Galactic Civilization III v2.3 Release
We have released a fairly substantial update to Crusade and the base game that will vastly improve the AI, improve balance, and squash some really important bugs. Read below for info!
Crusade Updates
AI
Substantial AI improvement to how the AI builds planetary improvements
New AI governors for smarter AI planetary building.
Added support for AI specific events.
AI transports are much more intelligent than before about targeting planets
AI much smarter about focusing its endeavors on its target primary opponent and its assets
AI work on trying to get it to be smarter about when to make massive fleets and when to send out smaller fleets to finish someone much weaker.
Lots of AI work to try to find a good balance between the AI using its military might to conquer versus when it should hunker down. This will be an endless balance war for the AI.
Removed code that was blocking the AI from even looking at units that were far away that it knew about. While this made sense when performance was tight, now that this has been moved to its own thread on its own core, we don't care.
Damaged fleets that fall behind a certain threshold will be sent home to reinforce
More improvements to the AI guessing algorithm for where good planets are (or as novices say "AI cheating" -- it's not cheating).
Big one: For the human player, 3 survey ships sitting on the same tile will go to 3 different anomalies rather than all going to the same stupid one. The AI players are very unhappy with this change.
A LOT of AI work on getting the AI to sacrifice a fleet on a hardened position to soften it. The AI doesn't like to sacrifice units and marketing doesn't like it either because users will say the AI is dumb for sending weak fleets that can't possibly win. But sometimes, you have to do this to soften up the player's defenses if you have the power to spare.
Eliminated the tech governor for the AI. They don't need a script on what to research.
AI ship design much better than previous for putting together more powerful ships by saving up resources more than they were before (fewer better ships rather than squandering them on lots of crap)
AI is better about building transports when it should and not build them when it shouldn't.
What AI players build on planets is less scripted and more procedural.
New code for the case when the AI can't find something to build on a planet. It switches to the new procedural system to figure out what to build.
More AI differentiation based on player traits (moving away from races to support better modding)
Eliminated last vestiges of AI scripting for trying to achieve a particular victory. You can't script a victory in a game like this.
Ship tech research now weighs heavily what resources it has coming in rather than what it currently has in inventory. The AI getting lucky and finding say 5 anti-matter shouldn't dictate its weapon research choices.
Tech stealing by player or AI players made less frequent
Warmonger penalty more intelligent. If you attack early game, you get it for awhile and if you are declaring war on a lot of players (where a lot depends on how many players are in the game) then it goes on.
Pirates no longer look for danger when going to a destination because, again, quit being goddam babies.
Pirate player will assign its ships to be on the warpath so that they're not such babies about attacking other ships
Pirates will do suicidal attacks.
Pirates are no longer considered dead if they still have a shipyard. They are only mostly dead.
As if the pirates are going to maintain a freaking starbase. They're pirates!
Gameplay / Balance
All Starbase rings now generate 1 influence per turn so that they at least, over time, will expand
Starbase modules now stack instead of upgrading
New promotion type: Mogul. Gives 5000bc upon promotion from Entrepreneur
New missions: Gem Trader, Pilgrimage, Xylology, and Hyper Silicates.
Sensors, which provide local navigational benefits, give a slight increase to a starbase's influence
Most starbase modules now have a +1 maintenance cost.
Colonizing events that gave "Planetary Defense" now give "Planetary Resistance."
Colonizers ability now grants 1 administrator point.
Unrelenting ability now provides +1 influence per turn for colonies
Ancient ability provides 10 research for each anomaly that it picks up.
Entrepreneur ability provides 5 additional trade routes in addition to existing abilities
Devout ability now gives an influence to all planets boost every time they choose an ideological choice
Bureaucrats start with 25 administrators in addition to existing abilities
Conquerors receive a 2,500 bounty every time they conquer a planet
Certain ability now provides 100 research every time they choose an ideological trait
Made the Prolific and Devout abilities global.
Trade secrets bonus reduced to 25% instead of 100% for pragmatic choice.
Trade Secrets ideology event nerfed from a 100% bonus to trade income to a 25% trade income bonus.
Cultural Center now provides 1 influence per turn flat
Elevation Foundation ideology reduced from 0.2 to 0.1 per turn
Temple of Enlightenment ideology per turn reduced from 0.3 to 0.1
Preparedness Center ideology per turn reduced from 0.2 to 0.1
Arbitration Center ideology per turn reduced from 0.2 to 0.1
Citadel of Revenue ideology reduced from 0.2 to 0.1
Death Furnaces ideology reduced from 9.3 to 0.1 per turn
Cultural Beacon now provides both a 20% influence bonus to the colony as well as a +1 per turn influence
Cultural Forum influence per turn increased from 2 to 4
Information Hub IpT increased from 4 to 6
Interstellar Exchange IpT increased from 8 to 12
Interstellar Embassy module IpT increased from 12 to 16
Interstellar Ministry IpT increased from 16 to 32
Changed planetary bonuses that helped just Social Manufacturing to help All Manufacturing.
Nerfed Renaissance event's research bonus
Fixed bad Food Stats on Desert worlds and Precursor worlds
Nerf some more of the base planet traits for Crusade.
Altarian AI personality changed from Aggressive to Peaceful (they were too mean)
Terran Resistance are no longer diplomatic (heh, they never were..) but instead are scientific
Yor are now 'Expansionist" instead of "Aggressive". The Yor aren't capable of being
"Aggressive" by our standards. That would require them thinking of us as sentient.
