Features coming soon to GalCiv

[Garth Vader]

You can do it without deals, but you need trade.

I do think there should be some kind of change. In my last game I was building the neural net at two planets. It gives 10% econ bonus. The two planets were making like 84 and 95 income. I checked after I built the net and they were making 84 and 96.

So I vaguely remembered something about income and production being capped by planet quality, and after a quick check on the website I saw that extra income after 4x the planet quality is heavily penalized. Those planets were class 21 and 24.

So I don't see any point in building most buildings. Morale just raises your max population. I was making my limit in cash with no morale buildings and not even all the econ buildings! So building them would just cost maintence with no benefit.

[Pyrkaige]

A lot of that all depends on how you play. GalCiv certainly isn't Civ3; you can't just build every social project in every planet and expect to be able to easily support it. On my current gigantic Masochistic game, though, I've only had 3 trade routes for the entire game, and haven't traded techs or anything else since the start of the game. My economy in this game is not great, and it would be better if I'd gotten more money from outside sources, but I'm still doing fine. You just have to choose what you build, and be careful to keep your people happy (and therefor productive.) Check out the strategies forum here and on galciv.com for more info on doing that, if you're having problems.

[bonscott]

My last game I stopped trading with the other major races about half way through. I traded with the minor races exclusively and made a killing.

[The Templar]

(1) Build starbases with max trade enhancers along trade routes. I usually build one line of starbases and run all of my trade routes down that path.

(2) I always have excess industrial capacity. I might be using only 25% but I'm still pumping out the ships.

(3) The game does need more quality enhancing improvements though.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by The Templar


I own both, and have played both. I like GalCiv much better. Of course MoO3 might vastly improve with a patch (but that would have to be one hell of a patch) ...

I have to agree - MoO3 is on the way to being shelfware for me, GalCiv is different every game, and is the most fun I've had in a single player 4x game since the original MoO

[Felch]

Originally posted by Pyrkaige
GalCiv certainly isn't Civ3; you can't just build every social project in every planet and expect to be able to easily support it.

So that's what I've been doing wrong.

Actually I don't seem to be doing that badly, but I do always just queue up all the social projects in the governors and have ever planet build anything it can regardless of size. Will this strategy break down past Normal?

[Pyrkaige]

Originally posted by Felch X
...I do always just queue up all the social projects in the governors and have ever planet build anything it can regardless of size. Will this strategy break down past Normal?

Well, I don't use governors, but you certainly don't want to build every available social project on all your planets. A good example are all the projects that increase starship abilities. The best strategy often relies on having the top 5-10% of your planets in planet quality & production turn out your starships, and just build constructors on the rest of your planets. So all those +starship social projects are just wasting cash better spent elsewhere. There are also some social projects that are almost never worth building (Cultural Exchange Center, Multimedia Center, Virtual Reality Center, etc.) simply because the upkeep costs are so high compared to what they provide. At 4bc a pop, if you have 20 planets with something like the Cultural Exchange Center, you're putting out 80/turn that is almost certainly better spent raising your production rate. (Granted, with that social project you get a bit of the cost back since it's +economy, but it's almost never worth it.) Personally, I always end up with 10-12 social projects unbuilt on non-shipbuilding planets by the end of the game, and 5-6 I don't build on any planet. You'll probably be able to grow faster if you do the same.

[Felch]

Okay, cool, I tend to just ignore micromanagement entirely with the governors. I play gigantic abundant, so before I figured out how to use the governors, I was swamped with a huge number of planets every turn finishing their construction.

I do see your point though, and it's very clever. What I do now is have every planet build whatever I need at that time (constructors, dreadnoughts, overlords, whatever) and maybe a couple building things like freighters or transports or some of the more specialized units. I can see how this isn't very smart, but usually I'm too lazy to really try hard to play the game.

[Pyrkaige]

1.04 patch and Expansion Pack info

For anyone who missed the announcement, here's the latest info on the upcoming patch and expansion pack:

Tuesday, May 06, 2003 - GalCiv Development Schedule Update

The stand alone 1.03 update is currently going through Strategy First's quality assurance testing. Once it completes that, it'll be available for download.

Next week some of us will be at E3 so there won't be any updates next week. A beta of GalCiv 1.04 will likely show up either at the end of this week or early next week.

Version 1.04 will include:
+ More stars in the galaxy
+ Some new United Planets events
+ Some bug fixes
+ Significant AI update. The lower level AI will be more active but make more "mistakes". The higher level AI will play even more intelligently with quasi-fleets, build up for war, one AI player will really focus on star bases, and more.

Meanwhile, at E3 we will be announcing Galactic Civilizations: Expanded Universe. The FREE expansion pack for Galactic Civilizations. Just because it's free doesn't mean it's light on features either. Here's a small taste of what's going to be in the expansion pack:

+ A host of in depth linked events
+ The Technology Tree Navigator
+ Hyperlinks in the game to get to detailed Info
+ A BUNCH of new technologies for both good and evil
+ New Starships for both good and evil players including the Death Knight unit.
+ Updated graphics
+ Rally Points
+ Much more powerful Governors for easing late game micromanagement further.
+ The Arnor minor race
+ A bunch of new random events and United Planets issues
+ A ton of new anomalies that visually look very very cool and do some really crazy things.
+ Lots of AI updates
+ More story based events to give more information on the back story on GalCiv.
+ Lots of new AI behavior in diplomacy.
+ New cut scenes

The Expansion Pack will go into beta in June and be completed sometime this summer. It is free for all owners of Galactic Civilizations / Drengin.net users.

Lots of exciting stuff. Since GalCiv 1.0 we've added many thousands of lines of new code to the game based on player requests, the expansion pack will be even bigger than everything we've done so far.

Have fun!


Reported by Admin Frogboy

[vee4473]

i guess they don't like my idea of zoom levels on the main gameplay area.

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by vee4473
i guess they don't like my idea of zoom levels on the main gameplay area.

I've been trying to figure that out. Is there no way to zoom out the main screen? I can't stand scrolling all over the place trying to see whats going on.

[vee4473]

if there is some hidden zoom function for the main screen, i wish someone could fill me in.

I agree that panning all over the place to see things gets annoying.

[LDiCesare]

I just wish there was a map editor. I'd hate to have to crack the .galaxy files and try to hand edit them to make a scenario...

[Pyrkaige]

A little patience might be in order, or there may not be some of these changes implemented at all. There are always more features that it would be nice to see than there is time to add. I'm just guessing, but I would imagine that something like making the main game screen zoomable would take quite a bit of work compared to, say, improving part of the AI. I view these patches so far, and most of the expansion pack, as "building on the basics". That includes new stuff that a lot of people wanted (hyperlinked info, real tech tree, rally points, etc.) as well as overhauls and improvements to the basics, such as the game AI. As far as modding and scenarios go, I honestly can't imagine that there will be serious modding until/unless there is a "Scenario" type of option, ala Civ3, that allows people to install mods outside of the main game data folders. So, there's definitely work that could be done in some of these areas, but overall the additions and changes have been rather impressive for a company that isn't getting any more money for supporting this than anyone gets from a stand-alone PC game.

Or, to put it in perspective: If the expansion comes out mid-summer, it will have taken approximately the same amount of time to get all those changes as it took Firaxis to release the second patch to Civ3, which was still trying to fix the corruption fiasco.

[vee4473]

I don't expect any type of zoom function to be in a patch.

I didn't think it would be out of order for the upcoming x-pak though. Then again, I know diddly about programming so maybe it's harder or more time consuming than I know.

The list above admits that it is just a taste of the x-pak, so who knows...