Newbie comments, queries and a bug report

Ships have a maximum range that they can travel away from your planets and starbases.  You can research techs in the engineering tree to extend this, or build star bases to extend your range.

Once you set a destination for a ship, it moves as far as it can on that turn.  It will then resume its journey at the end of the next turn.  Ship autopilot moves happen at the end of the turn, which can seem strange if you're expecting to see it move at the start of the next turn.  Also, they won't go past their maximum range.

Hi guys,

Just purchased GalCiv3 today and have played my first approx. 3 hours. Got some questions I hope someone can help with. And some comments for the developer. Sorry if these are dumb...

Comments:

- HOME key should take you to your homeworld

- You shouldn't be able to know the relative power of the other races until you've actually encountered them!

- Sometimes the text in the Research screen explaining what the researches do is partly obscured (doesn't fit text box)

- Would like a more obvious message once a new tech has been researched (at the moment you can easily miss it)

- Don't like the abbreviated names of the races so much (e.g. on ships) - makes it hard to recognize/remember them

- The alien language seems to be the same for all races - it would have been nice to have some variety here

 

Questions:

- Is there a way to randomize the starting races? (So it's more of a surprise)

- How do you enable "auto-survey mode" on the survey ship?

- How do I get my ships to automatically move to where I've right-clicked them to go at the start of the next turn? They just sit there otherwise, even though the movement paths predict where they will move. I find this micromanagement of the ships the most frustrating part of the game experience, which I am otherwise enjoying a lot

- Is this a bug? I have a ship that doesn't move, that it is it won't move any further to the west (away from Earth) once it's reached a certain distance. Is this intended, and how do I get my ships to move further away from my homeworld  - do I need to do certain research?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts - cheers! Ed

  

Comments:

Not a bad idea but the planet list is in order of ownership so the last planet click will take you home

Well, mebee, mebee not...you must have some kind of contact to know their power. The game assume there is fairly free exchange of info

On a long list of fixes

You can't proceed without clicking the new tech notice if you close the screen without picking a new one it will remind you next turn. Pretty hard to miss

You will probably get used to them but meanwhile you can rename enemy ships if you wish. Just click on the ship then click the name lower left and rename "That pesky Altarian" or whatever

What gave you that idea they are all different and require the Universal translater, before that they are transmitted phonetically

Questions

Yes you can randomize almost everything pregame selection

Click on the ship then click the lower left command button select auto survey

They skip a turn, this is an annoying game mechanic that someone can probably explain. I can't and I hate it.

Answered by Publius

I am hopeful that the large amount of information available will be strongly tuned at some point.   I should expect you need good relations to know much about another faction and to get even partial info on an unhappy faction  would take either capturing a ship/colony or espionage.    I shouldn't be able to know exactly what is in the Drengin fleet when they hate my guts, and all I know is that I saw one of their scouts.    On the other hand during the beta period there has been a general trend to give the human player excessive  information and advantages (like free upgrades to ships) so that tesing becomes easier.     Free upgrades are over, I think free info will also go away.    Great question for Friday live stream.

Many thanks, Publius and Franco for your detailed responses. I am getting more into the game now and learning how it works. In the past I played a bit of GalCiv2, so I am only partly a noob

Got some more questions, comments and issues to report:

- Govern Civ > Colonies tab, some of the figures in the columns don't match up with the icons in the column headers, so for example, for wealth, the figures given are for total manufacturing, and for research, the figures given are for net income

- Ideological traits - why do these get unlocked when they do?

- In GalCiv2 I'm sure there used to be a "view uncolonized planets" option (or at least view all planets discovered) via the main UI, and you could rank them by for example class, but now it seems you can only view planets you've colonized. Do you plan on bringing this feature back - it's extremely useful!

- Some of the planet descriptions from the main screen (when you hover over them) don't fit the text box

- How long a period of time does 1 turn represent?

- How do I obtain new trade licences?

Thanks for your continuing advice and support Loving this game so far!

