Galactic Civilizations III v3.96 Now Available

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v3.96 Improves Planet Visuals, Gameplay, and Several Bug Fixes

Change Log
Planets
  • The planetary map generation system now prefers placing tiles near the equator.  The result is fewer, isolated tiles near the poles. Change does not affect the total number of tiles placed.  
  • Improvements to the planetary material system that allows for greater detail and color. 
  • Continent shorelines blend better with the water.
  • City lights on the dark side of some planets (e.g. earth) get will get to max bright brightness when the population is 15 (was 30).
  • Jupiter has been told to "stay in its lane" and use its own gradient colors instead of Mars'

Gameplay

  • Players start with a shipyard. This has been added back because there is now sufficiently tight starting choices that we feel that holding back the shipyard simply creates an unnecessary repetitive starting condition
  • Retribution: New starting improvement: Industrial Center (one per player). Good way to boost initial manufacturing
  • Intrigue: Increased the number of colonies the higher level govs support. The highest level govs now support infinite colonies.
  • Fixed a bug where the AI would sometimes delete a rally point if it found an object in it (as in, its own fleet!).
  • AI combat ships are more willing to travel through dangerous territory to defend threatened planets.
  • AI will ignore reinforcing planets that are already defended and not under threat.
  • AI will focus on its primary enemy more so when targeting ships to attack.

Bugs

  • Fixed a trade exploit with Hypergates.  
  • Fixed a problem with colonization events that aren't imagined yet.
  • Updated the Planet window so the Build Queue buttons don't break out of their frame in Normal UI scale
faq support
170,780 views 11 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

  • The planetary map generation system now prefers placing tiles near the equator. The result is fewer, isolated tiles near the poles. Change does not affect the total number of tiles placed.
  • Improvements to the planetary material system that allows for greater detail and color.
  • Continent shorelines blend better with the water.

I've started several games as different races to see how things looked.  I haven't seen any tiles too close to the poles, and the visual improvements are noticeable.

There are two things in the update that aren't mentioned in the Change Log.  They are mentioned in this post by Brad.

If you don't want to click on the link, they are:

  • An Industrial Center is available to all races but Synthetic Life and those with the Zealots ability.
  • All races start with a shipyard.

The shipyard change also applies to the pirates that exist at the start of the game.  Before this update there were always 1 or 2 pirate ships somewhere in the galaxy.  They weren't together if there were two.  I checked several immense galaxies with pirates set to abundant and always found 2 next to each other and next to a shipyard.  The pirates were not very close to the starting location for any of the races, but some location in the galaxy will have an early pirate problem.

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Updated

Object Desktop - Get all of our enhancement utilities in one suite
Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Fixed a problem with colonization events that aren't imagined yet.

What does this mean?

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Fixing bugs before they even happen is my guess.

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Its a time paradox thing. :)

More seriously, 'under the covers' we removed special code handling situations that never could happen. 

Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Nice update.  I appreciate the planet generation fix, it is noticeable.  Also the starting shipyard (I didn't "every single game" rush it right away, but usually regretted it if I didn't).  The planet screens look better.

Reply #7 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Updates 11/04/2019

  • Reverted Earth to use previous textures.
  • City lights on the dark side of some planets (e.g. earth) get will get to max bright brightness when the population is 15 (was 30).
  • Jupiter has been told to "stay in its lane" and use its own gradient colors instead of Mars'
  • Updated the Planet window so the Build Queue buttons don't break out of their frame in Normal UI scale.
Reply #8 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Update 11/6

  • AI will focus on its primary enemy more so when targeting ships to attack.
Reply #9 from Stardock.net Forums Top

I have a small request. Disable the ability of colony ships to keep an empire alive when an empire has no colonies. Its really annoying. You can't find colony ships as easily as colonized planets.

The only reason I think colony ships can do this is because it was needed to make the tutorials and campaigns to work. At least that is what I remember.

Reply #10 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Patch is live everyone.  Enjoy

Reply #11 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

The AI changes in this should be pretty noticeable in their effect.