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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 #51 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Old-Spider, reply 49

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.

Hope this isn´t by design.

I am much more ok with AI production, research and gold bonuses than stuff like this.

This makes a game mechanic (ship range) completely broken...

Not fun to play like that :/

 

I really like that the AI doesn´t know where colonies and my ships are. This is one of the great positives of this game, that the AI is not that cheesy.

So I cannot believe, that this here is anything else than a bug. Shouldn´t be too difficult for the AI to deal with it.

Hope it gets fixed soon.

 

Reply #52 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Have to wait for a revert/mod of the 'cosmetic FOW change'. I just find it too difficult to play efficiently with it like this.

The Political Machine 2024
Reply #53 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

The fow change: base game or crusade?

Reply #54 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Crusade.

Reply #56 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Holy cow...

 

These look really impressive.   I especially like the changes to combat. (in theory)

now I just need to find time to actually play a game again...  

Reply #57 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Was there something changed in the way XML files are scanned? I added two mods to my Crusade mod folder without starting a new game, and it seems that unlike before the mods take effect immediately. I copied Old Spider's mod to revert the FOW change and Gauntlet's anomaly mod (taken out of his new GRM 8.0a mod) to my mod folder. I can now see the explored areas of the map properly again and I have new anomaly graphics, don't know yet whether I will really get new anomalies as such. Perhaps that's specific to to effect being modded?

Reply #58 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting lyssailcor, reply 57

Was there something changed in the way XML files are scanned? I added two mods to my Crusade mod folder without starting a new game, and it seems that unlike before the mods take effect immediately. I copied Old Spider's mod to revert the FOW change and Gauntlet's anomaly mod (taken out of his new GRM 8.0a mod) to my mod folder. I can now see the explored areas of the map properly again and I have new anomaly graphics, don't know yet whether I will really get new anomalies as such. Perhaps that's specific to to effect being modded?

We haven't changed anything in the way mods are loaded.  While gameplay specific data is baked into the save games, Icons and FOW colors fall into a bit of grey area.  I don't think you need to start a new game for the mod to override them. 

Reply #59 from LittleTinyFrogs Forums Top

Fixed the FOW thing.

Reply #60 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Thanks for the FoW fix. 

Reply #61 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Played a game on the new Feb 5th update. Immense map, about 16 races, normal difficulty.

Its worth noting that in Vanillla and base Crusade I play vs gifted with ease. I havent played in a few months and decided to give it a try.

The new AI is a BIG improvement, especially earlygame. They are definitely much better at producing fleets, pressuring the player, etc. I felt like normal AI now was slightly better than the old gifted AI. Huge improvement.

However, like before, the AI still falls off mid / late game (about turn 120 onwards). It seems to fail to develop its planets - in particular, most if not all of the planets had just 3 pop (no cities). 

Had they developed their planets properly I think its likely I would have been challenged well into the midgame and possibly lategame. 

Reply #62 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

The city/dichotomy is proving challenging for the AI. I am really trying to avoid scripting it. 

Reply #63 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Is the AI set to uses cities for increasing the pop cap or for use as a hub? I would think (if its part of the code and not the data) to push the AI to use a city or two as a hub or pop increase especially if the current pop cap is less than half the current planets class. At that point plopping a city would have the highest bonus on what to build next.

Just my 2 cents anyway.

Reply #64 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting pheonixstorm, reply 63

Is the AI set to uses cities for increasing the pop cap or for use as a hub? I would think (if its part of the code and not the data) to push the AI to use a city or two as a hub or pop increase especially if the current pop cap is less than half the current planets class. At that point plopping a city would have the highest bonus on what to build next.

Just my 2 cents anyway.

Yea, that would be scripting it.  Which I am trying to avoid.

 

Reply #65 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

4 Food/City seems excessive? I find it hard enough to strategically plan that (since it rarely makes sense to have the food and cities on the same planet). I can imagine it makes it hard on the AI.

How about 2 Food/City but the cities are less powerful? 

I dunno, it also just seems fairly odd that in a future with spaceships and massive star bases that planets have to devote massive swaths of land to farming to feed even a single city on a distant planet (granted 'One City' is obviously an abstraction but it still doesn't quite pass the flavor test IMO).

Reply #66 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Cities of super automated magic Utopia buildings?

Maybe?

Reply #67 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

The basic problem is that I need to get the AI to consider food and buildings good things.

But food provides no immediate benefit.

AI is not good at dealing with delayed gratification.

Obviously, I could just script it to build N farms and M cities.  But then it's not really AI anymore. It's just a script.

Reply #68 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 68

The basic problem is that I need to get the AI to consider food and buildings good things.

 

Could you have the AI instead look at lower population as being bad if the planet has a capacity higher than the current population cap?

Reply #69 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

The problem is the priority list. First you need to check if max population is lower than planet class, and if max population equal current population. Then build farms. If food => min for city Then build city. else if clustered tiles this is really the developers decision on number of tiles clustered. build city in cluster center. Else exit loop. else exit loop. else exit loop. I guess you have to check for importance.

Reply #70 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

The real problem is that farming takes up at least 4 tiles per city. The AI is not likely going to sacrifice 4 tiles for something that doesn't have a calculated benefit. Now if the AI can get smart enough to set aside a whole planet for farming (something with food bonuses) then it can set a farm governor to handle it. One or two production buildings and the rest farming. Then all the other colonies can focus on other important areas.

As far as scripting... its and AI. You have to program it to make a choice so there is no way around it. The data side might not have enough affect on the outcome to make a difference if the AI doesn't know how to properly and efficiently farm.

BTW I closed out of my game moments ago and steam updated GC3. What was in that update?

Reply #71 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 67

Obviously, I could just script it to build N farms and M cities.  But then it's not really AI anymore. It's just a script.

Hi,

Given you don;t want to script, could you give each planet - or possibly the complete set of planets given that food is global - a value like a chess position as a  function of their state, assign food and cities suitable weight in that function and then maximise along a short tree. Or is that either too difficult, or something you do anyway. 

Cheers,

Jon

 

 

Reply #72 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 67

Obviously, I could just script it to build N farms and M cities.  But then it's not really AI anymore. It's just a script.


I disagree, even we humans will run scripts in our lives. They are called routines, things we do without thought. Brush teeth, make coffee, get dressed are part of our scripts in our lives. Having scripts to build upon to for an AI isn't necessarily bad and may help. Just a thought.

Reply #73 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Hello everyone!

v2.8 is live.  We hope that you enjoy it and please continue to give us feedback.

Reply #74 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

The Yor were very quick to move ahead in v2.5 , now they are weak . The Torians were weak along with Arceans in past  and Dregin were the best in my old version taking number one spot for a long time, I don't know what they are now. The Colonizer should start with a low min of.1 AGREED.  QUESTION , Are admin points still a pain to get ? Havent played long enough to see.  We used to trade for ships then cash in for admin but that stinks. Hope thats fixed. The AI should recycle its own ships and not trade or sell them cheaply. PLus STARBASES, are they tough to kill now ?? they should be since you invest so much. And evil should not out rank everything else, all should be equal but different IMHO.