Races were too alike in GC2

1. It was mentioned in one of the "feature" pages that different races will inhabit different types of planets in GC3

2, 3 & 4. I agree fully! :3

Take a look at the Civilizations page of the Databanks, and the Features list. There are already indications that the races will be much more different this time around. The most interesting parts, in my opinion, are:

"Exploring A Galaxy
Players typically start with a single colony, a colony ship, and a survey ship. They must explore the galaxy to find inhabitable planets. What planets are habitable depends on what species the player has chosen to play as."

and

"Researching Technology
Each race has their own technology tree that provides unique ship equipment, planetary improvements, weapons, defenses, terraforming, sensors, and more."

In any case, I fully agree with you.

I think what he means on habital planets is that all the races can settle Terran worlds. Where he wants some who could only settle radioactive worlds... This would require the map to have an equal number of each type of planet. I would only want this as an option to the game. Not the game. If this was an optional game I think this would be a good idea. I would like to hear other options on what the species ability could b other than what is offered though.

I think they did it perfectly in GalCiv2. Races were different enough for different strategies and replay value, but not so different that I ended up only wanting to play one Civ.

Take an example. If for instance one Civ was nomadic, or for instance consumed planets and had to move on to new ones, I simply wouldn't be interested in playing it. Different yes, but too different. I see a fine line of balance there. Too much diversity can result in a very straight forward gameplay for every race, with one non-brainer strategy based on it's specialities. Then race diversity just makes the game boring.

GalCiv2 had this fine tuned balance between diversity and epic gameplay for every Civ, but of course some more weapon diversity and some other few things might not hurt.

Do you mean GalCiv2? GalCiv3 isn't here yet.

Time traveler spotted!

I think that it would be ideal if we saw a level of diversity on par with say, Starcraft, which had pretty different races. It would be very hard to balance though.

Purge the Thalan filth.

Can I see the time machine, and also can I have a copy of the game so we can make even more improvements before the game comes out.

Planets r doable. U could start different species on a chance of starting on a specialized planet. They would start out with that specialized tech, and the advanced version requiring them to research terran world colinization.

Rewarding species for playing how they r supposed to. The Korath got a influence penalty for slavery.

I'm not understanding the question. Your not saying enough. Maybe different species could work off of different asoects. Ie instead of approval Drengin or Korath could work off of fear or conquest. TheThalans, Altarians, or Krynn only have a descent approval when they r on a common mission that even the people could set. The Koex only have a descent approval with a descent economy. The humans seem to like policing the galaxy or r entertainment junkies. Maybe the Altarians r only happy with good science. These r some ideas that I have come up with trying to figure out what u really mean.I wouldn't mind this kind of role playing aspect. These r just some ideas I came up with. I wouldn't mind someone coming up with better or different ideas on how to do this.

I still would like to see different species that require different stradegys.

I would like to see a lot of specialised paths on the different species tech trees.

Can u clarify and elaborate on the issue of the site.

Correct(ed)!

Some more diversification would be nice. I don't see the problem of "too specialized" races, because the principles of the 4x remain as long as you keep the different tech trees balanced.

A race able to colonize all types of worlds from the beginning (e.g. a robotic race) would be fairly overpowered at least at the colony rush phase.

And I'm fairly sure that the race customization feature will stay in the game, so you'd have as much replayability as you want.  Of course, everyone will have his or her favourite race and don't like others, but that's normal.

I agree with OP, more diversive race traits would be nice.

I like the StarCraft 3 race analogy. Having 3 distinct races has a longer replay value than 8 races that border on the same.

Conceivably, this could be adapted to Galactic Civilizations 3 by having 3 sets of races that operate on similar mechanics but each

race is distinct. No easy solution and not sure if this could translate to this franchise.;

Balancing? What's that?   No seriously, as Frogboy said in a recent interview:

"We’re not making any promises to have some kind of multiplayer balance or anything like that. If one race is better than the other in multiplayer, well, that’s too bad!"

and

"I don’t want there to be discussion of nerfing races. The races are what they are, they are meant to be unique, and true to what they are, and there will be cases where some of them in certain situations are going to be better than others."

I mean it would look something like this:

1. Humans would be the most "GC2" like of the races. Strong diplomacy, average at most other things.

2. Altarians would have certain mystical abilities. That and they would be somewhat like the humans, but with their own ideals.

3. The Drengin would be unique in that their economy operated heavily on slaves (maybe from the other worlds too, ex: Torians slaves). Strong weapons and troops, maybe strong (slave based) economy. Weak at diplomacy, culture, and maybe population growth?

