Founders discussion topic: Overview

Well, even though a lot of discussions in the forum are about real-time planetary battles and such, I for one am against this as even in Total War this draws out the game and gives the real-time battles too much of an advantage, I would be for some more depth to the planetary battles instead of the rapid slider click go option in GalCiv II, such as different types of ground troops with different types of defenses/offenses ect...

Otherwise from what I've seen I like a lot of the different features that appear so far.

I've got a sizable post (including an example program written in Java) relating to tech-design over here.

To summarize, I think there are several things that can be done with tech design to present players with a more interesting spread of choices and (as a result) improve replayablity.  Some of the examples were: adding "optional" tech prerequisites, where you only need one of them to research a tech (so there are multiple paths to consider towards a given tech, with different side-benefits), spreading modules of a given type across the tree so you have to decide which ones you want the most, and designing each tech while considering "how would I play the game differently if I had this tech?".  Hopefully, some of it will prove useful.

I think the new/redo/old balance seems about right. I disliked how GW2 basically has nothing in common with GW mechanic-wise. To be honest, I more or less want "GCII, but with my ideas better"

I'd like expanded combat options, both fleet and ground, or at least a mechanics rework to make defenses viable. More atlas modules, warp bubbles, and the like as well to liven ship design up as well.

I think the races could stand to be more differentiated by tech tree and whatnot, instead of by their bonuses and penalties. More Starcraft, less Age of Empires, basically. For example, I liked the Arceans "no engines" thing, and would like more divergences like that. Maybe one race could focus on a carrier and light-ship based combat philosophy, and has no regular drive techs, and only has warp bubbles. Maybe another race is thinking "go big or go home" and has big, expensive modules with less scaling than normal, making them less efficient on light ships, but more efficient on bigger ships. Instead of having a research bonus, a research heavy civ could have unique, more efficient labs. Same for any other civ bonus. Penalties the same way; the labs and other buildings you research could be less efficient than average instead of having a straight racial penalty. Similarly, you could have a race be an early game powerhouse that falls off later, with more powerful starting labs and other buildings, but latter they have less upgrades, or the upgrades fall behind, leaving them weaker late game. Conversely, a lategame powerhouse could have poor early buildings, and require more upgrades to reach the top level buildings, but have the best late-game buildings on average.

On that note, we could make the custom races tech tree more dynamic as well. Instead of picking from presets, you'd spend build points to pick which tree a given building set came from. You could skimp on points buying your manufacturing tree from a poor manu civ, and use the extra points to buy a high-tier research tree from another race's tree.

With all the unique techs, tech stealing would have to be a much rarer endeavor. Probably have to loose the "steal a tech every time you win an invasion" and the "minor race steals all their techs" event.

I agree if they keep more or less the same kind of mechanics that way when people play the game they will know what to expect. Rather than buying a game that was radically different than what you expect. That has been my ideas all along of enhancing the game concepts instead of changung them.

would be nice if there was a professional writer completely outside of game development. A more dramatic idea would be to hire even one of the writers from star trek TNG, x files, a real professional that can work with the developers. I wish this were done more. Classic example of game writing gone bad, Chris Metzen of Blizzaed entertainment. He was okay back in the day, now it's easy to build a case he's a disease. I hope this game has quality writing and plot, like a novel the NYT would recommend, perhaps written above what the average consumer expects. Is that possible? Only way games will transcend being only games instead of art

They already did that with Dave Stern for the Elemental-games.

Speaking of the writing, I'm really curious who is doing it for GalCiv 3.

One thing I'd like to see done on the research side is to make it less deterministic and more random. In most games, including GC-2, you know the entire tech tree from the start and have exact knowledge of how long it will take to acquire a particular capability. Real life doesn't work that way! Sometimes there are research breakthroughs that weren't expected, other times the researchers go down a dry well and end up with nothing.

It might also be interesting to explore possibilities in terms of dividing up research into basic research and applied research. Basic research might go into about 4 different general areas. Once sufficient basic research points are generated in a given area, it opens up applied research opportunities that provide tangible benefits and perhaps lead down a series or branches of improvements.

