The Big Diplomatic Feature Update is Here Along with the Lost Precursor worlds!

More diplomacy choices, new Coercion ability, exciting new anomalies, and colony events!

Galactic Civilizations III v1.5 adds lots of new diplomacy features to better shape the destiny of the galaxy!

Version 1.5 offers more diplomacy options, the new Coercion ability, and a unique twist on the Planetary Spending Wheel while the "Precursor Worlds" DLC brings exciting new worlds, events, and anomalies to the game!
You can view the update's full change log down below.

 

Plus: New "Precursor Worlds" DLC

Unlock the mysteries of the Precursors and explore long forgotten ancient worlds. Discover new types of planets, deal with unexpected new colony events, and brave the dangers of perilous anomalies. With new challenges at every turn, exploring the galaxy just became a lot more exciting. 

Features:

  • Precursor Planet Types: Colonize Precursor Worlds and discover Space Elevators, Orbital Factory Rings, Promethion Refineries, and other exotic technologies that can boost planetary production, build better ships, or increase resources.

  • Colonization Events: Wrestle with new ideological choices that can drastically alter the future and potential of your new Precursor colonies.

  • Anomalies: Alter the future of your civilization by sending your survey ships out in search of more powerful Precursor Anomalies.

DLC_4_Precursor_Treasury_01 DLC_4_Precursor_General_01 DLC_4_Precursor_Battle_01 DLC_4_Precursor_Invade_01
 

 
In addition to the new DLC, v1.5 comes with a few exciting updates...


1.5_Deplomacy_01   Diplomacy
New ways to interact with your friends and foes will open up different lines of dialogue and choices. Order them out of your territory (darn aliens, get off my lawn!), proclaim friendship to allies (besties 4ever!), demand tribute from your enemies (you should pay just to be in the presence of my awesome), and more.

 

Planetary Spending Wheel
You asked for it, so here it is! You can now unlock access to this wheel through a planetary improvement or through the new civilization ability "Coercive." If you're a Krynn fan, you're in luck - they start the game with this ability!
  1.5_Coercion_Global_01

 

1.5_Coercion_Planet_01   Coercion
Balance your production wheel to maximize the efficiency of your production. Forcing your population to be overly specialized will reduce your overall raw production. We have also removed the Large Empire Penalty which will allow you to keep your large empires happier! Formerly, this penalty reduced your approval if your empire was too big.

 

Bridge Building
The AI will now use star bases to extend the range of their ships and the reach of their empire.
  1.5_AI_Bridge_Building_01



For the full change log, please take a peek below! Like what you see and what to talk about it? Join our GalCiv Dev stream on Twitch at 3:00 PM ET on Friday, December 11th to hound lead designer Paul Boyer with your questions!




v1.5 Changelog

Feature Overview
  • Improved Diplomacy. Added new diplomatic interactions including "Leave my territory" and "Demand Tribute." 
  • Planetary Spending Wheel. The Planetary Spending Wheel is now available again either  through the "Bureau of Labor" planetary improvement or through the new civilization ability "Coercive." This new ability replaces the Krynn's "Patriotic" ability (which ignored the large empire penalty) which is longer needed.  
  • Coercion system.  Setting the civilization or planetary spending to overly specialize in one area reduces raw production.  Penalty is modest for most spending schemes.  
  • Removed the large empire penalty. You'll to start a new game to experience this change
  • In-Game Metaverse: Clicking on the "Metaverse" button on the main menu will display your gameplay statistics, leaderboard standings, and universal stats via the new "Yor Galactic Report". 
  • Multiplayer Improvements.  Players can now invite their friends to play through Steam.  We have also resolved several crash and lobby problems.  


