Galactic Civilizations III - v1.3 Changelog

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v1.3 Changelog

***Released***

Overview

We are addressing issues with micromanagement of your growing empire. Here are some of the improvements we're providing:

  • Planetary Governors Choose Governors to rule planets in your place, freeing you focus on grander strategic goals. These Governors decide what Planetary Improvements to build.

  • Improved Ship and Fleet management We've introduced numerous UI enhancements to help manage large numbers of ships and fleets in your empire.

  • Improved Ship Destination Interface  A newly redesigned Ship Destination Interface will help you organize the movement of large fleets across the galaxy.


Please note that some of following changes are only enabled if you begin a new game.


Full Patch Notes

Visual / Audio Improvements

  • Added new background music track

  • Added new news robot animations

  • Added orbit and follow cameras to the Battle Viewer

Micromanagement Improvements

  • Governors

    • Governors build Colony Improvements for you. To choose a Governor, first research "Interstellar Governance".  Then choose a Colony and press the "Manage" button.  A list of available Governors appears on the right-hand side of the window.

    • You may remove a Governor and take back control of a Colony at any time.  

  • The Colony Window now allows you to sort the Colonies based on Name, Manufacturing, Research, Wealth, Population, Influence, and Approval.

  • Ships are now grouped into Fleets under the "Ships" tab instead of being listed out individually.  You can expand the Fleets to inspect individual ships within each Fleet stack.

  • Added a "Fleets" category to the Governs > Commands window.  This allows you to redirect large groups of ships all at once.

  • Redesigned the Ship Destination window to add tabs for each destination type and included a minimap.  

  • Shipyard and Starbases now have their own tabs to Main Game Window

Balance

  • Lowered the cost of larger hulls slightly

  • Fleets are more likely to dogpile on desirable targets.

  • Fleets will be less timid when picking targets.

  • Added a Game Settings option to disable the AI surrendering.

  • AI should build more Economic Starbases

  • Increased turn lifetime of strategies that were 5 turns to 10 turns

  • Eliminated the free stuff bonuses gifted AI was receiving due to improved overall AI improvements

  • Removed the free techs and free ideology points from Genius AI due to improved AI behavior generally

  • Made Incredible difficulty level get more goodies for those who want to be punished

  • Made Godlike AI difficulty get more goodies to punish the crazies

  • AI only updates tax policy fully when a new AI strategy is chosen (instead of every turn)

  • AI is more likely to use colony ships to explore unknown stars in the hopes of finding a planet

  • AI gradually adjusts its spending ratios per turn rather than trying to do it all in one turn to give time for other civilization-wide measures to have a chance.

  • Fixed bug that caused the AI to min and max its spending every other turn under certain AI strategies

  • AI puts more effort into keeping its people happier

  • AI does better dealing with ship maintenance and its effect on its economy

  • Planet project production is now capped at 100% now.

  • Changed all Planetary Projects to 5% from 10%

  • Removed Ultra Transformer improvement.

  • Remove all techs that give adjacency bonuses.

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed bug that caused the graphs to appear corrupted

  • Fixed broken progress bars for shipyards in colony screen

  • Fixed missing ship image and ship name in the upgrade window.

  • Game checks to see if Steam is online before allowing the user to register.

  • AI will now pursue more specialized/expensive techs than rather than always going for the cheaper tech.

  • If the network connection is slow, the game will no longer crash when trying to access the Hall of Fame.

  • Fix to a bug where AI would sometimes see a planet that was outside its vision if it was close enough to another planet

  • Fix to a bug (LONG overflow) that could cause the AI to not expand as quickly as it should

  • Fixed bug that caused the AI to sometimes zero out its research when it felt economically weak

  • The Colony Manufacturing and Influence sort buttons now sort the colony lists correctly

  • Increased turn lifetime of strategies from 5 turns to 10 turns

  • Adding fix to the slider code where the sliders would sometimes go negative.

  • Improved general stability of games with large numbers of AI players

  • Fixed a crash when assigning teams in games with a large number of AI opponents

  • Fixed a crash when checking and unchecking the "add random opponents" repeatedly.

