Stardock Releases Altarian Prophecy DLC for Galactic Civilizations III Today

Sorry couldn't locate a lot of information about this DLC, So if I'm understanding correctly I think it has the following items?

• Extra ship parts from factions from the Korx, Drath, and the Altarians from Galactic Civilizations II.
• No New factions to play with just, able to play against them in a new campaign.
• New 3 level campaign where the Terran's will ally with the Altarians and battle the Korx and Drath.

I'm sure I'll be able to see more when I get home today and get to see it in action but, sounds great wish you could play as the Korx or Drath but, maybe eventually

Wow, this is awesome! Thanks so very much. 

On that note Stardock. I have NEVER EVER played a single game of the campaign and I dont know why. I have heard they are very fun. Thanks very much!

Just noticed the Steam update and wondered what it was. The life of a Founder is a magical mystery tour! Thanks.

Quoting Zarkov, reply 3

Just noticed the Steam update and wondered what it was. The life of a Founder is a magical mystery tour! Thanks.

 

Heh.  Yep.  Remember way back when that people were trying to say the $99 Lifetime founder edition was a bad deal?

It was only a bad deal in the sense that it went away right before I could buy it.

Buuuut that's forgivable.

More stuff!  

Along with the continuing updates (especially UI), bug fixes, and AI improvements, this has been and is a marvelous game owning experience.  Thanks, Stardock!  

Quoting Frogboy, reply 4

Quoting Zarkov,

reply 3

Just noticed the Steam update and wondered what it was. The life of a Founder is a magical mystery tour! Thanks.

 

Heh.  Yep.  Remember way back when that people were trying to say the $99 Lifetime founder edition was a bad deal?

Seriously.  Those conversations had a whole lot of totally unnecessary heat.  Stardock was a home for heretics and blasphemers.  Anybody who fell for the deal was a fool. Fortunately, I like heretics and blasphemers.  And my Tarot card has always been The Fool.

Never once did I say that, I think it's awesome Stardock offers packages like this.  Purchase the full game in advance believe and trust a company.  This shuts down the argument of companies nickel and dimeing their customers w/ DLC as we all had the option to purchase it up front.  :)  

Yep. Rock solid material, especially compared to more recent "Season Passes", from certain other companies, which turns out to be less than half of what you expected, more than half of the time. It's the new way to package the DLC concept, without any accountability, apparently. This from some of the "big guys".

Makes you more appreciative of the real deal, somehow. 

Thank you, but I went through the entire campaign - all three missions in three hours, it's not DLC, it's trash.
Dear developers, such DLC you can do three in a week.
Please, better fix the known bugs, better is destroy they.
Don't replace the passage of void missions on micro-cards for a full complement to a great game, this is nonsense.

I was disappointed with this DLC and the recent Rise of the Terrans DLCs. In both cases, "new factions" were offered that only exist in the campaigns. In a game that is capable of 100+ faction scenarios, but only comes with a dozen factions*, you would think the developers would go the extra step (one step) to put a generic alien foreground on these factions and put them out there. Yes, I CAN mod them in, but that takes time, and frankly, I was buying DLC so I could enjoy the game more and mod less.

So, why did I just pay $5 for the Korx and the Drath when I can't immediately play as either the Korx or the Drath? Or the Xendar or the Haven? Heck, "United Earth" itself was a bust, since you cannot realistically use both them and the Terrans in the same game. I am not used to this kind of parsimony from Stardock... in the past, the goal has always been to put MORE into everything, rather than less.

Of the last four DLC, only the builder's kit was satisfying to me, and I even felt the expansion was a bit oversold. It isn't like I'm going to stop buying new content because I'm very committed to the game, but I don't feel I recommend the DLC to others, and I've stopped buying them as gifts. 

* Please don't even mention the factions available on Steam... they are, at best, a reservoir of (badly edited) foreground and background pictures. Nexus has about three dozen much better factions, but even then we are still well short of the 'promised' 100 faction game...