Arceans are now opportunistic removing the Chaotic trait (Which made them move between Neutral and Merciless).
Vigilant Level 2 on the ideological tree now provides the player 3 engineers upon choosing it.
Trade route diplomacy bonus increased from 0.5 to 1 for the Traders 4 trait.
When a player dies, their starbases and shipyards are destroyed instead of being given to pirates.
Durational projects will now re-queue themselves on completion (can still be canceled normally)
Adjusted ideology descriptions to reflect changes to ideology improvements
Wild Grain planet feature now properly increases Population.
Updated citizen descriptions to make the bonus calculations more understandable.
Updated privateer promotion description to be more accurate.
Adjusted ideology improvement descriptions to better reflect their bonuses.
Fixed bad descriptions of several ideology improvements.
Shipyards and Starbases are now destroyed only when a faction surrenders to the pirates
The "Certain" abilities now correctly award research points when ideological traits are unlocked.
Singularity Powerplant now actually charges for Elerium.
Slight modification of blueprints to not require as many resource heavy weaponry.
Slight increase in the amount of mining the mining modules produce per turn.
Shipyard HP and defenses reduced so that players can eliminate pirates and break defenses more effectively.
Nerf and Re-enable the Arbitration Center, that was disabled, making the Arbiters ideology trait useless.
Updated Starbase modules to stack, instead of upgrade.
Custom Factions
Custom Starbases can be uploaded to the Steam Workshop
Fleet's now show the original author's name of custom ship designs
Original author's name shows when creating a blueprint in the Ship Designer
Perf
Minor change to FOW with big performance improvements. Removing a redundant stat update.
AI players no longer recalculate every turn whether they know about an asteroid. Asteroids don't move
Player objects processing has been moved to the AI for faster performance
UI
Govern->Stats screen now shows the number of tiles (parsecs) owned, as well as number of tiles contiguous to the player's homeworld
Promotion options list now fills correctly
Fixed issue where promotion option costs were not showing the tooltip for the resource entries
Fixed display issue where weapon components in the ship designer landing would not show any stats in the tooltip
Large UI: Resources in the top bar no longer overlap in
Added alert for when another faction has destroyed a faction
Campaigns
Updated campaign maps
Reduced starting pop on some of the campaign factions.
Retiring in campaign no longer causes some buttons to stack on each other
Bugs
Asteriod Mining bases should no longer change ownership.
Fixed bad bonus text on several "Lost Worlds" colonizing events.
Fix resource cost triggers for Singularity Power Plant.
Fix incorrect descriptions on several colonizing events.
Mining base assignments no longer get reset if one of your planets has changed ownership or was destroyed
Fixed missing adjacency bonuses on the Silicon based life cities.
Fixed Power on the Manufacturing Focus specialization.
Fixed crashes
Fixed MP desyncs
Battles in nebulas are no longer missing their backgrounds
Fixed preclusion bug that allowed some one-per-planet improvements to be built multiple times.
Changed Adjacency text to say Adjacency Bonus.
Changed short name for Torian to Torians.
Fix for bad grid lines on some Nvidia cards. Doesn't fix all cases, yet. But hey, we got some perf as well.
Administrator points granted from the Colonizers ability are now properly displayed.
Fixed some cases where Legion count wasn't being updated correctly.
Don't refund legions after invasions for whole ships that weren't destroyed.
You can no longer view non-selectable ships in the fleet details window by going next/prev.
Fixed a logistics problem that prevented the ships from not always merging to a commander's fleet
"Destroying Galaxy" loading shows up when exiting to the main menu.
Tech victory alerts will no longer show up before the age of ascension.
Removed duplicate resource window in the ship designer window
Ship missions now show the proper completion time in the queue
Metaverse: Tutorial Factions and New Factions now show their proper names
Mercenary entries with large resource costs no longer get split into two lines
MP: Players are no longer double-charged for mercenary resources.
Fixed typos.
Asking someone to declare an embargo or to declare war now longer destroys the universe.
Removed a ghost ship from shipping crate
"Base Game" Updates
Bugs
Various crash issues fixed that were due to custom ship designs / ship mods
Lots and lots of potential crash issues resolved due to better checking of custom/mod data
Crash fixes from Crusade
Brought over Crusade optimization for stat updating while unit moving
Influence no longer calculates in real-time (major perf boost)
AI
Player objects calculations moved into the AI thread (performance)
Fixed bug that caused AI to potentially get "free credits" due to messaging being disabled
Pirate AI is more aggressive.
AI better at defending planets (Crusade tech)
AI targeting system updated to near Crusade level
AI keeps track of its fleet inventory, this is used to make better decisions on what to Build
AI more aggressive in using transports
Lots and lots of improvements to the AI's ability to target enemies intelligently
Smarter AI behavior when it comes to asking for money and such
AI smarter about what ships it wants to build and when
Much better AI trading system for putting together deals
AI trading changed to be a vector so that it can offer multiple trade offers (Crusade feature)
AI evaluates its money much better
AI much stingier on ship Trading
AI much smarter about declaring war on players when someone tries to bribe them to
AI much better about going to war against those who are at war with its ally
AI more reactive to parking fleets near its territory
AI war mongering set up
Smart auto credit bidder added to the trade window to make trading easier.
Greater variance in flavor text in conversations
Gameplay
Increased the amount of stars, planets and habitable planets when common is chosen
Planetary Improvement cost generally made higher.
Production points on colonies and capital planet default to a higher value
Reduced manufacturing cost but increased mass of special components so that the ramp up time isn't so severe.