Gameplay 

  • Improved Diplomacy. Added new diplomatic interactions including "Leave my territory" and "Demand tribute." Go to the Diplomacy screen and ask to talk about something else to access the new changes.  
  • The new "Coercion" faction trait allows the faction to use the planetary spending wheel throughout the empire without building the "Bureau of Labor" Improvement.  This new trait replaces the Kyrnn's Patriot trait which is now obsolete.
  • New "Bureau of Labor" Improvement unlocks the Planetary Spending Wheel for a specific planet.  This improvement is unlocked through the "Interstellar Governance" technology.
  • Removed Large Empire Penalty. This makes the Krynn's Patriotic ability (which overrode the penalty) obsolete and the former trait has been replaced by the new Coercion trait.  Note: you'll need to start a new game to enjoy this benefit.
  • Added Coercion effect to spending wheel.  Spending programs that are overly specializes will be not as efficient in overall production.
  • Lowered the Capital Production points bonus
  • Raised the default Population growth rate from 0.1 to 0.25 per turn 
  • Reduced the number of tech required for each Age to better reflect the current tech research norms. 
  • Re-balanced ship upgrade costs
  • Set minor races frequency game option "common" by default
  • Reduced Civilization and Colony Capital production bonuses.
  • To make the galaxy feel more alive, the AI will talk more often.  We've also increased frequency of minor races.

AI  

  • Added bridge building feature to the AI. if the AI can't reach a target world for invasion, the AI will build military starbases to extend its range.
  • AI now does a better job of picking weapon and defense techs  
  • AI chooses better weapons and defense systems for its ship.

Multiplayer 

  • Added Invite Friends button.  Players can now invite their Steam friends to join a multiplayer lobby.  
  • Fixed a problem with player count was getting messed up after choosing a custom map and then choosing a different map with a different number of players.  This would cause problems in lobby and sometimes crash.   
  • Addressed a problem where the lobby information wasn't always being updated correctly or in a timely manner.   
  • Fixed a crash caused by entering Snathi Campaign after leaving the MP lobby 
  • If peer who doesn't have the same DLC as the host leaves the lobby and starts a new lobby, the game no longer crashes.     
  • The first entry Multiplayer Setup listbox  no longer overlaps the header. 
  • Custom factions now appear correctly after restoring games 
  • The Auto-upgrade on the Planetary Governor screen will now properly remember its state in multiplayer.   
  • When a player with a custom factions leaves a game, the custom factions no longer leave the game as well. 
  • Fixed a race condition that would occasionally cause a custom faction to be eliminated when the game started.  If the custom faction was a player, the game would crash.

Graphics / Audio

  • Added in-game Metaverse experience. From the main menu, click on Metaverse to see your gameplay statistics, leaderboard standings, and universal stats via the new "Yor Galactic Report". 
  • Removed legacy DX9 Dependencies in the atlas generation system to improve stability on startup. 
  • Addressed several crashes related to the Atlas generation system 
  • Fixed issue with some buttons having a non power of two texture and looking weird on mouse down. 
  • Updated the Snathi Peace and War music tracks
  • Addressed a problem with the battle viewer where the camera didn't always rotate around the correct axis.

Mods 

  • Changed flavor text definitions so that they can have groups appended to with mods. 
  • Changed the preclusion rule so that the player can build a single improvement from a set that you've defined.   

Ship Designer

  • Addressed problems with that made it difficult to attach parts that were scaled or animated in a particular fashion. 
  • Attached parts are now scaled correctly when attached to scaled groups within Ship Templates  
  • Fixed issues that made it hard to place parts onto grouped parts in ship designer 

