1. Make it easier to trade equal value "cutting edge" techs with your allies. eg If I have a weapon tech and my ally has a defensive tech that are equal value they won't trade, claiming it's too valuable. Make it so I can trade if they are equal. I mean this to only apply to allied/teamed races.

2. Give unarmed ships a chance to escape, say a scout has 7 moves it should have a % chance to escape an armed ship with only 2 or 3 moves. I'd apply it to unarmed ships with more than 3 moves more than the attacker and give a % chance based on how many more moves they have up to a max of 75% or something. It'd make engine upgrades more appealing for unarmed ships and give scouts a role late game.

3. More random events and a slider to control how many as mentioned earlier perhaps not mega events, just big. Events that effect one race or alignment more than others are more interesting IMO.

4. Releated to #1, make it easier to trade planets with allies, sometimes you invade a planet near your ally while they have colonies in your influence (which may get flipped) so a swap would be ideal to get out of flipping your ally and give them something in return. Generally there are a lot of times when trading things with your ally can be very hard.

5. Balance the races more. This will take a few months of playing but eventually it'll be clear who is too strong and who's too weak.

Here's my five:

1. Make it easier to upgrade starbases. Systematically building lots of constructors and sending them to all your starbases is tedious to say the least, especially when your going for an influence victory. It'd be better if starbases got upgraded by planets beaming resources to them (like how asteroids beam resources to planets). There'd also be a delay upgrading starbases far away from a planet. This wouldn't make it any cheaper or faster (in game turns) to upgrade starbases, but it be a heck of a lot easier on us players.

2. Rebalance terror stars. Terror stars are awesome, but when I've finally finished researching all the terror star technology I've felt like I could have gotten a tech victory instead. Additionally, once you have the tech its not especially difficult to mass produce terror stars. I'd make the tech easier to research, and terror stars more expensive to build.

2A. Additionally, terror stars should be able to get the weapon upgrades (battlestations etc) of traditional starbases. It's strange something so deadly is so defenseless. Moving only one space a turn is enough of a drawback

3. Make the United Planets more robust. The UP is really cool, and I think a lot more could be done with this concept. Maybe you can persuade or coerce other races to vote your way before each vote. Maybe there are regular elections for a UP Secretary General, who could choose the issues that would be voted on.

4. Make some racially-unique government types. It's bizarre that the Korath can choose to become a democracy. The government description should at least be changed (even if it does the same thing), if not replaced entirely with new-and-improved types of dictatorships. These could grant combat bonuses instead of improvements to influence and diplomacy, for example.

5. Gift fleets. Finally, I'd be very convenient if I could give away or trade fleets in the diplomacy screen.

Anyways, you guys have made one hell of a strategy game. Us loyal fans really appreciate all the effort that has gone into Gal Civ.

Hi,

Could I second a few suggestions that have come up.

1.Option toggle for hiding enemy ship stats from the player UNTIL they actually meet in combat. A higher level of espionage can give that information to the player, providing a further strategic reason for espionage and adding a greater dimension of decision making in what type of weapon / defence path to go down.

At present it's way too easy to figure out what you are up against in plenty of time to take appropriate action. Having to work to get the info or wait until you are at war would make the rock/paper/scissors aspect of ship design and combat a lot more involved and interesting.

2. Beef up the United Planets part of the game in any way, shape or form. This is a great part of the game and any enhanced player involvement would only make it better.

3. (Quote) In addition to the ethical decision screens, normal actions should affect the ethical alignment. Breaking treaties, going to war, Giving aid, or associating (via trade, trade routes, treaties, etc) would all have a bearing on your alignment. Either a once shot punch (break a treaty and get X Evil points) or something sustained (Establish a trade route/treaty with a neutral race and get Y neutral points a turn) would be how it is implemented.

All good ideas that get my enthusiastic support.

Cheers,
Z

I dropped a bunch of comments on the forum, but the formatting is totally borked so I doubt anyone will decipher the now block-of-text.

Anyway, polish custom races and datafile usability.  Make custom styles actually work for players and let players either open 'wrong extension' files to use older versions or let the game 'see' them to allow them to be used.  Ideally, make custom races/styles backwards compatible and unified so you don't have such a huge mess of custom designs, styles and races across three games.

I like custom races.

First four are equal (high) preference, last three are equal (medium) preference.

1) Cleaner beginning-of-the-round notification. I don't need a dozen separate pop-ups, just put it all in a single screen where I can select which items to display or not.

