Galactic Civilization III v2.3 Release 6/19

[Shaupat]

We have released a fairly substantial update to Crusade and the base game that will vastly improve the AI, improve balance, and squash some really important bugs. Read below for info!

Crusade Updates

AI

• Substantial AI improvement to how the AI builds planetary improvements
  
• New AI governors for smarter AI planetary building.
  
• Added support for AI specific events.
  
• AI transports are much more intelligent than before about targeting planets
  
• AI much smarter about focusing its endeavors on its target primary opponent and its assets
  
• AI work on trying to get it to be smarter about when to make massive fleets and when to send out smaller fleets to finish someone much weaker.
  
• Lots of AI work to try to find a good balance between the AI using its military might to conquer versus when it should hunker down. This will be an endless balance war for the AI.
  
• Removed code that was blocking the AI from even looking at units that were far away that it knew about. While this made sense when performance was tight, now that this has been moved to its own thread on its own core, we don't care.
  
• Damaged fleets that fall behind a certain threshold will be sent home to reinforce
  
• More improvements to the AI guessing algorithm for where good planets are (or as novices say "AI cheating" -- it's not cheating).
  
• Big one: For the human player, 3 survey ships sitting on the same tile will go to 3 different anomalies rather than all going to the same stupid one. The AI players are very unhappy with this change.
  
• A LOT of AI work on getting the AI to sacrifice a fleet on a hardened position to soften it. The AI doesn't like to sacrifice units and marketing doesn't like it either because users will say the AI is dumb for sending weak fleets that can't possibly win. But sometimes, you have to do this to soften up the player's defenses if you have the power to spare.
  
• Eliminated the tech governor for the AI. They don't need a script on what to research.
  
• AI ship design much better than previous for putting together more powerful ships by saving up resources more than they were before (fewer better ships rather than squandering them on lots of crap)
  
• AI is better about building transports when it should and not build them when it shouldn't.
  
• What AI players build on planets is less scripted and more procedural.
  
• New code for the case when the AI can't find something to build on a planet. It switches to the new procedural system to figure out what to build.
  
• More AI differentiation based on player traits (moving away from races to support better modding)
  
• Eliminated last vestiges of AI scripting for trying to achieve a particular victory. You can't script a victory in a game like this.
  
• Ship tech research now weighs heavily what resources it has coming in rather than what it currently has in inventory. The AI getting lucky and finding say 5 anti-matter shouldn't dictate its weapon research choices.
  
• Tech stealing by player or AI players made less frequent
  
• Warmonger penalty more intelligent. If you attack early game, you get it for awhile and if you are declaring war on a lot of players (where a lot depends on how many players are in the game) then it goes on.
  
• Pirates no longer look for danger when going to a destination because, again, quit being ♥♥♥♥♥♥ babies.
  
• Pirate player will assign its ships to be on the warpath so that they're not such babies about attacking other ships
  
• Pirates will do suicidal attacks.
  
• Pirates are no longer considered dead if they still have a shipyard. They are only mostly dead.
  
• As if the pirates are going to maintain a freaking starbase. They're pirates!

Gameplay / Balance

• All Starbase rings now generate 1 influence per turn so that they at least, over time, will expand
  
• Starbase modules now stack instead of upgrading
  
• New promotion type: Mogul. Gives 5000bc upon promotion from Entrepreneur
  
• New missions: Gem Trader, Pilgrimage, Xylology, and Hyper Silicates.
  
• Sensors, which provide local navigational benefits, give a slight increase to a starbase's influence
  
• Most starbase modules now have a +1 maintenance cost.
  
• Colonizing events that gave "Planetary Defense" now give "Planetary Resistance."
  
• Colonizers ability now grants 1 administrator point.
  
• Unrelenting ability now provides +1 influence per turn for colonies
  
• Ancient ability provides 10 research for each anomaly that it picks up.
  
• Entrepreneur ability provides 5 additional trade routes in addition to existing abilities
  
• Devout ability now gives an influence to all planets boost every time they choose an ideological choice
  
• Bureaucrats start with 25 administrators in addition to existing abilities
  
• Conquerors receive a 2,500 bounty every time they conquer a planet
  
• Certain ability now provides 100 research every time they choose an ideological trait
  
• Made the Prolific and Devout abilities global.
  
• Trade secrets bonus reduced to 25% instead of 100% for pragmatic choice.
  
• Trade Secrets ideology event nerfed from a 100% bonus to trade income to a 25% trade income bonus.
  
