Galaxy Size - Largest Option

I would go for 1200 solar systems.

This thread has lots of nice information including about bigger maps

https://forums.galciv3.com/449010/page/1/#replies

Lets finally see a game with no real limits.  The limits should only be imposed by the system resources and common sense.  If you don't mind waiting 5 minutes between turns as the computer chugs through and iteration then so be it.  I'm usually so deep/lost in running a sprawling empire that a reasonable wait would not even be really noticed.  But people who are type 'A' can choose a smaller number of stars for a faster response time.  

I can't wait to love this game even more.

Happy hegemony.

backs out of the room slowly...   

Well I wouldn't mind seeing no size limits or something that is just HUGE. Over time those turns will get faster as the computer processing power catch's up to the game  . I don't know how much time people will want to devote to empires though, but I tend to let games go a long time and large empires (well mine is anyhow  )...

There would never be a finality to no size limits. I'm not sure I would like that but I do want a map option that is enourmous. Maybe ten times the current II map. With today's quad core processors that should be doable. They could break down the mapping into sectors and allow hiding of all movement in certain sectors. The graphical updates and ship animations are probably the biggest processor utlization.

I once spent 4 hole days pretty much playing Gal II on the biggest map. Didn't see any of my flat mates just played on it coming out of my room just to collect pizza and when nature called.

Best days of my life lol, so yeah +10¹⁰¹⁰⁰ .    A feature that allowed you to increase the size of a small map in game would be nice so you can start off small and balanced but then suddenly new worlds!

See this is why i could never be a games producer, i would have also just pile features in shipping be dammed!

Wouldn't that make things quite difficult? Wouldn't you have to have all of the other civs near you with the new extended galaxy empty of habitation? Same for anomalies, resources, etc.? I think the game would have to have an ultimate desired galaxy size in order to spread important things like these around, which pretty much defeats the whole idea of galaxies that grow.

Would make for an interesting late game rush and your original worlds would become your frontier worlds. Except if someone else attacked and your worlds became theirs

Well, in reality, the game would be stuck with 64-bit limits, so could only accomodate whatever 18 million terabytes of RAM could hold (yeah yeah scoff, but you join the ranks of Bill Gates' "computers will never need more than 640 kilobytes of RAM" remark he made 30 years ago).

Also, as Brad rightfully boasts, turns were virtually instantaneous to process in Galactic Civilizations 2 (and will be in 3) due to the way the game was coded, allowing the AI to plan its moves and execute its strategies while the human player is taking their turn.  The only 'end of turn' wait I get in Galactic Civilizations 2 is waiting for automoves to complete (ships moving to distant destinations).

Ok I agree the game would be based on 64 bit limitations. If I had an Athalon 64, and then found out that I couldn't play a game that you said that would on a Atholon 64 I would be a little upset. But I have played games before that would only work on the low settings; because it was designed to work on multiple platforms. You could design a game that would have different settings in the options menu for different gaming platforms this would be specified in the manual, and you probably should give examples on how to adjust this for what. 64 bit would only have to be the minimum. Lets not forget that their could be another option instead of having options the game would search for a graphics control center and windows settings. This could be used to tell the game what kind of settings it has.

In the midst of all this I forgot why I want a huge map. I want an Ai that at least could play this more than anything. We could randomly generate new things on the game as you expand. You could just keep reusing the civilizations after you used all the civilizations in the game. You could randomly generate them as the map expands. You would have to store a huge amount of names and or have the player rename them. Since the game have you pick abilities, political parties, and pick different government options later it could randomly generate them. I do at least want to see a bigger map.

Well this is what happened in RL with the new world, of course that was habited and so could the new one be i guess with more minor races or something? i mean the real problem with it wouldn't be so much the balance (gives races a change to escape a huge dominating empire) but would be the coding so probs not going to happen. Which is sad i like games where you can edit it as it goes along like AI hardness, give me an easy start and then bang throw me into the middle of a giant space opera Logh style.

¬_¬ but I am probably on the fringe of gaming for my want for the game I am playing to never end. So like Civ 5, Sins of solar empire, Gal Civ, total wars etc   the game gets very boring when its late game and I am wining..

While a procedurally generated universe is possible there's a gameplay balance problem with something like that.  The civilizations that start on the initial outskirts of the universe will have a huge advantage in expansion while those that start towards the center will be boxed in and hosed.  Even if the devs make it so that everyone start off in a "wheel" pattern around the edge of the universe that would just mean their territories will end up becoming very thin strips of a pizza as they expand and wouldn't come into contact with each other for a very long time.

Also, I think there will be performance problems in such a system because when you have a procedurally generated universe the boundaries are undefined and some of the faster algorithms to determine pathing and AI normally used in a bound universe won't be useable.

Agreed, but I wouldn't mind randomly generating major and minor races. You could use the customize pictures with the stock factions. or you could even use the custom factions. I would like to see more custom picts anyways, but there will be redundancies this is not a problem. This is kind of a compromise between the current system and my 83 factions idea. I agree that the idea of expanding would give Ai problems. I would like to see expanding multiplayer because humans could handle this better.

I suggested a different idea where the game would check resources and balance the game accordingly. This would work better as time went on. Because there are things we could predict right now like there will be more pixels, cores for computing and graphics, speed, memory, threads, pipes, bigger busses, a faster clock, anialising.  there are probably other things that will be on a future computer that we could predict right now, but I'm not a programmer. These are things a smart game could check for, and develop accordingly. This would keep for a more balanced game while utilizing the resources on hand while not becoming to old for the technology. This would be nice for a custom built computer that I don't have with 64 gigs of memory. This would help to make the most awesome game ever. Let's not forget about my Ai idea. Because this needs to be also implemented.