Thoughts on my first game

from GalCiv3 Forums

I just completed my first GCIII game recently. I played as the humans on a gigantic galaxy and used the slowest research advancement settings. I won the game with the ascension victory. For the most part, I liked the game, but I think it can use some improvement. Here are my thoughts:

At the beginning (Turn 1), after the galaxy is generated, it would be nice to have a "regenerate map" feature much like what Civ5 has. The reason is that I like to have a game where my starting planet is roughly in the centre of the map. This provides more opportunities for challenge and fun when dealing with other empires. This would save me the headache of constantly going back to the main menu to reset the game.

I think there are difficulties with the AI. For one, I found that an empire just doesn't know when they're getting their asses hand to them. In the diplomacy screen, it indicated "you are weak" to the enemy empire, but I was anything but. I just treated them as a nuisance. Occasionally they'd send a fleet across my border and I'd quickly blast it to pieces without incurring any losses. Occasionally I'd send a fleet in their territory to "teach them a lesson" and I'd blow up any fleet or starbase I'd find (again with no losses to myself). They'd still stubbornly persist in a war against me when I tried to negotiate peace.

I think there should be a forced pop-up notification, when other empires go to war (like in GCII). I don't always check the notifications bar every turn.

Negotiations with other empires should include an option to demand an empire to make peace with another empire. This can be handy if I want to keep other empires from bullying my allies. GCII had this option.

I'm just curious, will empires always opt for building the largest class size of ships? Is it possible that tiny, small and medium sized ships can still provide some strategic value late game and that some empires might choose this route rather than always defaulting to huge ships?

A minor thing. I noticed a typo on the diplomacy interface. "Infidel" is misspelt as "infedel".

And odd thing I noticed was when I eventually got to the Age of Ascension part of the game was that my research capacity completely left other empires in the dust by a ridiculously huge margin. The gap just grew and grew and grew, and the other empires' research levels were just stagnant for the remainder of the game. The difficulty level was normal, so I'm puzzled how I could have completely dominated the technology race.

I think this was discussed, but it would be nice to have at least some animations involved in ground invasion, just to see how the troops perform. I think something simple like the Master of Orion II ground invasion animations would be a useful model for this.

When protecting starbases with a fleet, why can't a fleet and starbase fight in tandem instead of separately?

To make the game more exciting, I think some mega-events would be nice to make things interesting. Rebellions/revolutions, space monsters, viral outbreaks, powerful invading aliens from outside the galaxy, or whatever. In a previous post, I suggested some ideas for near end-game apocalyptic mega-events.

I hope this helps!

17,738 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

This is good feedback. 

 

The regenerate map button has been requested. There is a technical detail on how placement of resources and objects are used in memory as the reason why we dont have it yet. It will happen but not just yet. 

 

I prefer to play on the edge of the Map rather then the center and expand out that way. 

 

There are hundreds of tweaks to the AI planned to make it more challenging. Already there are mods to address the LEP and to change how we earn money in the economy. 

Also we wil get an update that gives us more flavor for Invasions. This was in beta but removed as they wanted to do more with it.

 

Welcome to the forums!

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Are there no mega events?  There absolutely needs to be.  It was a huge cool thing in GC2.

ObjectDock - Access shortcuts and frequently used applications from an animated dock.
Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

We gave them a massive list of ideas for mega events in the Beta stage I thought there was a galactic events button in the setup menus? I'll have to check that out?

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top


At the beginning (Turn 1), after the galaxy is generated, it would be nice to have a "regenerate map" feature much like what Civ5 has. The reason is that I like to have a game where my starting planet is roughly in the centre of the map. This provides more opportunities for challenge and fun when dealing with other empires. This would save me the headache of constantly going back to the main menu to reset the game.

They keep saying this is eventually coming, I believe the latest news was patch 1.4 also known as (ctrl+n).


I think there are difficulties with the AI. For one, I found that an empire just doesn't know when they're getting their asses hand to them. In the diplomacy screen, it indicated "you are weak" to the enemy empire, but I was anything but. I just treated them as a nuisance. Occasionally they'd send a fleet across my border and I'd quickly blast it to pieces without incurring any losses. Occasionally I'd send a fleet in their territory to "teach them a lesson" and I'd blow up any fleet or starbase I'd find (again with no losses to myself). They'd still stubbornly persist in a war against me when I tried to negotiate peace.

