erischild

I have done a serious late game diplomacy build with upgraded diplo buildings on every planet a few times. It is my subjective opinion that it changes diplomacy significantly, making overall attitudes more positive. After being DOWed by 7 out of 7 factions and fighting protracted wars, I was able to settle for peace, build diplo buildings, and then build alliances later. I won't say it was easy, just the extreme approach I took to diplomacy, but it did seem to work effec

The behavior for auto survey has evolved from GC2, it seems. First off, it doesn't seem like survey ships can magically see into the fog and find anomalies. I approve of this change, myself. Therefore, if there are no anomalies yet exposed, the survey ship seems to default to auto explore behavior. Also, the survey ships will avoid ship graveyards as long as there are safer anomalies to explore, regardless of whether the survey ship is well armed or well escorted.&

AI changes I have seen in 1.4: Better planet management. This is possibly the biggest change. They still need to figure out about farms, though, as well as slightly less extreme specialization. Still, when I capture developed planets from the AI I find a lot less I feel I have to destroy and rebuild. Better fleet management. The comments above about the difference between offensive and defensive fleeting are accurate. The improvement is in attacki

I understand the "realism" factor and appreciate the idea for that, but I think in actual gameplay I would be more annoyed by partial information than entertained or helped by it.

The only thing I can think of is to find someone else who bought the game on GOG and make an appointment to show up in the lobby. That's what I did to first check out the MP when it came out. I lost that game, badly. :) Otherwise, I don't usually do MP except for the occasional LAN game.

Sensor stacking has been repeatedly supported by Brad as someone who loves his sensor boats. I don't think that removing stacking will be a successful suggestion for redesign. Also, what you react to as a "frustration", I see as an intriguing challenge. Effectively, I am defending borders without land troops, as I see it, and that is a very different kind of challenge. So, I am not convinced how much needs fixing here.

[quote quoting="post"] Is there a library or custom factions somewhere or do they need to be loaded one at a time via steam? I have heard of people playing large games with nearly a hundred or more AI players. [/quote] At the screen where you can choose factions is a button for the Steam Workshop. There you will find oodles of factions and ships to "subscribe" to. That will download those elements and make them part of your next game. There you will find fa

I have seen a bunch of what I consider non-optimal choices, or at least choices different than I would have made. I also watch for when they take optimal choices before I get to the branch. This lets me research the second best specialty and then trade for the better one. That makes me feel clever. :) Stardock has spoken out against the concept that the AI behaves differently at different levels. They follow the paradigm that difficulty level adjustments should

If you have made this double click trick work, then please tell us how to do it. It takes me straight to the main menu.

[quote quoting="post"] Now I`m going to have to buy the game again! [/quote] You are right. Stardock forced you to hate Steam so much you have to buy a GOG copy. It is all their fault. That does make sense. I suggest arresting them for coercion. Perhaps a class-action lawsuit. Maybe both.

Why are you defending starbases? With a sensor barge and a fast killer fleet I can defend a region full of starbases, shipyards, and planets, basically one radius worth of warship travel, and I research all the drive techs I can. If the AI starts fielding ships faster than mine or sensor barges that see farther, I may be in trouble, but so far that has not happened. But I can't afford or manage individual defenses, so I make things work as I can. In my last

Control of all the information sources is obviously Mediacracy. ;)

[quote who="ManiiNames" reply="10" id="3603343"] I keep looking for my "Howling Dog" star but it has never been sighted. [/quote] I've seen that! Probably in my last game. I might have invaded it.

[quote who="Publius of NV" reply="2" id="3582743"] I agree, but IMHO the notifications in the tab just aren't visible enough. For a rare event like this I'd like a pop-up. Edit: on second thought I'd rather see the birthing subsidies end and the planet go back to building nothing so that it will show up in the queue of inactive planets. [/quote] That is an excellent idea!

Starbases, shipyards, and planets are targets. Warships are weapons. That seems to be the GalCiv reality. Starbases and shipyards were given minimal military to limit pirate predation and early "one small ship kills all your shipyards" events. Otherwise, the intention is to have you defend your assets with warships. I find a credible hunter-seeker fleet and a nearby sensor barge is a fairly decent defense in this reality. It is very offense oriented

I have to speak up every so often and defend my poor maligned friends, the constructors. For me, a good deal of the enjoyment is placing and deploying constructors. I'm getting good at it, in my evaluation, even though I haven't tried playing with the range extension. I even used a pair of military bases on a crucial beach-head battle where they had adjusted to my weapons. It made all the difference. I seldom do bases for single planets, though.&nbs

The rate of atmosphere loss is something like 100 grams per year. A goodly sized compressed air tank could take care of years worth of depridation. Any actual atmosphere production capability could easily account for the loss, on the principle that a leaky bucket still fills up if you keep pouring water in. For purposes of narrative justification within the game, I assume that Mars has been the subject of centuries long application of primitive technologies just to get it

[quote who="Seafireliv" reply="5" id="3602690"] I vote for what I think is the best Sci-fi game. Telling me to vote Gal Civ 3 because `fanboy` isn`t the way I do things. [/quote] I could really use an explanation on how this reaction is valid. Of course you don't react that way. Very few people on these forums do, so it is not a surprise to anyone. Besides, you weren't ordered to vote for GalCiv. The wording say

[quote who="wuphonsreach" reply="6" id="3602312"] Quoting Rhonin_the_wizard, reply 4 Quoting wuphonsreach, reply 3 #1) W

I play where everybody has room to settle. I end up getting 20-30 planets or more. AI settling has become more aggressive in these kinds of maps and that is cramping my style. :) I move the wheel to about 40% research 40% manufacturing, 20% wealth. I buy a few initial buildings to jump start the first planets. I build planets according to bonuses, and try to find one or two high quality planets as wealth generators. In the meantime, my economy slowly

They all seem to have the same "go to the nearest X" paradigm with no awareness that another ship is also going to spot X. I don't know if that awareness is in future plans. In the meantime, the best I have found is to send such ships to opposite ends of the galaxy and set them loose there. It's not perfect, but it helps. Mostly, I drive them manually in the early to middle game stages.

The AI is always "thinking" about its turns, even while you move your ships about and study your planets. This is a new feature in general gaming. It also uses all the cores it can find to do its thinking. This is the usage levels you are seeing. When you finish your move, the game uses the decisions already made to start moving AI units, thereby eliminating the delay for the AI to think before making its move. The reality is that you are used to games that were

I don't see them as massive, but maybe I am using them wrong or something. The only thing I notice is the AI doesn't seem to know selling you two copies of a trade resource is different from selling you one copy and should cost more.

I don't think it is bugged. It would be weak to have them as trade items if you could only use one of them. I think it is just a leftover tool tip. It would be nice to have a handy display outside of the trade dialogue. The trade dialogue has a mechanism built in for trading multiple copies of a supposedly one-per-player item. I can offer you two or more of any of them. That is why I think it is working as intended, but documented incorrectly.

At the risk of being called a childish knee jerk, thank you, but no thank you. I won't try to convince anyone and the discussion points have already been made in this thread and others, but I really had to reject the negative descriptions of those who disagree with the OP. If I hadn't already thought about it a lot and made up my mind, I would probably change it to no thank you just for the opportunity to disagree with someone who wants to call me names for it. So,