Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

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GalCiv IV: Supernova - First 10 Turns, May 2023

GalCiv IV: Supernova - The First 10 Turns

Today we’re going to do a fairly simple game to “smoke test” the AI and general game mechanics. Here we will find bugs, AI issues and balance issues.

Setup

I’m playing as the Terran Alliance, the default civ.

Small galaxy, ONE sector. This lets us do an apples and apples comparison with GC3 and GC2.

Only 3 opponents.

In the beginning…

Our home solar system. I wouldn’t mind if Mars was moved so that it was closer.

Month 1: February 2307.

Picking research districts as my first tech:

Choosing Fast Exploration for more moves. I don’t really care about my HP.

Going to rush build my Industrial Center. I got a really good starting spot.

Before:

After:

We got some good feedback saying that this sort of seemingly minor change just doesn’t feel very good. Let’s see what happens if we boost the level up bonus on this from 1% per level to 5%:

Thoughts?

One idea we’re playing with:

Replace region districts directly with your citizens here. You would drag and drop them onto a region. You could move them around however you want.

This would require a lot of work because we’d need to deal with the fact you need these people to also man your special starships and we woudln’t want to yank them once they were placed or put players in the min/max position of extreme micro management.

We’d also have to deal with the fact that your colony would, mostly, not be building anything. But on the other hand, is that bad? Let us know.

Zooming out

Now, I feel like there should be tooltips for star systems. Something like this:

Yellow Star.
1. Yellow Stars are the most inviting for most forms of life. Habitable planets are more commonly found around them.
Violet Star.
1. Purple Stars are rare and are where Promethion can be found. Promethion is used is many advanced technologies.
Red Star.
1. Red stars tend to be larger and is where Durantium is most commonly found. Durantium is an exotic alloy needed for most mega structure efforts.
Blue Star.
1. Blue Stars are fairly uncommon. Their unusual gravimetric fields result in Thuilium, a highly dense material used for certain types of weapons can be found.
White Star.
1. White stars are a wild card. One never knows what htey might find.

Anyway, still on turn 1.

For leaders, I went with the one that pumps up my tech. Now I almos thtink we have too much going on on turn 1 but I’m not in love with the idea of locking leaders behind a tech. Feel free to share your ideas.

Same thing with Executive orders. I almost think we could make some of these abilities be locked behind the Cultural Progression tree (and have fewer of them) to make these a lot more intersting.

There’s an amazing world not too far away.

So I’m going to draft colonists and send them over there.

For my first shipyard project, I have to go with the colony ship.

So who do I put on the ship? Always the least happy person I’m afraid. That said, this gets back to wanting the professions to be more powerful and varied from the start (And not easily changeable).

And at last, we have finished Month #1.

Month 2

The Endeavor has arrived at Mars. Now, there’s a bit of lore behind why isn’t there a Mars colony by this point?

I only see two possibiltiies:

#1 We will never go to mars as meat humans.

#2 We will not colonize Mars until we have a new type of propulsion.

In GalCiv, we assume #2.

Our flagship, the TAS Discovery is investigating an artifact just outside the solar system.

So we reach Mars and there’s a situation. Depending on the game, I pick different things. In this situation, I’m going to go with minerals because I happen to know it’s a crowded little sector and I want resources coming in quickly.

I’ve nearly doubled my output by the second month.

Our probe has flown near a pre-hyperdrive world. We can’t talk to them yet. This is going to be an area we’ll be expanding on a lot this Summer.

Meanwhile, the Discovery has finished investigating the artifact:

This will be nice for later. Now off to the next anomaly:

Month 3

My colony ship has reached the Malmo system.

This planet used to be a Precursor world that refined Promthion.

It’s an amazing world, so I’m going to assign a governor so we that we can manage it.

It’s funny, people in GalCiv III always said they wanted to place their colony capital. Well here you go!

Month 4:

First contact with another hyperdrive capable civilizations.

I have a good feeling about them.

Month 5

I’ve gotten research districts technology.

Now, I want to make it clear: I have total confidence that we and this “Drengin Empire” are going to be best friends. But I’m still going to research armed shuttles.