Added new "Complete Tech" event.
Russian: Completed
Galactic Civilizations III: Completed
Galactic Civilizations III DLC: Completed
Galactic Civilizations III: Mercenaries Expansion: Completed
Galactic Civilizations III: Crusade: Completed
Galactic Civilization III: Crusade v2.21 (Released 6/1)
Hello,
We are continuing to balance the game to make it more fun. Please read below for the changes.
Balance
[*]New improvement: Galactic Mainframe. Can't be built on one's homeworld. Acts as a hub for other research buildings.
[*]Deep core mine base social production increased from 1 to 3, provides a universal manufacturing bonus to adjacent tiles.
[*]Various reclassifications of improvements for the AI
[*]Hyperspace project provides a +3 to neighboring research
[*]Brindle's Observatory adjacency research bonus increased from 2 to 3
[*]Kimberley's Refuge is now indestructible, provides +3 to the neighboring population.
[*]City population cap reduced from 16 to 9.
[*]City food cost increased from 2 to 3.
[*]Cities provide +2 level bonuses to Research, Manufacturing, Wealth and Influence improvements!
[*]Colonial hospital is now indestructible
[*]Colonial hospital population growth increased to 0.1 flat per turn
[*]The GIA provides a +1 influence adjacency bonus
[*]Consulate now provides a flat +1 influence per turn bonus
[*]Consulate goes up by +1 influence per turn for every other influence improvement that is adjacent
[*]Various higher level influence buildings receive the same benefit as the Consulate plus keep their existing benefits
[*]Changed most galactic events to only occur ONCE rather than once for each player. This should also eliminate the Pirate spam.
Patch Galactic Civilization III: Crusade 2.20
Full Change log:
We are pleased to unveil the first major update to Galactic Civilizations III: Crusade (Crusade being based on version 2.1 of the base game, we now unveil version 2.2).
== Map Size changes ==
Tiny: from 18 to 20 (20x20) hex sectors
Small: 32 to 36 hex sectors
Medium: 40 to 50 hex sectors
Large: 75 to 90 hex sectors
Huge: 95 to 120 hex sectors
Immense: 240 to 250 hex sectors
Excessive: 290 to 300 hex sectors
Insane renamed to Ludicrous
Ludicrous: 500! (500 x 500 tiles)
== AI ==
The AI will have harder time stealing techs from you if you have counter agents (e.g. unassigned agents).
The AI no longer tries to bribe you to pick on minor factions.
AI now fully uses the new Crusade multicore engine in pathfinding, diplomacy, ship movement, tactical analysis, economic planning, planetary invasions, citizen assignments, etc. are all broken up into tiny jobs and sent out to your CPU cores drastically reducing turn times.
AI is much, MUCH smarter in what ships to build when (thanks to the GalCiv Discord community for rapid strategy testing responses) and how.
Substantial improvement in the general feel of AI intelligence when dealing with other civilizations diplomatically.
Improvements to AI trade intelligence based on the new multi-turn need analysis system.
AI more savvy on how to use spies as it now takes the consequences of retaliation into account before targeting someone.
Lots of new alien dialog based on more background data (what the galactic situation is).
== Gameplay ==
Ported more of the GalCiv III base game tech tree elements to the new Trait based system. Crusade replaces the monolithic tech tree system with one that is procedural generated based on what traits you have for your civilization.
First internal pass on getting ready to let players submit their own tech tree parts via Steamworks (i.e. create a bunch of techs, tie them to player traits, and have them just work).
Anomalies and Events from other DLC have had their rarity adjusted to be in line with Crusade's new rarities (basically, other DLC stuff was relatively rare).
== Multiplayer ==
General multiplayer performance improvements.
Reduced multiplayer Checksum fragility to only deal with differences that are material.
First pass at networking layer upgrade to pave the way for fully customized civs playing each other (i.e. you play as your favorite sci fi civ vs. someone else's sci fi civ). The main challenge here is bandwidth on sharing what amounts to some pretty big assets.
== User Experience ==
Adjusted the Espionage screen to clarify that unassigned agents lower the chance the AI can steal techs from you.
Resource upgrades improvements are no longer flagged as one per planet.
You can now select a fleet even if there's a non-selectable ship on the same tile.
Decommissioned ships refund their administration points and legions.
Improved up the commander information on the citizen summary screen
Removed access debug error messages. This matters because modders could find themselves with a lot of debug output which on non SSD drives could slow framerate.
Reduced the number of event log entries displayed
== Balance ==
Beam weapon space usage reduced from 5% to 3%
Kinetic weapons cost reduced substantially.
Entrepreneurs now provide a trade route to their civ as well
General comes with Xeno Combat techniques
Colonizer Ability changed such that every time they colonize a planet, they get their administrative point back. This will need a tooltip tweak for the admin resource tooltip.
Xeno Combat Techniques now unlocks the General. Combined with Station Garrison, player can protect planets without having to research invasion.
Port of Call tourism improvement moved to only require Universal translator
Capital city now allows up to 16 population
Computer Core cost reduced from 35 to 16 so that players that don't want to rush it don't wait too long
Port of Call cost decreased from 150 to 32
Port of Call benefit changed from a 10% tourism income boost to a flat 3 with each level adding another 1
Starport now military production increased from 1 to 2
Space Elevator general production decreased from 2 to 1
City population cap increased from 8 to 16
Silicon city population cap increased from 8 to 9
Military Academy improvement now requires planetary invasion to eliminate confusion in which players thought they had to train legions to invade.