UI 

  • Added tooltips to tile bonuses Planet Window to better explain what they do and help you better plan your world. 
  • The Design Button (and a few others) no longer displays incorrectly when pressed.
  • Rolling over the turn count now displays the current galactic date. 
  • Changed the Campaign and Scenarios Difficulty from a dropdown to a spinner so that it no longer spills past bottom of screen 
  • Updated the Treaty Details background image used for highlighting/selecting so it doesn't attempt to upscale an image not meant for that size. 
  • Added scrollbars to the dropdowns in the custom faction screen so they don't break out of the bounds of the screen. 
  • The Wealth Summary screen does a better job of prioritize important information by hiding items with a value of zero.  .  
  • Added text to Starbase Module tooltips so that if they are disabled due to another player claiming the resources/relics that module needs, it will show a message notifying the player that the resources/relics are already claimed. 
  • Galaxy difficulty setting no longer moves to the bottom when changed 
  • Increased the width of the Large Distances Break tooltip to allow for 3-digit numbers to appear correctly. 
  • Added a scrollbar to the Load Ship popup window to make it more obvious that you can scroll the planet's list.  This also prevents the planet names from being clipped in medium UI.  
  • Shipyard Next/previous arrows are no longer clipped.    
  • On the starbase window, if a resource is already claimed it will now grey out the module name instead of allowing you to build it.
  • Battle Viewer: Selecting a ship changes no longer changes to free cam
  • Battle Viewer: Ship info now properly updates in top down camera (along with all other cameras) when battle is paused
  • Ideology button is now disabled and includes a helpful tooltip if the player has no ideology points.
  • Diplomacy button is now disabled until the player meets someone. 
  • The focus buttons are hidden when planetary production wheel is unlocked
  • Fix logo alignment issue with Fleet tooltip.

Bugs 

  • Fixed bad xml value that could lead to Antimatter showing up on maps that had Resources set to none. 
  • If a fleet of freighters arrive at a planet, one freighter establishes the route. The remaining freighters are not longer stationed at the planet. 
  • Fixing a crash related to pirates building ships 
  • Fixed a crash that happened right after invading a minor race planet 
  • When decommissioning a Shipyard, stationed ships are now ejected instead of being destroyed.   
  • The default custom race images are available again.  
  • DLC Available Button should appear for any missing DLC, not just the map pack 
  • Updated the Class Zero Planet feedback to clarify that it can't be colonized.   
  • Fixed intermittent failure to load campaign saved games that had bad tech tree data. 
  • Fixed trade exploit for infinite credits 
  • Fixed a divide by zero crash error that happened if you restored a very old save game and won the game on the same turn. 

115,736 views 21 replies
Reply #1 Top

very cool, looking fwd to it.. ty guys..

 

Edit: Question: Is the Precursor Worlds bonus frequency tied to any of the sliders? (such as the precursor relic slider?) Anyone have any opinion on whether it should have its own slider? Can homeworlds happen to have precursor bonuses?

 

Just fired up a game and immediately stumbled across a precursor manufacturing world - adds some great flavor and reminds me of the rare 700% precursor bonuses from GC2. 

 

cheers!

Reply #2 Top

Thank you guys!

Reply #3 Top

What effect does removing Patriotic have on custom or downloaded races that have this trait? Will they instantly become coercive, or will they just not have a second ability?

Reply #4 Top

The frequency of Precursor planets seems to be way off in galaxies with 20 or less planets.  In those cases at least half or more planets are Precursor planets.  On small and tiny maps were you have half a dozen colonisable planets and not counting your extra habitable planet in your home system, there seems to be a very high probability of having all Precursor planets.

Reply #5 Top

Quoting tid242, reply 1

very cool, looking fwd to it.. ty guys..

 

Edit: Question: Is the Precursor Worlds bonus frequency tied to any of the sliders? (such as the precursor relic slider?) Anyone have any opinion on whether it should have its own slider? Can homeworlds happen to have precursor bonuses?

 

Just fired up a game and immediately stumbled across a precursor manufacturing world - adds some great flavor and reminds me of the rare 700% precursor bonuses from GC2. 

 

cheers!

 

The number of precursor worlds is based on the map size.  There's no slider for it.    

Reply #6 Top

Quoting naselus, reply 3

What effect does removing Patriotic have on custom or downloaded races that have this trait? Will they instantly become coercive, or will they just not have a second ability?

I had some custom races created in earlier version with Patriotic, and if I use them on the 1.5 opt-in they have the coercive trait instead.

Reply #7 Top

Did a quick test and it seems this is the Precursor planets to map size

Tiny = 3 Precursor planets

Small = 6 Precursor planets

Medium = 9 Precursor planets

Large = 12 Precursor planets

The game seems to want to make sure you have that number of Precursor planets, so fi you only have the same number of habitable planets or less on a map (outside your home system) as the number of Precursor planets the map can have, you seem be be next to guaranteed that they will all be Precursor planets.