I also was disappointed with not getting the playable faction of Korx and Drath.  Didn't really notice the Xendar or Haven.  I would like to see each of these factions become available as their own DLC w/ unique ships and special abilities.  Truthfully I feel this last DLC would have been worth $10 had it included both playable factions with the extra content or more but, I feel they would be valued at $5 each if done like the Snathi.  Why not drop these as separate DLC's or give us the full factions (group of two for a $10 DLC with the extras versus the $5 DLC w/ just the extras and the feeling of missing those factions)  Anyways I still appreciate the extra content just wish when new factions were mentioned in the DLC one could play with those factions.  So please release these 4 factions as playable factions either as individual DLC's or a group DLC.  I may be a founder so no more $$ coming in from me for my game but, my son wants everything I have for this game and even though on sale I just paid all the bills so no $$ to get him everything to this point so I will be buying another copy of everything soon...

You want more factions, I have 30-40 unique factions w/ pictures, background, icons as well as story lines.  (They are not modded just using the core faction designer so they are not unbalanced and don't have unique ships/dialog)  They will however, help fill your galaxy w/ different looking factions w/ different combinations.  The main shortfall with mine is most focus on Benevolent and Pragmatic.  All but, maybe one or two can be downloaded from Steam as I have shared most of them. 

According to my faction list, I have found 120 different factions that appealed to me when I was being picky about establishing a wide diversity of different looking characters.  I have no idea of the care people put into trait and ability selection.  I know I posted a couple with carefully selected or edited pictures and lore and a good deal of play testing with the traits.  I figure the end result of all those arbitrary and unknown factions is as good as an RNG generated faction, possibly better.  

Like any crowd sourced content, it is a very mixed bag and it requires abandoning laziness to do your own curating.  However, the criticisms "at best" and lack of promised 100 factions are both incorrect, or exaggerations at best.

So, I am mentioning the Steam Workshop. GRM is indeed on Nexus, and is the best looking and crafted content ever offered for GC3 bar none, (except maybe the Colonizing events) but I know I put up a couple of at least "okay" Workshop factions myself, and so did a lot of other people.

I totally agree.

Ah, yes, I have several of yours, I believe. I can't seem to search on your handle right now, so I can't figure out which ones, but you are quite prolific. Thank you!

Also, I have the same problem... most of the factions I have collected are good or neutral.

[quote who="erischild" reply="13" id="3648026"]
Like any crowd sourced content, it is a very mixed bag and it requires abandoning laziness to do your own curating.  However, the criticisms "at best" and lack of promised 100 factions are both incorrect, or exaggerations at best.
[/quote]

I agree that, like much crowd-sourced content, Steam factions cannot be relied on. Most of the factions I have downloaded from Steam have terrible graphics (usually a hack-photoshop job and/or one of the included race pictures), the descriptions are so full of poor grammar and typographical errors that I can no longer suspend belief, the background is hit-or-miss (almost always miss), and a great many of them of them are just an excuse to post pictures of half-naked ladies.

I don't know about lazy: I am a very ill person who sleeps sixteen hours a day, and I have still put in almost every waking moment (sad, I know) into editing Steam factions so they can be used. I'm not complaining about editing and curating the factions I want... online content is WYSWYG, and I don't mind putting in the time every so often. The points are thus:

• They should not advertise a feature and then depend on crowd-sourcing to fulfill the "promise." Or, they should have made it more clear that a significant portion of the game was going to be crowd-sourced.
• If they are going to do that anyway, the very least they could do is provide us with a few new factions, especially ones they have already more than half created for DLC.
• I should not have to spend months (literally, months) editing when I should be playing the game.

 I paid for a game that made promises (or at least advertising claims) and cannot back them up. I am displeased.

And I agree, GRM is fantastic. I use the vanilla version with modified minors, because Gauntlet's minors use some of the old logos that I want reserved for the old minor races, and I can't take an alien faction named the "Huron" seriously.

The game supports up to 100 factions using the custom faction tool.  You as a player do not have to use Steam factions but, Stardock through Steam provides you the option to just grab others factions instead of spending the time creating 85 factions yourself if you want to play with 100 faction.  (You do not need to purchase the extra Stardock factions through DLC but, they also give you that option as well.)