Station Garrison cost reduced from 75 to 50
AI is more chatty
Easy AI no longer rushes defensive units
Easy AI is no longer capable of rushing colony ships
AI no longer tries to reinforce planets with individual defender units if they are far away (this is the cause of lone ships streaming to their death in far off places)
Influence specialization now provides a flat 1 influence to every colony instead of a 10% boost.
Majesty Tech now quires the diplomatic ability
Master Trade now requires the entrepreneur ability
Other high-level biz/trade techs now require entrepreneur race ability
Robots can't have cruise lines
Improved AI conquest strategies
Slight balance tweak to opposing culture affect.
Mild balance pass on the weightings of faction power.
AI is even more chatty
Hot Springs moved to require Planetology (for frog races)
Hot Springs benefit changed from 3 to 2.
Increased AI's guts by 25%. Basically, AIs tend to be a bit too careful in when to attack. This is partially because players think AIs are "dumb" if they make suicide attacks. But there is a time and place to use suicide attacks to wear down an opponent. Cracking a turtler requires sacrifice.
The AI will have a harder time stealing techs from you if you have counter agents (e.g. unassigned agents).
The AI no longer tries to bribe you to pick on minor factions.
New ship design method that lets us see how many ship designs are in the library.
AI will no longer trade ships away on the cheap
General increase in late game tech costs.
Defenses now use less space but cost more
Carrier modules cost more but use less room
Eyes of Universe now requires Interstellar Travel instead of Interstellar Survey
Farming no longer requires Xeno adaptation but comes sooner with Planetology
Cities now require planetology (or torian planetology)
Slight increase in cost for later improvements
Minor balance updates
Xenophobic tripled benefits.
Set default faction to Terran Alliance
Nerfed Renaissance event's research bonus
== Performance ==
Continued improvement to turn times thanks to Crusade multicore
Improvement to speed of clearing out an old game so you can get back to the main menu.
Optimization of fog of war edges
Optimization of battle viewer weaponry
== Bug Fixing ==
On the starbase list, the "upgrade" icon isn't always enabled.
Fix Virtual World improvement, now requires Promethean instead of Promethean Stones (which are no longer in the game)
Stuck turn fixes. This issue is caused by the very delicate balance between turn speed and the difficulty of resyncronizing the threads quickly.
Various crash bugs fixed.
Fixed the Scientist Coerced Promotion which was giving 10x points
Fixed a bug where if food was ever >0 but then later became 0 that it would never update again.
Fixed strange bug that was causing pirates to not get to take a turn because the game thought they were dead. They're not dead!
Fixed bug where asteroids from dead players would become owned by pirates and unkillable. Mining bases are now autodestroyed when a player dies.
Fixed edge case bug where the player somehow allies with an event race which in turn causes a strange diplomacy flag to show up.
Fixed minor bug where planned destination of a virtual fleet wasn't being copied from the source fleet. This would sometimes cause the AI not to attack targets of opportunity.
Typo fixes. English isn't our first language. Our first language is Drengin which doesn't have vowels.
Graph power buttons now toggle properly
Updated the Entrepreneur Citizen text to better reflect its ability.
Ship designer window: removed a duplicate resource bar
Patch Galactic Civilization III: Crusade 2.13
AI updates
Deciding "ships to build" moved into the planning phase so that it can better keep track of its ship inventory
If Minor races get ahold of a ship (like constructors via ideology) they now will do something with them [hat tip: GalCiv Discord
https://discord.gg/JN2XH6A)
AI less inclined to build war support vessels
Only expansive civilizations will try the colony rush strategy now. [hattip: GalCiv forums]
AI players that are at war with everyone won't bother to build freighters [hat tip: GalCiv Discord team:
https://discord.gg/JN2XH6A)
Fixed a bug that was introduced in GalCiv 1.9 to improve multiplayer where credit transfers are sent as a message. This caused the AI to not be properly charged for rushing ships.
AI prioritizes getting resources for its starbases over economic ones early game.
Better Spy handling
Broad, overall improvements to AI for dealing with player threats, creating bigger fleets, etc.
AI will not try to recruit various citizen types until much later in the game
AI does more evaluation on its economic status when determining whether to train a citizen as an Entrepreneur
Trade: The AI does not add any more offers if the offering party doesn't have the credits/resources to back it up.
Increased odds of AI building transports, training generals.
AI builds resource improvements better
Hull Changes
Tiny Hulls:
Cost reduced from 11 to 10
Logistics reduced from 2 to 1
Small:
Logistics reduced from 3 to 2
Medium:
Cost increased from 56 to 60
Large:
Cost increased from 128 to 150
Logistics increased from 7 to 10
Huge:
Cost increased from 432 to 500
Logistics increased from 10 to 12
Starbase: HP reduced from 100 to 50
Balance
Took away the Leader's +1 to raw production on every planet [hattip: GalCiv Forums]
Hull Reinforcement ship module HP boost reduced from 20 to 5 [Stop Brad's cheese tactics]
Scavenger Mission moved from Colonial Engineering tech to Interstellar Survey [hattip: GalCiv forums]
Military Academy cost reduced from 200 to 75
Xenophobic race ability now provides 100% boost to social and research on a planet but a 75% penalty to ship production.
Synthetics granted trade techs
Wealthy ability provides +1 to raw production on every world in addition to the money it provides
Starbase cultural forum influence increased from 0.5 to 2
Starbase Information Hub increased from 1 to 4 influence per turn
Starbase Interstellar change influence increased from 1.5 to 6 influence per turn
Starbase interstellar embassy increased from 2 to 8 influence per turn
Central Bank improvement now doubles colony wealth and increases +1 gold per turn for each level
Market Center provides 5% more of a wealth bonus per level (up from 1%)
Other wealth based improvements now match market center bonus levels.