Another possibility is to make the research tree slightly random or adaptive. This would enhance replayability. To give a GC-2 example, the Yor might not have the intellectual capability to conceive of "laser" technology unless they steal it from others, or actually see it in combat. Intelligence gleaned in combat might be enough to unlock some of this branch of research that would otherwise be inaccessible.

While I do admit that I personally would love this aspect of realism. There is something to be said about a game that is designed a bit 'to real'. I mean if I spent 30 turns researching a doom weapon that would swing the war in my favor. If it disappeared on me because I 'failed it' or whatever... That's a rage quit, or worse, breaking the game flow by the user restoring to an earlier save.

Concepts like that are how a game can easily slip from 'challengingly deliciously difficult' to 'frat house painful punishment'. If something like that is made as more of an opt-in to it via some in-game choice/mechanic, then there is less concern over that.

I really like the idea, and I would say that the potential improvement in game variety would be well worth the risk of some rage quits
However, I agree it should be select-able during the game setup

They tried this early in the Elemental series, as far as random goes anyway. I really liked this, but for the most part everyone shouted this down, with pitchforks and torches in hand. Most people thought they needed to be able to plot out their strategy for the game in advance. To each their own I guess, but I don't foresee Stardock trying that again so soon, unless they have some completely different implementation.

I'm not sure that having something like this selectable is really an option. If it's done seriously, it's going to require things like AI and UI changes to handle it (as opposed to just the normal tech tree only with some of the research costs randomized).

It's going to be a lot of extra work to maintain two distinctly different research systems at once, and both will suffer for it. So no, I don't think "just make it selectable during game setup" is an option here.

The problem with having the tech tree be "mysterious" and "random" is that it undermines your ability to make long-term plans.  If you don't know what benefits a tech will lead to down the road, then you have to always choose techs based on what you need right away, rather than forgoing short-term "gratification" so that you can build up the tech combo you need to turn the game around.

I'm happy with things like race-specific techs - these allow for things like cool race-specific combos, and a truly unique feel for each race.  But once the game starts hiding information from the player, you start losing the ability to think strategically, which is a serious problem in a strategy game.

Well if we were going to do that then we need to do what Startrek does which goes to Nasa for advice.

What you're doing already sounds pretty close to perfect, keep up the great work Stardock!

On the macro vs micromanagement side of the equation I would love to see the ability to assign different worlds to different governors for focusing planets singularly on one type of output. The way that I would do it differently to everyone else is that I would only have the different 'focus's' unlock after the appropriate Capital Improvement has been built.

By doing that you wouldn't overwhelm new players with more options until they need them, and it makes logical sense that you wouldn't need to designate a group of planets to focus solely on manufacturing or science or economics or culture until you actually have one focused world of that type. This might upset some players who like to wait until they find really good planets to build the capital improvements on, but usually even they don't let their empires get to the point where they would need governors before building the capitals.

To be clear building the Manufacturing Capital would unlock the Manufacturing Governor and assigns that world as a manufacturing world. You could then also assign any other worlds to be manufacturing worlds and fall under that governors settings which would be player adjustable.

Thanks for listening Brad!

As an option to the governors role mentioned in reply #15, I would like to see the option, when an empire reaches a certain size, to create provinces or regions, distinct groupings of stellar systems that are administered by a regional governor/senate, yada.  This would allow players to specialize areas of their empire.  Perhaps the wheels for production might be accessed at this level, as wall as universally, and/or each individual system. An additional advantage of this is loyality, rebellion, covert influences may be applied/defended at a regional level.

A few ideas I have, mostly regarding the tech tree.

1.) Bigger tech tree with overlapping techs.  
For instance, you shouldn't be limited to just one method of travel; you might have standard hyperdrive, wormhole/jumpgate travel, or even something similar to "sailing" through space on subspace eddies or some other sci-fi nonsense, which would allow you to travel faster on certain areas of the map almost like traveling on rivers.

Weapons should include different variants for each class, since frequently you are not able to choose your weapon types but have that decision forced upon you by circumstance; cheap, powerful but large, less powerful but small, better vs defense, or slower to upgrade (and possibly less efficient than simply progressing to newer weapons in the long run) but overall superior weapon types.

You should be able to pick different methods of industrial growth that may be more-beneficial on certain planet types; geothermal-powered industry might only work on geologically-active planets (especially for oceanic races) but if you have enough would be worth the investment.  Slavery wouldn't be as powerful as robotic factories and shouldn't be the only option for enslaving races.

