–RELEASED 05/1/2015–

Galactic Civilizations III Beta 6 is now available! Read the huge patch notes list below for all the shiny details on massive AI and performance improvements, new resource-fueled colony buildings, the high dynamic range lighting update, and much more:

Features

Added a new lighting system (high dynamic ranges, bloom, strobe lights in Drengin discos, tone mapping).

Added the ability to Retire

Added new Improvements that require strategic resources (Durantium Refinery, Elerium Defense Shield, Promethion Pleasure Park, Thulium Data Archive, and a new Antimatter Power Plant)

Added engine support for engine effects fade in and out

Fixes

Fixed crashes

FIXED TEXT CLIPPING! (what a pain this was, so glad to have it fixed)

Fixes crashes and issues that were keeping the game from shutting down correctly

Fixed a crash when voting on a UP measure

Fixed a stuck turn issue when a survey ship visits a ship graveyard on auto-explore

Fixed the Explorers and Beacon ideology traits (they noe give the specified plant class instead of a random one)

Fixed an issue where planet rings weren't showing up in the battle viewer

Fixed an issue where Antimatter missiles weren't requires their resource

Fixed an issue where the population on shipyards was incorrect

Fixed an issue that kept mods from working if you have a space in your windows user name

Fixed lots of typos specifically in the Colonization and Galactic Events

Fixed bug that caused United Planets to look low res

Fixed an issue where an enemies ships can get stuck on a planet after that planet is captured

Fixed an issue where planet thumbnails would be lost after loading a game

Fixed the Farmers -2 ability so it now correctly applies a penalty instead of a bonus (shame on you for exploiting this!)

Fixed an issue where the Altarian Inherent Magic tech gave +1000% to Accuracy and Evasion instead of +10%

Fixed a big bug that would cause sounds to stop playing, especially on large maps

Fixed a problem where invasions were calculated incorrectly

Fixed an issue where planet icons would be lost when loading a game

Fixed an issue where ship icons would be lost when loading a game

Fixed the Slowdown Galactic Event to correctly impact the moves of ships

Fixed an issue keeping the accuracy bonus from the Ruthless Vision Ideological event from being applied

Fixed an issue keeping the sensor bonus from the Scout Ideological event form being applied

Fixed an issue where a single player had over 1,000 (yes that's one thousand!) separate fleets moving in one turn

Fixed an issue causing Goto and Details on your ships to become disabled if you ever selected an enemy ship

Fixed an issue where Opposing Ideologies was using the base ideology of that ai personality, not the active ideology

Fixed an issue keeping lines from not being destroyed when a starbase was destroyed

Fixed an issue with the Handy trait not correctly applying its ship maintenance modifer

Fixed an issue that could cause 2 icons to show up in some text strings

Fixed an issue where you could research into other tech ages even if you didn't have enough techs for that age

Fixed an issue where you could assign more than 5 sponsors to a shipyard

Fixed the crash in the diplomacy screen if you are playing with more than 40 players

Fixed an issue where treaty duration was broken when reloading a game

Fixed an issue where you might not see the sample ship on the custom faction screen if a game has already been played

Balance

Tech Specializations are now mutually exclusive (when you pick one specialization you can't pick the others) techs are rebalanced to support this

Rebalanced anomaly pirates (they are intended to be beatable by an undamaged Survey ship)

News now unlock more advanced UP resolutions

Rabalanced the Iconian tech tree

Added 4 new Iconian improvements

Added a new Precursor Defense System Component

Added/enabled Government techs for all factions

Updated balance to the game setups defs (number of minors)

Slightly fewer habitable planets on various map sedttings

Rebalanced planetary invasions, they were way to easy before

Rebalanced tech costs

Reduced the minimum requirement to win the up headquarters resolution to 0% (so the player with the most votes wins no matter what that percentage is)

Galaxy United resolution reduced from 10% taxes to 3% and the Approval boost reduced from +25 to +10

Reduced Trade Route income

Reduced Tourism base income

Ideology improvements now all grant points per turn instead of a flat amount when built (which created some exploit issues)

Weapons all significantly rebalanced

Pirates now spawn in unoccupied star systems instead of in nebula

Tweaked the falloff of influence

Invasions now grant some influence to keep the planet form flipping back to the original owners control

AI

AI will discuss diplomatic issues with players

Series of relation based conversations added

Gifted difficulty provides fewer AI bonuses

AI discussion system adjusts how often the player can be contacted based on the number of opponents (1 on 1 the player can esxpect to be contacted once every dozen turns, but with 8 opponents that changes to once every 3 turns for example)

AI less cranky about military ships being in its ZOC -- still cares about transports

Lots of changes to the AIStrategyDefs

All tech trees now have the tags for weapon and defense categories

AI tweaks to AIdefs

AI cares more about the expense of a tech now than before

AI balancing to make it more likely to surrender

Battle Rating modifier for determining power increased from 0.1% to 0.2%

Economic income power now uses the production modifier instead of the treasury modifier

Added AI tags for bigger hulls to the tech tree (some some players may pursue big ships while others prefer large fleets)

New AI modifier called "HumanPlayerhasInvasiontech" added

AI will focus a bit more on targets that are near and in his territory

Planets cry out for defense if they are undefended and nearby opponents have invasion tech

AI determines if targets in its influence area are more worthy to attack than others.