2) Improved espionage. I'd like to be able to select different types such as:
* disable a planetary improvement
* disable a ship
* disable (or weaken) a starbase
* gather info ONLY
* steal techs ONLY
* impair relations between civilizations (make it look like A is starting trouble with B even though it's really me)

3) Economic sliders - my problem is that I'm paying for things I should not need to pay for:
* If the Fusion Reactors make manufacturing 25% more efficient, doesn't that mean that I should get 25% more manufacturing for the same price? But instead, I'm simply permitted to pay for up to 25% more manufacturing.
* I have automated computers that run by themselves. Why am I paying just as much per technology point as I do when people are actually involved?

4) Farming and its impact on morale. Why does this affect all races equally (bugs and humans are NOT equally impacted by overcrowding)? Why does this affect all planets equally (a PQ25 planet should be able to handle more population than a PQ5 planet without impacting morale)? Why am I forced to farm at my maximum potential (if my farm capability is 25billion, I should be able to sell 5billion worth of food, and only have a pop cap of 20billion)?

5) Clean up ethics. The current description (especially of available techs and impacts) is incorrect. The ethical consideration questions are only available before you pick your ethical alignment, so it's in the best interest of GOOD races to pick ethics as soon as possible (so they stop getting the negatives) and in the best interest of EVIL races to delay picking an ethical alignment (so they can continue to gather bonuses).

6) Improved diplomatic interaction. I'd like to be able to counter-offer. If the AI offers me a peace treaty, I'd like to be able to tell them "throw in planet X and you have yourself a deal." But right now I must reject. I'd also like to be able to discuss UT voting with other races, and to have contrary UT voting impact diplomatic relations (if X votes for no limit on starbase modules and I vote to limit it to 2 modules, they'll get pissed at me).

7) Give an option to completely eliminate, or significantly minimize, the need for a planetary invasion. Sometimes I don't care about invading the planet - it's end-game and I don't need it, there's no more techs to steal, it requires the Toxic tech that I simply don't care to research, I choose a scorched-earth strategy, I have a strong navy but a weak army and would rather destroy and move on. Whatever. Where's the option to kill all life and turn the planet into a PQ0?

Thanks!!!

Erm, UT->UP

Leaper22 suggested


I want this too. It's an ingenious option in Civ 4

The MCC makes you forget the MCC. There is no MCC.

Uh oh. I thought of one more thing. Sorry....

I would like to either have the following removed or have a settings toggle put in place so I could disable it.

I am getting a LOT of X races asteroid mining station has decided to send their goods to Y race because they think they are cool... I don't care! If it's not my mining station, I don't want to hear about it and could care less...unless of course it's me the alien station is going to start sending goods too. Other wise, PLEASE let me turn this off. I like to play with abundant asteroids and I start getting spammed with these messages about mid game. Thanks for the opportunity to slam.

Well, only be playing ToA for a short while, but so far it has been great!!

Couple of ideas:

1) Revamp the documentation for the game (this includes finishing the documentation for ToA). A Civopedia (sp?) like in CIV 4.
- Let me look at every item in the game, tell me what it does, tell me how to get it
- Tell me what each option when starting a new games does and what each option in the Option screen does (tool tips would be best for this...)
- Review and fix all the in game descriptions. I've come across spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes, missing descriptions, truncated descriptions. This is "theoretically" such an easy fix, yet it "takes some of the polish off" the game when you come across it.

2) Make the arrow keys work where it contextually makes sense. E.g.:
- Use the arrow keys to scroll around the main map
- Use the arrow keys to scroll through lists
- Use the arrow keys to scroll around the mini map
- Use the arrow keys to rotate a ship in the ship designer
- Use the arrow keys to navigate around the Tech Tree

- I'm sure there's other good uses as well, should not be forced to use the mouse for action that you need to make

3) I like the previously mentioned normal actions should affect the ethical alignment.

4) [This maybe too big a job...not sure how AI would handle but...] Add some cosmic variety to the map. E.g.
- black holes a sector wide, that ships cannot go into (without being destroyed)
- Nebulas (real ones NOT background image) - allows ships to hide, reduces Hit Points of ships the longer they stay in
- Pulsars, Super Novas, Cosmic Strings etc.. These would all have effects on ships/people. Makes the universe alittle more varied, provides some "terrain types" to the map. Add some strategic depth to the game.


Minor stuff really, Awesome game  :CONGRAT: 

Heck I'd be happy to see the race's UP votes before I vote myself (to possibly be a swing vote). Either have the player go last, or have it go in order of # of IP or diplomacy rating.



Well, there are man-made super novas now in TA...

