to 20%.
Capital World raw production points increased from 3 to 5.
Capital World raw gross income increased from 10 to 12
Strategic Command now provides general manufacturing instead of just Military and provide Manufacturing bonuses to adjacent improvements.
Basic Factory improvement cost increased from 30 to 40 but has been moved up in the tech tree so players get it earlier.
The Bank…is no longer indestructible.
Several other banking and financial buildings are no longer indestructible.
Entertainment Center tech requirement moved from Cultural Exchange to Universal Translator.
The Mega resort is no longer indestructible.
However, Paxton’s Emporium IS indestructible now.
Carriers are more powerful but now require Large Scale Construction tech (moved far back in the tech tree).
Updated many of the event graphics with new better looking ones.
AI Trade offers are much, MUCH better.
So many bug fixes.
Fixed bug that caused AI to “see” planets the player could see even though it was in that player’s FOW.
AI much better as handling taxes
AI much MUCH better at choosing what technology to research which should make it far more effective when at war.
AI better about offering treaty trades
AI will abort offering a trade to another player (AI or human) if it determines it’s a really unreasonable trade.
Crusade: Durantium requirement removed from bigger hull classes to match Retribution.
Base ship speed increased by +2
Large hull HP increased from 80 to 100
Large hull cost increased from 400 to 500.
All Engine upgrades get +1 more moves (if you are putting on hyperdrive you should get more than 1 extra move)
Tiny hulls get +1 moves.
Lower end weapons no longer require a special resource (i.e. particle beams don't require Elerium).
Root threshold of faction power before surrendering changed from 25% to 20% (AI slightly less likely to surrender).

There’s lot of incidental fixes, tweaks and optimizations in here as well. But we think you will find this update to be a major improvement in pacing, AI behavior and general gameplay.

galciv iii dev journals

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Old-Spider

Join Date 04/2006

+149

WOW!

That's a lot. I going to have to stop playing GalCiv4 for a while and resume playing GalCiv3 to check out all the changes when this comes out.

Fixed bug that caused AI to “see” planets the player could see even though it was in that player’s FOW.

I've seen evidence of this since GalCiv3 was released. It seemed strange that the AI would be able to send ships directly to a planet on the other side of a galaxy that they couldn't possibly know about under normal conditions. I'm glad it's been fixed. Of course, those ships being sent to a planet on the other side of the galaxy were also ignoring range limits they had, but that's another problem. I'll be sure to check if that is still happening.

Despite my complaint, which may be about something that no longer exists, this is a huge improvement over the current version. I look forward to playing it. I hope I can make the mental switch from GalCiv4 back to GalCiv3 without too many problems.

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Hi. I just started on the beta, going to take a while to explore it. PC, Windows 10, all DLC, fresh reinstall after deleting every folder from before.

Right off I can see a couple of problems:

New:

No starting scout ships for the Drath, Korath, Phamysht, and a few other races. They also don't show up on the civilization picker screen.

Old:

Yor: They have Advanced Colony Capital but no Upgraded Colony Capital - no way to build anything but the starting colony capital.

Yor: The Fusion Matrix and its upgrades do not seem to exist.

Yor: Research Collective gives and gets an adjacency bonus for Ship Construction. Intended?

The folder created for saves under Documents > My Games is for Crusade instead of the latest expansion. Intended?

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DerekPaxton

Join Date 03/2003

+309

Quoting pandreor,

reply 2

Hi. I just started on the beta, going to take a while to explore it. PC, Windows 10, all DLC, fresh reinstall after deleting every folder from before.

Right off I can see a couple of problems:

New:

No starting scout ships for the Drath, Korath, Phamysht, and a few other races. They also don't show up on the civilization picker screen.

Old:

Yor: They have Advanced Colony Capital but no Upgraded Colony Capital - no way to build anything but the starting colony capital.

Yor: The Fusion Matrix and its upgrades do not seem to exist.

Yor: Research Collective gives and gets an adjacency bonus for Ship Construction. Intended?

The folder created for saves under Documents > My Games is for Crusade instead of the latest expansion. Intended?

You are correct. We will update tomorrow with the following fixes:

Fixed missing scout ship for the Torians
Fixed missing scout ships for the Arceans
Fixed missing scout ships for the Scryve
Fixed missing scout ships for the Measured
Fixed missing scout ships for the Phamysht
Fixed missing scout ships for the Xraki
Fixed missing scout ships for the Korath
Fixed missing scout ships for the Drath

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Old-Spider

Join Date 04/2006

+149

I had a real strange experience with surrenders in my game that I thought might be due to the new surrender mechanic. I do have surrenders on in this game.

In the same turn the Yor, Snathi and Terran Resistance surrendered to me. I then received messages that the Yor and Terran Resistance had been destroyed, but I didn't receive a message that the Santhi had been destroyed. Right after that the Xraki surrendered to me, and I received a message that they had been destroyed. This was in 3 or 4 turns starting on turn 75.