Let’s take a look at their world and compare it.

These Drengin don’t have much cultural output (Influence). And their pollution is relay really bad. But who are we to judge?

Meanwhile.

I have no idea what a Techpod Hive is but I’m going to get it (actually I do know but a new player won’t/shouldn’t).

Month 6

I’m actually pretty torn this time. I want Asteroid Mining and Universal Translator. But they’re so much more expensive than the ones getting a research bonus. I have to go with Space Elevators.

And I am going to get a Constructor to start claiming the shiny resources I’m finding.

Month 7

This doesn’t make me happy. The GNN is now in action and they have heard rumors there are two other civilizations out there. And both of them are better than ours.

Month 8

Artemis, the 9th planet of our solar system (didn’t you know?) is colonized.

And we’re going to sell it to Big Planet.

I also have enough culture points to choose a trait for my civilization.

Cultural Progression

This is an area of the game we are still lookingi at. I feel like it’s too much bread for the butter.

There are 14 different cultural paths here. Let’s assume they average 6 traits each. First off, that’s not many traits and second, even if you only can get half of them due to the balance, that’s still 42 of them. Let’s say you pick one every 10 turns, it would take 420 turns and that’s longer than we expect the average game to take. I’m 45 minutes into this game and I”m on turn 8.

Next, let’s look at the choices available right now:

Self-Governance. Gets me a free leader. That is worthwhile.
Iron Fist. +50 control. That’s worthwile.
Ambition. Leaders cost less to hire. That’s weak.
Fairness. 10% approval boost on my worlds. That’s weak
Sacred History. 1000 influence on your home world. THAT’S HUGE. Ok fine.
Eureka. 30 research. That’s pretty good.
Kindses. +1 Diplomacy. Boo.
Practicality. You get 3 SUpply ships. Ok that’s quite good.
Amiable. +1 Diplomacy. Double boo.
Spycraft. +5 Deception. The game doesn’t explain what that means so it’s worthless.
Independence. -15% decay rate. Meh.
Unification. +50% homeworld influence. This is too powerful.
Intolerance. Citizens of other species don’t care if you’re at war with the homeworld of their species. This is nice but not a good one for the first choice.
Tolerance. Core world start with 1000 influence. HOLY cow that’s OP. We need to take a 0 off that.

So of these I see a few good ones and a lot of weak ones.

Culture Traits should be more like a Loot Box. You get a thing with it. Something right then and there. Not a stat boost. So we’re going to have to revisit.

Month 9

From here I’m going to start really getting into the game and come back later….

…Time

Passes…

Ultimately, I was able to conquer the other AI players pretty well. The issue is that the weapons are just too expensive for them and it messes with the value they put onto other things.

This in return resulted in an update we released to the game on May 2.

A from here we created the 1.6 requirements document.

______________________________________________________

GalCiv IV: Supernova First 10 Turns Series

First 10 Turns, May 2023

galciv iv dev journals

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aclegg

DivineWrath

Join Date 05/2006

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My first encounter of the Tolerance perk was in my first game of supernova when the Altarians colonized a planet near one of my planets. I was overwhelmed by influence and didn't know the cause. All I knew was that I couldn't have the Altarians be neighbors in any star system I shared with them. I later found out that this perk existed a few games later. Also note that this perk affects colonies, not just core worlds.

If its a shock to me, then its going to be a shock to new players. They'll be losing without knowing the means to fix it. I fear this would turn away a lot of new players.

My average game is a small map with 2-3 sectors. I usually win under 200 turns, give or take 50 turns. Thats not enough time to get many perks.

However, I have noticed that culture points per turn is linked to the civ capital buildings, so conquering another civ is a good way to get more culture points. I've also noticed that minor civs have these capitals as well. Since I can't do anything else with them, I make minor civs my first targets. You also don't need to core these worlds; just owning them is enough.