  • Fixed a crash that would happen if you deleted a custom race and then immediately started a new game.

  • Fixed a crash for restoring multiplayer games

  • Resources at the top of the screen are no longer being trimmed

  • The tech tree specialization nodes were using the wrong square background.  

  • Addressed a UI problem where some drop down lists were appearing behind buttons

  • Fixed minor text layout problem with Starbase Context Window

  • Fixed a number overflow problem with improvements with 0 manufacturing cost.

  • Updated appearance icons for custom races.  Removed some duplicate entries and updated colors for others.

  • Spaces are no longer allowed for save filenames where space was the only character.

  • Removed the white streaks in the Iconian faction leader movie when choosing it as your custom faction foreground movie.

  • Fixing a minor issue with the Terran colony and Terran constructor ships where hyperdrive modules weren't appearing on both sides

  • Removed the yellow hex ring around the Approval Relic

  • Planetary defending fleets with zero attack power are no longer invulnerable to attack.

  • Set the default AI difficulties to Normal instead of Easy

  • Mega Events are now disabled in the Campaign and the Tutorial.

  • Tutorial and Campaign will no longer hang when loading if mods are enabled

  • Added a diplomacy modifier that calls out other races as warmongers when they declare war too often.

  • Changed the game so anyone with a transport can invade with conventional warfare if you don't have the tech yet.  This solves a problem where a player who unlocked the "Malevolent - Dangerous " Ideology, received a transport, but couldn't use it to invade a planet because they hadn't researched the invasion tech.

  • When fleets merge they now attempt to take on whatever move directive is currently issued from the incoming fleet.

  • If an AI leader is busy with another player, it won't make a trade offer to a second player.

  • Fixed Fog of War bug where objects in a row that goes from visible to exposed were not hidden.

  • Added a Browse button to the Custom Faction Choose Picture Screen that will open an Explorer window directly to the location for copying images.

  • Map Editor: fixed problems with the preview thumbnails

  • Map Editor:  Do longer allow players to set a "recommended players" count of more than 100 when saving their map

  • Loading a custom map screen now displays the selected map's size.

  • Fixed a crash that occurred when the map editor tried to access DLC ships.

  • Fixed a problem with that would cause planet icon tooltips to break and show invalid data

  • Fixed a couple game-within-game lobby crashes

  • Fix an issue where "Unlikable" trait causes you to actually be liked.

  • Address a problem with uploading custom factions to Steam.

  • Fixed a crash when moving a fleet into shipyard at the end of turn
116,061 views 92 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Wow! :O   I wasn't expecting this opt-in this quickly! Wouldn't you know it that I just started a new game on the official 1.2 last night! LOL Guess it will be time to start another new one then as these changes are just too darn good to pass up. Thanks for the heads up and continued work on this enjoyable game!

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Great job Stardock.

 

I realize how hard and how much money it takes to make a patch and your efforts are very much appreciated by me. 

Multiplicity - Control multiple PCs using one keyboard and mouse
Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Nothing to see here... Mistaken "bug" report...

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Mine isn't updating at all. Says it's the opt-in in my Library, but in-game still says 1.2.

I have tried restarting Steam. I have tried verifying integrity of the files. No luck.

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

@Avatar: read the release notes. you need the corresponding tech to unlock the governors screen.

Personally, i think there ought to be some minimum level of governing ability without any tech. Making a UI usability feature dependent on tech just sounds like a bad idea. (Giving bonuses through tech is fine.)

Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

So wait, I need to research something BEFORE I can adjust the wheel to my very first planets?

Reply #7 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting leiavoia, reply 5

@Avatar: read the release notes. you need the corresponding tech to unlock the governors screen.

Personally, i think there ought to be some minimum level of governing ability without any tech. Making a UI usability feature dependent on tech just sounds like a bad idea. (Giving bonuses through tech is fine.)

 

Wow, thanks for that. Obviously I was in a hurry and didn't read it carefully but just wanted to check it out quickly. :omg:   Lesson learned. Off to edit/delete.

Reply #8 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

@Larsenex: Yes. We have to research Interstellar Governance before we can even see the individual planet wheels. I don't see this going well for a lot of people.

