GalCiv2 Forums
I love how one can customize one's own ships in Galactic Civilizations II. However, I find ground battles to be quite boring. I would like to be able to customize my ground troops and vehicles. I would also like to actually watch them fight. How about everybody else? What would you like to see?
Well you have 4 out of 5 methods of winning which are "civilized" - and which are also much more easy to reach (esp. Alliance, Influence on small maps, and Tech Vic when fast res speed) so I think the devs gave that a great deal of thought already.
But please devs - do something about automation: Simple logical routines IF THEN ELSE addressing objects in game, even WinAmp has plenty of them nowadays
Or, is that just too civilized?
I'd settle for no scoring system or a neutral scoring system and an alignment system with base values based on your overall decision patterns, not your A-B-C choices in a few event dialogs.
Seriously, Stardock needs to consider taking more Master of Orion II features and cloning them to GCIII, much improved of course. Optional tactical combat for starters. OR, make a tactical combat expansion package.
I agree that the game already has "civilized" ways of ending without using aggression (self defense of course but that's not the same), but I thought that was obvious.
The option of zero size components. I can't get any of the mods that use this to work in my own custom mods.
RTS? NO NO NO. Many of us specifically play this game BECAUSE it is not RTS. Many of us DESPISE RTS.
Completely new game?! Are you guys nuts? MoO already tried that with MoO3. Did you see how well that worked? If you want to play a different game then go and play a different game and not GalCiv.
I'll say it again. Carriers. Large ships that carry tiny ships into battle.
Quoting Krsont, reply 601. Change the way the techs work. At the moment it feels like 90% of techs have an effect that just adds some arbitrary percentage to a score/attribute, so it feels more like a grind and less like finding a cool new thing. No more "+10% fertility" or "slightly better laser gun" technologies. Have them do things that are distinct, interesting, and have a clear effect on the game.Bad idea. Keep it the way it is.
2. Connected to the above, remove all the fiddly little "laser III" style weapons. Have weapons with more interesting qualities. Lots of different types of damage and effects that allow civs and the ships you create to feel more unique.Bad idea. Kepp it the way it is.
3. Remove limitations on how many improvements can be built on a planet. Have planet quality refer only to population size, industry rate, instead (and maybe have certain improvements depend on a certain level of planet quality to build). To stop spamming of a certain improvement, have only one of each type available to build on a planet.Bad idea. Too much like "New Game"
4. More resources, that have unique effects, and can be found in a variety of places both in space and on planets. For example a fast propulsion drive might require "unobtanium", which can only be found on certain planets. Give resources fun and scifi themed names, not the current generic ones like "influence resource".
5. Allow useful things to be done to non-habitable planets. We could build unmanned mining facilities to exploit rare resources, millitary facilities, etc etc that act to improve the habitable planets in the system. Maybe even in late game you could terraform them.Uses for worthless planets. Good Idea.
6. Allow the construction of wormholes between systems, allowing instanteous or near-instantaneous travel between them. This will speed up combat and introduce a new dynamic to warfare - disruption of supply lines when enemy ships destroy wormhole gates to cut off distant systems from support.Bad idea. We all know the AI would be crippled by this.
7. Connected to the above two, have a generic "worker" ship module that creates stations, mining facilities, wormhole gates, etc. These work like miners rather than constructors, i.e. they aren't "used up" when they build something.Bad idea. Where exactly do the resources come from for the miners to use. That's why it takes time to build a construcor.
8. Have the concept of mixed populations. Currently when you conquer a planet, the native population dissapears and is replaced entirely with the soldiers. This is not only unrealistic, it implies that every single planetary invasion is accompanied with mass genocide! Instead it should track the percentage on each world that is of a certain race, and give you the option to either commit genocide, to enslave them, to give them limited rights, or to embrace them as full citizens of your empire. Depending on how you act, what the galactic situation is, and the character of the race itself (are they aggressive, freedom loving, etc?), this can have different effects. Treating them too harshly might lead to protests (that disrupt industry) or even full rebellion; however giving them too much freedom might cause the same thing. Over time, if they act peacefully and are given full rights, they become assimiliated and cease to have loyalty to their original empire. Of course, if they end up getting conquered again by their original empire, these traitors may face some harsh punishments for their lack of loyalty...Workable idea. As in "needs work", but has potential.
9. Remove the good-evil system, instead replace it with a simple system of values or policies, i.e. slavery vs. caste system vs. egalitarianism; democracy vs. dictatorship. If you act badly, however, for example committing genocide or slavery, or using terror stars, you can still expect other civilizations to look on you poorly.The game already works this way.
10. Minor races should be kept, but changed considerably. There should be a lot more of them, and the category should basically consist of all pre-space or pre-interstellar civilizations. They can either be exterminated, enslaved, or persuaded to join your empire (see point 8 above for possible repurcussions of this). They should provide unique bonuses that make them a strategic resource. It may even be possible for them to become a full fledged civilization given the right circumstances (e.g. a random event that has them using a salvaged ship to reverse engineer an interstellar drive).This is already in the game in certain decisions you make when you colonize planets. Pre-industrial civs are so insignificant they don't warrent more complexity.
