What are your thoughts on retribution?

[Frozen Esper]

What do you guys think of the new expansion so far?

[Frogboy]

Originally posted by jonnin:

I got civ 6 and it was so much garbage.
Lets see... gameplay goes like this: your neighbors find you, they declare war on you, they burn everything you have built if you can't move fast enough to stop them. You get mad and take their city, and are, for the next 100000 years of humanity, on par with hitler himself for being such a bunghole. Meanwhile some other far away faction is sending 1000000000000000 missionaries to your area to convert you, and there isnt jack you can do about it because they run faster than horses and possibly faster than early aircraft. The graphics are 2 notches better than southpark, and the map vs size of things .... well, I think everyone is building their cities inside a football stadium. The ai makes the one in G3 look like a genius. In short, its possibly the worst game I have played, and I come in from alpha centauri, warlords 1, and heroes which are all 20 years older and 10 times better than civ6. Even the civ fanbois tell you to buy 5, its cheaper and a better game.

back on topic, I am waiting this one out. The dumb AI is starting to bore me, and I will circle back to this later. I like g3, but i wish the AI would at least pretend to try to win a game.

Sorry to go off topic, having not played Civ VI, what major gameplay change does it have over Civ V?

I think a lot of people, with some justification, felt GalCiv III was really just GalCiv II when it first came out.

But then you add Crusade and Retribution and it gets to be pretty easy to describe how GalCiv III is different from GalCiv II.

But I haven't really seen a "Civ VI changes over Civ V" in a short description.

[Frogboy]

Originally posted by Travis:

Originally posted by wotan1a:

"For the next major update, we are hoping to make modding a lot easier. There are just a ton of different files to mess with right now based on all the different expansions and DLC."

That would certainly help smooth the introduction of major changes by providing an easy modding path to revert or adapt to individual preferences, making it easy to apply through Steam would be a gigantic plus also.

Not to mention it would make the game more popular. I actually like retribution and all the expansion packs, but felt like something was missing, ala modding. As a fan of the game since the old days of GalCiv 2, I like this, but making modding possible would introduce great potential.

As far as my thoughts on the expansion goes, it adds a lot of things that I view as much more streamlining, taking out certain micromanagement elements via the addition of hypergates and such. I like this game a lot, so take my personal opinion with a grain of salt, but Galciv 3 is a good game in it's own right, just like most other popular 4X games today. It's just a certain flavor, and people have different tastes. I do admit though, some things present in the expansion pack are things that I would have rather seen implemented in the game before as non-expansion pack patches, so I see where people are coming from with that point, but development of a game as a game designer takes time and money.

Modding in GalCiv III is a very particular challenge because there are 3 expansions that you have to take into account that change game play so much.

Retribution doesn't just add new features, for instance, it changes the tech trees and planetary improvements.

That effectively splits modding between each expansion. Retribution, for instance, will break most mods that were done with Intrigue in mind. That's super frustrating if you're a modder.

I'm not sure the right solution to the problem. I don't think there will be any new expansions for GalCiv III. It'll be pure DLCs and that will come only after some major QOL updates that the team is working on.

[Wotan1a]

Draginol, I understand the challenge but other developers have been able to deal with it cough**Stellaris*cough where major rewrites, 1.9 to 2.0 is definitely comparable to anything GC3 did changes wise, have basically invalidated previous mods. If you want to play with mods for a DLC/version of the game you revert to that version, end of story. Now that has been controversial but with 10,000+ mods in Steam you cannot deny it is somewhat effective. I play the latest version with 82 mods active tbh, talk about customized. Being able to do the same with GC3 would mean I would never leave the game LOL It also opens up the Chinese market btw ;-)

[Spl1nters]

17 quid seems pretty expensive. Played a few hours, haven't noticed a whole lot different.

[imminence]

Originally posted by Draginol:

Originally posted by imminence:

Crashing, opting for beta, must start new game.
Now old issues (placeholder texts etc.) are back and features of the DLC are missing.

It looks good from what I have seen .... when it works.

Best wait for a REAL patch which fixes things without destroying others.

We are finding that these are related to installation issues. Validate your Steam files to make sure you have all the files.