Supply line tech rather than simply life-support tech, to increase the range bonus imparted by starbases/planets (and even a supply freighter which could be sent to outlying outposts like a trade freighter for a further bonus, and could also be destroyed like a trade freighter to temporarily take away this bonus).

2.) Minor races should be more involved and should be at more-varied standings technologically.  For instance, a minor industrial civ might be unified enough to build up quickly with space-age tech, or a space-age faction may not even have a unified homeworld and would present unique political opportunities to fracture their world and potentially annex it without a war (or with heavy local support).  Some minors should be little-different than major powers.  Also minor states might actually represent disunified, industrial or pre-industrial races which present an obstacle of varying size depending on your nation's preferred way of dealing with them (the evil race, for instance, considering a variety of options varying from subjugation to enslavement to annihilation, while the good race tries to figure out a way of unifying them and even merging with them, or alternatively simply colonizing a small portion of their world).

3.) Culture should affect certain things in your empire such as espionage capabilities/vulnerabilities or the desire for trade.  The cultural border should not have to overrun an empire for culture to affect another power; in fact I feel as if peaceful and political culture should be separated; there is no reason to antagonize a friendly government simply because they happen to be too close to your cultural borders.  You shouldn't be forced to have your cultural color blob consume friendly worlds, but instead affect local support for your empire and slowly push an empire to back you (this will affect republic-type governments even more).

4.) Espionage should include the passive spying from Dread Lords, active sabotage from Dark Avatar, and also political espionage to affect approval changes on different worlds.  You should have the option to use agents on your own worlds to artificially-boost approval or even on allied worlds to prop up a failing government.  Spies in a shipyard complex might temporarily provide vision of enemy ships as they are built and for some time afterwards.

5.) Weapon/defense die rolls should be less-important.  There should be a minimum die roll; for instance, 10 defense should be rolling from 6-10 rather than from 0-10, so that your 200 defense isn't penetrable by 20 offense.  The values don't have to be as high as I suggest but they should be higher than not.

6.) Not 100% confident with this one, but it should be possible to share ownership of a world.  For instance, an aquatic race could easily inhabit a planet with a minor race on the surface, since that minor race would not be needed to share resources.  However, it would make for problems with diplomacy with said minor race.  To avoid confusion any invasion would require defeating the major power to win.  I'm a little iffy on this one but it sounds interesting.

7.) Resources should be more involved.  They should also be split between (like Endless Space) luxury and strategic resources.  Certain techs might require certain strategic resources for a bonus, an improvement, a ship module, or even research of subsequent tech.  Use of ship modules/improvements requiring a special resource would be set up like Civ 5; you can only build 1 per possessed resource.  Alternatively you may have a limit based on how many of the resource you possess; the technological ability to synthesize it in limited quantities would give you a few uses of a module/improvement, greatly-slowed tech development for relevant techs, or a reduced bonus; certain milestones might give you more modules/improvements, faster tech development, or a superior bonus, until possessing sufficient quantities of the resource would end the penalty and make use of the resource completely unrestricted.
Resources could be found on planets (including uninhabitable ones like Gas Giants), in asteroid fields, nebulae, or various interstellar anomalies (even stars, black holes, and similar anomalies).  Rather than mining asteroids only providing random resource bonuses and resource starbases providing a flat bonus to a certain field, you might find resources in all manner of areas (some where you would need to research methods to extract it, such as those in black holes) and have a variety of ways simple and complex to acquire them (a starbase should be a supply center or a management HQ rather than the actual mine, for instance).

Take a look at the "UI - Research Screen Alpha01.jpg" in the Founder's Vault.

The devs have already stated that espionage won't be in the base game.

That was already in GalCiv 2. It depended on your Luck ability. If it was 0, then the minimum roll was also 0. If it was 25%, then the minimum roll was 25% of the maximum value of your weapons and defenses.

On another thread on the forums I saw something about how there should be research interdependencies on the tree. Example: Let's say you want to unlock Phasors which would be an upgrade to LasOrs, though you would not be able to unlock the possibility to research the tech without having first unlocked Fusion Power Recycling which would be a tech from another branch of the tree (under Planetary Improvements most like). So in short, you need to research Laser V AND Fusion Power Recycling before you can even power the systems necessary to test the theories for Phasors in your Xeno Labs or what have you.