To your second point, correct you shouldn't have to spend months editing but, they provide the in game custom faction editor so if you choose, you are able to create your own factions.  This is also why when I design my factions I make sure each has a story to it, may not be great but, they shouldn't have too many spelling errors ect...

Last point, what promises did they make via advertising that they didn't back up?  You are able to play games with 100 factions. (Again using the in game custom faction tool.) Never anywhere in the advertising or release materials does it specify includes 100 factions.  It simply just says you can play against 100 factions using those options.  Go through my list of factions out there I believe current group saved of my factions is about 45.  Provide feedback if you don't like something with them and I can correct.  Most are unique w/ their own background/picture/portrait/icon.  They all use the core in game editor and are not modded, so therefore no cheating issues with those factions.  The downside is they do not have own ships or tech trees which Stardock does say in the future expansion this may be a feature.

What do you do when you edit Steam factions?  This sounds like a totally worthwhile project.

Editing Steam factions is easy. Copy the faction, edit the copy and delete the original. The race menu screen will flicker after deleting which indicates it is gone and so is the subscription to it.

All added content (race images, etc) will remain until you remove these manually.

That seems a little disingenuous, at least on their part. And it isn't quite accurate anyway... the Steam page says:

So, if I buy a cable package that says I can "watch over 100 channels," I emphatically do not expect to have to make up all the content on every channel for myself, and it I certainly do not expect to have to rely on crowd-sourcing to make a feature work.

Now, do I really expect Stardock to provide me with 100 factions? No. But I think it would go a long way if they provided more than THREE in DLC and expansions (United Earth doesn't count, since you can't play them against the Terrans without modding or suspension of disbelief). We still have the Drath, the Korath, the Korx from GC2 (although they told us the Korx wouldn't be back), plus they could have done the Stellar Guild (more humans, yawn) and the Xendar.

In short, I see little commitment from the developers to support this supposed feature of the game (as listed on Steam, see above). Just because they didn't promise to release 100 factions doesn't mean there isn't an implicit commitment to provide a more expansive experience. Again, from Steam:

Clearly, this is not true in one very important respect.

Oh, I have. I use the Wirling, the Dolph, the Staplemides, the Mirrion Symphony, and the Nanaquin for every game. They were the first four I downloaded, and some of the best. Not to flatter, but they really are among the best. I still edited them (and you are welcome to see the edited versions), but mostly for typographical errors (which are hard to avoid, and even harder to correct, in the faction editor).

Come to think of it, I'm going to go get some more. Thanks for the suggestion!

Not a true comparison, one can not add or think about adding channels to their cable or sat provider.

More of a comparison would be like purchasing a roku or any android device.  Download 1000's of apps, they only provide the tool and a handful of apps themselves the rest are provided by other people/companies.

I would personally love additional factions provided by Stardock and, they are offering more over time as DLC's.  The problem is this isn't the highest requested feature to be added.  The core objection here is false advertising, which they aren't.  As stated you can play 16 to 100 factions, meaning that one could play a game with included features in the game that meet this criteria.  This they have met.

Name a strategy game that has the ability to play that many players against each other?

I would like to see the edited versions, I agree it's hard to correct typographical errors in the faction editor.  (Note if Stardock is seeing this please allow us to correct these easier with a copy and paste from clipboard function or other easier editing tools.) 

Thanks.

I think maybe we should agree to disagree on the finer points here, and agree that more and better factions from all sources would go a long way to solving problems.

I'll try sometime to put them up on Steam so only you can see them. (And it was five... I apparently can't count).

My question was not about method, but what aspects of the factions were changed in what ways.

Depends on what you want to do. I usually redo the images, because they are often poorly edited. I touch up the spelling and grammar, and tweak the abilities and traits to better match the description. In some cases, I'll rewrite the background to fit the picture, or because it is a little too close to a faction I already have. Sometimes the chosen picture makes me think of something else, and I'll just take the picture and make a new faction. Minimally it is often necessary to change the faction portrait or logo, because many authors use the same images for those, and it can be confusing if you don't coordinate them

Just be sure to copy the faction and then unsubscribe from the faction on Steam. If you don't unsubscribe, Steam will "revalidate" the faction and you will lose all of your changes.