Edit: Checked the XML and those above figures are right.  The rest are:

Huge = 16

Gigantic = 19

Immense = 24

Excessive = 30

Insane = 32

These are the Minimum number of Precursor planets on the map, which seems to support what I thought was happening above with the game forcing you to meet the map setting for Precursor planets.

There is also a variable called PrecursorPlanetPercentOfHabitable, which is set at 5%.

Reply #10 Top

Update is good, DLC is great.

But when are you guys willing to add more keyboard control like change planet in Planet Surface UI?? (and in shipyards)

It's very painful to use only mouse to control so many planets in a huge map with hours gaming time.

As an Elite Founder, that's is the only thing I hope for.

Thanks.

Reply #11 Top

Quoting The, reply 7

There is also a variable called PrecursorPlanetPercentOfHabitable, which is set at 5%.

 

Good find, where did you locate this?

Reply #12 Top

It's in MapSizeDefs.xml

Reply #13 Top

Some nice stuff here. It`s interesting how a Dev company of another major game never, ever gave the Player the option to ask the AI to `get off my lawn` even though people for years asked them for it. But you guys have managed it.

I also like that we can ask them for cash for a change.

 

Will give this a run. Please have a version for GOG and a release of your DLC on GOG too.

Reply #14 Top

Despite being bummed at having to give up on an insane mapped game 480+ turns into to be able to play with the pPrecursor worlds and all but it's been worth it! Having a blast with 1.5. I'm only about 135 turns into this new game but it has been interesting from the beginning and I hope to see some real power house races emerge once I'm near turn 500...  Good job guys, GC3 is turning into everything I imagined it would be and then some. Keep up the good work and I"m looking forward to the next couple of years of development!

Reply #16 Top

Quoting Gaunathor, reply 15


Quoting Seafireliv,

Please have a version for GOG and a release of your DLC on GOG too.



Both are already available on GOG. You can get the DLC at http://www.gog.com/game/galactic_civilizations_iii_precursor_worlds

 

Yes, thankyou.

Reply #17 Top

Am I the only one who feels like games now run a LOT faster? Precursor worlds + massive boost to pop growth really speeds up the pace.

Also precursor worlds are really overpowered :)

 

Reply #18 Top

My problem isn't precursor worlds being OP as much as the anomolies.  They are obscene - since the AI doesn't go after them, I end up with 20K+ treasury with no effort, and all sorts of OP buffs (like +200% ship speed... at least the game is over fast even though I am bored).  It ends up playing like a cheat/trainer (all technologies unlock in 1 go!).  Neat idea, but the implementation completely ruins the game for any but the meekest of players. 

Reply #19 Top

Quoting Malaclypse523, reply 18

My problem isn't precursor worlds being OP as much as the anomolies.  They are obscene - since the AI doesn't go after them, I end up with 20K+ treasury with no effort, and all sorts of OP buffs (like +200% ship speed... at least the game is over fast even though I am bored).  It ends up playing like a cheat/trainer (all technologies unlock in 1 go!).  Neat idea, but the implementation completely ruins the game for any but the meekest of players. 

Even the devs think so. A patch to nerf them is in the works.

Reply #20 Top

Quoting pshaw, reply 5


Quoting tid242,

very cool, looking fwd to it.. ty guys..

 

Edit: Question: Is the Precursor Worlds bonus frequency tied to any of the sliders? (such as the precursor relic slider?) Anyone have any opinion on whether it should have its own slider? Can homeworlds happen to have precursor bonuses?

 

Just fired up a game and immediately stumbled across a precursor manufacturing world - adds some great flavor and reminds me of the rare 700% precursor bonuses from GC2. 

 

cheers!



 

The number of precursor worlds is based on the map size.  There's no slider for it.    

 

There definitely should be an option to set rarity of precursor worlds.

Reply #21 Top

Quoting The, reply 7

There is also a variable called PrecursorPlanetPercentOfHabitable, which is set at 5%.

 

So this could be adjusted down to make them rarer?