Later, I saw that the The Measured had been destroyed by the Snathi, who had surrendered to me earlier.

Even later, I saw that the Tywom had also been destroyed by Snathi.

The continuation of a race that had surrendered is not new because of this update. I have seen and reported it in earlier versions. It seems to be due the timing of the various threads that are being used by the game. In this case, the Snathi surrendered in one thread while some other race surrendered to them in another thread.

I felt it would be good to send in a save before this happened so it could be checked to see if things were working as expected when the mass surrender occurred. I loaded an autosave before it happened and resumed playing. I saved each turn to get one just before it happened to reduce the playing time needed by the Devs.

Only the Snathi surrendered to me.

Nothing else happened the way I just reported. Races are still surrendering to other races, but it seems like things are going the way they did in the past, with no mass surrendering to me or any other race. Races that surrendered are no longer in the game.

I decided to report it so that others will be aware that something like this could happen.

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Any timeline that can be announced on the GCIV overhaul?

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Quoting DerekPaxton,

reply 3

You are correct. We will update tomorrow with the following fixes:

Fixed missing scout ship for the Torians

Fixed missing scout ships for the Arceans

Fixed missing scout ships for the Scryve

Fixed missing scout ships for the Measured

Fixed missing scout ships for the Phamysht

Fixed missing scout ships for the Xraki

Fixed missing scout ships for the Korath

Fixed missing scout ships for the Drath

With today's update, everyone starts with 2 Scout Ships, but now the Drath and Korath have no starting Survey Ship. Error or trade-off?

The Yor issues I mentioned remain. Or am I the only one having this problem, like an installation path issue (I have all DLC and don't use mods)? Other people seem to play Yor no problem. Yet I see no Fusion Matrix, Anti-Matter Matrix, or Quantum Matrix as mentioned in the changelog above. Also there is still no way to build Upgraded Colony Capital or later.

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Any chance that GalCiv 2 might get some love?

I have this strange bug that won't let me alt-tab if I do a planet invasion. I think the planet invasion screen breaks something. In windows 7, I would return to a black screen (I have to close the game). In windows 10, it makes everything a black screen (I have to restart the computer).

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As for GalCiv 3, could we get an in-game clock? I'd like to know what late hour I'm playing to.

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I just picked this up on EGS and want to make sure that it has already gotten or will be getting this update?

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Quoting Lucas1802,

reply 9

I just picked this up on EGS and want to make sure that it has already gotten or will be getting this update?

I know it was in opt-in beta, not sure if it went to a regular release.

Opt-in is easy to download no password needed.

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Old-Spider

Join Date 04/2006

+149

I've run into a major problem (for me) with the release version of this update. I didn't have this problem with the first or second opt-in version.

The problem is that the release version doesn't respond to mods. Using mods is the same as not using mods. I've made and used mods enough to know what I'm doing. I always make sure my mods are compatible with the current version of the game. I update them as needed before using them. There is no doubt mods are being ignored.

I always use a mod that changes the graphics a little so my old eyes can handle the game more than 15 minutes at a time. The game I recently played and finished had the mod working. It was started and finished with the second opt-in.

After that, I changed from the opt-in to the release version, which should be the same. The next game I started didn't show the graphics I was expecting. I verified it didn't matter if mods were on or off. The graphics were always the same - the default version for the game.

I then made the same changes in the files in the game directory and tried that. The graphics changed to what I expected the mod to make. I found long ago that the game reads reads those files directly rather than the .bin or .dat files.

I hope someone at Stardock will check on why the game is ignoring mods next year when the holidays are over.

UPDATE Dec 26

All the above is about my laptop. I updated GalCiv3 on my desktop today. It went directly to the release version of 4.5. Mods worked fine on it. The problem is not the game by itself; it's how the game works on my laptop.

I've tried a lot of new things to get the game on my laptop to recognize mods, but it still doesn't. I even copied the entire game directory from my desktop to my laptop, but that didn't solve the problem. I'm going to guess there is some obscure file somewhere in the Steam install that is causing the problem, but what do I know?

I'm giving up for now because I can change the .xml files I need to change to get the result I want on my laptop.

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yor needs fixing again - they are stuck at 8 pop max even after opening the entire tech tree - nothing appears to improve their pop cap

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Yes, I have this exact problem with my custom civilization. I can build to 8 pop and then use a colony ship to move 2 pop to another planet and then repeat. Seems really goofy.

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Hi, I was excited to see an update to GC III so I started playing it. But I immediately noticed something strange going on, I think related to these two items:

AI’s will now merge with the weakest other civ if they are hopelessly behind after 75 turns.
Turns before an AI can surrender changed from 100 to 75 but odds of surrendering in a given turn reduced..

