Galactic Civilizations III - v2.8 Official Changelog (Released 2/8)

from GalCiv3 Forums

Hello,

In this v2.8 update, we've streamlined lined base game experience, improved ship defenses, adjusted population mechanics, and added some general quality of life improvements to the game.  Please read below for details.  

Gameplay

  • Major boost to defenses: Defenses are now reduced by the square root of damage rather than full damage making defenses much better.
  • Balance pass on defenses based on new combat update that makes defenses a lot more worthwhile.
  • Updated AI ship blueprints to reflect the changes to the battle system.
  • Peacekeeper event won't trigger until at least turn 200 (instead of 100)
  • Defenses on Peacekeepers reduced so that they can be worn down faster.
  • More AI research focus attention
  • AI improvements to planetary improvement choosing.
  • AI better at early game administration resource and late game invasion legions
    Upgrading to a ship to a colony ship class penalty increased.
  • AI now will adjust how big its fleets need to be based on the assignment of the fleet.  Thus, scouts and survey ships don't need escorts while mega fleets now need larger fleets.
  • AI smarter at picking quality ship designs.
  • AI much better at going after key technologies based on the conditions of the game
  • Tweaked the AI fleet governor to use defenders.
  • Pacing improvements for the Crusade tech tree.
  • Commander ships are no longer stackable in a fleet
  • Adjusted the culture tree to be more in line with the planetary improvements
  • Cultural Festival now requires Cultural Influence
  • Streamlined the base game tech tree.
  • Decreased the spacing between civilization starting positions and pirates
  • Base game laser weapon now comes with Militarization tech.
  • Set default colony ship population to 1.0
  • Minimum population for colony ships increased from 0.5 to 1.
  • Nerfed several of the crazy Lost Treasures DLC rewards
  • Navigation Center is now a Galactic Wonder
  • Eliminated ship moves going up based on the level of certain planetary improvements
  • Required starbase spacing reduced from 4 to 3.
  • Mega Resort -- changed the bonus from +25% bonus to a flat +4.
  • Financial buildings now provide +1 to influence growth
  • Galactic Navigation Center global moves decreased from 3 to 1 (yeeesh!) ...and it now longer provides an additional 0.5 points per level! (double yeesh!)
  • Galactic Navigator's Guild benefit reduced from providing 4 moves per turn to 1!...and it no longer provides an additional 0.5 points per level in moves!
  • Galactic Mainframe research bonus increased from 0.3 to 0.5
  • Starport level benefit increased from 0.5 to 1
  • Synthetic Race population increase Promethion cost reduced from 10 to 1
  • Synthetic Race population increase Duranitum cost reduced from 5 to 1
  • Synthetic Race population increase improvement increases by 0.5 instead of 1
  • Changed the default invasion from 1 legions to 2.
  • Industrial Sector maint reduced from 2 to 1

UI

  • In the ship commands, "Go to" renamed to "Auto Pilot."
  • Cosmetic change to the FOW color.
  • Cosmetic change to the size of ships on the main map.
  • Cosmetic change to the starbox visuals.
  • When receiving messages from a Civ, it names the Civ in the title bar.
  • Added tooltips to the various "idle" button states.
  • Added tooltip support for notifications.
  • Updated message for insufficient population to eject a colony ship to "Unreserved colony population is less than the minimum ship load" so that people will know that colonies have a reserve population.
  • Added dialog if the game fails to start because the graphics driver fails to initialize.  This is usually caused by out-of-date drivers.  
  • Added a warning if your graphic drivers' date is older than 2013.

Bugs

  • Crash fix in the event that the AI can't negotiate with another AI for a tech trade.
  • Base Game: Custom factions with the "Raider Ship Style" will now get the proper ships awarded by events and anomalies.
  • Fixed crash in battle tooltip if privateer is stationed by itself in a starbase or shipyard
  • Fixed several improvements tooltips that were saying they were both "one per player" and "one per galaxy"
  • Fixed typos and sTough
  • Fixed typo.  Near bay ships...to Nearby ships.
  • Recruit Celebrity requires an Aurorus Arbortetum instead of Helios Ore because, uh, why would any celebrity be interested in raw ore? How does that even work? Hey, famous movie star, here's some metallic ore for you. Please do a USO tour. Because... you know, you'll get some ore!  As the famous saying goes, you will attract more celebrities with flowers than...ore.
  • Fixed shipyard window to always show the military production generated by the sponsors regardless of if there's a ship in the build queue or not
  • Fixed issue in influence system where it was displaying "Foreign ship in your ZOC" alerts for ships owned by allied players
  • Fixed AI related multiplayer desync bug  
  • You can no longer launch empty colony ships from a starbase.
297,472 views 74 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top


Set default colony ship population to 1.0

 

Just started a new game and my first built colony ship population was still 2.0

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

It was 1.0 prior to an update today. I have all the game files setup locally in git so I can watch the changes as they show up in each release. Makes it easy to know what I want to mod back.

Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

    • Nerfed several of the crazy Lost Treasures DLC rewards

Can we get this spelled out a little more? Curious as to which ones are considered crazy and which are not.

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Research Node was changed from 8 to 4

Others have percentage changes from something like 75% down to 15%. The Military Precursor Fabricator went from a 100% bonus to 20%

 

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Did they do a pass on the adjacency bonuses for those? Social Construction only is very limiting in my opinion.

Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top


Synthetic Race population increase Promethion cost reduced from 10 to 1
Synthetic Race population increase Duranitum cost reduced from 5 to 1
Synthetic Race population increase improvement increases by 0.5 instead of 1

Thank you

Reply #7 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

2.0 population is the default down from 2.5 on transport. The minimum is 1 up from 0.5. This is about colony ships. I hope this doesn't affect transports in the base game ai used colony ships, and transports the same number.