4. The Yor would be unique. They're robots, so expanding on the GC2 theme would be nice. Special robotics too would be nice. I'd make them immune to being culture flipped, and to revolts, but say in return, they cannot culture flip or produce other culture.

5. The Iconians may bear some resemblance to Yor technology (common origin), but they are biological so they'd be kind of a hybrid in a sense. Plus they're "good". They'd be an interesting amalgam of some Yor tech, sans the culture immune part.

6. Thalan ought to be totally different from everyone, since they're from a different dimension. They should have some very powerful, but very unique abilities.

7. The Krynn should be a hybrid of everyone, with their own traits too (maybe not Yor though). They'd be strong on culture, but the middle of the road type of race.

We could also have a general category of races and sub-variants. I'm not sure how it would work though.

MOO3...

MoO3? What's that?

Moo3 Master of Orion 3. I played the second and the first. It looked like it might of been a good game for its day, but from what I could see it was limited on options. The graphics were cheesy. Not enough races. That was my opinion, but a lot of people think it was the bomb on these posts. I don't think it is worth playing. Right now I will try Distant worlds.

I don't think a three race concept is better it works, but why would it not be better to do that to 12 of more races.

Hey elf from what I can see all you are asking for is more specialized tech trees for the most part. They are attempting to do this already from what I've seen with Galactic civilizations 2. I always support more specialization. I would like to see a slavery option implemented than just tThe techs, but how would you go about this. How would you go about giving Altarians those abilities. As far as the Krynn they are specialized in galactic civilization 2. They had a nice set up on researching and espionage. They had specific influence starbase option. They had specialized wonders. This time around they are mafia. I still would like to see the game rewarding you for playing the species the right way, but this is not applicatle for the campaign since that is the purpose of the campaign. This would be great for the sandbox.

If it is possible I would like to see the species equal but as different from each other as possible on single player, but if this is to hard of a task that's Ok. It is what it is right. i like the idea that the different species have different party and government options.

MOO3 was a lousy damned game that poisoned a franchise and showed a company's complete disregard for cohesive gameplay.

Yet its races did become much more distinct. Both in their appearance and behavior. Humanoids of all stripes, machine/cyborg and fully alien blobby thingies. They had different tolerances. Some liked M-class, others gas planets (blobby thingies) and so on and so on.

Colonizing became more immersive plus though provoking. How much do you really care that another race colonized a planet you couldn't touch anyway? Start a war? Try to become partners? Then there was the factor that in war, conquering a planet also meant dealing with those inhabitants. Meaning that they kept their unique talents, etc. Did you wipe 'em out or live alongside 'em?

Then terraforming: terraforming particular planets would incur penalties (when the game was actually working) from various races that depended on 'em.

The entire system of what seems is being asked for had been put out in MOO3. It was just wrapped inside a crap game.

I see you missed the joke.

lol

Nice explanation though

I talk about this all the time in the Elemental Forum but the key to good distinct races is for them to actually play different. Resource boosts and different planet preferences are not enough.

The Drengin could have a slave/occupation economy.  They would gain large bonuses for occupying planets and have special buildings they could build on occupied worlds to boost the the economies of their core worlds. Basically instead of developing some of their worlds they would exploit them instead. This would of course result in unrest on those planets. Thus playing as the Dregin would offer a unique experience. In fact this is a great idea for a elemental mod... 

Good ideas but here are some more. The Yor are inorganic so they don't require food. Instead population is directly tied to manufacturing. Also as machines they are adaptive and can colonize any world.

Another idea is a race that prefers living in space and specializes in building colony starbases that increase the population of worlds. Hmm I would give an idea for Alterians but what the heck does cosmic energy do?

Brad programmed the AIs for GC1 and, IIRC, GC2.

Perhaps this time, instead of doing all of the AIs himself, Brad could spread them out amongst his programmers, maybe assigning them based on each one's game playing personality, and providing "game playing personalities" as design points for each alien?

Just saying that if only one person programs all of the AIs that it is hard not to program in one's own game playing personality, at least to some extent, no matter how hard one tries to avoid doing so.

I am actua

Yep.

There needs to be a lot of specialization to make this work out though. Otherwise all races will be like GC2.

GC2 had some differences in technology, but that was about it.

Slow population growth seems like a good choice. Being robots, they don't need an atmosphere anyways. Radiation on the level that could damage a machine would be lethal to carbon based organic life.

I suppose it could be difficulties in the "spark".