Feature Requests for next Galciv (6)

from GalCiv4 Forums

I am a veteran of 4x games going back to MOO (and yes, even the disasterous MOO3).  The evolution has been interesting.  There were many interesting mechanics introduced by MOO which have been unfortunately phased out.  I'd love to see these reintroduced.

1)  The multi-disciplined tech tree. I always *loved* that in MOO it was possible to split research into multiple fields.  If one wanted they could pour it all into one field, or they could spread it across many.  Also - there was no guarantee that once the points were accumulated the tech would be opened - it was a % chance to open the tech based on the accumulated points.  To solve the imbalance of stacking MOO had the accumulated tech points *compound* each turn.  While not perfect it did give players a choice - research a single tech fast but at the expense of others falling behind or spread the tech across disciplines and get them all faster than if they did one at a time.    It seems to me that GalCiv could adopt and improve on this.  A civ may get a certain number of tech points *per field*.  Keep the % chance of success and the compounding, but introduce that if researchers from one field are forced to work in an unfamiliar field then their research is halved - both as a result of their unfamiliarity as well as the loss of inter-discipline research.  Also - slow down the introduction of research across the game.  Give me time to implement the tools I researched before introducing new ones.  

2) MOO planetary management was hypothecated.  You could build infrastructure (factories) but not individual buildings.  I always preferred this.  I think it is lame constructing 'buildings' on a planet surface.  IRL our planet has millions of buildings and not one is unique enough to change the output of our planet.   The building factor of GalCiv is juvenile and naïve.  The population management is comparably silly - really we would give up 10% of our population to create a colony ship of invasion force?  C'mon.  Even the construction points are lame - the USA has considerable construction power but a university built here is not built any faster than one built in Ecuador. If anything it is not our industry that would accelerate it so much as our existing universities!  Calciv should go back  to hypothecating planet resources.  Give production by population unit.  Allow the player to determine a planets focus on research (or fields of research), ship construction, farming, recreation, or wealth.  Give planets advantages or handicaps in these.  Give bonuses when a planet is focused but financial penalties apply for doing so - for example: If a planet is focused on ship building then their food must be imported and costs increase.  Another planet may focus on food - but have to purchase ships to transport it offworld - costs increase.  Etc.   Technology should absolutely increase overall *citizen* output but get rid of the silly building construction mechanic.   If you really want to have silly buildings - let the player manage a capital city and note that the civilization will tend to mirror that.  But even that is lame -  NY and LA *do NOT* mirror DC.

3) Diplomacy.  With the advent of ai we should be able to chat directly with the diplomats - no more multiple choice menus. I can tell the ai that I will declare war against their very strong neighbor if they offer me a tech.  If they say no I can mention to them why it is in their best interest and possibly nudge them from a poor decision.  LIke - give me mega-space blasters so I can better ships to attack them with. 

4) Espionage!  One of the most rewarding parts of MOO and MOO2 was stealing tech and fostering chaos!  I miss that.  The espionage portion of GalCiv is essentially nil.  But heaven help you (or your unfortunate spy) if you got caught!  Galciv needs a major overhaul in this category. 

5) Spoils of war.  One of the *best* rewards of MOO and MOO2 was the 'democratization' of technology through planetary invasion.  I am sad that my invaders are completely incapable of investigating the advanced technology of a captured planet or reverse engineering captured ships.  

6) Ship upgrades.  Too many techs are automatically applied to existing ships.  Engines do not spontaneously upgrade!  Same for most weapon types.  While we're at it - lets overhaul ship design.   Let me import an existing ship to upgrade instead of starting from scratch each design - and for fuck sake give the ability to permanently delete a ship design in-game.  Let me upgrade the flagships.  In fact - Let me construct as many flagships as I want and assign as many commanders as I wish.  Make them cost prohibitive  and awesome.  Let me even construct survey ships.  Same thing - cost prohibitive by awesome.  

7) Leaders - I understand the appeal, Lets develop them more. Give them experience points and levels.  Unlock certain abilities as they level up.  Have incidents (like a close call space battle, planetary assault, or spy contact) scar them.  Give them a salary.  Maybe - with ai chat - some personality?

Galciv IV  has been fun but I feel it still needs polish.  It feels like we're playing on a Frankenstein chassis; all sorts of parts bolted together instead of crafted in synchrony. Hopefully for the next iteration we can do a ground-up code refresh.

galactic civilizations iv
7,577 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

LEts look at some of the broken mechanics of GalCiv iv.  I will be discussing buildings some.  If the future version of Galciv applies my suggestion of not having buildings then this will, of course, need some modification as well.   The primary flaw I have seen is a very large disconnect in cost/benefit of so, so many items in GalCiv.   For example - the Industrial goods/supply ship is a known imbalance.  There are plenty of others:

Missions:
Research Missions - Too expensive when they will be useful, and too useless when they are affordable.   
Fix - Have a slider where a player can allocate production to affect the resulting impact.  Promethium should be a multiplier, not a prereq. 