Uhm... I lost my overview about how many times I validated my files AFTER I completely un- and reinstalled the game.

Here is the starting window of my homeworld:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1663882873

No new buildings, no new artifacts (there should be one on the homeworld) and the new races are missing, too.

After all I've done to make the game run, I'm out of ideas. I just know for certain, that there is nothing wrong on my side. At least nothing I could have done.

So please stop to blame the player.

[Gauntlet]

Originally posted by Draginol:

Also: a modder could change the population growth default to whatever they want by modifying the galcivglobaldefs.xml file.

For the next major update, we are hoping to make modding a lot easier. There are just a ton of different files to mess with right now based on all the different expansions and DLC.

Well as one of the few dedicated modders left, this will be a welcome change. Obviously business first... but if you wanted to just GIVE all the tiny DLC to people so you could consolidate file structures I sure would be happy lol.



As for the expansion... well... to be honest I don't know that its worth the price.


1) Campaigns are hard to value... I value them 0. I suspect most 4X players do too, but I can't be certain. Regardless, its not like these campaigns are of the quality one would expect with say... RTS classics like Starcraft or such.

2) "New Races"... not really. Two animated races, some ship parts you already get with other DLC and two new abilities are not enough. IF they had even a few unique ship parts i'd have to grudgingly accept this claim... but they don't.

3) Planetary artifacts with super powers. Okay Cool. If you like that kind of thing. Really though, how many times can you give the player super powers before it is redundant? Mercenaries and Citizens give me plenty of effective super powers... but okay... now I have another way to beat the AI at a game the AI can never hope to play intelligently.

4) Hypergates. Legit Cool. I love the idea... and they are implemented pretty great.

5) Cargo/Supply/Population... okay... its a balance change, but it isn't really a big feature. I actually like how it works, but it's not something I'd ever pay money for.

6) Tech/Galaxy Size/Etc. Basically balance changes... again... not something I'd pay money for.


Ultimately, I think buyers should balance these things with the fact that Stardock provides quite a bit for free (custom color schemes came out a while ago and didn't cost a dime), but this particular release feels like a "well meaning rush-job".

It absolutely feels 10X SMALLER than Crusade did for expanding the game.

[Chaos12Legion]

Originally posted by imminence:

Originally posted by Draginol:

We are finding that these are related to installation issues. Validate your Steam files to make sure you have all the files.

Uhm... I lost my overview about how many times I validated my files AFTER I completely un- and reinstalled the game.

Here is the starting window of my homeworld:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1663882873

No new buildings, no new artifacts (there should be one on the homeworld) and the new races are missing, too.

After all I've done to make the game run, I'm out of ideas. I just know for certain, that there is nothing wrong on my side. At least nothing I could have done.

So please stop to blame the player.

Have you bought the new expansion?

[jonnin]

Originally posted by Draginol:

Originally posted by jonnin:

I got civ 6 and it was so much garbage.
Lets see... gameplay goes like this: your neighbors find you, they declare war on you, they burn everything you have built if you can't move fast enough to stop them. You get mad and take their city, and are, for the next 100000 years of humanity, on par with hitler himself for being such a bunghole. Meanwhile some other far away faction is sending 1000000000000000 missionaries to your area to convert you, and there isnt jack you can do about it because they run faster than horses and possibly faster than early aircraft. The graphics are 2 notches better than southpark, and the map vs size of things .... well, I think everyone is building their cities inside a football stadium. The ai makes the one in G3 look like a genius. In short, its possibly the worst game I have played, and I come in from alpha centauri, warlords 1, and heroes which are all 20 years older and 10 times better than civ6. Even the civ fanbois tell you to buy 5, its cheaper and a better game.

back on topic, I am waiting this one out. The dumb AI is starting to bore me, and I will circle back to this later. I like g3, but i wish the AI would at least pretend to try to win a game.

Sorry to go off topic, having not played Civ VI, what major gameplay change does it have over Civ V?

I think a lot of people, with some justification, felt GalCiv III was really just GalCiv II when it first came out.

But then you add Crusade and Retribution and it gets to be pretty easy to describe how GalCiv III is different from GalCiv II.