Edit: Although at least the global wheel is still available from the start.

Reply #9 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

"Research Interstellar Governance to govern planets" the button says> "no problem, can't be that bad... wait, where is it I don't see it on my starting tech options"
- universal translator > Diplomatic Specialization >Interstellar Governance....

- Ouch hmm...
Rush buy lab > zero progress on building other stuff... that's going to really hurt in 1.3 on. Before the initial rush buy of starting colony improvements could be offset usefully by swinging the slider to full research... I could live with one or the other, but both together is -awful- for those first 5-10 turns

- holy hell does it take a long time to build things at 33/33/33 or whatever it's doing... doesn't seem to be changing the time till research complete would if it were moving sliders during rush buys at all

 

- oooh I an do it at the civilization level in the govern thing.   You can unlock it by about turn 15-20 if you rush buy labs while keeping the civ level spending at 100% research.  Syill some bugs in them though, yor governors like to queue up assembly (labs.. or anything) for a jillion turns before the factory that would cut that down to 10-20some.  I notice that sometimes it seems to be putting the slider back to 33/33/33 or something thoug.  These things really need to learn that there needs to be factory(ies) before it can build other stuff

Reply #10 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

The UI governors are the same governors that AI players already use under the hood to manage planets. If you see AI players making dumb mistakes, you will likely see it on your own planets on autopilot.

Reply #11 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting leiavoia, reply 10

The UI governors are the same governors that AI players already use under the hood to manage planets. If you see AI players making dumb mistakes, you will likely see it on your own planets on autopilot.

 

Yea, the bonus they giive makes them something that I'd like to use sometimes, but "It's doing what" kind of overrides that

 

Edit:  For example, I have a low quality planet I have manufacturing yor queued for every tile on the planet...  Manually I'd run at 0/0/100, governor gives me +10% though!... hmm... 29/28/44=101, ooh... even if that was a flat 10% for 29/28/53 I'm not sure it would be worth it very often

Reply #12 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I haven't played the patch yet, but i suppose you could queue up a planet with what you actually want and then set the governor. I'm not sure how the two interact yet. I would never want to give a ground-floor colony over to the AI to manage without queueing at least the first few buildings.

 

Reply #13 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I will definitely check out the UI enhancements.

But two thoughts from the patch notes:

 

1) Governors give production bonuses. I strongly disagree with this. I don't like the idea that automation gives me a benefit I don't get myself. Automation should be a way to streamline my game-play experience...my incentive is less to fret about, not getting some extra bonuses. 4x games are all about control...when I choose to give up control for convenience, my choice. When I feel obligated to maximize my bonus (which a lot of hardcore players do)...then you have removed control.

2) Larger hulls are a little cheaper. First, I think the main issue on the boards is that ship costs across the board are too cheap, not too expensive. It is too easy to mass produce super ships even by mid game. Second, has the "mass fleet of small ships" suddenly become a balance issue? In my experience, fleets of larger ships already crush swarm type fleets.....except for carriers of course which are in their own class.

Reply #14 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting leiavoia, reply 12

I haven't played the patch yet, but i suppose you could queue up a planet with what you actually want and then set the governor. I'm not sure how the two interact yet. I would never want to give a ground-floor colony over to the AI to manage without queueing at least the first few buildings.

 

 

there isn't a whole lot to them, giving them a finished colony is just as bad if not worse because you get this:

<GovernorBonus>
<InternalName>WealthBonusGov2</InternalName>
<DisplayName>WealthGovernor2_Name</DisplayName>
<Icon>GC3_Wealth_Token_5.png</Icon>
<Slider>WealthSlider</Slider>
<SliderOffset>0.15</SliderOffset>

<Stat>
<EffectType>ColonyGrossIncome</EffectType>
<Target>
<TargetType>Colony</TargetType>
</Target>
<BonusType>Multiplier</BonusType>
<Value>0.10</Value>
</Stat>
<Prerequ>
<Techs>
<Option>GalacticGovernance</Option>
</Techs>
</Prerequ>
</GovernorBonus>