Executive Orders:
Print Money: -10% approval?  For how long? Permanent?  Early game this is devastating.  Late game this is an inconsequential amount, and if the penalty is applied across your empire it is *HUGE*.  Most EO's are equally flawed.
Fix - better effect descriptions and, frankly, get rid of the penalties and costs.  I am already spending control points to get this - no need to complicate it with all the whacky moving parts.   In fact - get rid of the cool downs as well - make control points actually worth something - especially late game.  

Advanced Structures:
Beacon of Babylon - introduced early far, far sooner than any player will have the requisite harmony crystals, let alone the planetary production. It is insulting to see it in the que for half the game. 
Fix - Reconsider *ALL* advanced structures for their cost and feasibility at their point of introduction (early game, mid game, late game)  Not just the cost to build but the cost to research.  Most advanced structures are a waste because by the time they are built the game is almost over anyway.  

Also consider making other civilization planet surfaces with tourism visible to all players - I mean, ffs they have tourism going on so how are they keeping the entire planet surface a secret?  Announce when an advanced structure is begun, not just completed.

Stellar Nexus:
These are game-breaking.  The entire mechanic of Gigamass is game breaking.

Fix -   IMHO *everything* (research and construction)  should be much cheaper and the effects of the nexus should be MUCH lower, then compound over time.  A Dyson Sphere should generate substantially more power than it does and be an expensive pinnacle achievement, not a spammed feature.  There should be cheaper ways to power stargates, nexus, and planetary structures until a Dyson is completed.  These other power producers would be *affordable* (so that they are actually useful during the game) but they would take up much needed space on a planetary surface.  The Dyson Sphere would allow a player to remove these. 

The common denominator of most of these is that cost creep has become so absurd that, once the more interesting items can be built the game is already essentially over.   

These are just top of mid for me right now.  I am sure there are more.  Hopefully the community will share.

Reply #2 from GalCiv4 Forums Top


I am a veteran of 4x games going back to MOO (and yes, even the disasterous MOO3).  The evolution has been interesting.  There were many interesting mechanics introduced by MOO which have been unfortunately phased out.  I'd love to see these reintroduced.



1)  The multi-disciplined tech tree. I always *loved* that in MOO it was possible to split research into multiple fields.  If one wanted they could pour it all into one field, or they could spread it across many.  Also - there was no guarantee that once the points were accumulated the tech would be opened - it was a % chance to open the tech based on the accumulated points.  To solve the imbalance of stacking MOO had the accumulated tech points *compound* each turn.  While not perfect it did give players a choice - research a single tech fast but at the expense of others falling behind or spread the tech across disciplines and get them all faster than if they did one at a time.    It seems to me that GalCiv could adopt and improve on this.  A civ may get a certain number of tech points *per field*.  Keep the % chance of success and the compounding, but introduce that if researchers from one field are forced to work in an unfamiliar field then their research is halved - both as a result of their unfamiliarity as well as the loss of inter-discipline research.  Also - slow down the introduction of research across the game.  Give me time to implement the tools I researched before introducing new ones.  

2) MOO planetary management was hypothecated.  You could build infrastructure (factories) but not individual buildings.  I always preferred this.  I think it is lame constructing 'buildings' on a planet surface.  IRL our planet has millions of buildings and not one is unique enough to change the output of our planet.   The building factor of GalCiv is juvenile and naïve.  The population management is comparably silly - really we would give up 10% of our population to create a colony ship of invasion force?  C'mon.  Even the construction points are lame - the USA has considerable construction power but a university built here is not built any faster than one built in Ecuador. If anything it is not our industry that would accelerate it so much as our existing universities!  Calciv should go back  to hypothecating planet resources.  Give production by population unit.  Allow the player to determine a planets focus on research (or fields of research), ship construction, farming, recreation, or wealth.  Give planets advantages or handicaps in these.  Give bonuses when a planet is focused but financial penalties apply for doing so - for example: If a planet is focused on ship building then their food must be imported and costs increase.  Another planet may focus on food - but have to purchase ships to transport it offworld - costs increase.  Etc.   Technology should absolutely increase overall *citizen* output but get rid of the silly building construction mechanic.   If you really want to have silly buildings - let the player manage a capital city and note that the civilization will tend to mirror that.  But even that is lame -  NY and LA *do NOT* mirror DC.

3) Diplomacy.  With the advent of ai we should be able to chat directly with the diplomats - no more multiple choice menus. I can tell the ai that I will declare war against their very strong neighbor if they offer me a tech.  If they say no I can mention to them why it is in their best interest and possibly nudge them from a poor decision.  LIke - give me mega-space blasters so I can better ships to attack them with. 

4) Espionage!  One of the most rewarding parts of MOO and MOO2 was stealing tech and fostering chaos!  I miss that.  The espionage portion of GalCiv is essentially nil.  But heaven help you (or your unfortunate spy) if you got caught!  Galciv needs a major overhaul in this category. 