• Cultural Center now provides 1 influence per turn flat
  
• Elevation Foundation ideology reduced from 0.2 to 0.1 per turn
  
• Temple of Enlightenment ideology per turn reduced from 0.3 to 0.1
  
• Preparedness Center ideology per turn reduced from 0.2 to 0.1
  
• Arbitration Center ideology per turn reduced from 0.2 to 0.1
  
• Citadel of Revenue ideology reduced from 0.2 to 0.1
  
• Death Furnaces ideology reduced from 9.3 to 0.1 per turn
  
• Cultural Beacon now provides both a 20% influence bonus to the colony as well as a +1 per turn influence
  
• Cultural Forum influence per turn increased from 2 to 4
  
• Information Hub IpT increased from 4 to 6
  
• Interstellar Exchange IpT increased from 8 to 12
  
• Interstellar Embassy module IpT increased from 12 to 16
  
• Interstellar Ministry IpT increased from 16 to 32
  
• Changed planetary bonuses that helped just Social Manufacturing to help All Manufacturing.
  
• Nerfed Renaissance event's research bonus
  
• Fixed bad Food Stats on Desert worlds and Precursor worlds
  
• Nerf some more of the base planet traits for Crusade.
  
• Altarian AI personality changed from Aggressive to Peaceful (they were too mean)
  
• Terran Resistance are no longer diplomatic (heh, they never were..) but instead are scientific
  
• Yor are now 'Expansionist" instead of "Aggressive". The Yor aren't capable of being
• "Aggressive" by our standards. That would require them thinking of us as sentient.
  
• Arceans are now opportunistic removing the Chaotic trait (Which made them move between Neutral and Merciless).
  
• Vigilant Level 2 on the ideological tree now provides the player 3 engineers upon choosing it.
  
• Trade route diplomacy bonus increased from 0.5 to 1 for the Traders 4 trait.
  
• When a player dies, their starbases and shipyards are destroyed instead of being given to pirates.
  
• Durational projects will now re-queue themselves on completion (can still be canceled normally)
  
• Adjusted ideology descriptions to reflect changes to ideology improvements
  
• Wild Grain planet feature now properly increases Population.
  
• Updated citizen descriptions to make the bonus calculations more understandable.
  
• Updated privateer promotion description to be more accurate.
  
• Adjusted ideology improvement descriptions to better reflect their bonuses.
  
• Fixed bad descriptions of several ideology improvements.
  
• Shipyards and Starbases are now destroyed only when a faction surrenders to the pirates
  
• The "Certain" abilities now correctly award research points when ideological traits are unlocked.
  
• Singularity Powerplant now actually charges for Elerium.
  
• Slight modification of blueprints to not require as many resource heavy weaponry.
  
• Slight increase in the amount of mining the mining modules produce per turn.
  
• Shipyard HP and defenses reduced so that players can eliminate pirates and break defenses more effectively.
  
• Nerf and Re-enable the Arbitration Center, that was disabled, making the Arbiters ideology trait useless.
  
• Updated Starbase modules to stack, instead of upgrade.

Custom Factions

• Custom Starbases can be uploaded to the Steam Workshop
  
• Fleet's now show the original author's name of custom ship designs
  
• Original author's name shows when creating a blueprint in the Ship Designer

Perf

• Minor change to FOW with big performance improvements. Removing a redundant stat update.
  
• AI players no longer recalculate every turn whether they know about an asteroid. Asteroids don't move
  
• Player objects processing has been moved to the AI for faster performance

UI

• Govern->Stats screen now shows the number of tiles (parsecs) owned, as well as number of tiles contiguous to the player's homeworld
  
• Promotion options list now fills correctly
  
• Fixed issue where promotion option costs were not showing the tooltip for the resource entries
  
• Fixed display issue where weapon components in the ship designer landing would not show any stats in the tooltip
  
• Large UI: Resources in the top bar no longer overlap in
  
• Added alert for when another faction has destroyed a faction

Campaigns

• Updated campaign maps
  
• Reduced starting pop on some of the campaign factions.
  
• Retiring in campaign no longer causes some buttons to stack on each other

Bugs

• Asteriod Mining bases should no longer change ownership.
  
• Fixed bad bonus text on several "Lost Worlds" colonizing events.
  
• Fix resource cost triggers for Singularity Power Plant.
  
• Fix incorrect descriptions on several colonizing events.
  
• Mining base assignments no longer get reset if one of your planets has changed ownership or was destroyed
  
• Fixed missing adjacency bonuses on the Silicon based life cities.
  
• Fixed Power on the Manufacturing Focus specialization.
  
• Fixed crashes
  
• Fixed MP desyncs
  
• Battles in nebulas are no longer missing their backgrounds
  
• Fixed preclusion bug that allowed some one-per-planet improvements to be built multiple times.
  