Replace the italicised bit with  appropriate manufacturing/researchstat for those & substitute 0.15/0.20 for  tier2 & 3.  That works out to being roughly half of a tier 1 econ/manufacturing/research improvementfor free at the expense of running around some combination of 30/30/44 instead of some combination0/0/100.  The situations that would benefit from that are extremely limited

 

now if they looked more like this, they might be somewhat useful

[quote]

<GovernorBonus>
<InternalName>WealthBonusGov2</InternalName>
<DisplayName>WealthGovernor2_Name</DisplayName>
<Icon>GC3_Wealth_Token_5.png</Icon>
<Slider>WealthSlider</Slider>
<SliderOffset>0.15</SliderOffset>

<Stat>
<EffectType>ColonyGrossIncome</EffectType>
<Target>
<TargetType>Colony</TargetType>
</Target>
<BonusType>Multiplier</BonusType>
<Value>0.10</Value>
</Stat>

<Stat>
<EffectType>ColonyGrossIncome</EffectType>
<Target>
<TargetType>Colony</TargetType>
</Target>
<BonusType>Flat</BonusType>
<Value>10</Value>
</Stat>
<Prerequ>
<Techs>
<Option>GalacticGovernance</Option>
</Techs>
</Prerequ> 

But they don't...Not to mention the fact that a flat 15/20 is really pretty small by the time you get into those later tier 2/3 ones, so who knows

Reply #15 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Stalker0, reply 13

I will definitely check out the UI enhancements.

But two thoughts from the patch notes:

 

1) Governors give production bonuses. I strongly disagree with this. I don't like the idea that automation gives me a benefit I don't get myself. Automation should be a way to streamline my game-play experience...my incentive is less to fret about, not getting some extra bonuses. 4x games are all about control...when I choose to give up control for convenience, my choice. When I feel obligated to maximize my bonus (which a lot of hardcore players do)...then you have removed control.

Don't worry, they are terrible bonus'on just shy of setting the slider at 33/33/33 rather than some combination of 0/0/100. As far as I was able to tell in testing, you won't be using them to maximize anything aside from more chances to click end turn

Quoting Stalker0, reply 13

2) Larger hulls are a little cheaper. First, I think the main issue on the boards is that ship costs across the board are too cheap, not too expensive. It is too easy to mass produce super ships even by mid game. Second, has the "mass fleet of small ships" suddenly become a balance issue? In my experience, fleets of larger ships already crush swarm type fleets.....except for carriers of course which are in their own class.

Kinda wonder about this myself.  The ai only has trouble making them because they are expensive to rush buy & take a long time when your "EpicManufacturingWorld" has 2 food tiles, a FoodHub tile, an approval tile, wealth Tile, Defense Tile, Military Tile, Influence Tile, MilitaryHub Tile, Tourism Tile, Manufacturing Tile, and a third food tile behind 7 manufacturing tiles, a manufacturinghub, & a mabnufacturingunique.  Now that's not too mad I guess if you have a planet with space for 22 improvements... but that's not the average planet.  those look more like NormalManufacturingWorld

<PlanetClassMin>10</PlanetClassMin>
<PlanetClassMax>12</PlanetClassMax>
<Improvement>Manufacturing</Improvement>
<Improvement>Manufacturing</Improvement>
<Improvement>Manufacturing</Improvement>
<Improvement>Manufacturing</Improvement>
<Improvement>ManufacturingHub</Improvement>
<Improvement>Food</Improvement>
<Improvement>Food</Improvement>
<Improvement>Influence</Improvement>
<Improvement>Approval</Improvement>
<Improvement>Wealth</Improvement>
<Improvement>Manufacturing</Improvement>
<Improvement>Manufacturing</Improvement>
<Improvement>Manufacturing</Improvement>
<Improvement>Military</Improvement>
<FillerImprovement>Manufacturing</FillerImprovement>
<FillerImprovement>Food</FillerImprovement>
<FillerImprovement>Research</FillerImprovement>
<FillerImprovement>Influence</FillerImprovement>
<FillerImprovement>Wealth</FillerImprovement>
<FillerImprovement>Approval</FillerImprovement>

a player who only puts 4 manufacturing improvement on a manufacturing world is probably doing it because there are only 4 or so tiles on that world to begin with after the colony is counted, not because they are saving room for food, food, influence, approval, & wealth tiles on the remaining or so 6 tiles

Reply #16 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

This is a very promising improvement!