Reduced improvement maintenance.
Galactic wonders now generally provided an improvement bonus.
Sneaky no longer gives you a spy turn 1, gives you espionage tech
Drengin forced to be Merciless (they have an image to uphold)
Commander now increases the logistics cap of a specific fleet
Mo money from missions
Recruit citizen project and similar ones are given a secondary type to allow the AI to better identify them
Conqueror Ability provides +1 to shipyard construction and a 100% to legion quality. No longer gives invasion tech.
First level Xeno farm is allowed for aquatic factions again.
The Research Institute improvement now gives 7.5% bonus, not 75%
Performance
AI calculates its stats during its own threaded turn rather than in a single update all players thread
Lots of late game performance improvements (hat tip: ZINGO!
https://discord.gg/JN2XH6A)
Influence calculations moved to a background thread to keep the game from getting "jerky" on large maps late game.
Diplomacy updates now handled as a threaded job.
Visuals
Cosmetic texture updates
Invasion screen prettier
Improved alignment for tooltips
Removed duplicate ability names in the Civ. Builder
Reduced administration alert priority to Medium (from High) to reduce spam.
Polish pass on colony ship animations
Remove redundant screen title on the Multiplayer setup screen.
Fix missing tooltip description on the Worker Recall Production.
Trades no longer (incorrectly) display have negative credits
Improved FOW Border for both appearance and perf.
Updated several screens from the old style to Crusade Style.
Fixed mislabeled Resource names
Fixed bad alignment for ideology Tooltip stats.
Updated credits tooltip in resource bar to be more informative
Torians and Arceans factions don't show twice If you own Crusades, but not Mercenaries.
Changed tooltip for starbase upgrading to be more clear.
Fix the Constructor tool tip to be accurate.
Fixed the Quick Research Window to avoid text overlapping
Sylne UP portrait is no longer squashed
Implementation for minor player text tooltips.
Added a strategic icon for the Mission ships
Updated text for various techs.
Several improvements now have improved icons
Fixed small break in between the tech tree entries on Normal and Medium UI sizes
Flavor-
Lots of new insults
Bugs
Changed tooltip for starbase upgrading to be more clear.
Crash fixes
Upgrading a Transport no longer consume legions
Deleting a ship design template from the main menu ship designer no longer kills the game
Fixed the discrepancy between the net income tooltip and the govern stats.
Particles are now get properly cleaned up after battles. This was leading to late game lag after several battles.
The first upload for ship style sets will no longer give an error.
Upgrading ships to the same type will no longer kill admins/legions.
Legions are not longer lost when upgrading to a new transport
Logistics cap is now on a per-fleet basis instead of on-the-player so we can increase it for the commanders.
Now when you place a legion, you see the particles for the legion show up immediately.
When you add or remove legions, you see the particles change to indicate a smaller or larger swarm
Fixed a problem with Information Warfare that would heavily favor the invader.
Fix for AI simulated invasions (for choosing tactics) not taking into account force surrenders and planet killers
Several stuck turns fixes
Fixed error where the AI was still ignoring resource costs in improvements
Added sanity checks where the AI tries to pick a improvement even if it didn't have an improvement to queue
More crash fixes
Resource Bar Arrows no longer Scroll in the wrong direction
AI can no longer sneak invisible techs from the trade window which were throwing off the overall evaluation.
Added tooltips to the Invasion Viewer window
Updated "Word on the Street" graphics
Fix for the workshop race condition crash between validation and updating workshop UI.
Updated planet graphics
Fixed problems with growing the Yor population.
Fix for deleting factions with ship style sets for subbed workshop items (it wasn't removing all the files so it was complaining for a set you can't use because it should have been deleted)
Fixed issue where super long ship names were clipping to two lines in the fleet details window callouts.
Clicking the "Lost Unit" notification will now take the player to the Unit Manager -> Transfer screen and select the last lost unit in the list.
You can no longer steal spies from dead civilizations.
Spies placed on buildings no longer disappear when loading a save game.
Added tooltips to the Advantage Values in the Invasion Viewer window
Some lopsided Invasions were incorrectly being previewed as being "evenly matched.
First pass at re-balancing campaigns.
Mecenaries: Ysengard's tooltip now properly reflects its ability.
Lost Treasures: Food improvements are now working correctly
Multiplayer
AI is now properly charged for rushing ships.
Continued work to reduce the amount of data going back between players so we can have custom designed races in. (almost there)
Faster game start up
v2.0 adds new Starbase Administrators, Improves Diplomacy, updates Ship Builder UI, and More
Starbase Administrators are a new addition to Galactic Civilizations III with v2.0 and will take some of the pressure of feeling like you need to mass-produce Starbases off your shoulders. You'll start with a number of Administrators based on the size of the map, and each Starbase will consume one. Researching certain government-related techs will allow you to hire more Administrators. This new resource gives some advantages to smaller empires who can now choose to use Starbases to improve morale and productivity in their home systems.
Diplomacy has received some major work in this update, too! The AI now takes several things into account when determining trades, including how much they like (or don't like!) you and what their relations are like with your allies and enemies. AI players who don't like you will charge more in diplomacy and will evaluate proposals using a redlining system (learn more about that here). You'll also get detailed information on why a specific trade was accepted or rejected, which will allow you to strategically adjust for future offers.