I found this the opposite, I couldn't force an AI to declare war on me I was too powerful, none of them wanted to mess with me even though I was running away with the game.


And odd thing I noticed was when I eventually got to the Age of Ascension part of the game, my research capacity completely left other empires in the dust by a ridiculously huge margin. The gap just grew and grew and grew, and the other empires' research levels were just stagnant for the remainder of the game. The difficulty level was normal, so I'm puzzled how I could have completely dominated the technology race.

Four reasons.  First it depends on the AI's focus on technology for that specific faction, if it's low on priority they seem slow.  Second if you have tech trading on this will also leave the AI in the dust as they don't take advantage or very poor advantage of trading techs to other races so the player can get their hands on many more techs much more quickly than the AI knows how to do.  Third the AI has to build research buildings next to each other to take advantage of the adjacency bonus's and I find that they are poor on doing this as well.  Fourth the AI is poor on placing economy star bases near planets and therefore can't receive the extra production/research/economic boost they provide.  This will allow the player to have planets producing over 1000 points per turn in any of those categories while the AI may have 100.


I think this was discussed, but it would be nice to have at least some animations involved in ground invasion, just to see how the troops perform. I think something simple like the Master of Orion II ground invasion animations would be a useful model for this.

Is eventually coming I thought it was patch 1.3, however, much of this has moved around so many times it's not funny.  This should have been in upon release, however, do to time restrictions (even though it could have been adjusted easily enough as everything is digital and they made it a point to note this several times during production) they pushed it to a free post release patch.  I'm hoping by patch 1.4 they get most of the annoying bugs and quirks cleaned up. :)  Stardock is normally very good about player feedback and correcting things.


To make the game more exciting, I think some mega-events would be nice to make things interesting. Rebellions/revolutions, space monsters, viral outbreaks, powerful invading aliens from outside the galaxy, or whatever. In a previous post, I suggested some ideas for near end-game apocalyptic mega-events.

Mega events were left out of the base game because of the ideology bonus's.  They originally felt ideology would offset some of these events.  I feel this has taken away some of the game twists especially middle to late game.  I hope these are brought back in an expansion.  

Some of the ones I miss....

Random minor race found.\

Planets break away make a new faction (although annoying helped to stretch the game for those that love that type of thing.)

(Dread Lords) An all powerful race enters the game with a fully built up class 26 (or more) planet ready to conquer the galaxy.  

All planets double in planet class around certain object and extends out so far.

All planet qualities increase by x around certain object and extends out so far (even class 0 or dead worlds)

Planet is destroyed by comet.

Ones I don't miss.

Random pirates are generated throughout the galaxy (In Galactic Civilizations 2 this meant the galaxy was now filled with pointless fluff that you had to clean up or be annoyed by.)

Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Thank you Seilore, for your comments. :)

I'm glad the regenerate map and ground combat features are in the works. Awesome!

Regarding the AI issues, I think I had the same issue you had with some empires. After I had finished a war with the Krynn, they didn't bother me again for the whole game. It was the Iridium that stubbornly persisted to go to war with me, despite that they didn't have a chance. For some reason, the AI just saw me as weak, when I wasn't. The Iridium often had a bigger fleet than me, but they were totally outclassed (mostly because their logistics tech never improved much).

I think that even if we're more powerful that another AI empire, but that empire still wants a piece of our ass, it should still have capabilities such as trying to form military alliances with other AI's to try to balance the playing field. Under those conditions, a weaker AI could declare war on us. A lone hyena won't attack a lion, but perhaps a pack of them will.

I also noticed if an AI empire that declared war on me is far enough away from my empire (and they don't have starbases initially within my borders), they won't attack me at all. This can be solved simply by building starbases to extend their range, but I've never seen them do that.

I look forward to playing another game after the 1.1 patch is released. Hopefully much of these issues will be resolved. I'll post another thread with my thoughts after that happens.