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Citizens on tiles: this would depend on the details. If those citizens still man transports we would need a good visualization of what we are doing. If you change this system or not: please add easy ways to see the stats of the citizens and/or add some kind of sort/filter functions
Star tooltips: thumbs up
Too much during turn 1: GCIV is prominent for its quick start. If somebody wants a slow start they can play distant worlds
I would not use Telescope: I like the idea but control is too important for spamming colony ships
Boarding Colony Ships: visualization of citizen stats (without tooltip), sort/filter would be great. It is not always the least happy person (it could be a criminal that is supposed to chill at a starbase)
Flagship and GNN Live: I really like those features
Culture Traits: I did play the board game Ark Nova https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/342942/ark-nova . I had to think about GCIV culture traits. AN has one kind of card that gives you instant bonuses and ongoing bonuses. I think the underlying idea would fit very well to GCIV's Culture Traits. When (early, mid, late game?) and in what situation (galaxy setup) is a Culture Trait activated?

Let's take an example: "Unification. +50% homeworld influence. This is too powerful." Maybe. If you play in a small galaxy. But if you play in a very large galaxy this might be very crappy instead.
So you could change this to: 1 free (scout/trader) and +50% homeworld influence

I will provide feedback to all fourteen traits.

I agree:

"Self-Governance. Gets me a free leader. That is worthwhile."
"Iron Fist. +50 control. That’s worthwile."
"Practicality. You get 3 SUpply ships. Ok that’s quite good."
"Spycraft. +5 Deception. The game doesn’t explain what that means so it’s worthless."
"Intolerance. Citizens of other species don’t care if you’re at war with the homeworld of their species. This is nice but not a good one for the first choice."

I am not sure:
"Sacred History. 1000 influence on your home world. THAT’S HUGE. Ok fine."
"Unification. +50% homeworld influence. This is too powerful."
"Tolerance. Core world start with 1000 influence. HOLY cow that’s OP. We need to take a 0 off that."

I respectfully disagree:
"Ambition. Leaders cost less to hire. That’s weak." I like to get a lot of leaders. I also assign a lot of leaders to factions at late game.
"Fairness. 10% approval boost on my worlds. That’s weak" Approval management is very important. I want to run taxes as high as possible. This trait helps.
"Eureka. 30 research. That’s pretty good." Here I would like an additional ongoing effect. Maybe -10% cost to build science ships.
"Kindses. +1 Diplomacy. Boo." "Amiable. +1 Diplomacy. Double boo." Those can be the key to reach a diplomacy threshould or to get more time to prepare for a war. If you want to win an alliance victory they should be valuable.
"Independence. -15% decay rate. Meh." This is an ongoing effect that should be very strong if I am not wrong.

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Old-Spider

Join Date 04/2006

+149

The suggested tool tips for stars have some problems. The minor problem is that one star is called violet, then it is called purple. Nit-pickin', but I couldn't help myself.

The major problem is that resources in Supernova aren't restricted like they are in the base game.

I've seen yellow stars with durantium or promethion or both or nothing.
I've seen purple stars with durantium or promethion or both or nothing.
I've seen blue stars with durantium or thullium or both or nothing.
I've seen white stars with durantium or nothing.
I've seen red stars with durantium or nothing, which is the way it is in the base game.

I think I saw a star that had durantium and promethion and thullium, but I haven't been able to find it in my saves, so maybe I didn't see it.

There could be other combinations that I haven't seen.

When I mention a resource, that doesn't mean one of it. It could be two or three. I've never seen more than 3 resources at a star, so those with 2 types mentioned could be 2 of one and one of the other.

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Leaders on the first turn are fine, as are the 3 ministries you get; they provide decent bonuses, but aren't overpowered early. In terms of gameplay, it's actually a little bit of a toss-up between filling a ministry, having the money available to rush certain improvements that'll have a bigger effect on what you want RIGHT NOW, or to quickly rush out your probes, colony ships and constructors. Good, meaningful choices on the 1st turn, that don't screw you too much for not picking them quickly due to their percentage global effects having more impact later. As an aside it should probably not be free to assign a minister to tech to get a bonus tech choice, choose the bonus tech, then un-assign them and keep the breakthrough bonus on the chosen bonus tech. Even just being able to instantly see an extra tech for free probably isn't good either, as even if you didn't keep the break-though bonus, you can always take a peek and see if you want the bonus tech, then reassign if not.

