Beta 2 First Comments

from GalCiv3 Forums

Wish I could post more tonight, but have to work tomorrow.  Will play and post more this weekend.

  • Love the new choices for customizing a game and the ability to change victories conditions within the game.
  • (Playing on Huge map as Terrans)
  • On the galaxy map, some stars are showing pixilation through the FOW.  Okay, these are black holes.  Bug still exists.
  • Game crash to desktop when I selected Earth the first time in a new game.  Crash did not repeat after starting another new game.
  • The Manufacturing Queue is still not dynamically updating as the planet production is changed.  Dynamic updating would really help us see what effect changes in planet production will cause to planet improvement build times.  Currently have to leave Planet screen and open again (or cycle between planets when we have more than 1) to see the changes.
  • In the first turn, I got some “stutters” on the main map when I grabbed and moved it while a ship was moving.  I was able to repeat the stutter occasionally when grabbing and moving the main map quickly.
  • When a shipyard is built, it would help if the screen auto-centered on the shipyard so I can be sure which sponsor to select.  Yes, I know the planet on the top of the list should be the closest, but would still like to be sure, especially when I colonize more than one planet in a turn.
  • Several text box issues on the ideology screen (boxes are too small for some text).
  • The benevolent ideology seems overpowered compared to the other ideologies.  I notice that I am actually selecting early ideologies from all three trees (benevolent for approval, pragmatic for research, malevolence for production).
  • I do like how the ships don’t wiggle anymore.
  • Maybe it’s just this game, but most of the choices I’m getting when I colonize a planet favor benevolence.  I’m not a benevolent kind of guy (at least in video games). The other ideologies can have some significant penalties (especially to approval and growth, which are critical in the early game).
  • I've encountered another race (shared border) but have not seen any ships and diplomacy has not triggered.  I do have Universal Translator.

That all for tonight (should have been asleep two hours ago; thanks, guys).  :grin:

16,419 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Replying to your post

Yes, black holes in FOW still show

First time to start the game took forever, I thought it was locked up. I was finally able to get in, started a new game on a huge map with the Krynn. Moved all my ships, etc. as soon as I click my home world to manage, crash. It wasn't repeated in a second attempt to start a new game either, but I it looks like it is not Earth dependent.

The manufacturing queue has never updated correctly from the govern sliders and I agree it would be nice

I agree in the alpha, and still in the beta, benevolence is OP. Of course, a lot of the other level 2s in pragmatic and malice are disabled, but I would probably choose the benevolent tree at this point anyway.

As to planet choices, pragmatic seems decent many times. I have actually chosen benevolent because of the tree over the benefit to the planet at times.

My own observation

I had an event where the said dust of some kind of sentience descended on all planets of all races helping orbital building. However, the description of the effect was a penalty on orbital manufacturing of 20%. There doesn't seem to be anything in the tooltips of the starports to say one way or another, but moving the slider to 50-50 on military vs construction of a 12 production planet shows 5 going to the shipyard, so it looks like it is indeed a penalty which is the reverse of the description.

I see lots of text display errors where the text is cut off sometimes on the research tree at the top when looking at an improvement for that tech. If I close the tree and come back, it displays correctly.

The planet build queue on the right has text to long for the one line field and wraps showing 1/2 the top line and 1/2 the bottom line. I noticed this on Xeno Research Laboratory.

Anyway, I only had an hour or two to try it out. I will play more later, like Hamilmac.

Thanks for the beta, hopefully a few of the things are small enough for a quick fix.

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Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I had the same CTD when selecting Earth on the first turn.  I reported it as support ticket #NLV-163-39971, including the debug.err and crash dump file with the ticket.

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Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

More Beta 2 Feedback (turn 146)

Before you read the additional comments, please know that I AM having fun and I DO like the direction the game is going.  The Dev team have done a great job!

(Playing on Huge map as Terrans)

Diplomacy:

Way too easy.  I know this will be balanced in future patches.  I prefer the GC2 model where other races are reluctant to trade early in the game.