The Ship Builder's UI now makes it easier for you to find your favorite creations. By default, the auto-generated military ships will have their categories folded for easier UI navigation. Every ship you create will be added to your "favorites" list. Also, the currency, morale, population, and turn information will appear in the shipyard window now.
v2.0 also brings some additional updates and fixes. For more details, check out the full changelog at the bottom of the post.
v2.0 Changelog:
Administrators
Starbases now require one "Administrator" to build
Number of starting Administrators depends on galaxy size
Research certain Government Technologies to increase the number of Administrators
Current number of available Administrators can be seen on the resource bar or the starbase list tab.
Diplomacy
General pass on conversation weights such that the AI will talk more and offer more interesting trades.
AI players who dislike you will charge you more in diplomacy
Changed diplomacy attitude label from "allied" to "loves (they're not allied)
Changed diplomacy attitude from label "war" to "hates" (they're not at war)
AI should be better at focusing on a given weapon or defense tech rather than trying to research multiple paths.
AIs will heavily weight their relations with other players based on who is at war with whom and why
AIs will tend to come to the aid of their friends even if the enemy is more powerful
AI now has the capability of explaining in detail why they rejected (or accepted) a trade offer (though will require translation of new strings)
AI will use a redlining system of evaluating proposals such that each sub-AI routine will add marks to the proposal with potential veto power.
AI now has the capability of explaining in detail why they rejected (or accepted) a trade offer.
By default, the auto-generated military ships will have their categories folded for easier UI navigation.
Balance
Home planet production points base increased from 1 to 10
Significantly reduced starbase spacing radius to 2 tiles, allowing you cluster them closer together.
AI is substantially better at evaluating what ship to build, when and where
Early game improvements made less expensive
Late game improvement benefits reduced slightly
Research improvements have been rebalanced.
UI Improvements / Bug Fixes
By default, the auto-generated military ships will have their categories folded for easier UI navigation.
When a player designs a ship, it will, by default, be added to the favorites
Added the currency, morale, population, and turns information to the planet and shipyard window
Changed Terran and "space monster" fighters size from small to tiny, matching the sizes for other factions. This change prevents a crash in the ROT campaign
Map Editor: Fixed a problem that prevented the Mini-map Preview from working.
Replaced Diplomatic Specialization 3 to be "Efficient Administration" on all trees. (Base Game and Campaigns.)
Fixed bad Matter Disruption Cost multiplier that was making Matter Disruption 2.6 times more expensive than it should have been.
Changed the width of the asteroid tooltip window and "nearest owned planet" value so that the value can no longer overlap
Negative Strategic resources are no longer shown in the trade options when they were negative
Updated map lighting settings to decreased ambient light and increased key light to make the ships look less flat.
Mercenaries: Ships that you can't afford are greyed out.
Fixed issue where Ancient Kinetic Augmenter had weapon FX even though it is a support module.
Removed military ring Starbase range boost now that we have implemented Administrators.
Fixed a problem that was causing rebellions in peaceful corners of the galaxy
Galactic Civilizations III: 1.9 Mega Patch (Released 12/13)
We are happy to share our next update which has massive improvements in performance, more challenging AI, better balance, and lots of bug fixes. Please review below!
Launcher
Read below for the new launcher will allow us to communicate better with you, better settings support, and more.
Introducing the Launcher
Capstone Techs
In the Age of Ascension, players can now research that provide large, temporary empire-wide bonuses. These techs can be researched repeatedly with stacking bonuses.
Optimization
Memory: introduced new texture compression for planetary and ship textures to greatly reduce memory usage and dramatically improve startup times.
Removed legacy stopwatch code from the sound system
Moved old profiling junk
Reduced CPU usage of the particles and main graphics threads
Removed redundant debug output
Multithreaded the texture loading at the start of game to improve performance.
AI
AI builds scout ships later in the game to keep exploring very large galaxies
Dramatically reduced AI >normal economic bonuses (no longer needs them)
Re-designed the way the AI expands into the galaxy with colony ships so that its expansion no longer stalls on large maps
Dramatically reduced the amount of time an AI will interact with a player if they are not within ship range
AI doesn't try to bribe other players to go to war unless they and the other players have a decent military already
AI will no longer give tech gifts to players with a different ideology (i.e. no more Drengin giving you tech if you're a nice person)
AI now scales the number of similar ship projects based on number of colonies rather than a flat number
AI pumps up colony ship production priority if there are a lot of nice planets laying around
AI pumps out fewer Constructors in general
Re-designed the way the AI determines which planets should get a shipyard to be more (way more) intelligent
Updated AI's handling of adjacency bonuses to be more intelligent
AI values planet quality more when picking planets to colonize
AI somewhat more heuristic on tech research
AI somewhat quicker to war
Auto Surveying Survey Ships will now survey extra anomalies if the ship has extra movement points.
Balance
AI is much MUCH smarter about detecting cultural flipping strategies
AI is much better about detecting fast alliance strategies
Lowered diplomacy bonus of the Diplomacy Techs.
Made low-level factories cheaper, provide smaller bonuses.
Reduced the size of maps while keeping the same number of objects, effectively increasing the galactic density.
Increased the zoom distance.