------------------------

As the bonuses for most tiles are so small, rushing ships so you can get more colonies to get flat input buffs is far more effective for ramping output of everything than spending money on other things (aside from some of the 1/colony improvements) early. The impact that strategy has on your growth rate can be easily fixed with the early growth policies, which is good. That's absolutely fine, so long as it's intended.

Later the slow development of bonuses really adds up, but only for planets with high base values or lots of colonies. This is fine and needed for the tall/wide gameplay choice; fewer core worlds with many colonies mean the small multipliers on tiles have much more of an effect, basically multiplying the cost/benefit of getting that tile. If you change the tile multipliers to be bigger, you may need to tweak decay rates to avoid tiles on tall colony rich worlds being incredibly efficient in comparison to a wider playstyle, making rushing them far more potent. I'm aware the maths will make the cost/benefit the same, but the credit cost benefit for rushing is what I'd be really concerned with, alongside the inflation of numbers that are currently being controlled and cost/benefitted very tightly. Being wealthy at the start is already a huge buff; increasing the exponential rate of scaling up production with money would mean that you might have to do a diplomacy money weighting re-run, alongside reconsidering the balance of building synthetic population.

Tile adjacency bonuses being far more impactful or of a similar value to Tile bonuses slightly supresses the design goal of wanting players to feel like they should develop planets differently based on their tiles. My development is more based on their raw resources than special tiles; when everything is a percentage buff to something, the value of the original something being multiplied often matters far more than the strength of the buff. So, if developing based on raw inputs is best, then what effect do tiles have on my decisions? An extra 1% or even 3% as an isolated tile bonus boosting a medium value is worth far less than the integrated 2-18% adjacency bonus lost by given up the placement of a synergistic improvement boosting a high value that's not taking advantage of any tile bonuses but only making use of adjacency bonuses. There is a place for isolated high bonus tiles operating on similar initial input values, or even choke-pointed mini-clusters operating on similar initial input values, but not much else.

In respect of Policies, one thing that really needs dealing with is their instant on instant off nature, even within one turn. Especially with the ship HP Policies, this is easily exploitable. My suggestion is to, at least, delay the effect of policies so that the policy that modifies everything during a given turn is the one that was active at the end of the previous turn. A stretch goal would be having their effects ramp up to full power over a certain number of turns when added, to dis-incentivise frequent policy swapping.

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We got some good feedback saying that this sort of seemingly minor change just doesn’t feel very good. Let’s see what happens if we boost the level up bonus on this from 1% per level to 5%:

Thoughts?

I think the result is better, but there's an inherent issue with % that you don't know exactly what they would do. Meaning at a glance I can't play in my head with how much benefit it would give me, and depends a lot on the input. So it might be good with a low input but OP with a higher one, or it might be weak now and balanced later. I sometimes feel the numbers on this game are all over the place.

Replace region districts directly with your citizens here. You would drag and drop them onto a region. You could move them around however you want.

This would require a lot of work because we’d need to deal with the fact you need these people to also man your special starships and we woudln’t want to yank them once they were placed or put players in the min/max position of extreme micro management.

We’d also have to deal with the fact that your colony would, mostly, not be building anything. But on the other hand, is that bad? Let us know.

I'm a bit lost with some of the ideas here.

"Replace region districts directly with your citizens" You meant place? As kinda like Civ specialists?

"We’d also have to deal with the fact that your colony would, mostly, not be building anything." Like they do now? I mean, colonies don't build anything.

In any case, I think the core problem with population is that it has a lot of noise and conflicting ideas that slow down decision making. They have unique stats, then they are specialists and then they are a resource. They are interesting ideas that in practice clash quite a bit.

You correctly mentioned in another post that individual stats create a lot of "noise", plus clash with the ideas of them being a resource. In others games, populations are equal, so it's more about the role, so you can take anyone for a ship or place them as specialists. By making them unique stat-wise, you need to make it easier to find the best one for a job, then easy to compare between them, then ways to mark them so that building a colony ship is not a chore.