But I haven't really seen a "Civ VI changes over Civ V" in a short description.

I did not actually play 5, so your best bet here is to google that very question or try the steam forums for civ 6. I liked sid's alpha centauri, which (perhaps incorrectly) I thought was a fork of the civ game line, and it was not working well in winx (finally got that fixed, hooray) so I figured I would finally try it out given the successful series. I dunno. 6 felt like selling the name, not the product, if that makes sense, like a bad sequel to a movie where ppl gonna watch it even if its terrible because the first was good (eg anything disney ever made a sequel for).
I guess my main few grips (serious this time, though the above isnt wrong)
- the religious system was one of the most poor things ive ever seen.
- the ai is incapable of anything (kind of like g3). I mean we had relatively tough AI in the 90s. I don't understand at all what happened. Even warlords 1 the darn computer was going full tilt on beating you, and it would, if you were not at least decent, on the highest level.
- the map is too small. its like playing g3 on the biggest # of enemy on the smallest possible map.
- this is huge: you can't customize units. Build your own ships here in g3 is a HUGE feature. AC had it too. Civ has default units, and thats that.
- major faction balance problems. The horse lords one, for example, ... helicopters count as horses, and the bonuses that made sense early game become stupid (on par with robotic custom cheeze factions here). The most basic faction, sumeria, has extra R&D, fast moving high damage units from the start, and a better than most any other building, making, of all things, the extinct and failed civ from pre-history your best bet for science victory via space race.... for real.
- no customization of leaders. They are what they are. Its not as bad if you bought more dlcs. Its pretty rough with the defaults, since you can't make your own.
- the resource problem we have HERE is nothing like the one in civ. Can't make knights without iron, can we? And there are 2 or 3 iron nodes in the whole world sometimes, for all 20 AI factions... and it goes downhill from there, Ive had maps with 2-3 oil total.

[Singularity]

Originally posted by Draginol:

Sorry to go off topic, having not played Civ VI, what major gameplay change does it have over Civ V?

I think a lot of people, with some justification, felt GalCiv III was really just GalCiv II when it first came out.

But then you add Crusade and Retribution and it gets to be pretty easy to describe how GalCiv III is different from GalCiv II.

But I haven't really seen a "Civ VI changes over Civ V" in a short description.

I disagree with the previous poster about Civ5's superiority over Civ6 (and I think this is something that has been said about literally every version of Civ since Civ2 or so). But that said, the changes are as follows, and they are pretty vast:

- Civ6 has a district system for cities. You expand your cities on the map by building districts and then you build further buildings in them. Like Endless Legend or Fallen Enchantress, but the buildings for military actually go in your military district and can only be built with that district.

- Civ6 allows corps and armies, which let you join two/three of the same unit into a larger army. A compromise that helps you avoid the "carpet of doom" scenarios in Civ 5.

- Civ6 drops the social policy tree for a card system. You can adopt policies and swap out at any time. You earn those policy cards on a social tech tree in the same way that techs are earned. The social tree also has other benefits.

- Civ6's barbarians do not mess around. They find you, they tell their friends, and they mess you up.

-Civ6's AIs before Gathering Storm were ... a bit maddening and hard to satisfy. Post Gathering Storm, a Grievance system has been implemented that prevents you from becoming the hated warmonger described in the previous post. It's a much better system, but maybe too easy to exploit for domination at the moment.

- Civ6, at first release had most of the gameplay systems of Civ 5 except for the World Congress. As of the Gathering Storm expansion, the World Congress was added.

- Civ6, Rise and Fall added governors, who have their own promotion trees and can be moved around in cities. It also added a loyalty system which can be used to flip cities without war. Finally, it added casus belli, to allow you to wage wars for ... reasons.

-Civ6, Gathering Storm adds disasters, World Congress, diplomatic victory, and interestingly, climate change. It also adds a future era, where war is waged with jumping, giant death robots.

Hope this answers some of your questions. Surely, you should play it, if only for research purposes.

[imminence]

Originally posted by Chaos12Legion:

Have you bought the new expansion?

