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Mercenaries an Underwhelming Disappointment

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Mercenaries an Underwhelming Disappointment

from GalCiv3 Forums

I really like Stardock and its games. I've been playing them for years and despite the Elemental disaster, I consider them among my favorite developers of all time. Legendary Heroes is still among my most-played games on Steam and I sunk 500+ hours in to GalCiv 2, not to mention all the others that I've enjoyed. 

Mercenaries is a disappointment and an underwhelming "expansion" for Galactic Civilizations 3 and the only reason I'm writing this is because I feel like Stardock isn't really listening any more. 

Take a look at your forums. The main feature requests focus on a proper invasion system, a fix to starbase/constructor spam, expanded diplomacy options, the political system returning and a few others. There hasn't been a single request for what amounts to heroes for GalCiv 3. 

So I guess I don't understand why this was the first focus of development after the vanilla release. 

Here are some of my thoughts on Mercs: 

  • The mercenaries, while moderately cool in and of themselves, do not add a great deal of excitement to the game and worse yet, the AI hardly uses them well. 
  • The mercenaries are not upgradeable and some become completely useless half-way through the game. 
  • The new races are decent, but neither really change my general strategy or fix the shortcomings of the base game, and considering all of the awesome race mods (Guantlet's!) out there, did we really need to pay for this?
  • The campaign isn't really a campaign, but I personally don't care that much. Some others may care a lot, though. 

If I wasn't already a Founder, I'd have considered this a bust for spending $20 on it. It's even more frustrating when something like political systems or an actual invasion system could have been the focus of this expansion and we would have all been much happier. 

I mean no disrespect and I'm not trying to be antagonistic. I'm simply venting my frustration and disappointment in general with the direction of Galactic Civilizations 3. GC2 was one of my favorite games of all time and I hardly care about 3. That should tell you something. 

 

Please reconsider the plan to "wait until a Standalone" for a proper invasion mechanic and other widely-requested features and start focusing on shoring up GalCiv 3's well-documented and often-verbalized weaknesses. Mercenaries should have come after an expansion focused on the oft-requested features and not a "bonus" feature. 

 

Color me all sorts of underwhelmed and disappointed. 

 

 

 

95,792 views 55 replies
Reply #51 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Avatar137, reply 46

Wow, I guess the point of my post went right over your head... I'd explain further but Seilore has already tried and some how I feel it would be in vain anyway.

 

The Sisko mentions: "To be fair until a week ago there was never any mention Founders weren't allowed to talk about the game publicly."  how many times Stardock have asked something along these lines and where and in what manner I don't know.  I was aware that they had asked people not to post videos or screenshots I'm sure I read that in some post.  I hadn't read the patch notes until very recently where there is a short request along those lines in there.  

Personally I've been saving my opinions on Mercenaries (I haven't played it yet) until it's released but I'm glad of this thread.  I know XWerewolfX has stated he unknowingly posted this in the wrong forum, if that wasn't the case I still wouldn't have an issue with him, I don't think certain things should be behind closed doors.  You're a consumer yourself I'm sure you've bought a game/dlc that's disappointed you before that if you'd had more information on you might have made a different decision.  It may not be in a companies interest e.g. Stardock but it is in the consumers and like I said if certain things are done openly they can't be accused on censorship, which is good for them also.  (Seilore likely has an issue with me with differences of opinion in the recent removing tech trade thread, he hadn't voiced an issue with XWerewolfX posting here in the five or so posts he had made previously, perhaps he was trying to be helpful but it didn't come across like that)

Look Stardock don't need someone to rescue them from a tower every time they get criticism on these forums.  It was the manner of your post that irked me, the people who criticize are usually fans as well, they wouldn't be wasting their time posting still if they weren't.  I think your post was an overreaction, the community letting Stardock know its issues wherever or whatever they may be is what will hopefully encourage Stardock to make the improvements we all want to see.  Certain fanboyism can be very damaging to a product and consumer interests imo.  I thought this thread was doing a good job of discussing genuine issues and hope it can get back on track.  

Reply #52 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Moved to founder forum. Note that you had to enter a password from the founders forum to access the beta--it's founders only.

I will point out, there is a roadmap for the expansions. They aren't something that we just decided to do one day and two weeks later we popped a beta out. There's some flexibility in the small DLC but for the big stuff, there is a lot more time and effort involved and going off-plan (i.e. doing a completely different expansion) doesn't come cheap.