TotA is a really great expansion and loads of fun to play. That said, I could imagine two changes that would make it more comfortable to play:

1. Some way to direct planetary development on a greater scale. Admittedly, a good solution for that would be rather difficult to implement, but even the option to tell the game "replace all recruiting centers with stock exchanges" would be a big help when running an empire on a largish map. Ideal would be a solution like "Develop all planets that fullfil condition X with one farm, one counter esp center, and a third each of labs, factories and economy buildings.

2. An additional option to ship upgrading. Much of the time, I simply cannot afford to "upgrade all" without going into debt, and thus have to upgrade each ship by itself, which can be kind of a bother with 100+ ships of a design. I'd really like the option to upgrade a fixed number of randomly chosen ships of the design, or the option to upgrade as many ships as possible of the design while still remaining in the black.

Not sure. Perhaps a solution would be to weaken the sliders and strengthen the planetary focus options. Instead of only focus on/off, you could change this depending on the resources a planet has available. I tend to agree that having an all-lab planet shut down work because other production planets are busy working overtime is illogical

This reminds me of the comments of early post-Cold War Russia, when people just expected Russia to stop building tanks and bombs, and start building refrigerators and TV sets. Even 'experts', until it was made clear that those tank factories lacked a 'make TV sets now' switch...

Right now there are 3 ways to focus development on one of the 3 primary resources (research/military/economy):

- planetary development (buildings, etc)
- Planetary focus
- sliders

I think the effect of sliders is overdone personally, and think it would be more interesting to be able to have more levels of planetary focus. If you decide to develop a planet that can only research, then you will reap both the benefits and pay the price, by having fewer options. This alone might encourage people to build more balanced planets, instead of only specialized ones, to give them more flexible choices with more powerful planetary focus options. On the other hand, this might also worsen the whole micromanagement issue, so it is hard to gauge.

Most of the important things have been said IMO, so I will push the ones I agree with the most:

1) No tech brokering option. Made even more valuable when tech trees are fixed/fine-tuned.

2) Cleaner, centralized new turn screen (with necessary announcements).

Surprise factor



PLUS



COMPLETELY agree with this.

Micromanagement

One of the biggest issues of a large game is the exponential amount of micromanagement involved, especially for planets, and starbases. I liked a few of the ideas:



This is so logical, it's surprising it hasn't been done already. You can already make multiple Troop module ships, so why not this?

Some form of governor/automated upgrading process makes plenty of sense.

4b) I liked the idea of a specialized planet governor type. Have it follow basic precepts for developing a specialized econ/research/production planet without the need for major babysitting. It would exploit the resources accordingly too, meaning build

Ship magic upgrades

5) I realize this will sound strange, but it never made sense to me that a ship could be upgraded to a new model, in space, as soon as the appropriate tech and ship design had been developed. Might make the game harder, but I'd think a ship would have to go to a Starport to do this. I mean, how would they have gotten the right pieces with this brand new technology while flying around in space? Magic?

Those are the 5 ASAP suggestions I'd make, other than the aforementioned fixes and bugs mentioned by others. As an afterthought, I thought this was a very good idea, but ths would no doubt be for later:

My top 5

I just got ToA, I played GC1 and 2 alot. Forgive me if something's been fixed that I haven't realized.



1) Starbase management is a pain. I almost wish I could turn them off completely, or at least turn off the different resources (military, eco, etc.) to not have to worry about them. Or have an "auto-upgrade template" manner. I guess I could try automating every constructor (sad to say I just thought of this) but if that works it's still annoying. Having to pick what 50 constructors do to a starbase is horrible.

2) Colony management is a pain.... I frequently build the same kind of things, or have a priority.. I wish I could have a build template.. like "research colony" and paste it... I've seen that in earlier competitor games.

I like less micromanagement, those are the only two that really annoy me.

To add some minor annoyances:

3) It would be nice to be able to right click a tech while trading and go to the tech tree... the tech tree in general is tough to navigate. I'm still searching the forums for the complete tech tree description somewhere in easy format. Nice that there's some value to right click, and I am now just looking at research costs to figure out what's a good weapon tech to trade.

4) Early game I trade alot to the minors alot (later I wipe them out). I just noted sometimes they are... short changing me. For example (I'm approximating numbers) they have lets say 1200 credits. If I offer them 5 techs they will give me 540 credits. If I offer the techs one by one they will offer me alot more (and all their money eventually). I only caught this because I was offered like 100 for multiple techs one time, and I tried doing it one at a time and each tech was far more than that. Overall I applaud the change where usually (not always) seem to automax how much cash I can get from a deal.