Reply #8 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I use colony ships to ferry people around to new planets. Having to always haul back 1.0 on return trips instead of going empty is silly for that. I would even go for 0.1

Reply #9 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Well the reality is that they don't expect that behavior (or so I believe). I think if they intended some sort of continuing pop transfer it'd be a project of sorts. 

Reply #10 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Well if we are voting for this i think 0.1 minimum would be good.

Reply #11 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

The reason I bring up the colony ship minimums is because I almost exclusively play as robots and their only early game option is to start colonies with minimal populations just to claim the land. It takes a LONG time for robot colonies to get ramped up to the point where they can self replicate. In the meantime, the home world usually ends up becoming a population factory from which  I can ship out pops to fledgling colonies using leftover empty colony ships.

Reply #12 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I have started a new game last weekend with 2.72 Is 2.8 savegame compatible for this game or I have to start a new game? 

Many thanks in advance

Reply #13 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Saves are safe.

Reply #14 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Just started a new game as Snathi, default colony ship pop is 2.

Reply #15 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

With the increase in population for colony ships you must then address upgrading constructors or other ships to colony ships without the hit on population. That should now be seen as an exploit.

Reply #16 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

New 2.8 game with gifted AI on a medium map. Default number of races. Am up to turn 71. Grabbed more than my share of the planets at the start and believe the game is won. Good starting position and initial push for ship movement increases.

Does the AI grab the capsules with their survey ships? Don't seem to. I'm getting tired of running 3 cargo survey ships and the initial survey ship around continually after them. They keep respawning.

Its a major effort to build a city on a planet. Guess this is a good thing.

Since I'm quite far in the lead with production, research and planets, no one has declared war on me. Kinda boring.

I'd guess that a large map would let the AI do more to be competitive.

 

 

Reply #17 from Stardock Forums Top

Agreed on the 0.1 Colony pop minimum

Reply #18 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting PalaceGuardian, reply 15

With the increase in population for colony ships you must then address upgrading constructors or other ships to colony ships without the hit on population. That should now be seen as an exploit.

thats an excellent point!

Reply #19 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

The problem with small starting colony sizes is that colonies grow at 0.1 per turn no matter what.  Now, if we moved it to a percent, you’d have the big planets grow at crazy speeds or small worlds growing glacially.

thus, starting a colony requires a minimum of 1 population unit. 

Reply #20 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

That will slow the AI colonizing worlds, especially if one races to the 2pop after the fact ideology pick. At .1 per turn and the rate some civs start shoving colony ships out as fast as possible.

Same with the DLC nerfs. I swear some were nerfed so bad it makes them entirely worthless.

Reply #21 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 19

The problem with small starting colony sizes is that colonies grow at 0.1 per turn no matter what.  Now, if we moved it to a percent, you’d have the big planets grow at crazy speeds or small worlds growing glacially.

thus, starting a colony requires a minimum of 1 population unit. 

That you could easily counter with a growth formula that is dependent on free housing on a planet:

Say the base growth is 5% per turn. But that is modified by (5 - 5^(p/m)) with p = current population and m = max population.

That would mean that at 0.1 pop and 6 max pop the growth would be nearly 20% while at 5.5 pop the growth would drop down to around 3% and at max pop the growth would be 0. All numbers are just examples, and different races could have different numbers.

Reply #22 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Nathan, reply 16

Does the AI grab the capsules with their survey ships? Don't seem to. I'm getting tired of running 3 cargo survey ships and the initial survey ship around continually after them. They keep respawning.

Answering my own question. Now playing turn 150 as Thalans on a large map, gifted AI. The Iconian Refuge have 4 Survey ships visible on the same turn. These Iconian survey ships have at most 14 movement. A different race had at least 2 surveys running around. There are almost no capsules or other good things to pickup anymore. They don't seem to be spawning. So it seems yes, the AI does go after capsules given enough time.

I had to declare a war. Otherwise no one wanted to start one with me. Other races are at war with each other and taking planets. Drengin got wiped out due to this.

The AI planet builds seem somewhat inefficient. Not terrible, just not seeing good use of adjacency bonuses.

On starting this large map game with the default number of players, noticed that the starting race positions are sometimes badly unbalanced. Spiral seemed to work best to give everyone equal room. It would nice if races were more evenly spaced on the spiral and loose maps.

 

 

Reply #23 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting pheonixstorm, reply 20

That will slow the AI colonizing worlds, especially if one races to the 2pop after the fact ideology pick. At .1 per turn and the rate some civs start shoving colony ships out as fast as possible.

Same with the DLC nerfs. I swear some were nerfed so bad it makes them entirely worthless.
heres my question ai doesnt colonize fast enough why would anyone want to slow them down, please dont slow down the ai colonizing.

Reply #24 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

At half a pop point per colony ship the AI was rather quick about colonizing worlds, though I think part of the issue is the AI also uses colony ships to scout for planets. With only a sensor range of 2 these ships can take far too long at times.

While having  minimum of 1 pop per ship is better the colony supplying the colonists will run out faster if the home system only has a single world. In this case I think having the starting world as overpopulated might be a good thing for the player and AI. Instead of 5 starting pop on the homeworld maybe push it to 7 or 8 and leave the popcap as is. Use it or lose it for the extra pop.

Reply #25 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

good cause the version I am on is walk in the park.  They always surrender when they get down to bottom of military power.   The Yor are the weakest of all on current version