11. More "terrain" in space. Nebulas that slow movement (but contain valuable resources), black holes, quasers... Basically all the wonderful and varied things that science and science fiction have imagined to make up the universe should show up in game. This might also include giant space monsters that attack ships.As long as there is a way to turn it off...
I like the idea of large ships carrying tiny ships into battle, also the carriers would need weapons of their own. Ship combat would turn into massive battles, epic.
BTW, Stardock is already considering making MOO4, so it would be a waste to make GC3 like MOO2.
http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/43030/Stardock-Talks-Star-Control-Master-of-Orion-Sequels
There are alot of great ideas that can be stolen from Sword of the Stars. In that game, every race has radically different means by which they travel from planet to planet. For example, Hivers can build star gates that allow alot of ships to move to another planet in 1 turn, but they move to a new planet using sub-light drives so they expand slowly, yet they can defend easily. The terrans use natural jump nodes between some planets to move around and can only move fast when using a jump node. Things like that. In addition, the tech tree is semi-random. The main tree is always there but as a technology diverges from the main tree the percentage chance that the tech can't be researched increases. Also, you can "push" development with more money but you risk a cataclysmic failure. For example, pushing research into AI technologies may cause the AI to go rouge and start a new faction with all of your technologies. They get the AI advantages and you loose them.
All I got to say is:
Imperium Galactica II
A game from 1999 and it did a whole bunch of things better than any other space-based strategy game (including GalCiv2); fleet combat, invasions/ground combat, colonies, planetary defenses, espionage, diplomacy, gridless map, to name a few.
Please, go play IGII before you even start coding GalCiv3!
I'd also like to see the possibility to play real time, shouldn't be hard to implement.
On one level, that sounds a bit incestuous. But if Stardock could cut a deal to do a MOO4 project before they start or get very far on GC3, that would be an awesome motivation for them to deepen and strengthen the 'generic' guts of their TBS codebase. That's assuming it's at all plausible to have two 'separate' game teams working to build fundamentally different front-end offerings based on the same in-development back-end infrastructure...
That game sucked so bad. I returned it and got my money back.
NO REAL TIME. Many of us that play GC2 play *because* it is NOT an RTS.
I'd also like to see the possibility to play real time, shouldn't be hard to implement.That would actually be rather difficult to impliment: you'd need pretty much an entire duplicate game engine, AI brain, economic system, and GUI (pretty much a whole game).
I don't think it's that hard. You just assign an amount of units to everything and in turnbased a turn would be x amount of units and in realtime a minute would be x amount of units.
I love it when my users tell me, "this won't be hard to implement" and then they proceed to tell me an idea that would require an entire rewrite of the project. Likewise, sometimes they say, "I don't know if this is possible, but..." and it turns out to be something that takes me 5 minutes. Only a coder familiar with the project can tell you how difficult a change will be to implement.
You're assuming stardock has already started to work on GalCiv3.
As I stated in my post;
Please, go play IGII before you even start coding GalCiv3!
Carriers, really? Is that really the first priority? I'd like seeing that too but if that's going to be GC III's prime marketing bullet, I'm bored. Anyway GC II can semi-simulate that already (fleet warp bubbles I believe they're called?)... yawn.
I'm totally fine with leaving GC mostly alone (and honestly it probably should be) and getting a MOO sequel instead of a GCIII. We have a modern and decent GC game - not so with the MOO series, and it's about time that changes.
Agreed on RTS (ugh!!!) unless we're talking a Star Control sequel where it'd be mandatory. 
I guess MOO 3 was a screw up just like Starcon 3, it can happen to any series, even GC. I'm impressed that Stardock has considered working on such sequels - the trick is (which the big producers always overlook) to not break the game in the process of improving it, and to do enhancements that add real value.
Depending on the type of game, fancy new updated graphics, 3D effects or UIs, or removing entire aspects of the game that made the original fun is how game publishers tend to screw up the worst. Do enhancements that add real value: with Star Control for example that might be:
Imperium II was "okay" for me, I think the main problem I had with it was the crappy interface/RTS game and the "boringness" of the RTS part entirely. Games that try to combine strategy/turn based and real time tend to do a great job with one, and a SUCK A$$ job with the other:
Total War series: Great job with the RTS part; piss poor turn based strategy game and AI which never improves from game to game
Space Rangers II: Amazing, dynamic, free-play, and immersive turn based game superior to even Star Control's outside-of-combat exploring; boring and tired RTS sub-game (good thing the bad parts of this game are entirely optional!)
Sometimes you'll have a game that successfully combines two very different game modes, like MOO II or the Romance of the Three Kingdoms series does (in general)-- but they're entirely turn-based, not turn-based + RTS.
