Is it a good time to jump in now? Loved GCII
I’d be surprised to see it on sale as steep as it is now until at least the Summer sale. Plus, the Mercenaries expansion is about to come out.
When that happens, I would love to get Tom to play it some. He’s super picky about AI. I wish more people were.
Actually, I grabbed it yesterday and was going to ask if you had posted much blog stuff on development of the AI. I’d be keen to read up on how it has come together.
Brad, have you guys tinkered with the AI at all? The warlike races are hyper-aggressive, even on the easier difficulties. They send wave after wave of ships, much more than the player can support…
The Snathi is my favorite, and most of the people I talk to about GCIII also talk lots about that and Precursor Worlds. I’d like to hear others opinions here. :)
When it first came out, the AI was pretty…meh. The systems were there, the AI just wasn’t very skilled at the game yet. Over time, with lots of data on how people play, it’s gotten better and better. 1.6 (which is the update that comes out the same day as Mercenaries) is pretty startling at times.
In GalCiv II, I wanted to have the AI do some of the things the GalCiv III AI does but the problem was CPU power in 2006. Some of the stuff these things can do now (it’s mostly very brute force pattern recognition and data analysis) just couldn’t be done back then without turns being unreasonable.
On easier levels, the AI just gets resource gimped and can’t use certain strategies. But no matter how easy it is, the Drengin are still…well, look they eat people. THEY EAT PEOPLE.
I shall commence downloading at the conclusion of my current work cycle.
I watched the trailer for the expansion on Steam. There’s a place where the narrator goes “the year is 2243” and I found myself thinking “the name of the place is Galactic Civilizations 3” (even the background music is kind of similar).
Man, do I miss Babylon 5. ;)
I always got a B5 vibe out of GalCiv2 , even with the “phasers” and “photon torpedos”. The humans also seemed more EA-type than Trek-type which I liked.
And one thing I’d love to see for a future game, be it Civ 6 or a future Stardock game- Claudia Christian narrating it the same way Leonard Nimoy did for Civ 4.
Preferably including throwing someone out of an airlock. ^_^
“Confirmed Survey 1. Upon arrival you will report for debriefing. And just one more thing, on your trip back I want you to take the time to learn the Babylon 5 mantra. Ivanova is always right. I will listen to Ivanova. I will not ignore Ivanova’s recommendations. Ivanova is God. And if this ever happens again Ivanova will personally rip your lungs out! Babylon control out.”
Maybe in Star Control 3? One can dream, right? ;)
Yep, GalCiv III: Mercenaries and the v1.6 update are out today. :)
More about Mercenaries: http://forums.galciv3.com/474801/
v1.6 changelog: http://forums.galciv3.com/475427
Launch trailer: https://youtu.be/_szJ6OEKt0Q
Right, and I understand this should affect how they behave diplomatically. But I can’t see what’s going on under the hood and how they outbuild everyone else. On the higher difficulties I accept they should behave this way. But even on the easier settings they’re building ships like mad- far more than I can field. It forces the player to play aggressively in kind and makes relaxed gameplay impossible.
I’ve seen it mentioned on the steam forums too. More experienced gamers offer solutions like creating imbalanced races which is just too gamey. I never saw this sort of behavior in Gal Civ 2. I guess you guys don’t see it as a bug. Can I tinker with the XML files or something?
I want to get the Mercenaries expansion but not with the base game as it is.
What are you asking for exactly, Fenris99? It sounds like the easy AI already operates under penalties, so it is a passive AI setting you’re looking for or something else?
Dunno, a slower start with less manic shipbuilding by the warlike races? Is that editable via XML?
You can choose your opponents, have you tried excluding the more warlike buttheads?
Yeah, I guess I could do that too…
lol at “warlike buttheads” :D
“Those Snathi LOOK really cute and innocent … what could go wrong?”
Been watching old episodes of X-files and a common thread in the storyline is that abductees all claim to have experienced time loss.
I’m pretty sure it was 11 pm when I started playing a new game in GalCiv3, but when I next checked the time it had jumped to 3 am - which was way past the time I should’ve gone to bed.
I bought two mercenary ships in the time I played, a surveying ship and a colonizer. The question on my mind is; If I use the colonizer on a new planet, will it be lost - since it is a pretty expensive ship. On the other hand, it had a nice special power – which unfortunately there were no planets around me that I could see it would be useful at. – As long as there’s no upkeep for it I might as well keep it around.
Still haven’t found the planet named after my old dog, Zeb. But I’ll keep looking.