GalCiv at the end of 2020

Thanks for all your efforts ... Galciv3 has definitely evolved into an almost perfect turn based strategy game ... currently my most played game on Steam (perhaps only Starcraft 2 was played more due to me playing competitively for many years)

Thanks.  Yea, I've sunk my share of hours into StarCraft 2 right up until this year when they buffed the Tempest's building killing ability.

I wonder what the story for GalCiv4 will be?

Thanks for an amazing immersive game. I remember picking up galciv2 on clearance in gamestop many years ago only to realize after I got home how much DLC had been released for it. What a journey! Thank you.

I love GC3 and was on board 100% from announcement... hope you offer the same kind of package again because I am all in on 4! until then.. .time to log some more hours on 3!

Thanks for the great work! GC3 is truly a unique jewel among space strategy games.  

I'm still playing GC3 and will be with you for whatever 2021 brings.

Unfortunately GalCiv 3 is a mixed bag for me. It seemed like every feature added was to turn me off: resources, planet tile adjacency, admin points, mercs, governments, limited ability to build some buildings (why can't a galactic empire build multiple military academies?), and so forth.

Then there is the fact that the game changed substantially many times, rendering a lot of what I learned obsolete. Its like a different game that I can't play anymore. Got removed because of a patch. For instance, I can't load up a previous edition where experimental weapons were available early on (very powerful) but required resources. Back then, anyone who wanted to survive as an independent empire needed resources.

I want to like this game, but it hasn't drawn me in like GalCiv 2 did. I only recently got in the mood to play more and try the DLC.

By the way, could you make it possible to train admin points? I don't want to have to convert citizens to admins because I ran out of admin points. I've been playing larger maps lately so I need admin points to keep nabbing resources and artifacts.

Edit: By the way, is there any chance I could get access to the source code of GalCiv 2? There are few fixes I want.

In the latest DLC there's an improvement you can build, one per planet, that gives you 2 admins and some decent adjacency bonuses. It greatly reduces the need to devote citizens to administration.

I can tell you right now there won't be a "Campaign" for GalCiv IV.  Instead, that story content will be integrated into the sandbox game so that each game can, in effect, be a campaign.

GalCiv III was the first of the series not to be designed by me from the outset.

For most of GalCiv III's development, the design was by Jon Shafer (Civilization V).  After he left, Paul Boyer took over because he was the person who knew the game the best who was available and was willing to take on design.

When Cari (lead dev of GalCiv I and II) came back from maternity leave and I was finished with Ashes of the Singularity we made GalCiv III: Crusade which was a massive re-design of the overall game.

So it did have a bit of a bumpy ride.

I thought you were using my mod, which does work for silicon.

Well I think we need more planets. 
I did special specie hubs. They just needed balance. 
I like individualized tech trees. They also needed balance. Not just species, but you could go off abilities. 
as is ideologies look to much like good vs. evil. Renaming benevolent and malevolent would help. Three ideologies look to much like good, neutral, and evil. Maybe four or more ideologies wouldn’t look like this. I like ideologies techs. 
kind of fit above. I didn’t like how you could get all three trees. I think it would have been better if it averaged you choice points to decide what tree you got. 
I like civics. Think like civilization 4. They had 5 times 5 variables. 5 things you could research under each catagory. To keep away copyright infringement maybe 6 times 6. Six things under each category. You would get these 36 things by what you research, and when you research something then you could change to it on the civic page. And under a certain combination would decide what you research under the tech tree. The tree would be dependent under the civics. 
a couple from what happened at the beginning of three. I think until you get around to making tech trees, you could keep the trees from three on the species from three you decide to keep. This way the trees would be better than three. Abilities in this case. Until you get around to making a ai keep the one from three. Instead of starting from scratch you should add to the ais you already have. It is important to keep the interface from the previous game. Three in the beginning had a significantly worse interface than two. Bringing back specie specialized hubs would be nice.

please make a fixed jagged knife an option.

Certainly lining up to be part of any Founders Edition for GalCiv4.

Here's what we said we'd like in GalCiv4 way back in 2019.

Just posting that here for anyone's refresher/perusal as I was about to say what I'd like and then remembered this and nope, can't think of any changes to what I said in that thread. The bit about Citizens being Units you can forget about as I've just changed my Citizens picture to say "Group Unit" so it's fixed as far as I'm concerned.

Happy 2021, everybody!

Excellent!  I can't tell you how happy that makes me. 

By the way, I intend to be around for GalCiv 4. I want to push hard for features that would make the game good. I don't think I did a good job of that for GalCiv 3. I thought everything was going to be alright if I let the game develop on its own.

Thanks for the post. 

Gal Civ III has and will continue to be my go-to 4x game.

I loved it's changes over the years. I think Paul's blogs during development in Alpha were wonderful!  I am sure we would love to hear your thoughts during the process (alpha & beta) for Gal Civ IV. 

I am not the only one who was hanging onto Paul's words about what was going on and his challenges with certain game features. 

I earnestly look forward to Gal Civ IV and hope to share my experience to make it another gold standard for 4x space games. 

Frankly, you can be proud of GC in general.
I just hope, and think it will be, that GC4 will be easily modable at launch because that can be a great selling points for games like that.

Waiting for a GC4 founder start and happy new year to all.

Thanks guys.  

I feel like GC4 will get to start on a really good foundation.