RTS and turn-based games are mostly two totally separate markets with only some rare exceptions. The only successful series I can think of to do this well is the Total War games. (But with their lack of attention improving the strategy side, I'm losing interest.) No, we don't want RTS in our turn-based games here, even as an option (it'll cost in other areas to design and implement!), it's just too risky.
seen some good ideas but i would like to see somethings via stargate (not universe) as in
: working stargate tech (reach a certain level to gain access)
: ability to colonize other galaxys in the local group ( uses alot of resouces if able for it )
: colonisation fleets with a number of city ships ( 4 or 5 ) with armed fleets for protection at startup
: as in stargate the gates connect to the home galaxy when new colonys are up and new colonys become a source of revenue, resources and new undiscovered technology as they explore the new galaxy automaticaly
: they would independent for the most part only looking for help if in danger from a new enemy
: it would be the begining of a trans-galactic empire for whatever race you are
: as seen earlier in posts , streamline the colony's tech buildup once you select the base startup conditions so colony buildup happens more on auto
just my 2 cents
Interesting idea about colonizing other galaxies. Should the turns be on hold for every galaxy except the current one in focus?
I agree with this. Its a bit boring just to research through mark 1, mark 2, mark 3, etc., especially when there's not enough of an improvement to enable you to build a better ship.
I would LOVE to see strategic resources. :D
Oh god yes. Anything to prevent constructor spam.
I hope they don't. I like the ethical choices, and the fact that evil civs get a few different techs and improvements to good ones.
Whatever happens, they need to upgrade the Snathi to major race.
A few thoughts of my own:
- Give some reason not to put industrial output up to 100%. Maybe if its lowered you could get a population growth bonus, as your citizens have more time for family?
- Enhanced borders with agreements not to enter each other's territory. That's exactly the way it works in real life. Borders aren't magically protected by troops or walls. Countries rarely violate border agreements to avoid diplomatic incidents. But if they were determined there's little to stop them, until the violated country decides to react with military action. It should work that way in space too.
Regarding the tech trees, redesign. Ditch the unique tech trees for each race. It's just not worth the effort. Maybe a few unique technologies for each race is fine, but not a whole tree. Besides the insanity it creates when 'tech trading' and such, I just don't see the point in adding that complexity, it doesn't make the game world any more interesting.
Unfortunately that would just turn constructor spam into base spam (which is just as big a problem now if not more so). I like the idea but it'd need to have some other dependency "cost" for actually building structures.
I agree. Sending just one ship somewhere and getting a fully build-out base is not realistic. Neither is the idea to let the base grow overtime from itself.
I'd be happy with a modest graphical overhaul, a few new races and other goodies and a whole lot of rebalancing. On a commercial level, I think the invasion graphics was the worst part of GCII. The rest of the game is cute, but the invasion screen has always been substandard.
I would also say to bring all variables out of the binary and into python or XML, but I think they have already said yes to that.
The biggest problem with GalCiv2, TotA in particular, was that it was never balanced. There have always been useless improvements, useless technologies, and broken game concepts. A high percentage of them would have been easy fixes if Stardock had only invested the time. Frogboy seems to have an aversion to charting the progression, cost and benefit of game elements on a spreadsheet, but that's the only way to see how out of whack some things are.
Case in point: defense. It isn't worth the research time, space, or cost compared to just building a bigger hull or more ships. And it has been that way since day one. The AI seems to be smart enough to know this, since I have never seen it spend a great deal of resources on defense. However, if you cut in half the cost, size and research time for defense, it starts to be a viable alternative.
The morale, population and tax income triad is also out of kilter. Tax income is based on the square root of population while happiness goes down exponentially with population. The net effect is that you will get more income from low populations and econ improvements than from farms and morale improvements. All of which brings to mind GalCiv's equivalent to teats on a boar--300% food production bonus tiles.
But please don't reinvent the wheel with each update, whether it is an expansion or the next generation. I think that is a big part of the problem with bugginess and the general lack of refinement in PC games. Build on the foundation you already have.
I would also like to see somebody finally make some progress in defeating some of the core problems with 4x strategy games in general. The basic problem is, and has always been, that if you survive the insanely competitive colony rush, you can't lose. Unfortunately, that sure win may seem to take forever. Some progress has been made with alternative victory conditions, but the other half of the problem has never been addressed. That other half is that bigger is always better, and this is a direct consequence of the fact that new colonies, cities or whatever are just as good as the capital. Maybe colonies shold be sort of rustic and the lion's share of research and production should be centered in or near the capital. This would tone down the colony rush and provide a way to finish off an enemy without conquering every last outpost.
Actually, this depends. A 13b planet (one farm) will give you more tax income as a 6b planet with one Stock Market.
In case of 20b planets this is surely correct, as around 18b the moral upkeep is pretty hard to manage. Still there is a balancing factor therein to prevent Über-pop-planets (which would bring the Torians every game an easy influental win..)
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