I can use the information on the diplomacy screen to gain WAY too much intel on my opponents (number and types of ships, colonies, etc.).  I would prefer a lot less knowledge until some level of espionage is attained.  Then, after achieving that level of espionage, they would tell you “How did you find out about that?  Well, okay, we DO have these other [colonies, ships, starbases, etc.] we might be willing to trade.”

I found some of the options (i.e. Exploration Treaty) a little confusing.  Are they mutual treaties (it appears so)?  I would prefer the Civilization model where each side would give up the treaty element (i.e. both sides have to give open borders for it to be mutual; same with exploration and the other treaties, except non-aggression pact). [Edit] So most are individual, just like Civ V.  Wasn't immediately obvious.  I'm hoping non-aggression pact is mutual, because I found you can get a lot of stuff by offering it.

Other:

When using the Govern/Commands menu, updating what is building in the shipyards does not update the entire queue, only the ship currently being built. [-Edit] No, it's actually adding a ship to the queue, which is not what I was expecting.  I wish the ships would auto-upgrade in the construction queue like they did in GC2.

Before

Before

After

After


The minimap colors for the Kyrnn and the Iridium look too similar.

Colonizing is currently a free-for-all just like GC 2.  Because peace is the default relation (I think it should be race dependent whether to start at peace or war to spice up the game), I threw caution to the wind and just built colony ships until everything was taken (mostly by me).

Influence is too powerful.  Following the benevolence ideology (and because I’m colonizing twice the number of planets as the other powers), I was able to get the +100 influence bonus fairly quickly, leverage that in the United Planets to get the HQ which increased my influence another +50% and I’m now converting worlds (3 so far with another 4 soon) too easily.  I personally dislike influence victories—they’re boring.  Even though I haven’t selected the influence victory condition, at this rate I might convert most of the galaxy.

Relics are overpowered.  +500% modifier is too much in the early game.  +50% would be better, and could be improved with new modules/techs as the game progresses.

I'll provide more comments as I continue to play.

Thanks again!

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Publius, reply 2

I had the same CTD when selecting Earth on the first turn. I reported it as support ticket #NLV-163-39971, including the debug.err and crash dump file with the ticket.

I only had it happen that once.  I've reloaded the game multiple times and it has not crashed again.  (fingers crossed)

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Blaze, reply 1

First time to start the game took forever, I thought it was locked up.

I've noticed long load times every time I start the game after logging in to a new Steam session.

Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Precursor libraries used to give a 700% bonus as did precursor mines if memories serve? so why would you reduce it by ten times the amount? just curious?

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Reply #7 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Hamilmac, reply 5


Quoting Blaze of Glory,
reply 1

First time to start the game took forever, I thought it was locked up.



I've noticed long load times every time I start the game after logging in to a new Steam session.

I wonder if it is a time of day thing, reflecting the number of people trying to access Steam, or some other traffic?  I am in a hotel in China, using a VPN, over wireless, with a business laptop, and both the time it took to download the update and since then to start the game have been quicker than expected. The total time to connect to Steam and load the game is less than it took with Beta 1 in the USA on a buff landline connected to a 8-core super tower.

Reply #8 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Echelion, reply 6

Precursor libraries used to give a 700% bonus as did precursor mines if memories serve? so why would you reduce it by ten times the amount? just curious?

This game uses different mechanics.  I now have three of these under control (economy, approval, production) and my civilization stats are ridiculous for the stage I'm at in the game.  I am, frankly, too powerful now.  I would prefer a low starting stat and starbase upgrades, like in GC2.  My opinion, of course. 

Reply #9 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

New bug.  When a planet flips to me, the planet still looks like it belongs to the former player until I add/upgrade an improvement on the planet.  Lola0307 II below has flipped to me and I can open the planet menu, but still looks like it belongs to the former owner.

 

Annex bug