• Changed Adjacency text to say Adjacency Bonus.
  
• Changed short name for Torian to Torians.
  
• Fix for bad grid lines on some Nvidia cards. Doesn't fix all cases, yet. But hey, we got some perf as well.
  
• Administrator points granted from the Colonizers ability are now properly displayed.
  
• Fixed some cases where Legion count wasn't being updated correctly.
  
• Don't refund legions after invasions for whole ships that weren't destroyed.
  
• You can no longer view non-selectable ships in the fleet details window by going next/prev.
  
• Fixed a logistics problem that prevented the ships from not always merging to a commander's fleet
  
• "Destroying Galaxy" loading shows up when exiting to the main menu.
  
• Tech victory alerts will no longer show up before the age of ascension.
  
• Removed duplicate resource window in the ship designer window
  
• Ship missions now show the proper completion time in the queue
  
• Metaverse: Tutorial Factions and New Factions now show their proper names
  
• Mercenary entries with large resource costs no longer get split into two lines
  
• MP: Players are no longer double-charged for mercenary resources.
  
• Fixed typos.
  
• Asking someone to declare an embargo or to declare war now longer destroys the universe.
  
• Removed a ghost ship from shipping crate

"Base Game" Updates

Bugs

• Various crash issues fixed that were due to custom ship designs / ship mods
  
• Lots and lots of potential crash issues resolved due to better checking of custom/mod data
  
• Crash fixes from Crusade
  
• Brought over Crusade optimization for stat updating while unit moving
  
• Influence no longer calculates in real-time (major perf boost)

AI

• Player objects calculations moved into the AI thread (performance)
  
• Fixed bug that caused AI to potentially get "free credits" due to messaging being disabled
  
• Pirate AI is more aggressive.
  
• AI better at defending planets (Crusade tech)
  
• AI targeting system updated to near Crusade level
  
• AI keeps track of its fleet inventory, this is used to make better decisions on what to Build
  
• AI more aggressive in using transports
  
• Lots and lots of improvements to the AI's ability to target enemies intelligently
  
• Smarter AI behavior when it comes to asking for money and such
  
• AI smarter about what ships it wants to build and when
  
• Much better AI trading system for putting together deals
  
• AI trading changed to be a vector so that it can offer multiple trade offers (Crusade feature)
  
• AI evaluates its money much better
  
• AI much stingier on ship Trading
  
• AI much smarter about declaring war on players when someone tries to bribe them to
  
• AI much better about going to war against those who are at war with its ally
  
• AI more reactive to parking fleets near its territory
  
• AI war mongering set up
  
• Smart auto credit bidder added to the trade window to make trading easier.
  
• Greater variance in flavor text in conversations

Gameplay

• Increased the amount of stars, planets and habitable planets when common is chosen
  
• Planetary Improvement cost generally made higher.
  
• Production points on colonies and capital planet default to a higher value
  
• Reduced manufacturing cost but increased mass of special components so that the ramp up time isn't so severe.
  
• Added new "Complete Tech" event.

[Xerberus86]

nice, thanks mate!

[baddicus]

WOW, this looks GREAT!!!!
It's Here!!!!

[Airmaster]

Complaint regarding Carriers using Cargo Hulls when creating custom ship styles. In game Carriers, even default core Carrier ships use a large and huge scale hull. Why are we limited to a useless cargo hulls with just ONE LOUSY HIT POINT for Carriers when creating custom ship set styles? Perhaps an oversight but yet it is a major balance issue. Please balance this properly.

[Cerberus Shepard]

now thats a serious patch!
cannot wait to give it a spin

[abonamente]

This update will be much more than 'fairly' substantial. I guess a LOT of work went there.

However, I don't really understand why are the ideology gains from buildings nerfed. In the beginning of the game they are very hard to build/buy, or I just don't have many tiles for such improvements. The rewards after finishing them should be actually higher. And the late game buildings, like the Death Furnaces, come really late game, and they are not that easy to build either (need to choose where to build them, then perhaps rearrange the entire surface of the planets to make the most of them). And late game 0.1/turn ideology reward is nothing.

Which leads me to the second question: I don't get it, why the bad, very bad, extremely bad. unthinkably bad design decision's effects which plague every aspect of the UI are not fixed before doing anything else? Why every list, every table in every screen has to reset to default after performing an action there? Like:

- In my current game I have 90 colonies - how long will it take to choose where to build the nerfed Death Furnaces if I cannot compare easily my first 10 candidates? The table keeps jumping to the default ordering criteria every time I take a peek at one of those colonies.