5) I'm really having trouble coming up with 5. 1 & 2 really bother me, other than that it's a great game. The diplomacy system obviously has evolved from earlier, similar games and is clearly the best one (I always remember the endless war of Moo2). I like the different options... The AI is the smartest, though I'm still upping the difficulty to see how they do. On the original galciv2 I felt there weren't enough different random events... Ah, got one. Espionage... what a pain and a ridiculous cost. I got that "spies everywhere" mega-event, and I basically quit that game after trying to fix it for awhile...since then I've paid more attention to it, and even with a healthy economy I can barely make enough spies to stop the infiltrators. Overall great game and peerless support.

I'll toss in one that I'll call a "bug". I've renamed all the races, but they don't rename their fleets. So half the time I'm like "who are the iconians again?" whenever I'm seeing Iconian fleet, etc., as they are not called that. I remember you could edit text files to fix these things before, so I'll have to look into that... but I like the auto-editor for your opponents otherwise.

Bulk sales benefit(?) from bulk discounts. If buying from a race, buy in bulk, if selling, sell individually. Somewhere a dev confirmed this isn't a bug, but a feature.

For your #5, too many times I've just loaded the autosave if something that sick happens. Depending on my empire size/map size will be my determining factor though. I try to tough it out through all mega events if it a plausible scenario. If I own 50% of a all abundant immense galaxy and then the spies come. F THAT. I only play with conquest victory allowed, so no tech victory shortcut would be available.

OMG, i really_very_drastically_foolishly L-O-V-E this suggestion(s)!
If only before GC3... this alone could completely redefine gameplay!

1b) Fix the "Invisible" trailing decimal when a BC offer pops up in a trade deal.

2b) Fog-of-War should be a direct consequence to_by_with behaviors & a deterrant to territorial squirmishes; The Neutral Zone sort of. (This aspect was mentioned before, i think - almost similarly)

3b) Technology-Tree Governor; Trust me, it would lower micman to relatively high degrees if i could simply slap a template (variable, files(s) saved for later use, etc) of pathways and, rather simply unlock it once in awhile when & then.

4b) List me ALL the Mega-Events, Planetary, minor events (...) at setup so i can choose whichever & how many i please by simply ticking boxes. Faith has been sealed, it's still random and yet, i can adapt to the many or less situations. Strategy wise, i could at least control *some* of my destiny.

5b) And this slot will from now on, be permanently sealed with the highest priority in my mind; Constructors (possibly, with indirect morphing modules, polyvalent, etc) looping indefinitely at wanted_required upgrades while being redirected or dismantled deterministically through proper detection of multi-tasking goals. ** Which is explained many times over above my plenty of other players!

Now, would be a good time for a summary - i think - maybe.
From you, Frogboy!

Bulk sales are a "feature"?!?!?

Arg... I can't be the only one that will painstakingly sell one tech at a time if it ads up to a different number.

It wasn't a small difference, either.

Well, that's the bene to take your time. If you wish to do it quick, it comes at a price. That's my take on it though.

quick things:

- weapon techs seem to take much longer to research than other types of techs. i'm reaching the mid/end game and everyone is still using first generation lasers. i can see why; it's almost better just o bump up miniaturisation

- planets that require techs seem to be much rarer than in DA. moreover, i find the entire galaxy set up confusing in this regard; does the frequency of habitable planets change the number of habitable planets (irrespective of the number of planets), or the proportion of the planets which are habitable, or the proportion of which do not require techs?

- please increase the race/galaxy limit. i love the larger maps, but without enough factions it just becomes the same thing scaled up.

agh, forgot

please, for the love of god stop calling technologies enhanced/advanced/superior; it makes trading them really difficult. just use numbers please. and please add an easier way of trading ships without having to get a piece of paper and write down their numbers. maybe allowing the selling of fleets?

Later on it would be nice if you could give us a list of the things you will "try" to work on. Make sure you point out that not everything asked will be possible and that you can't do everything.

I can only imagine the flaming otherwise...

One thing that would be really cool for building up fleets, is a filter on the colony management screen to only show those colonies that have a certain rally point set.

1) Turn down the invasion screen sounds. If I'm playing at night and its quiet, they're too loud and not actually very nice sounds, so it kind of grates and I skip the invasion screen as quickly as I can.

2) Revert the invasion screen to the old version, it was more interesting, and cleaner (easier to understand what was happening).

3) Multiple constructor modules on a ship.

4) When you add a module to a ship, don't switch away from the module tab. This gets kind of annoying when I'm trying to put 10 advanced troop modules on something and I have to keep switching tabs every time. Ok, it doesn't happen very often per game so its only a small annoyance.

5) Give me back all the time I spend playing your game when I should be working. Or make it do my work for me in the background.