Reply #17 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

That was fast, thank you.

 

If i may ask, is the constructor spam problem looked at in 1.3?

Reply #18 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Tetrasodium, reply 15

Don't worry, they are terrible bonus'on just shy of setting the slider at 33/33/33 rather than some combination of 0/0/100. As far as I was able to tell in testing, you won't be using them to maximize anything aside from more chances to click end turn

 

A suggestion.

 

The AI is supposed to be using these governors. And the governors have a planet-by-planet offset value. So, in theory, we can now make the AI utilize planets sensibly.

 

Go into the AIStrategydefs.xml and change ALL strategies to use 100% manufacturing at all times.

 

Then go into the governor settings and give Wealth planets an 80% wealth offset, and research planets an 80% Research offset.

 

This should mean that all AI manu planets operate 100% manu, all research planets have a 20% manu-80% research split, and all econ planets have a 20% manu 80% econ split.

 

For extra points, set the colony hub to give 5 social manufacturing instead of production, and then you can set the governors to use 100% econ/research without preventing the AI from building up planets (albeit very slowly).

 

Voila, the single biggest weakness with the AI's play is solved instantly. I've not tested this yet, and I need to go spend the next 10 hours at work... but if the AI uses governors in the same way as the human player does, then this should work, and we should immediately see at least a doubling in AI final output. 

Reply #19 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

When fleets merge they now attempt to take on whatever move directive is currently issued from the incoming fleet.

Did they also fix the related bug that causes the name of the fleet to change when you add ships to it or is that still there?

If they are anyway modifying the join mechanics of fleets they ought to fix this, too, to save some overhead work...

Reply #20 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Another problem was, the course of the production of an updated list of "Manufacturing Queue"

 

 

https://forums.galciv3.com/470211/page/1/#3584611

Reply #21 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Stalker0, reply 13

I will definitely check out the UI enhancements.

But two thoughts from the patch notes:

 

1) Governors give production bonuses. I strongly disagree with this. I don't like the idea that automation gives me a benefit I don't get myself. Automation should be a way to streamline my game-play experience...my incentive is less to fret about, not getting some extra bonuses. 4x games are all about control...when I choose to give up control for convenience, my choice. When I feel obligated to maximize my bonus (which a lot of hardcore players do)...then you have removed control.

2) Larger hulls are a little cheaper. First, I think the main issue on the boards is that ship costs across the board are too cheap, not too expensive. It is too easy to mass produce super ships even by mid game. Second, has the "mass fleet of small ships" suddenly become a balance issue? In my experience, fleets of larger ships already crush swarm type fleets.....except for carriers of course which are in their own class.

I strongly agree with both 1) and 2).

Reply #22 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Yea I don't like not being able to use the wheel early on. I go to the global and set it to 50/50 pro/research but then I have to have that for all planets. Lame.

 

We should have a tech that unlocks it immediately at start like weapons or such. Give us the choice to unlock it first but don't gate it behind 3 techs first.

Reply #23 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I am happy u are taking the time to do a really needed/requested patch. I liked the idea to ask the people on the forum for tipps and requests...

But now that u did that... why the hell do you not care what the people wrote? 

1) "We have to research Interstellar Governance before we can even see the individual planet wheels." --> no, seriously, who had this crap idea? I cannot even begin to understand why the hell would you do something like this. Is this to give AI more time and space by reducing the effectiveness that players can achieve in the first turns? if this is it, it is more than stupid.

2)Governors give production bonuses --> this is not great imho.

Reply #24 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Spotted a couple of wording grammatical issues:

 

 

I also noticed that the AI is able to, for example, colonize extreme planets, but when I go to trade with them, they don't have the tech listed to trade... Not sure if this is a bug or design decision to slow the player down in some way. I also noticed that the AI was able to build transporters with having planetary invasion listed in their techs to trade.

Reply #25 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

In the long term, the per planet production wheel is going to go away. It's too tedious and too gamey.

Something more interesting and immersive will go in its place.