Galactic Civilizations 3 announced

“You are allied with infedels”

A minor thing, but it sets my teeth on edge :-)

Check the Steam Workshop, probably a faction called “infedels.”

Heh, wouldn’t surprise me.

But I think they just also don’t like the Altarians.

Who just told me they had no choice but to surrender to the supreme buttholes of the galaxy, and ceded all their stuff to me. And the Drengan still have like x5 the overall power that I do after that consolidation O.o I think I see Fenris’ point.

See? It’s one thing for the AI to be aggressive, even bloodthirsty. But it builds massive amounts of ships and doesn’t appear to even need to support them.

If I recall correctly, GalCiv provides handicaps for the AI but doesn’t do away with rules. It does need to support them, but its income is probably enhanced.

I wonder how well it would work if hulls were the main or even sole determinant of maintenance cost, to discourage the spam the AI does.

One problem with Stardock games in general is that the AI tends to feel like its quantitative when Stardock games tend to be heavy benefit to qualitative stacks of doom.

Users on the Steam forums for the game are saying that the AI pays no maintenance at all for garrisoned ships. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but that’s what they are saying.

Well I played a game yesterday and excluded the Drengin. It led to a more normal and enjoyable game. So maybe the problem is the way that their AI specifically is coded.

Here’s your answer: the AI does pay ship maintenance costs, but they are reduced at higher levels (and their economy also gets boosted depending on the level). They do NOT pay maintenance on stationed ships.

So it is. Thanks, Dan. Mystery solved.

Does the player pay maintenance on stationed ships?

Yep, AI gets a 100% discount over what the player has to pay. Suppose it’s one way to make the A.I. not go backrupt all the time.

Thought the AI was supposed to play by the same rules as the player. That is one of my aggravations with GalCiv3- all those AI ships.

Yes, it’s annoying. The dev’s response is “Those AI are supposed to be bloodthirsty” which (sorry Brad) does not excuse the AI cheating. If the AI can’t play with the same rules as the human player, then at least dial down how many ships they build.

Well, it’s partly a question of what’s cheating (mind you, I don’t work for and have no affiliation with Stardock, et al, so I’m just paraphrasing what they’ve written elsewhere); their theory is that giving these types of bonuses to the AI would be akin to a golf handicap (spotting a lesser opponent X number of strokes). That’s not cheating in their mind; rather, cheating would be doing away with things like fog of war, being able to see whatever you’re building/what techs you’re working, etc… I understand the desire to have an AI opponent playing with the same restrictions as me, but the theory goes that this would only provide greater satisfaction for the players who want to dig into files and such (a minority, to be sure) and that it’s not cost-effective to produce an AI that works that way when they can just add a handicap to modify challenge level, instead. Furthermore, some players might actually appreciate a more target-rich environment.

Is anyone aware of a mod that reduces the (what I feel are) crazy ship speeds? Mid to late game ship movements renders fleets as defensive entities useless and makes me rely solely on garrisoning planets and starbases, which leads to a not fun game.

I wonder if your own garrison cost was zero, if that would make it more fun. A garrison would then be akin to PD in Dominions - a cost to deploy (or build in this case), but no upkeep once (permanently) garrisoned.

The impression I got was that Brad wanted them nerfed, but the players didn’t.

If GalCiv teaches us anything, never trust a squirrel.

The v.161 update went out this week with fixes and tweaks for both Mercenaries and the base game.

Gameplay

The Starbase Military ring and its two upgrades now give a flat bonus.
All other Starbase military modules still give multipliers but at higher values.
Reduced the Starbase Range boost given by Military ring by 1.
Starbase culture bases and modules now generate more influence per turn
Increased the anomaly counts on mid-range settings.

Full changelog: 1.61 Update Change Log (Release 3/3) » Forum Post by shaw