Hoping that this is a serious question:

Yes, of course. It worked, but without some inportant features:
"Knowledgeable" should have access to graviton-tech, but it was not present in game.
The hotfix should have fixed that, but since I applied it...read my last post.

[princedetenebres]

What does everyone think about the changes to the tech tree?

I confess, I'm not yet sold on them. I've only poked about a bit and haven't gotten into a new sandbox game, but I miss the optimization choices from the old tree, but need to play through to get a sense of the change.

I'm hoping that a scenario editor and the GC3 editor alluded to in some of the .xml files might be available in future though. And larger maps (I want more space between objects, for the galaxy to feel even more vast than it does on immense now -- I even start my MP games as a SP save on a larger map to get around the size restriction there), so this wasn't the expansion I was hoping for but...

I bought the expansion even though I am skeptical about some of the changes; (excepting the hypergates, very tired of painstakingly building starbase chains across immense maps to get a similar effect) because even if I'm not incredibly keen on every feature I definitely want to continue supporting the game and its development.

So I hope that it's clear that when some of us long-time players perhaps don't have the most enthusiastic feedback that its clear that it comes predicated with gratitude and affection for the game first, and not out of petulant entitlement.

[Charlando[SunsOfStmChrts]]

Well I'm sad other are not enjoying the changes as much as I am.

...I happen to be at the "dont forget to drink water...and eat something" stage that I was at when a new XCOM game is released. Before this Galciv3 didnt really "click" with me yet.

[Astasia]

The new tech tree seems pretty broken. Tech costs seem to be all over the place and completely arbitrary, with many later tier techs having a lower cost than earlier ones, and over all every research just being way below the cost it needs to be for research to matter at all. There doesn't seem to be any point currently in building research buildings, you will still unlock everything in 1-2 turns. I'm not going to go too much into how much I hate the removal of the specialization techs, one of the few unique and interesting things this game had, flushed down the toilet, just to make it easier to mindlessly queue through entire tech lines without thinking or planning.

Artifacts seem to have a finite amount of charges, which means instead of being a useful ability they are just glorified versions of existing game events. You know that one random event you get 10 times every game? Here's another way to get it 10 more times, you just have to push a button this time. Doesn't help that the two I found in the game I played were completely awful. One of them was finish the currently researching tech in 1 turn, what a laugh, as if any techs take much more than one turn to finish anyway.

I really loved the cargo ships for the most part though, it's something StarDrive did that I wished more games would pick up. I wish they could be redesigned to stack more than one cargo module though, and I wish the game didn't create a new auto design for them for EVERY SINGLE research in the game, because it's really important to be on version 60 of the ship, with the last 40 versions being identical.

I didn't play around with the hypergates much yet. They sound cool, but I'm not sure they were really needed with the starbases that already did something similar.

Overall it doesn't seem like much of an upgrade. The tech changes are a big --, the artifacts are a meh, the cargo ships are a +, maybe another + for the hyperlanes, the new races are cosmetic, pretty much a wash overall. Which seems to be the case for every update the game has. They can't quite seem to add onto the game without ruining an equal amount of it.

[CBR JGWRR]

I like it. Having the Drath back is good, Hypergates are good, colonies require more thought as you can't just colonise everything anymore (which is an improvement, before you sent colony ships to every world you could get) the space between stars being expanded is an improvement, the tech tree changes I'm not concerned with as I much preferred GC1's method of having the technologies all interconnected anyway, and supply ships are really good, you wonder why so few games have an equivalent.

[Rhonin the wizard]

Originally posted by imminence:

Originally posted by Draginol:

We are finding that these are related to installation issues. Validate your Steam files to make sure you have all the files.

Uhm... I lost my overview about how many times I validated my files AFTER I completely un- and reinstalled the game.

Here is the starting window of my homeworld:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1663882873

No new buildings, no new artifacts (there should be one on the homeworld) and the new races are missing, too.

After all I've done to make the game run, I'm out of ideas. I just know for certain, that there is nothing wrong on my side. At least nothing I could have done.

So please stop to blame the player.

First, right click on GC3 in your Steam library then View DLC to see if the Retribution is installed.

If it is and it's still not working try going to steamapps\common\Galactic Civilizations III\Tools and run EverythingButCampaignData.bat