I also believe that we should be able to see large population centers take up space on a planet. I've always looked at that Colony Capital tile and wondered: "Okay, now where do the rest of them live?" I want to see cities that form naturally as your planet's population grows! I want to see slums develop during the periods of decreased economic activity! I want to see that my people aren't just a number! I wan't to see what the planet looks like after I have finished developing it into a pollution spewing ship-factory worked by Meat-Bags!!! (I like playing the Yor and I like my slavelings, what can I say.) On that note, the message for unlocking Research Centers in the previous game made mention of the fact that these Planetary Improvements are essentially colossal, city-sized structures.

Another interesting mechanic (one that I first saw on the GalCivII Forum way back in '08) is a hex-based planet map that has multi-coloured hexes representing the structures that can be placed on the terrain. Example: You want to plop down an Adv. Market Center on a planet you just colonized. Now that's fine and all, but you gotta think about where you wanna put it. You can't just place it in the Mountains!!! What kind of alien shop-goer would want to hike up a mountain in order to go to the planet's largest shopping mall?! Short answer: it ain't gonna happen. Whereas those Plains over there look like just the spot to set up a nice AMC! Now to touch on the previous point, certain Planetary Improvements should get bonuses for being placed close to other PIs of the same kind. Such as placing a Fusion Power Plant beside an Adv. Factory which will improve output from all adjecent factories by 2 MP along with the additional percentage bonus of the FPP. Same for Adv. Markets. Place them close to population centers and boom! An extra 2bc per turn from all Market Centers adjacent to a Population Center/City.

If that's a bit too much of a hassle to implement, how about placing PIs directly onto developed population centers, thus justifying where that population suddenly went. This would also limit the colony-rush phase a great deal because it would mean that we would  be able to take advantage of a planetary tile only after a city has developed on that tile, thus allowing us to take advantage of its population so that we may direct its efforts towards either economic, technological or industrial growth.

Coming back to spewing pollution: the one thing I liked about Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri was the way pollution affected your game as you progressed. When everyone finally gained access to Thermal Boreholes and started planting those suckers down left, right and center the sea levels would begin to rise and the game would become increasingly challenging as you had to fight for dwindling resources on rapidly disappearing land. I'll leave the Planet Busters out of this because I used those for no reason other than to destroy whatever land my enemies owned (I am a cruel sort of leader, aren't I?) so as to hamper their own industrial efforts. In GalCivIII, this could potentially translate into formerly Terran worlds turning into Aquatic or Toxic worlds due to over-exploitation or because I placed far too many Factories on it so that I could pump out a late-game capital ship each turn. Planet Quality in this case could potentially have a direct effect on morale and would also determine how many pollution-spewing improvements you could build on a planet before over-pollution would become a problem.

Finally, I would like to lobby the idea of positive/negative traits when you are creating Custom Races or just boosting the default starting races with skill points. For the sake of simplicity, here is a hyperlink: https://forums.galciv3.com/451290/page/1/#3433332 if the link fails, please let me know and I shall reiterate.

Now that I'm done with that, I can get back to doing my Math...

(P.S. - I would like to once again ask, will there ever be a possibility of seeing Drengin plushies in the near future? While you're at it could you also consider the possibility of GalCiv race plushies in general (save for Terran maybe), because I would absolutely buy them.)

I felt that a roll of 6 out of 10 would be fairer than a 0; using an ability to bring it up to 2.5 isn't exactly what I'm asking for, but rather no ability bringing it PAST 2.5.

If you want Tech research to be random or with jumps where you get tech ahead of schedule put ability points into Luck or creativity as that has this effect on GC2

I've mentioned this before, but the more ways we can customize our game the more we'll love playing. Finding things for us to invest in, which ultimately leads to victory in some way, is what I'd like to see. Here are some ways we can customize and things we can invest into:

1):Detailed Unit Skil-trees (Crews?): The units are how we get to directly interact with the the rest of the world. By making units more customizable and specialized, they can do what we want better and they become more precious. Personally, I'd like the units to be as RPG-like as possible. Skill development, bonuses, crew training, millitary training (for planetary or even ship to ship invasions), etc. Maybe it is the crew that retains this skill-tree and can be placed into other ships, that way keeping the crew alive would be another thing we could invest in with the tech-tree.