5) Spoils of war.  One of the *best* rewards of MOO and MOO2 was the 'democratization' of technology through planetary invasion.  I am sad that my invaders are completely incapable of investigating the advanced technology of a captured planet or reverse engineering captured ships.  

6) Ship upgrades.  Too many techs are automatically applied to existing ships.  Engines do not spontaneously upgrade!  Same for most weapon types.  While we're at it - lets overhaul ship design.   Let me import an existing ship to upgrade instead of starting from scratch each design - and for fuck sake give the ability to permanently delete a ship design in-game.  Let me upgrade the flagships.  In fact - Let me construct as many flagships as I want and assign as many commanders as I wish.  Make them cost prohibitive  and awesome.  Let me even construct survey ships.  Same thing - cost prohibitive by awesome.  

7) Leaders - I understand the appeal, Lets develop them more. Give them experience points and levels.  Unlock certain abilities as they level up.  Have incidents (like a close call space battle, planetary assault, or spy contact) scar them.  Give them a salary.  Maybe - with ai chat - some personality?

Galciv IV  has been fun but I feel it still needs polish.  It feels like we're playing on a Frankenstein chassis; all sorts of parts bolted together instead of crafted in synchrony. Hopefully for the next iteration we can do a ground-up code refresh.

1) only if Gates or Musk gives you the funds to hire extra engineers

2) Nothing wrong with the current system that a little nerfing wouldn't fix. While a great little game MOO was checkers to Gal Civs Chess.

3) See #1 and then only have diplo if there is a war/surrender only option otherwise the AI does not interupy the game 

4) Not only no but hell no unless there is an option for closed borders where the Scum may not enter your worlds without a diplo treaty. Far too many features in the game to need more ways to slow play

5) Thought I was going to disagree with all your proposals, but reverse engineering captured tech is a good idea, though thought might be given to making it a multi-turn feature like Anomaly Exploration

6) Needless additional headache a solid no if it ain't broke don't fix it and GC4 is not broke in this regard

7) Worth discussion though the Kiss principle should apply 

GC4 needs bug fixes but so does Civ 1,2,3,4,5,6,&7 as for polish GC4 is already the best 4X space game in the Gamerverse let's not make it or a GC5 bloatware like a certain Swedish space game that is mentioned here a lot

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Reply #3 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

Quoting IpityU, reply 1

LEts look at some of the broken mechanics of GalCiv iv.  I will be discussing buildings some.  If the future version of Galciv applies my suggestion of not having buildings then this will, of course, need some modification as well.   The primary flaw I have seen is a very large disconnect in cost/benefit of so, so many items in GalCiv.   For example - the Industrial goods/supply ship is a known imbalance.  There are plenty of others:

Missions:
Research Missions - Too expensive when they will be useful, and too useless when they are affordable.   
Fix - Have a slider where a player can allocate production to affect the resulting impact.  Promethium should be a multiplier, not a prereq. 

Executive Orders:
Print Money: -10% approval?  For how long? Permanent?  Early game this is devastating.  Late game this is an inconsequential amount, and if the penalty is applied across your empire it is *HUGE*.  Most EO's are equally flawed.
Fix - better effect descriptions and, frankly, get rid of the penalties and costs.  I am already spending control points to get this - no need to complicate it with all the whacky moving parts.   In fact - get rid of the cool downs as well - make control points actually worth something - especially late game.  

Advanced Structures:
Beacon of Babylon - introduced early far, far sooner than any player will have the requisite harmony crystals, let alone the planetary production. It is insulting to see it in the que for half the game. 
Fix - Reconsider *ALL* advanced structures for their cost and feasibility at their point of introduction (early game, mid game, late game)  Not just the cost to build but the cost to research.  Most advanced structures are a waste because by the time they are built the game is almost over anyway.  

Also consider making other civilization planet surfaces with tourism visible to all players - I mean, ffs they have tourism going on so how are they keeping the entire planet surface a secret?  Announce when an advanced structure is begun, not just completed.

Stellar Nexus:
These are game-breaking.  The entire mechanic of Gigamass is game breaking.

Fix -   IMHO *everything* (research and construction)  should be much cheaper and the effects of the nexus should be MUCH lower, then compound over time.  A Dyson Sphere should generate substantially more power than it does and be an expensive pinnacle achievement, not a spammed feature.  There should be cheaper ways to power stargates, nexus, and planetary structures until a Dyson is completed.  These other power producers would be *affordable* (so that they are actually useful during the game) but they would take up much needed space on a planetary surface.  The Dyson Sphere would allow a player to remove these. 

The common denominator of most of these is that cost creep has become so absurd that, once the more interesting items can be built the game is already essentially over.   

These are just top of mid for me right now.  I am sure there are more.  Hopefully the community will share.

Again I thought I was going to find no common ground with you and I do only with the Mega structures DLC and there is a very simple fix for remove it from the game in downloads.

Otherwise, your other "fixes" I disagree they are broken and need a fix

Reply #4 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

Hey guys, thanks for all the detailed feedback and ideas.
I am eager to hear, what other players think!