New AI evaluation to determine whether planets are under threat

AI will not determine a victory objective until after 100 turns have been played

If the number of defenders is less than the number of colonies, the AI is more likely to build defenders

Shipyards now have a separate queue threshold (1 instead of 3) than colonies so that they can react quicker.

AI reevaluates its weapon and defense preferences after it gets a new tech

AI does a better job calculationg intelligent weapons and defense techs based on who their primary enemy is

Updated the surrender eval to modify based on the number of major players in the game

AI makes a distinction between potential military might and actual military might

AI no longer uses starbases and shipyards as part of the military might calculation

Military power diplomatic evaluations now uses military power instead of faction power

Gifted difficulty nerfed slightly

Fixed AI bug where it was looking at ships instead of fleets

Fixed bug where AI would not attack defenseless ships if they had a stronger military

AI cares more about map distance now than previous when determining targets

AI will tend to prefer ships that it can hit that turn

The AI won't declare peace with you for 20 turns after war is declared (to keep people from exploiting the AI by declaring war, attacking and then paying for peace)

Military and culture starbases are more offensive to the AI

AI is better about managing its money

AI much better at forming attack fleets (it won't be so defensive)

Peace Treaty value to AI increased by 10X

AIs that don't like you are less inclined to make peace

Planet threat distance reduced from 20 to 10 to prevent AI from being overly concerned with ships

Added new flavor text for peace treaty negotiations

Various modifications to the AI spending strategies

AI will no longer consider a player "Weak" if they have relatively little military

Effect of diplomacy ability is reduced at the start of the game

AI makes a distinction between survey ships and actual assault ships when determining whether to be annoyed

Minor races no longer evaluate freighters and constructors and transports of its own (As it no longer will build them)

AI boosts freighter priority if it has no licenses in use and is at peace

AI now looks at a given tech's intrinsic value to that player based on that particular player's preferences (military vs. culture vs. trade techs for example)

AI just generally smarter at trading in the diplomacy screen

AI makes a distinction when making peace if that player is NOT their primary opponent

AI evaluates both the player's potential military power AND their actual military power for determining courses of action

The AI will no longer produce its biggest, best ships for planetary defense, those are for going out and fighting wars

Checkin from Brad reads "ai stuff" (I'm sure all sorts of evilness was done here)

UI

Added end game screens

Added a search feature on the tech screen

Added filters to the shipyard and ship designer so that you can filter on the base designs, or on your own ship designs

Added lots of new race logos

Added lots of new icons

Shipyard tooltip now shows total manufacturing per turn

Placing a component in the ship designer doesn't deselect that component anymore (making it easier if you want to place multiple copies of it)

Added a conversation popup from your science advisor when an AI player is defeated (so you are notified)

Delete key now removes the selected ship from the queue on the shipyard screen

Tech screen mode now remembers your last setting

Added Military Power to graphs

Now showing the number of turns you have been at war with a player on the diplomacy report window

We continue to play with the relic and Strategic Resource icons

Adjusted all the starting battle distance so that the ships are little specks (you would be amazed at the tech going into the detail of those little specks) so it looks better now

Added descriptions for all of the ship roles to better to describe how that sort of ship will act in battle

Minimap overhaul to be more clear and functional

Added the strategic resources to the top of the shipyard screen (so you can see how many you have available when you are picking what ships to build)

Added the strategic resource bar to the ship designer

Added hit points to the shipyard tooltip

Removed "Beam Weapon 1" and "Missile Weapon 1", etc stats on all the tooltips (they are internal stats used for tracking what modifiers apply to what)

Added Military Power to graphs

Additional info added to the ship, ship design and fleet tooltips

Fleet context window now has a tooltip for fleet size control

Faction tooltip added when you mouse over the faction logo

Planet class tooltip added if you mouseover the planet class

New minor faction color (the dark brown was really hard to read against the darkness of space)

Added a tooltip showing a players influence on any tile

Added an entry to planet tooltip stating if they are immune to culture flipping

Battle viewer doesn't reset you playback speed or camera selection if you replay anymore

Added scroll bars to the ship designer and desginer landing page inventory listboxes, so you have better mouse scroll behavior and you know when the list is full

Added a date display when your turn starts

Performance

Performance optimizations to eliminate evaluations if the player does not have relations with target player

Improved performance when scanning across the map, previously you could experience stuttering

Significant memory optimizations