It is too difficult to setup hull upgrade techs, especially for new players

from GalCiv4 Forums

So, in my current game, I am 43 techs into the game, and still playing with Tiny-hulled ships.  This is even though I want to upgrade my Plinko-class warships to something that can actually matter.  That's priority 1. For a new player, it's virtually impossible to even find the techs that upgrade hulls, even though they are critically important.  The tech library does not help finding them in any way.  

Artifical gravity, orbital manufacturing...  Okay that's great, but not obvious at all for newer players and pretty hard to setup even for players who know what they are doing.  I could try to beeline, except that there are so few techs to choose from vs how many there are and every tech you unlock just unlocks more techs to *not* give you hulls.  I know there are only so many words for "small" in the thesaurus, but I feel like based on the number of techs in the game and the inability to choose which ones you want, you may want to add more hull sizes/techs and an obvious hull/miniaturization tech line just for *clarity's* sake.  Another option, provide more tech choices.  Even the five with tech minister isn't enough to reliably beeline anything.

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4,164 views 8 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

Agreed. As I have said in another post, the ability tp set a research end goal would be more 'realistic' as nations do it all the time. Take JFK's mood speech as an example or China's and India's aircraft carrier programs. 

Reply #2 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

I think if the devs wanted tech rushing then we wouldn't have RNG based tech options. As I said here, I don't necessarily think tech rushing is good for the game.

I'm actually going to go one further (and you're going to hate this). What if they eliminated tech selection from the game entirely? Then you wouldn't have to micromanage which tech to go for every few turns. If you have a science minister, you get to pick which color of tech to emphasize but the techs you gain would still be random. If I'm Baratak Grove then I'm going to emphasize green most of the time. If I'm Fenstron Hunt then probably red most of the time. This may be a good way to shave 5-10% off of game time. 

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Reply #3 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

You need to grow through a few starts, and hunt for the techs in the library, before you get a feel for tech research. I now have a pretty good feel for how to get my initial tech choices quickly but it took me a few restarts and some effort looking at the library.

Looking for a tech is not just based on the "color" either.  Sometimes techs that are brown can only be researched by selecting the "green planet" tech category.  But only after you complete the prerequiste, which might be brown.  It can be confusing.  Correction, it is confusing, obviously it is intentionally confusing.  But you can do it.

Also, as they continue to develop the game they move some things around.

Reply #4 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

I'm fine with the system preventing tech rushing as is.  But I think that the actual chances of stumbling upon these critical ship upgrades is approximately zero and nonincreasing as the game goes on and on and you reveal more techs.

What do players want to do?  Make interesting ships.  Fight cool space battles.  120 turns into the game or so, and I'm still putzing around with single weapon tinies with all the contextual information from GalCiv 1-3.  I can't really design anything besides choose beam, missile or gun.

Reply #5 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

Quoting Simplicity123, reply 4

What do players want to do?  Make interesting ships.  Fight cool space battles.

I think this is a very narrow view of things. It does not match what I've seen from fans of other 4X games or the developers of this game. Combat is fun but it is only part of the reason people play strategy games.

Quoting Simplicity123, reply 4

120 turns into the game or so...

As I said in another thread, this is a BIG game. The way it is designed, you're not going to have the technology to make interesting ships in the first 150 turns. You're just not. Maybe the solution is to have scenarios but it's hard to make good ones and I have not heard anything on that front from the GC4 camp. 

Reply #6 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

All you have to do is slightly increase the space on ships.  I think if you were to pitch normal Civ, but you were stuck with Warriors for 120 turns.  People would be rightfully annoyed (other than the Marathon masochists).  I mean, I like building up my economy too.  But when I get 40-50 techs on doing that, and virtually none that make a difference on my ships, I think there may be too much filler on one side.

Honestly, it might be better to have them be completely separate research queues.  One for social policies, and one for hard tech.  Similar to what Civ does.  At least then I could focus on what I want my civ to look like instead of choosing the egg-injecting beasts and then spending all my time looking after the social welfare of my citizens because that's the research choices given to me.  But that's probably a little wild at this point.

Reply #7 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

A larger issue I feel is that there is seemingly a lot of "filler" research. That is, research that does not seem to give you a specific benefit, but is just a stage research something else.

For example, you might research beam weapon miniaturization, but once you do you cannot add an extra beam weapon, nor do your weapons do more damage.  And you can't add more of anything else either.  It's just something to research.  You have to research several more items before you get a beam weapon upgrade. So it's just "filler" research.

Reply #8 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

I agree that there is way too much techs and filler techs and time spent trying to figure them all out (we really do need that tech tree back). 150 turns to get a decent ship seems like something people who want to put the game tech rate on a very slow setting can do if they want, but I think most people who put their tech on normal are going to want something a little quicker than that. i know that you've already put a lot of time into making all those techs and how they all work though, so i was thinking that one way to solve this problem might be to have 2 different tech researchers going at once... one that is set up like the current system, and one that is set up like the previous gal civs where you can actually choose which research you want to pick. that way you would have a good blend of people being able to research the things that they actually want to, while at the same time making some of it based off luck and adding to the fact that no two games are ever that similar.