GalCiv 3 in comparison to GalCiv 2

[|Nick]

After the release of all the DLCs, is GalCiv 3 just better than GalCiv 2, different, or worse?
Most of the threads regarding this topic are from a time, where GalCiv 3 hadn't all the DLCs yet, that's why I ask this question again.
To get an up-to-date- answer

[Neithan]

Just started GC3, and never played GC2 that much, because of that annoying bug (or was it a game mechanic?!?) that after saving and loading at some point(or some other trigger), the anomalies just disappeared from map (visually), but were still present. If you knew where they were, you could still collect them, only they were invisible...
So far, GC3 does not have that "bug"...

[ashbery76]

I think leaders with Crusade made GC3 better than CG2 imo.The games were pretty similar before.

[Airmaster]

Better ship designer, being able to create a custom race that uses your custom ships as it's ship set style. Unlimited ship design possibilities only limited to players imagination.

[Max Mojito]

+1: the ship designer is definetly better in GC3, true
+2: one + of GC3 is the citizens. fun to play with the different roles, though, i find some are op., relative while you only get 1 per 10 turns
+3: the mercenaries are a good idea, makes life easier in early and mid game, chosen the right ;D
+4: Hyperlanes ... YES ...love them at higher travelling speed... how dull was it in GC2 to move a battleship across the map in 20+ turns ??
+5: NO more constructor-spamming !! ... 1 constructor = 1 starbase, modules only need creds

-1: planet building was far easier in GC2 than in GC3 with tons of 1-per-galaxy, or 1-per-player and some 1-per-planet buildings you very often need special resources for to build. but rarely standard buildings. found myself researching techs just to get to other techs as my research was useless without the resources ... for 1 building... frustrating.
-2: another negative is the special resources and the related "artifacts": feels like pokemon when you play a card to boost a planets influence or a fleet's attack or speed ...
and you need the resources (again) to activate the artifacts
-3: again the special resources: one branch of the tech tree is halfway for researching to built the artifacts... no fun to research st just you have to
-4: i remember the research trees of GC2 only vaguely but think there were more than 3 different ones ?? (have found only 2 slightly different tech trees in GC3 and no way to chose for custom civ
-5: senseless ai aggressiveness in GC3: find it hard to build trustworthy relationships with major races. only send traders to minor races now
-6: ship roles lead to strange behaviour sometimes in combination with opposing forces if not escort type, as most ai ships are..

imo GC2 final version is still better than GC3 with all the dlcs, if only by a small margin. for my liking GC3 is too much centered on the special resources.

[jonnin]

-4 You get a different tree for some races and perks. For example slavery changes the tree, and things like scavenger add a branch or more. This seems like a forgotten idea, though. Vanilla game had more differences between races and factions -- now its fairly similar for all under MOST settings.

-6 is this really an issue? Only the support role is super weird, even if armed it won't fight. Otherwise, its basically way to decide who engages first and who hides in the back behind the others. I prefer interceptors for my fighting ships, and capital for support ships. With those 2 roles, I have zero issues, but I have not seen any major problems with the roles back when I used more of them. If you know of a bug, though, give it a report... the devs do fix stuff.

[Max Mojito]

4 yes .. said differently, meant same: 1 single branch in a tree
6 most of the ai fleets i meet are mostly escort type ships. with my attack and interceptor type ships these are easy prey ... problem starts with some attackers on ai side as they are ignored. usually lose 1 or more escort type ships ... annoying

[Overloadedcasu]

Why dont play at GC4 ?

[kinbard603]

MO, GC3 lacks the "soul" that GC2 had.

[Max Mojito]

Originally posted by kinbard603:

MO, GC3 lacks the "soul" that GC2 had.

agreed ! could'nt have said better !! :D

Originally posted by Overloadedcasu:

Why dont play at GC4 ?

simply said i don't like to start all over again every week bc the save file is no longer compatible with the new game version.
the endgame being tedious logistics has not changed since GC1l
ai cannot built fleets - just multiple ships without a concept
ai cannot upgrade planets planets

having played all 3 GCs, i'm tired of having to rebuild all of my self built ships from the sratch again ...

oya Mando'a