I understand the idea an appeal of making them more than a "pop number". So I'd guess what I would do is:

- As a base, make the race population the same stat-wise, like "this is the average human/drengin/altarian". So you take a look at the portrait, you know what they are good at. Plus you don't check much who to place on ship.
- Make a chance for "gifted" population to appear, which have increased stats (which could even be random but always above the average, like +6 stat points distributed above the average pop). This gifted pops should be marked with a small star, and it's the ones you want to keep for sure in your planet to do an specialist job. Policies could affect the chance they appear, plus even maybe you could promote them to leaders.

For leaders, I went with the one that pumps up my tech. Now I almost think we have too much going on on turn 1 but I’m not in love with the idea of locking leaders behind a tech. Feel free to share your ideas.

I think they are fine at the start, it's something I love doing, starting building my cabinet.

Same thing with Executive orders. I almost think we could make some of these abilities be locked behind the Cultural Progression tree (and have fewer of them) to make these a lot more interesting.

Yes, there are too many of them as the game goes on, and I don't even know or care what half of them do.

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Quoting Old-Spider,

reply 3

The suggested tool tips for stars have some problems. The minor problem is that one star is called violet, then it is called purple. Nit-pickin', but I couldn't help myself.

The major problem is that resources in Supernova aren't restricted like they are in the base game.

I've seen yellow stars with durantium or promethion or both or nothing.

I've seen purple stars with durantium or promethion or both or nothing.

I've seen blue stars with durantium or thullium or both or nothing.

I've seen white stars with durantium or nothing.

I've seen red stars with durantium or nothing, which is the way it is in the base game.

I think I saw a star that had durantium and promethion and thullium, but I haven't been able to find it in my saves, so maybe I didn't see it.

There could be other combinations that I haven't seen.

When I mention a resource, that doesn't mean one of it. It could be two or three. I've never seen more than 3 resources at a star, so those with 2 types mentioned could be 2 of one and one of the other.

Old-Spider,

Just for your entertainment, here is a screen snapshot of a white star with 4 Durantium and 27 asteroids:

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Old-Spider

Join Date 04/2006

+149

WOW!

I've seen a white star with lots of asteroids, but I've never seen one with 4 durantium. In fact, I've never seen any star of any kind with 4 of any resource, so WOW! again.

Thanks for posting this. I've saved a copy of the picture, just in case it's needed in the future.

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if you looking for a real OP start that is not the right mix of stats

Watcher is extremely OP; add Militant (+40 control) and the discount on Telescope that lower it to 5 control

this is a first turn OP and I didn't even have to start moving any of my 4 probes (1 typical +3 free, and they all have +6 moves too!)

To recap

EXPLORER +2 Ship move than

FAST +2 ship move

MILITANT +40 Control (help to use 8 times the telescope and still have 100 control for 3 or 4 Colonization ships)

WATCHER "Reduce Control cost and no cooldown on Telescope" + 2 Sensor Range Ship (I am not sure this works. My probe still has only 5 range, not 7) & Start with 3 free probes

FAST EXPLORATION (policies)+ 2 ship move

You have a total of +6 moves and can see 8 planets around you in the first turn and plan where to put your mining station and which place to colonize even before you start moving (The no cooldown on Telescope for just 5 points is definitely OP)

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Quoting Old-Spider,

reply 7

WOW!

I've seen a white star with lots of asteroids, but I've never seen one with 4 durantium. In fact, I've never seen any star of any kind with 4 of any resource, so WOW! again.

Thanks for posting this. I've saved a copy of the picture, just in case it's needed in the future.

Old-Spider,

If you liked that one, here is another one to make you drool: A starbase mining 5 Durantium (not all from the same star, but who cares?). With Mining Drones and a Techapod Mining Unit I am getting 1.5 Durantium per turn. Oh, and an as yet undiscovered Culture Relic thrown in as a bonus (I can't see it, but the Starbase Report says it is there).

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Just to point out as well that if levels of a district are made more effective vis-a-vis tile bonuses, then you will not only be buffing tile bonuses, but also the bonus you get when you, for example, upgrade research districts, which will scale better when every tile is the same putting you back to square one (and being miles too efficient).

Leaving level bonuses alone and boosting tile boost levels would accomplish the same thing without the side effects.

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