Galactic Civilizations IV Discord Q&A

What was the development reason for not using DX12 or Vulcan and staying with DX11?

How will AI choices in game be made? 

In Gal Civ III AI was 'data' driven. 

I am in the minority but I loved Brads ai scripts in Gal Civ II. Will Brad have a direct hand in how the AI behaves? 

How many cores will the game effectively use?

How 'smart' will the AI be (compared to previous entries) given that you are adding so many more elements to the game?

Can you refine your statement behind no shipbuilding in Multiplayer?  Does this mean no custom hulls or no shipbuilding at all <gasp>?

My assumption is that Founder's Editions probably end up being a losing money affair.  After all, I would think a large part of the core audience who ends up playing the game in the long run were Founders.  In this way, it crushes revenue when you produce DLC X and a large portion of the player base gets it without paying.  The question >>> Why not just charge more to make it financial viable to still have a Founder's Edition?

My guess is the economy is to unstable to predict acuratly and they do not want to charge to little or to much.

Maybe IV alphas can get some sort of discount on DLCs and Expansion packs.

Alright, I'll throw a question up here:

This was attributed to me on Discord by Schism, but someone else had actually mentioned it prior (although we could probably do the Monty Python bit about who thought of it first..)...

Question:  There's been some demand/requests for more animated aliens for doing custom races.  We realize that doing animations is time-consuming and expensive, however there was a question as to whether a reasonable middle-ground would be to simply re-skin existing animations in different colors: Yellow Yor, Purple Torians, etc.   An added MP side benefit might be that if more than one player wanted to play the same race in an MP game they could choose different "flavors" to at least look different - ie: one player could play the regular Yor and the other player could play the green ones.

Ok, I'll throw a few more down..

Question:  there is a question from a post above about clarifying the specifics of ship customization and what will/won't be avail in multiplayer.  I would like clarification on this question also.

Question: In the excellent Explorminate interview posted on the 17th one of the questions involved AI development and how it works better when done alongside the entire development cycle of the game (vs trying to write the AI for all the systems later).  My question is whether a similar approach is going to be taken for Multiplayer.  Hopefully Multiplayer will be developed alongside the singleplayer sandbox from day one, so that MP can be the best that it can be.  Could you elaborate on Multiplayer, MP dev plans, and at what stage (alpha/beta/whatever) MP might be available for troubleshooting/testing?

Question: Could you please talk about plans for the/an ideology system in GC4 - I felt it could be improved upon from GC3.

Question: In GC3 the various races were: carbon, aquatic, silicon, synthetic.  Is it planned to have a similar type of delineation in GC4 or are the races going to be more customized than this vague breakdown?

Question: Are there any plans for support for multi-monitor setups? - like you could have a bunch of technical readouts or whatnot on a second monitor instead of having to flip back and forth between different windows?

Question: Someone on discord wanted clarification about from which platforms GC3 would be available: Steam, GOG, etc.  Also, on a related note - how is the alpha likely to be distributed?

Question: Here's a question I'm passing along for someone on Discord (apparently he/she isn't on the forums), So I think a question about whether the ship designer is going to have additional features for designers.

[space reserved for future questions]

Thanks for taking the time to do a Q&A and taking these questions, as the SD team can probably see, the community is very excited for GC4 and is passionate about it being the best game that it can be.  

cheers,

-tid242

last updated 5/19

Questions:

• Customization has always been a big part of the game.  What customization options are going to be part of Galactic Civilizations IV?  (Such as custom faction, picture, icons, ship art (missing in Galactic Civilizations III), Ships, Galaxies)
• What modding options will be available and will modding be supported via the steam workshop?  (Galactic Civilizations III could be modded but not supported in the steam workshop.)
• Will Ctrl+N be an option included in Galactic Civilizations IV?  (For those that don't know what this is, in Galactic Civilizations II, if one didn't like the map that was generated at game creation, they could press Ctrl+N, and have the map re-generated.) This was an awesome feature that didn't require you to keep going in and out of the game to create a new map.
• What is the anticipated memory load on the largest maps with the most factions in the game?
• Will one be able to somewhat import factions from Galactic Civilizations III, into Galactic Civilizations IV?
• The Thalans have been my favorite faction since Galactic Civilizations II, I'm saddened to hear they won't appear in Galactic Civilizations IV, I know the game hasn't been even launched yet, but maybe an expansion of factions of the past (the lost civilizations)?
• With the talk of moving away from planet management, especially in smaller planets, is the planet building a thing that is going away?
• One tedious thing I've disliked in mid to late games in the previous versions of the game is border protection, having to go around your border to make sure that the enemy fleets aren't attacking is time consuming.  Will there be a built in option to have your fleets protect "your boarder"?  Maybe instead of influence border have a treaty in the game that recognizes  the influence border as your physical border, with exception of foreign planets that are inside your influence, give them a grace range from their planet.
• Maybe have a contest among fans/alpha players to help develop one or two core factions of the game?  Have some submit artwork, icons, story line, traits, maybe one complete faction and one mix/match faction.  That way if several people are great at all those things they can submit a whole new faction, and if people aren't great with art, or story building they can submit their piece to the faction?  Community builder?
• Game speed has been a problem with Galactic Civilizations III, especially for those that like the slow/tall game.  Currently in Galactic Civilizations III, the slowest setting doesn't really allow for this especially in larger maps without modding the game.  What is being done with Galactic Civilzations IV to address this?  (maybe instead of tying the game speed to the galaxy size, tie it to the # of habitable planets.) I want my ships I build on turn 50 to still be somewhat effective at turn 80, not greatly outgunned without upgrading them.

Suggestion: 

• Have the ability to go over the maximum ship size, but sacrificing hull integrity, or reducing the usefulness of the engines ect..  I can overload my ship by 10%, but my hit points may drop by 25%, or my engines may only be 50% effective, or maybe my shields or weapons are reduced by a certain percent.  And allow us to really be able to greatly overload the ship but it just becomes ineffective at a certain point using a logarithmic scale making there be a soft cap, but as you research or expand your miniterization technology it may make this ship become effective.

Questions (in no particular order): 

1.)  For those of us who only want to create functional ships (and don't care about adding all the pointless cosmetic parts), will there be a "simplified" version of the ship-designer this time around? 

2.)  Similar to the risks of letting a governor have too many planets, could an admiral with too large/strong a fleet decide to break off from your empire (or make a power grab)? 

3.)  It's been mentioned that characters in GalCiv4 won't necessarily be stuck in one role (governor, scientist, diplomat, etc.) the entire game, and that the player can move them around as they choose.  If so, can characters in one role desire *for themselves* to be in another role (i.e., switch from being a general to being an admiral) and make that desire known to the player? 

4.)  For those handful of planets that players choose to manage directly, will we finally see the economy make more sense, and/or be less opaque? 

5.)  When in the Galactic Civilizations timeline is GalCiv4 actually taking place?  It's not entirely clear from reading the timeline & lore for the game, but it almost sounds like it takes place during the Terran Crusade (essentially GalCiv3 still). 

Also (more a request that a question, I guess, but):  Could clicking (or double-clicking) on the notifications in the corner of the screen please take us to the corresponding location and/or menu?  That would definitely be a nice little QoL improvement. 

Will the hunt for anomalies be spiced up at all? I remember the art and lore for anomalies in III being very repetitive. Could this concept be expanded on? See Stellaris as an example.

1. Stardock is known for breaking the mold in game designs, trying new and innovative things with each release.  What, if any, move are you making with Galactic civilizations 4 that represent innovations in game design?
2. The maps show the planets' orbits in the solar system.  Do they orbit the stars as the game progresses?  Is this GalCiv game's map finally alive instead of static?  (I have asked for this for years.)
3. As a follow up to question 1, would you consider making this a game that costs more than $60 and aggressively holding to your price point?  The lack of inflation in game prices in relation to inflation of currency has led to a noticeable decline in quality that has been evident across the industry for over 5 years.  In a world where cash register operators make $15-$20 an hour, don't you think it's time?
4. Will the tech tree be cross-integrated like in Galactic Civilizations instead of the isolated branching paths of Gal Civs 2 and 3?  It was more interesting and realistic to have to research communications technologies to unlock weapons techs, or medicine to realize soldiering improvements.