Diplomacy tech effect to Diplomacy ability increased from 0.5 to 1
Influence MinToClaim increased from 0.33 to 8
Influence Radius root reduced from 3.25 (^0.325) to square root (^0.5)
Eliminated the Influence Bell Curve target divisor
Influence fall off is increased from -0.3 to –10
Capital Influence per turn increased from 1.5 to 3
Colony Influence per turn reduced from 2 to 1
Removed the faction ability bonus from the Diplomatic Office
Removed all faction ability bonuses from starbase modules
Colonies now instantly update when you rush build to show the effect of the new building.
Players start with no area of influence for the first turn
Influence now grows more organically over time
Adjusted tech cost to increase per tech age
New capstone technologies that can be researched repeatedly for galaxy wide bonuses
Minor races will now establish trade routes.
Tweaked influence such that growth is now slower in general, but influence improvements and modules are now much more powerful.
Increased starbase spacing to 4
Adjusted intensity on several strategic map icons and the grid.
AI tends to focus more on tech (generally) than previously.
AI will build survey ships late in game.
AI provided with a much wider variety of ship designs to choose from with the various strategies.
AI weights units much more closely than previously in order to not make one virtually impossible to build.
Opposing culture diplomatic penalty reduced from 1.25 to 1.1 if AI is benevolent.
Opposing culture diplomatic penalty increased from 1.25 to 2 if AI is merciless.
Opposing culture diplomatic penalty increased from 1.25 to 2 if AI is cruel.
Close to victory diplomatic penalties increased from 1 to 5.
Ripe for conquest diplomacy penalty reduced from 0.75 to 0.1 if AI is benevolent.
Ripe for conquest diplomacy penalty increased from 0.75 to 1.25 if AI is aggressive.
Minimum planet class to be a manufacturing world reduced from 7 to 4.
Max number of colony ships the AI will construct at once increased from 2 to 3.
Max slider focus reduced from 95% to 75% (to deal with coercion penalty).
Coercion forgiveness eliminated (there is always some coercion if you move off from center).
Maximum coercion reduced from 50% to 35%.
Colony Capital production points reduced from 5 to 1.
Civilization Capital production points reduced from 5 to 1.
Influence Radius root increased from 1.75 to 4 (i.e. influence ZOC will start out much much smaller now).
Tech inflation penalty significantly reduced.
Penalty for switching a constructor to a colony ship increased from 50% to 75% (yea, you know who you are).
Pirates moved further away from starting location.
Increased the variance for the various settings (minors, pirates, etc.).
Modified the governor script to provide a bit more flexibility based on planet bonuses when building improvements.
Colony capital maintenance eliminated.
Colony capital hub provides a 2 (was 1) level bonus to adjacent buildings if they are population or manufacturing or research.
Civ capital hub provides a 3 level bonus (was 1).
Reduced maint. slightly on research buildings.
Rare habitable planets decreased from 30% to 25%.
Nebula and black holes and anomalies made much less common on all settings.
Occasional planet frequency amount doubled from 1X to 2X.
Common stars modifier increased from 0.9 to 1.
Common planet frequency amount increased from 0.75X to 3X (this also fixes a bug where common was less than occasional).
Abundant stars increased from 1X to 1.5X.
Planet Frequency increased from 0.25X to 3.5X (also fixes bug).
Tiny map base objects increased from 32 to 120 (i.e. tiny maps will be a lot more filled).
Small map base object count increased from 64 to 150.
Medium map Base object count increased from 110 to 200.
Large map base object count increased from 155 to 300 (i.e. over twice as many
stars/planets/etc. in a particular size).
Huge map base object count increased from 250 to 350.
INSANE map object count INCREASED from 1200 to 1400!
Sensor cost components reduced slightly.
Cargo module cost reduced from 27 to 10 (cheaper colony ships -- but remember, planets now rely more on population for their production).
Tiny hull cost reduced from 11 to 10.
Small hull cost reduced from 25 to 20.
Medium hull HP increased from 100 to 120.
Large hull cost increased from 128 to 300.
Large hull HP increased from 250 to 600.
Large hull storage increased from 100 to 120.
Large hull logistics cost increased from 7 to 10.
Huge hull cost increased from 432 to 500.
Huge hull HP increased from 500 to 800.
Huge hull storage increased from 250 to 300.
Huge hull logistics increased from 10 to 16.
Cargo hull cost reduced from 42 to 24.
Cargo hull HP reduced from 10 to 1.
Cargo hull logistics increased from 5 to 6.
Improvements/Bugs Fixes
Fixed a major late-game memory leak
Stuck Turn fix involving battle system in multiplayer
]When vram is maxed out, the game will no longer generate a massive log file.
Fix for capstone alerts showing up for non-local player and for tech victory alerts showing up for non-tech victory items
Fix text wrapping on starbase window
Increase the opacity of the alpha on the un-owned grid
Escape key now prompts the user if they are designing a ship, instead of instantly leaving the view.
Added an option skip the upgrade notification on the starbases window.
Fix some bad prerequisites some hidden minor race tech tree.
]Fix bad tech description for Technological Outreach tech, in the Torian Tech Tree.
Added check in Galactic Events that prevent random crashes with event that pops up twice.
Fix bad prerequisite for Xeno Geology in the Arcean techtree.
Fix bad prerequisite for Drengin Manufacturing Stimulus.
Removed normal map corrections and Lean Maps from game as they didn't look good and were taking up too much space.
Fixed false positive on culture flipping penalty in diplomacy window
Fixed bad normal map for merc textures.
Fixed issue in Krynn tech tree causing the Coordination Temple to be hidden.
Fixed some issues that were causing some of the techs at end of the tree to have the wrong cost calculated.
Increased the halo size on non-colonized planets
Added author fields for maps, factions and ships.