- The Torians just surrendered to me their 40+ colonies, some of them in need of complete reconfigurations, to integrate them in my general economic and military strategy. How long would it take me to choose the improvements to build from the long list on the right hand of the colony view, which keeps jumping back to the top position?

- I prepare to build my first huge hull ships. Then, as I research military techs, I would very much like to upgrade those designs. How long will that take, with the minuscule one-line list at the bottom of the designer screen? It keeps jumping back to the top of the list every time I remove one item at the bottom.

This is a big, time consuming game, and that catastrophic design decision, never acknowledged, let alone repaired, makes it so much more time consuming.

[th0ma5]

Wow nice change list. I just finished a medium map game so going to wait and play my next game with the opt-in.

[Dancing Dragon Games]

My friends. Please, please fix asteroid mines changing affiliation on their own ;_;

[Unthwarted]

Please fix the ship style creator. Ship classes are missing, i.e. the Overlord and Titan. Also, the Martyr is listed as a Cargo hull class, but the predesigned ships by the Devs is a LARGE hull template. Similar issue with the Sovereign (aka Envoy) as a Medium class in the ship style creator but actually being a Cargo hull per the predesigned template.

[Nicol_Bolas]

More improvements to the AI guessing algorithm for where good planets are (or as novices say "AI cheating" -- it's not cheating).

How can you guess where good planets are without maphack?? I would prefer not improving this ....
I am not an AI, but I would need some improvements to my own algorhytm for fingind good planets.


Big one: For the human player, 3 survey ships sitting on the same tile will go to 3 different anomalies rather than all going to the same stupid one. The AI players are very unhappy with this change.

Why not for AI also? - Its already automated feature.



Cultural Center now provides 1 influence per turn flat
still weaker than the consulate its supposed to upgrade (actually equal)


Where does it say fixed legions and administrators counters bugs

[Nicol_Bolas]

When a player dies, their starbases and shipyards are destroyed instead of being given to pirates.

THUMBS DOWN.
Less realistic.
I also used this to build the starbases at a later time.
Now all the AI will instarush and take the starbases anyway

Please don't change this.

Concentrate on changing bugs like legions ffs.

[Astrobia]

Looks great but needs more multiplayer love.

[Jono]

How about giving the player the ability to set and design the craft used by the carrier modules? That would be a nice future addition.

[Nicol_Bolas]

Originally posted by Vamphaery:

A LOT of AI work on getting the AI to sacrifice a fleet on a hardened position to soften it. The AI doesn't like to sacrifice units and marketing doesn't like it either because users will say the AI is dumb for sending weak fleets that can't possibly win. But sometimes, you have to do this to soften up the player's defenses if you have the power to spare.

This is what I LOVE about StarDock games' AI. While not perfect (what ever is?) you always at least TRY to make the AI do things that may not seem optimal, but are still decisions a human player would make if warranted. That's one of many reasons why, while as stated not perfect, GC series AI in my experience is at least far and away better than most turn based 4x games' AI I've played against over the years. (Even at lower difficulties, frankly. It's more that they hold back at lower difficulties, than that they're "stupider" at lower difficulties.)

When a player dies, their starbases and shipyards are destroyed instead of being given to pirates

This will be a debated change (as shown in some of the above posts, lol.) But for me on the same line of thougt... Request/question for future:

Is it possible in the future to add the ability to remove enemy AIs' shipyards (not starbases, since starbase influence is part of the game obviously) that are directly in captured territory? E.g. if I capture a colony, it's a little weird to me that their shipyard remains one hex away from me even once my influence has expanded far beyond it.

On the other hand though, if we're going for realism, I guess having to destroy it makes sense. We're at war after all, and if we can't destroy their shipyard, they 'deserve' to use it against us I suppose. ;) It's just a taste thing I guess.

"Destroying Galaxy" loading shows up when exiting to the main menu.

This made me Lol. :p

being able to board them would be even better.
but if thats not possible then keep them.

What would be even better is Vassalage.
If AI is about to lose war, they surrender to you, but they keep their independecy. But reroute all asteroits , starbases, and part of raw production to you.
From point of diplomacy, the two empires would become one.

I play without surrendering. But having to capture everything is also a nuisance and vassalge would work fine.

[Nicol_Bolas]

Well also it's realistic. It might be they declared war on me, but since then their military and most colonies were crushed, but I don't want to wipe out the whole civilization, as their new leaders might be wiser and I want to play benevolent civ.

[Shaupat]

Originally posted by harmonic42:

My friends. Please, please fix asteroid mines changing affiliation on their own ;_;

This is one of the things we have fixed.