What is the plan for Galactic Civilizations 4 in regards to multiplayer?

(leaving this open ended just to get any information you wish to convey on this topic)

Thanks and good luck on the development of the game.

This is shaping up to be a pretty amazing AMA.

Since battles can take more than 1 turn, will it be possible for a 3rd faction to join the battle? It would be cool if you're watching the tactical battle and you see a third faction jump into the fray and start engaging both sides.

Will it be possible for enemy ships to surrender to you? If they do can you choose to destroy them anyway?

Will you be able to board and capture enemy ships? If so will you be able to reverse engineer their tech?

Can we have a unique tech tree per race? Also, can we have a unique scientist for each race? (That little robot guy gets old after awhile)

From listening to his interview I would say no. He talked about a single tech tree idea that is wide and tall and one has to have the pre-requists to use any tech. Not just a single races tech.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtZO87Cr9-4

I thought about it long and hard. My question would be:

As someone who enjoys and still plays GalCiv 2, what about GalCiv 4 will appeal to me? If you must know, resources, adjacency bonuses, and citizens didn't appeal to me.

Edit: Made it simpler.

Alright. Just going to toss in a few last-minute questions here for the AMA later, just in case I can't make it.

1. Combat Mechanics: The one big change we know about ship-to-ship combat is that it can now last multiple turns, depending on the number of ships involved on both sides. Could you share in further detail how'd this change will affect combat from what we know from GCIII (e.g. retreat mechanics, flanking maneuvers, line of battle etc.)?

2. Combat Mechanics: Apart from multiple-turn battles, could you share any other ways in which combat in GCIV will be different from what we know from GCIII (e.g. weapons/defenses, ship roles, hull sizes, components, carrier mechanics etc.)?

3. Economics: There's been several previous mentions of a "mineral" resource, which is something new coming from GCIII. Could you share more details on what it is, how we can 'harvest' them, and what we can use them for?

4. Economics: In GCIII, the Trade feature as it is now is an anemic mechanic that's easily overlooked, as it's a lot of trouble for not much payoff at all. Are there plans in the works for a more robust, enjoyable Trade mechanic for GCIV?

5. Ship Designer: I understand that the Ship Designer will not be the priority for GCIV going forward, as enough work has gone into it during GCIII. However, as it is right now in GCIII, the Ship Designer is better at the "Lego-building" portion of the ship design process, and isn't so refined when it comes to equipping components on said designs.

Are there any plans in the works to add a "Blueprint Designer", which we can use to create custom blueprints that auto-generate ships according to our own specifications, much like how default ship designs are currently auto-generated in GCIII?

6. Ship Designer: It's mentioned that ship design will not be available in the first alpha. Does that include both "lego-building" and component equipping? Or will the latter be available as well?

7. Citizens/Leaders: With the new citizens/leaders system for GCIV, are there any plans in the works for an Espionage system where we can disguise our own Spies as a Citizen/Leader of an enemy race, and obtain intel and/or cause sabotage depending on where they're assigned by the enemy race?

8. Quality of Life Improvements: Currently in GCIII, we have to bear with issues (such as Trade Offers and UP Resolutions) where we're stuck at a specific screen until we make a decision, without the option of referring to the map and/or information on other 'windows' before doing so.

Are there any plans in the works to improve QoL by making all such screens "minimizable" like you would do with Windows, so that you can come back to them later once you've had the chance to refer to other screens?

9. Ideology: GCIV will see the introduction of a 4-axis system to replace the trifecta in GCIII, with talk of increasing the number of axes. Could you share with us how the new system will affect gameplay, and how the way it does will differ from that of GCIII?

10. Governments: Will this mechanic make a return? If so, how will it differ from what it was in GCIII Intrigue?