I’d like to see it as a separate title personally like how SK was. Maybe call it Galactic Crusade?
Thanks for that link Island Dog,
Looking forward to the new starbase changes 1.7 will bring + the other stuff like filtering ship designs and battle previews :)
Hopefully 1.8 will include a way to ‘freeze time’ (IRL) so I can finish the huuuuuuuuge galaxy I’m playing in.
I’d like to know more about the mentioned AI changes. Maybe I’ve just been playing too much grand strategy lately, but they seemed overly aggressive. I hate when AI’s declare war when they can’t even reach your territory. War should be so they can obtain something or fight off a threat, not “because I think I’m stronger”.
Perhaps they declare war on you, even if they are not directly linked to you, because they want to impress another faction that doesn’t like you (and does in fact border you) ?
I.e. the AI takes “politics”/Diplomacy with other factions than the player into account :)
I’m very pleased to hear that work is being done on the AI.
The AI’s general attitude is getting a lot of rejiggering in 1.7 which, btw, comes out tomorrow.
I’m pretty excited about 1.7. I hate that it’s a weird version number. In MY day, 1.7 would have been part of some big expansion pack with other stuff. Digital distribution is, overall, a good thing I think. But there are times where I miss major launches.
I am the same age as you are, so not sure what “day” you are talking about. Back in my day games never got to 1.7 because they didn’t get patches, or if they did you had to either make a long distance phone call to download the patch from their BBS (while guarding the other phones so no one picked it up and interrupted the download), or request them to send it to you on disks. Will never forget getting the Darklands patch on 7(?) 3.5 disks just to kill all the bugs to make it playable. Man, I feel old.
1.7 is out!
News and changelog: Massive Starbase Update for GalCiv III is now available! » Forum Post by Island Dog
Queue Upgrades Directly from Shipyards
Constructors are ordered from the Shipyard that can deliver the upgrade in the shortest amount of time and will now automatically travel to the Starbase.Plan Your Battles…and Your Retreats
The new “Battle Assessment” feature allows you to hover your mouse over an enemy fleet to see an estimation of your fleet’s victory against them.Sort and Group your Ships with Ease
New options make it easier to find the ships you want when you want them. Mark your “favorite” ships so that you can snap right to them in a hurry!Make Friends, Not Enemies
The update to diplomacy has made it so that your allies are more likely to give you a good deal on trades! Trade value will now scale based on the game’s difficulty setting and your relationship with other factions.Easily Access Starbase Modules and Effects Info
The “Starbase Window” displays more detailed statistics and will aid you in managing the Starbase and the rest of your empire.Maximize a Colony’s Potential
The new “Planetary Alert System” will warn you when your influence, population, or approval are holding your colony back.
I’ve only tried it a bit, but it looks great. I love the ship sorting on the construction screen and the Ai seems less crazily aggressive. Good job guys!
I was talking to some of our engineers regarding game development’s less sexy side which is the underlying game engine.
From 1997 to 2009 we used one engine we called Pear. We made a bunch of games on it including Entrepreneur, LightWeight Ninja, GalCiv I, GalCiv II.
As you can imagine, eventually you actually to have to make a new engine. That’s why so many companies now license Unity or Unreal. It’s super hard to make your own engine.
GalCiv III is the first game with the new engine that was just made for GalCiv III and its successors. You lose a decade of refinement when you switch engines but you also get a fresh start (64-bit, multicore, DirectX 11). I’m glad that 1.7 seems to be winning GalCiv II players over. That’s been a real challenge since GalCiv II was the beneficiary of a decade long of code refinement.
I’ll confess that I was a bit underwhelmed by Galciv 3 on release, but I really like 1.7 so far. I started a new game and I’m enjoying it considerably more now.
Started a new Insanely huge galaxy now to try out 1.7 changes and just noticed something.
In the top right corner you’ve got your Money, Your Population, A smiley face, and a timer.
The smiley face doesn’t have a tooltip but the other 3 values have one.
Wow: it uses 7.5GB RAM at the moment ;)
That’s what the smiley face is for. ‘Yes, this is 64bit, mofo! All of your RAMs are belong to us!’
I like to think of it as “Wow, it only uses 7G!”
I’ll show myself out… ;)
hehe, Wonder how much it will be using after a few hundred more turns :)
I guess the top right smiley-face tooltip could show the top/bottom morales for your civilization or something to that effect? As I assume it is the overall morale of my civilization.
The v1.71 update is out today that addresses bugs, optimize performance (esp. on larger maps/longer games), and introduce a few improvements to the gameplay and lobby.
Full changelog: http://forums.galciv3.com/477459
The GalCiv III anniversary sale has started on Steam today, and we’re also having a Twitch stream in celebration at 3pm ET today. :)
Yea, it pretty much front loads everything so it shouldn’t grow too much. It’s all those ship parts.
Question:
I have some old savegames that were made very early in the version history of GalCiv. When I look at the load game screen, it doesn’t show which version of GalCiv the savegame was made for.
So the question is thus: Does it even matter? I am thinking that perhaps there have been changes done to the world creation in latter patches that means that early savegames are ‘missing out’ on game content/stuff, or is this dynamically added during gameplay so the gameworld “seed” isn’t affected by which version of the game it was created for - or perhaps, a old savegame is “updated” when it is first loaded in for example a v1.7x client.
Got fooled into starting the game last night, then I looked out the window and it was starting to become early morning — I guess conquering space only requires 3 hours of sleep. At least the Terran really really like my faction, so I’ve been getting a lot of free tech from them. Too bad the Drengin are sounding their war drums (as if they wouldn’t).
So Mercenaries has a 50% discount, but I’d like to know if you can disable mercenaries during game setup, or if it’s always on…?