2): Special Technologies: Perhaps certain discoveries are outside the reach of the scientific method, and require a lucky encounter with a physical phenomenon normally not seen in the universe, the brilliant insights of special researchers, or discoveries of ancient technology, etc. Placing these specialized techs into the world would make each civilization very and would also inspire players to invest into a new system to obtain these special techs. They could be randomly obtained, or maybe we can invest in exploration or social structure (invest in the people and they can think freely, etc). No matter how you implement this, it would be super cool.

3):More random events: I absolutely love those random events that happened in GC2. I want more of those, and I want the bonuses or penalties we get from them to be more unique. I mean, random events shouldn't define how we play our civilizations, but they should be complex enough to make each play through different and interesting.

4):More World Types and Features: More of this, in every way you can imagine. Make the worlds so unique that even once you've colonized 40 worlds, you still get something new and refreshing each time you get another world to your federation. Ways that worlds could be unique:
-Negative Features: Cold Core, Extreme weather, fungal infestation, violent alien life (needs millitary force to keep colonies safe?), the usual (heavy grav, etc)
-Positive Features: Resource Rich, Filled with ruins of the ancients (random bonuses from "discoveries"), The usual (scientific, production and economic bonuses, food), Special building options (insert sci-fi reasoning for this)
-Neutral Features: Moons which give random bonuses, proceedurally generated descriptions (lifeforms, history, etc), inhabitants that already live there (can specialize the population).  

5): More Race Specializations: The more ways we can invest in our races the better.

6): Alien Artifacts: These could replace the item system we saw in Elemental. Perhaps each ship or world could have slots available for these alien artifacts, which would give unique bonuses not normally available. The sci-fi justification for this is that there are certain truths about the universe that will not be discovered without some luck. For example: Knowledge of the Universe expansion is only available for the civilizations that have been made early enough to detect it (the case in reality). Another example is that perhaps only the study of a rare event in reality allowed certain areas of physics to be opened up. This would allow artifacts to be "mysterious" and "un-reproducible"

In summay: more customization and more things we can invest into!

Could we have the main campaign run more like a tutorial?

When I first played GC2 I immediately started playing the missions but later discovered the skills acquired there were worse than useless in the sandbox. Also if you're going to have a super enemy like the Dread Lords could you include useful hints and tips on how to defeat them? I used cheats to complete the campaign. Perhaps tips could be included in the mission briefing screen?

Or...even better, while you're in-game your allies could contact you and give you advice on how to grow your empire, what ships you should be building and other important mission details? That would be a nice way for your allies to feel like allies rather than some random head that occasionally pops up demanding help. I always used to love it when a friendly faction leader would show up saying something like "Those Torians are getting too powerful. Perhaps we should funnel resources to their enemies..." (this message would happen a lot). Basically, I want my allies to be as pro-active as the opposition forces, you know what I mean? Much like real life, I want my friends & allies to interact with me in a mutually beneficial manner.

As a new player, Galactic Civilisation can be horribly intimidating. If you have a main campaign that eased you in, used AI allies to hold your hand and support you along the way and let the skills you learn in campaign translate reasonably well into sandbox mode then this could net us a lot of new fans. I think this is particularly pertinent considering GCIII's transition onto Steam where we should be seeing a flood of new players.

One of my favourite GalCiv memories came from a map, which had a large galaxy, where all the players were.  I then discovered a smaller galaxy, still large enough, where no race had spawned, sort of a conquest of the new world sort of feeling.  I would like to see a number of map options, perhaps a bit similar to SINS, where you could sketch out some of their greater details of the map, but most of the specifics will still be random enough to not distract from the exploration phase.  Also, I am a big fan of the exploration phase, the first X, and wouldn't mind it being a bit longer and more fleshed out than in most games, whose philosophy seems to be the fun doesn't begin until you encounter the AI/other players, so let's make that happen in the first few turns.  

The  Lead Designer of GalCiv 3, Paul Boyer, has stated in this podcast (around 23:00 min.), that there will be a tutorial campaign in addition to the main campaign.