Starbases will now notify the you that they need to be upgraded after being initially built.
Fixed double counting of trade routes for AI diplomacy purposes.
Fixed late game crashes related to textures on large maps.
Fixed an infrequent crash on loading large maps.
Fixed bug that could cause the AI to see tiles in the opposite map position of where they were exploring.
Fixed a bug that could cause the AI to reduce the priority weighting on colony ship production based on the # of targetable planets.
If a player faction is set to random in the prefs.ini file, the quick-start tooltip will no longer display an invalid faction.
Fixed an issue where if you changed the planetary spending wheel, the displayed. manufacturing time for improvements wasn't being updated at the same time.
Clicking available projects tabs no longer resets the improvement cursor.
Added ESC to close Ship Designer and Diplomacy screens.
Starbases no longer incorrectly show the upgrade option when none avail.
Fixed a crash related to the AI defying the UP.
Galactic Civilization III 1.8 Update (Release 6/14)
Hello!
The 1.8 update is nearly here. We taken some time to improve the stability of multiplayer, as well as introduced some new game features including asteroid mining and ship leveling.
Overview
Asteroid Mining
You can now mine Asteroids for riches! Click on any Asteroid within your ZOC and spend some credits to start building an Asteroid Mining Base. Once the Base is complete, it will send Raw Production to the planet of your choice (you can re-assign the destination planet of course). However, these Asteroid Bases are fragile and easily destroyed by an enemy attack.
Ship Leveling
All ships now improve over time for winning battles and surveying anomalies. Most ships will gain additional HP as they level up. Mercenary Ships will additionally improve based on their existing abilities.
Improved Multiplayer
We've completely reworked the game's movement and event system to greatly reduce the number of desyncs and improve the stability of multiplayer.
Uncolonized Planet List
We've added a great new feature that lists out planets you've discovered but haven't colonized yet. This will help you expand your empire faster.
Star Information Window
You can now click on a star to see colonizable worlds within that solar system. Rename your stars to organize your empire or after your favorite Sci-Fi series.
Change Log
Note: Adding startup commands to a desktop shortcut not longer works. To add startup commands, please edit the games "Launch Options" in Steam.
Asteroid Mining
Asteroids within your ZOC can be mined. Each Mining base costs 500 credits and takes 3 turns to build.
Mined Asteroids will provide a raw production bonus to the nearest planet. The bonus is reduced by distance. You can reassign the receiving planet.
If the ZOC changes, the Mining Base will be automatically flipped.
Mining Base can be attacked and blown up by enemy fleets.
Mined Asteroid map icons are tinted to their faction's color.
Colonies can be decommissioned for scorched earth tactics
You can rename Mining Bases by clicking on their name in the context panel
Asteriod Mining Bases do not require a starbase.
Note: The Asteroid Mining feature will require starting a new game.
Star Information Window
You can now click on a star to see colonizable worlds within that solar system.
Clicking on one of the planets will select it on the strategic map.
Click on a star's name to rename it.
Uncolonized Planet List
The Colonies list now has two sections: Colonized and Uncolonized Planets. Uncolonized
Planets lists out the planets you've discovered but haven't colonized yet.
Both sections are collapsible and are independently sorted.
Ship Leveling
Ships gain experience through winning battles and surveying anomalies. This experience translates into a ship level.
Ships gain additional HP as they level up.
Mercenary ships gain additional bonuses.
Improved Multiplayer experience
Refactored movement and events systems to reduce the number of stuck turns and desyncs during multiplayer. These changes should have no gameplay effects.
Increased the movement speed of ships only in multiplayer.
Gameplay
Diplomacy Statistic bonus increased from 2 to 3
Conquest Victory Goal is not active until after turn and the player has a reasonable military
Easy target modifier now takes trade routes into effect and reduces the impact accordingly if the player is trading with them
Ships In ZOC diplomatic modifier takes into account how many ships are in the ZOC . If it's just 1, it tends to let that slide.
Added recommended player counts to each galaxy size. When you choose a galaxy size, you can choose to automatically add the recommended number of players to the game.
Specialized techs now have star icon next to them to make them stand out relative to normal techs
Updated Durantium Refinery and Thulium Data Archive to do Flat points.
Added new Promethean Reserve improvement that provides credits per turn.
Bug Fixes
Fixed a potential issue when setting a destination for a fleet that can move and immediately hitting 'end turn'
Iconian Defenders will no longer respawn after being attacked by a faction with the "Scavenge" ability.
Prevented a crash if a mod tries to reference a missing sound file
Right-aligned the values for the lobby details section to account for differences in length of the titles for various languages.
Planets can be renamed again
The Lobby Window was being hidden unnecessarily when clicking the Invite Friends button. It now stays visible in the background.
Fixed various places where long names (planet, shipyard, or starbase) would break out of their frames.
Fixed issue that prevented allies from using the "declare war on" offer during trade.
Fixed crashes caused by canceling a starbase modules.
Fixing an issue where canceling mining starbase modules on a starbase with claimed resources caused the starbase to remove the queued modules incorrectly.
Fixing a tooltip where it would say you can't build you because the module is claimed by another starbase when in fact it was claimed by the current starbase and the warning is in error.
Fixed typos in the description for the "Precious Metals" planet feature
Logistics now shown with decimal values. Previously, value was being rounded in the UI and which in some cases, made it appear that a fleet had room for another ship.
Re-implemented the round robin colonization event mechanism to be simpler and also functional. This should fix problems with colony events not firing after the list is exhausted.
