First impressions

from GalCiv4 Forums

Greetings. Big fan :) Played gal civ 2&3 and just got alpha .65 a couple days ago and wanted to share my first impressions...

Overall I really like almost everything, i esp like the new citizen/leader systems and the new way the maps and planets are set up. graphics are very nice too, but it does feel just a little sluggish with the visual movement. it was also just a little laggy at the start of the game with default map size settings. wasn't too bad at first but by like turn 50 or so it had gotten quite laggy and everything had a delay time of about 1sec. made it pretty difficult to play at that point. also clicking many things, like the NEXT button, was kinda tricky because as soon as i hover over them, the description box that pops up often pops up right where the cursor is, and blocks me from being able to click on the button.

I like the new setup of, and all the new options for the ideologies, but being able to level up in the paths you want seems kinda difficult and i think it's based too much on luck for something that important. 

the researching part is the only thing i really dont like as much. what pops up for being able to be researched seems to be way too based on luck in my opinion, even with the 5th slot open, and i think that is really going to frustrate a lot of players in many games. also i found the tech tree system much more comprehensive than the library system that is in place.

In conclusion, i think that the luck stuff is great with the citizens and leaders and planets and anomalies, but when it comes to picking the basic ways your civilization works through your ideology and scientific choices, i think that people really have more fun when they're able to pick how their civilization works instead of relying on luck to give them a small chance on actually getting the type of civilization they were going for that game in a timely manner.

Thanks for all the years of fun! can't wait to see how this game evolves :)

galciv iv early access feedback
14,016 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

thanks for the kind words and feedback.

With regards to what shows up, different techs have different likelihood's (common, uncommon, rare, extremely rare). 

You can reshuffle as many times as you want but the tech costs goes up each time.

I think the new Tech Navigator (which isn't in your build I don't think) will make things a lot easier to get around.

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Reply #2 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

oh, i hadn't even noticed that button up there in the corner, ty. i know that will prob be pointed out to everyone in the tutorial, but u might want to consider put that a little more front and center with the other research stuff. it's up in the advisor section and at first glance looks like a way to cycle through advisors or something. thank you again for pointing that out though, should def make research a lot easier for me :P might make it a little more difficult for AI to know when it's worth using though.

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Reply #3 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

Yeah the Stellaris tech tree system is something i really dislike about Stellaris, I understand it's their spam solution to a "rush" balance problem with their spam game but it's a bad solution and GalCiv isn't a spam game. I feel like the removal of the granular Ship Builder and the addition of the Etchy Sketch tech tree are precisely the opposite of turn based 4x, which is about planning. Can't plan anything without a persistent tech tree and a proper ship builder. Hope they're not gone forever.

Reply #4 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

Disclaimer:  I am not early access.   I just recently went back to Galciv3 to see if the patch made it more fun.  It did, slightly.  I have played the series ever since Galciv1 PC, and Sins.

 

I must comment to this:

 i think that people really have more fun when they're able to pick how their civilization works instead of relying on luck to give them a small chance on actually getting the type of civilization they were going for that game in a timely manner

 

Actually, on Galciv3 I don't.  The custom civ traits are not balanced, so far and away some custom traits are better than others (which particularly, in Galciv3, are +1 Move and Xenophobic).   I am not incentivized to mix it up and play different styles of civs, because certain traits are just definitively better.   So I wind up playing my one custom civ that lumps in all the best traits, and play that 90% of the time.   I think I would like the luck feature.  That is not to say that is the BEST solution, however.  I don't know.  One serious concern I have with luck is, all I would do is re-roll a lot.

Switch over to Civ6:  I have logged three times the hours on Civ6 as I did Galciv3.  What Firaxis did is, they just have a boatload of civilizations.  Yes, their styles are very different, but you don't have a lot of "traits" which different civs share, per se.   They have outliers, too (namely, Babylon), which have clearly superior traits as well.  But for whatever reason I gravitate away from Babylon; not toward them.   Precisely because they're OP.   Firaxis did a good job of patching and making their less-interesting civs more interesting (namely, Georgia and Mapuche).   On civ6 I felt I could freely choose less god-tier civilizations and dial down the difficulty correspondingly.   But for whatever reason, on Galciv3 I play the Tealians (my custom civ) every time, and I lump in all the best traits.

I really appreciate all of Brad's journals, blogging the game dev cycle, but I also appreciate all the rest of the devs and architects at the studio, who are also smart.

 

Reply #6 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

i don't think I've ever seen anyone happy with the way developers implement randomization systems in games, possibly because they don't use weighted distributions or any sort of moderately complex selectors or something, they just use whatever mathematically ineffective, untrained unRandom (random isn't random) lib they come across?  "rogue-like", the champion of "random", is almost the diametric opposite of 4x, one is about letting a game happen to you and you surviving as long as you can and the other is about forging a universe as god, I see those as entirely opposite ends of the gaming spectrum. I don't play rogue-likes, i play builders/civ managers/4x.  Let players "play".

Reply #7 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

I like randomness.   The strategy of managing fog of war and the unknown.   Just not when the game is all randomness and no strategy.

 

By the way, upcoming quantum computers promise true randomness.   We have a means of producing true randomness in nature now, and actually it DOES exist.  It's just, at our present stage of quantum physics research, we are presently unable to produce a true 50/50 distribution of 1's and 0's.   The distribution is true random, but it is not 50/50.  I think we got it down to around 52/48 so far.

Reply #8 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

im play further GalCiv III

4x and a Rondomized techtree ...no Thanks ,so no Strategic and tactical Plans for the Player

Im can not design Starbases :( and the battleviewer is now only a Hexview ...for what im have the Shipbuilder? I don't need to see every little battle(skip Funtion)but when my main fleets come up against other large formations, I want to see my self-designed ships, especially the flagships in all their glory and firepower, small fighter squadrons doing their deadly pinpricks Star Wars style, ships bursting to pieces, and no abstract table function or minimal tabletop view, then I could play table top and not need a PC, and I don't need graphic effects for the galaxy map.

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Reply #9 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

One thing that I have believed all along:    viewing the real-time battles would be really cool--IF I could glean some helpful information for how to win future battles from it.   You had fast ships, slow ships, long range weapons, short range weapons, assault ships, capital ships, support ships....   If the quick battle is the exact same play-by-play as the viewed battles and I could glean something from viewing it--as if I was viewing robot wars--that would definitely be a cool feature.