I started with 30 civs (including mine) on the map. We're down to 7 and it's still pretty early. It's been a masssacre too, with up to 6 being destroyed on a single turn. And the destroyed civs planets have just evaporated. This seems really really weird! Is anyone else experiencing this behavior? I have all the DLCs btw.

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Publius of NV

Join Date 08/2002

+231

Whether worlds of surrendering civs disappear or not is one of the game options and is not a recent change.

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Gotcha. You're talking about "surrendered colonies" which toggles whether "colonies transfer ownership upon surrender". I'd suggest that vaporizing the planets is a weird thing in this context, too.

Along those lines, I could disable AI surrendering. I'm not sure what will happen with the "merge" bullet above but I'll start some new games and test. I used to like AI surrendering, it's a pain to root out the last vestiges of a civ sometimes. But I imagine (and I'll do some testing here too) that if I had the transfer ownership toggle on and allowed AI surrenders, then I'd have about 20 planets (because nobody had surrendered to me) and the other remaining civs would have 60 or more. We're down to 5-6 civs left in the entire ludicrous sized galaxy, and it's turn 111.

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Publius of NV

Join Date 08/2002

+231

Quoting Colonel_Panic2465,

reply 16

Gotcha. You're talking about "surrendered colonies" which toggles whether "colonies transfer ownership upon surrender". I'd suggest that vaporizing the planets is a weird thing in this context, too.

Along those lines, I could disable AI surrendering. I'm not sure what will happen with the "merge" bullet above but I'll start some new games and test. I used to like AI surrendering, it's a pain to root out the last vestiges of a civ sometimes. But I imagine (and I'll do some testing here too) that if I had the transfer ownership toggle on and allowed AI surrenders, then I'd have about 20 planets (because nobody had surrendered to me) and the other remaining civs would have 60 or more. We're down to 5-6 civs left in the entire ludicrous sized galaxy, and it's turn 111.

That could well be (the other civs having 60 planets). I started using the "transfer ownership" setting when it was introduced because I thought it bizarre that planets would simply disappear. In most of my games since the beta ended I've also disabled surrenders since I've never liked the mechanic where a civ could surrender to another civ they weren't even at war with. I haven't had a chance to play since the latest update.

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Old-Spider

Join Date 04/2006

+149

My first game I had 24 opponents in a gigantic galaxy, and I had surrenders on with colonies transferring. On turn 75 or 76, I had 3 races surrender to me in 1 turn, then several more in the following few turns. My economy and happiness were ruined. The planets I received were all over the galaxy. I couldn't defend them, so my other enemies were taking them. At least that helped my economy. I quit this game.

My second game was the same except colonies didn't transfer. It didn't take too long for most of the races to quit. I did get some home planets when some of the races surrendered to me. I lost that game to an AI alliance victory.

My third game had only 19 opponents with other settings the same. There were only 5 of us left when I saved at turn 150. I don't know when the total decreased to 5. After about 90 more turns, the 5 of us were still playing. Two of them suddenly quit, which left one of the remaining AI allied with me and the other AI, so I lost another AI alliance victory.

I think this new surrendering decision needs to be adjusted so most of the races don't vanish so quickly.

I have started a new game with surrendering off, but I haven't reached turn 75 yet.

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2394

Quoting ebne10770_21435,

reply 12

yor needs fixing again - they are stuck at 8 pop max even after opening the entire tech tree - nothing appears to improve their pop cap

well crap. I’ll take a look.

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Thank you!

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Re: the Yor pop max problem

I wonder if it's somehow related to the thing I mentioned earlier, not being able to build Upgraded Colony Capital (though that wouldn't affect the homeworld?). Maybe consider bringing back the old Power Matrix building, which seems to have disappeared somewhere along the line of Yor balance changes?

Also please look at the issue with the Drath and Korath not starting with Survey ships since getting the new starting scouts, and custom races not getting the scouts at all.

Thank you for doing the update though! Interesting changes so far.

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Please look at The Fissure mercenary ship. The description says it takes 2 logistics points but it actually takes 7 points.

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2394

The Yor have their own special pop cap. But there are techs thst are supposed to increase it.

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Please look at the celebrity citizen galactic tour promotion. I have never been able to make it work even though I have more than adequate resources.

I need to review the tech trees because I missed this.

I don't play the Yor in the game, I play a custom civilization with the Yor robotic base population.

I just looked through the Tech Trees and I did not see anything that increases my pop cap above the new 8 max.

Thank you.

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 23

The Yor have their own special pop cap. But there are techs thst are supposed to increase it.

Oh! I had really no idea what was going on with Yor population mechanics, since I started playing them these past few months. Thank you for letting me know I wasn't simply bugged (or crazy). Looking forward to the New Year and hopefully a new GC3 hot patch.

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