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Reply #53 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

In that case, let's get back on topic.

Interested in the thoughts of others on the below (it becomes much more noticeable well into the Age of Ascension).

To supplement, as others have highlighted, the AI seems very slow in buying mercenaries.  In my current game on Godlike there are 11 empires (i.e. so there should be plenty of available cash to buy them), but I have almost all of the mercenary ships (including everything purchased so far in the Age of Ascension).  That said, it's partly a domino effect from other problems.  From diplomacy, I have heaps of cash (even with credits per turn being removed in 1.6 which is a little like trying to stop a freight train with a water pistol).  Using the motivation line under Malevolent (please nerf some of the bigger bonuses), I can far too easily and quickly spam starbases and resources.  

Quoting Icemaniaa, reply 32

It's worth considered the three classes of mercenary ship, as each case is a bit different.


For ships that provide planet related abilities (e.g. production boosts), yes the military stats of the ship itself don't really matter.  However, what I've always enjoyed in other games with "Heroes" is being able to level up their abilities over time, unfortunately that's not possible here.

For ships that are pure military, with individual ship bonuses only and no wider effects, those ships are useful briefly but then very quickly become obsolete.  

For ships with special fleet related abilities, it's similar.  They are useful for longer, as you say they have fleet wide bonuses, but then also become obsolete.  

A good specific example is "The Bitte" which is an Age of War ship that provides a 50% movement bonus but has 5/8/4 attack and 9/12/12 defence.  For my first fleet, that's pretty useful, and the 50% movement bonus is huge.  However, before long my ships are much faster and stronger, then much faster than the 50% movement bonuses and so "The Bitte" becomes obsolete.  For ships with other fleet wide bonuses (e.g. accuracy), if you want those benefits, you have to gimp your fleet movement speed.  Even the Age of Ascension mercenary ships are hilariously slow before long (they don't seem to stack components so the top movement speed for any ship is in the mid 20's by the looks).

So what I end with is a whole bunch of military mercenaries parked at my homeworld doing nothing (or dead while my normal ships all survived).  Why the mercenary called Watterson Bitte wants to hang out in his banged up old 1980 Mitsubishi Magna while everyone else is cruising around in their 2016 Lamborghini Huracan's is beyond me! :)

Reply #54 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

My comment will be more neutral towards mercs than some of the other comments. I like the idea but there's still a ways to go with it, but things don't seem as bad to me as some others indicate.

However, I DON'T like the fact that costs for a merc ship increase over time. 

This is a very difficult game to balance since vastly different map sizes are played. Someone who plays in an enormous galaxy may have many more planets and income than someone like me who plays large. Therefore, they can afford more mercs etc.

I do strongly urge the devs to take a good look at every merc's capabilities. I still think that some cost too much and the late age ones should often require fewer resources.

It will take some time for Stardock to improve this and most likely it will be an ongoing process. Lets give them that time.

OT...I see a mention of nerfing the Motivation line in Malevolent. OK that is my favorite start as well. Nerf is a very dangerous word and I've experienced too many nerfs in related games that result in too small a difference between plans and units to make much of a difference. To me, this makes these games less fun. Better than nerfing, is to improve the other ideologies somewhat. Pragmatic could use some serious boosts, IMHO.

 

Reply #55 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I have to agree with the OP, this just doesn't really seem like an expansion. If I wasn't a founder, and was looking at what this adds to the game on steam, I wouldn't pay 20$ either. The things that I like most with the 1.6 update are things that really just needed patched anyways, like the changes to the resources on the map, and I do like the new abilities for the races as well as the return of the Arceans and Torians

That being said, there are a lot of things that this game needs as well as what people want: Espionage, invasions reworked, heroes/characters, star bases being updated, ship veterancy, diplomacy improvements, better ways of gaining ideology points, as well as the balancing of racial abilities, ideologies, and tech trees. These are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.  I know many of these things are planned in the future, but I have to wonder why the addition of mercenaries, something that as far as I can tell really isn't much of a game changer, was put in front of all these things.

While the addition of mercenaries isn't really a bad thing, it really isn't all that great either. It's kind of a "meh" feature, not really bad, but nothing to get excited about either. However, since the Bazaar is already in the game, I would like to see the ability to hire generic mercenary ships that have no special abilities, but that you can hire as many as you can afford. I think this would allow cash heavy races like the Iridium to focus on making money and not have to worry as much about military techs if they are able to hire an army that have better ships than they are able to build themselves.