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

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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.
297,481 views 74 replies
Reply #26 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Don't make the AI be like Milton on the movie Office Space.

I like the lost treasures DLC

the never builds any survey ships can go after it

is this what the AI call artifacts

We have to make as powerful survey ship to go after them.

phoenix missiles and 4 barrier fields

Reply #27 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

A couple of concerning things, playing on Incredible. 

1) Early in the game, ie colony phase I am seeing AI ships and colony ships with 15 range!! This is way too much. We've gone from ships that had too small a range, to ones that have too much too early.

2) What have you continued to do to Malevolent? It really seems to be over-nerfed now. It went from very OP (at release of this game) to close to useless.

 

 

TouchTasks - Access tasks with ease on Windows touchscreens.
Reply #28 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Any one else notice how the AI has really stepped up it's tactics and strategy with the last 2 opt in/patches?

 

luceo non uro

Reply #29 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I like the lost treasures dlc too. I just think it would be better if some kind of leveling system where they start out weak, and end up strong would be better.

Reply #30 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

The Invasion AI has gotten a lot better btw in terms of prioritizing legions.

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Reply #31 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I've come to Gal Civ Crusade as a refugee from Civ6. And it is easily one of the best strategy games I've ever played--one I'll be sticking w/ as the game matures. But the amazing thing is that this game wins the award hands down for best game ever that has a MAJOR design flaw. And that flaw is the planetary invasion system. Here's a post I made recently answering a similar complaint made on the steam forum.

I agree w/ your comment on the planetary invasion system. It is downright poor. And it is unpredictable. I've won planets attacking at around 5/1 odds, but lost my entire invasion force attacking at odds approaching 20/1! This is the only game I play where I feel justified saving the game before any planetary attack. The shame of it is that in terms of strategic depth and "feel", this is one of the best stategy games ever. But the planetary invasion system needs to be overhauled so that planets can be sieged and weakened before they are stormed for a hard-earned capture..

This isn't the fly in the mix that stinks up the perfume. But it is a headache that has to be blocked out to enjoy an otherwise great game.

 

Reply #32 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

The ai is colonizing very well in 2.8 and doing a good job capturing planets on Genius. Planet build out is also really good and I have seen dumb placement but only because there were no 'optimum' places for things. 

Reply #33 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Wish I had had more time available to test it, but 100 turns into my first game on the 2.8 opt-in, I can see the AI colonizing more aggressively. and since the Drengin declared war on me and I've taken over several of their planets, it looks like they are developing their planets better.

Reply #34 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Sometimes with a lot of transports, it works to hit your target with 2 or 3 transports at a time and attrit your enemy down a bit. Then hit them with a massive fleet.

 

Had a similar situation that you described, the attrition worked wonders in 3 invasions (same turn) wearing them down. Because when I hit them all at once... got the DEFEAT! blurb

 

 

 

luceo non uro

 

Reply #35 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I have seen a lot of posts including mine about combat system (space and ground)  but so far Stardock is keeping quite about it.  Maybe they are planning something, time will tell.

Reply #36 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Unfortunately, I've come to the opposite conclusion... whilst its possible we will get the roles sorted out one day (or just plain removed) I highly doubt we will ever see anything really interesting done with combat mechanics... I think it just isn't something SD is passionate about and they have been careful not to encourage us regarding combat mechanics.

To be fair... they have limited time and resources and they may well be right to consider politics and other elements to be a better use of their time...

Still... be nice if they could just fix the roles a little.

Reply #37 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

version 2.8 vanilla galactic civ 3 (no crusades, etc) has a serious problem. no research labs (or later improvements of the same) are able to be built. meaning your research is hobbled from the beginning and there is no way to improve it. https://forums.galciv3.com/486998/page/1/#3701330

 

will this be fixed soon? this version is great for game speed and in a host of other ways so i much prefer it but it cant be played with no research buildings....

Reply #38 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting christopherender, reply 37

version 2.8 vanilla galactic civ 3 (no crusades, etc) has a serious problem. no research labs (or later improvements of the same) are able to be built. meaning your research is hobbled from the beginning and there is no way to improve it. https://forums.galciv3.com/486998/page/1/#3701330

 

will this be fixed soon? this version is great for game speed and in a host of other ways so i much prefer it but it cant be played with no research buildings....

We updated the opt-in with a fix for this.  Thanks for the report.

Reply #39 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting pshaw, reply 38

We updated the opt-in with a fix for this. Thanks for the report.

 

Its still not fixed fully, see the prerequ for the first  xeno lab upgrade 'XenoResearchLaboratory'

<Prerequ>
      <Techs>
        <Option>XenoIndustrializationTech</Option>
      </Techs>
      <UpgradesFrom>ResearchLaboratory</UpgradesFrom>
    </Prerequ>

 

'ResearchLaboratory' is missing, should be changed to 'BasicLab'.

 

Check out my improvement viewer it highlights bugs like this that can be easily overlooked.

https://forums.galciv3.com/486772/

Reply #40 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Thank you for the update 2/2. I appreciate you name the CIV on the receiving message alert. It may not have effected a lot of people but I duplicated your core civs multiple times so I had no way of knowing who was talking to me. I ended up changing their background pictures to include numerals. I may now revert to the more cosmetically pleasing.

Reply #41 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Hm, you made some "cosmetic change to the FOW color". Now I started a new game as the Flow yesterday and I have really hard time now to discern explored areas from the FOW ...

Reply #43 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

What lyssailcor said. It is really hard now to distinguish between explored and unexplored space.

 

Reply #45 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Agreed.  I thought it was just my eyes going bad.  

Reply #46 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Hi 

There is a bug with AI ship range. It seems to be unlimited.

When I tested my custom civs (if my AI personality settings make them play like I want) with autoplay (console "ai") ships ignored their max range. I suspect it also happens in normal matches (freighter reaching you from seemingly anywhere).

I haven´t tested/played with the console completely deactivated however.

 

Reply #47 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

+1 for the FOW color revert. I don't usually get wrapped around the axle on cosmetic changes, but this one is surprisingly bothersome.

Reply #48 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Anyone got a screenshot of the new FOW? I'm still playing a game in 2.7 so don't want to try the beta.

Reply #49 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting MarcoDBAA, reply 46

Hi

There is a bug with AI ship range. It seems to be unlimited.

When I tested my custom civs (if my AI personality settings make them play like I want) with autoplay (console "ai") ships ignored their max range. I suspect it also happens in normal matches (freighter reaching you from seemingly anywhere).

I haven´t tested/played with the console completely deactivated however.

I agree with this.  I put in Ticket BKL-489-10361 about this in December with a save game showing freighters coming to my planets from the far side of the galaxy.  My planets were on the opposite edge and my freighters couldn't go as far as the center of the galaxy.  I have seen this all the time when I use the console to automate a game using AI or Soak.  I thought it might be something to do with the AI and Soak commands, so I didn't worry about it too much.  When the AI starting sending freighters to the other side of a Huge galaxy I decided something was wrong and reported it.

 

Reply #50 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I also have a problem with the current appearance of the galaxy.  I started having problems after an earlier update which included changes to the graphics of the galaxy.  I solved my problem with a mod that put the graphics back to what they were before the previous update, that made a few more changes to get things to look the way I wanted.

I have updated the mod to include changes in 2.8 that didn't give me eye trouble while keeping what made it look better to me.  It works for me and also worked on a saved game I started without mods, so I could continue playing it.

If anyone wants it, it is available here.

All changes have a comment and can be found by searching for mod:

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