Further:

Issues:

- Invasion appears to be buggy. Drengins invaded my planet, I asked to auto resolve, then got a message saying *I* was the invader! I won the invasion (note that "auto resolve" doesn't work, nothing happens when you click on it), but the Drengins took my planet! Same thing just happened with the Altarian Resistance.

- Had declaration of war messages twice, and only in one case was it clear who was declaring war (and then only from the body of the message, not the info box/screen). All I saw was a background instead of the face of one of their representatives.

- When I loaded a saved game, the approval ratings of all my planets had zoomed to 100%, whereas when I saved the game, some planets were as low as 55%.

Question:

- When you annex a world from another race, do all their facilities on the planet that they have built all get destroyed? That appears to be the case.

Quoting Ed1975, reply 4

- Govern Civ > Colonies tab, some of the figures in the columns don't match up with the icons in the column headers, so for example, for wealth, the figures given are for total manufacturing, and for research, the figures given are for net income

- Ideological traits - why do these get unlocked when they do?

- In GalCiv2 I'm sure there used to be a "view uncolonized planets" option (or at least view all planets discovered) via the main UI, and you could rank them by for example class, but now it seems you can only view planets you've colonized. Do you plan on bringing this feature back - it's extremely useful!

- Some of the planet descriptions from the main screen (when you hover over them) don't fit the text box

- How long a period of time does 1 turn represent?

- How do I obtain new trade licences?

Thanks for your continuing advice and support Loving this game so far!

-The colonies tab was just added in the last release. It is out of whack and will be fixed either with a patch or at least by B6

- You accumulate points from various sources. The decisions you make when you colonize a new planet about whether to kill the bugs or save the bugs gives you points for being good, bad, or down the middle. When you have enough points you get to pick a trait. You also get points from galaxy wide events and from some of the building that you build on your planets.

- I think you are thinking of a different game. I have played games with a list of un-colonized planets (Lords of the Black Sun, Distant Worlds) but I don't recall such a list in GCIIA list like that would be hard to adapt to GC since there are usually so many un-colonized planets it would be unwieldy, At least it seems so to me. Maybe some others will comment on this.

- This text box thing has been with us since the beginning they are going to fix it by the final release but it is low priority at this time.

- I believe it is supposed to be 2 weeks but I prefer to think of it as 2 months. There has been a lot of discussion on this and everybody has their own take on it . Two years fits my mental image of the story line better than 2 weeks. There is no perfect answer so I guess it is up to the individual.

- You get new trade licenses from trade techs and from a few of the ideology traits 

The issues you mentioned in your second post sound like bugs to me if you don't get a better answer from someone you should try to submit a save game to find out what's going on. There are plenty of bugs in the game but I went through this process with GCII from Alpha to gold release and they got it all fixed by the time it went gold.

When you annex a world (culture flip) you will get any improvements that the AI built on the planet. If you invaded the planet you may destroy some of the improvements but usually no more than half. If the AI had not have the planet long they might not have built much. The don't operate like people and they are sometimes slow to develop their planets.

There are some here that know a lot more stuff about the mechanics of the game than I do maybe they can give you a better answer on the invasion thing but it sounds like a bug to me.

Hope this helps I am always glad to answer any questions that I can.  

just from being a forum troll it sounds like the invasion viewer only shows the attacker side definately a bug but it means you have to be aware of what side your on and if it says you won while defending it means you lost

Thanks, Franco.

Re. the uncolonized planets list, it would just be the planets you'd discovered. I'm sure there was such a list in GC2 and it was quite manageable. You could also do stuff like rank the planets by class.

More comments and a couple of questions:

Observations:

- Can confirm, having seen several more invasions, that it is totally bugged - the attacker and defender are mixed up in the process.

- "Had declaration of war messages twice, and only in one case was it clear who was declaring war (and then only from the body of the message, not the info box). All I saw was a background instead of the face of one of their representatives."

This has ocurred several more times.

- The AI still needs some tuning. In one turn 5 civs declared war on me, and the very next turn, one of them said "we're bored with war, how about peace"? Then, 2 turns later, the same faceless civ declared war on me again...then 3 turns later, asked for peace.

It does seem as if the AI has got it in for the human player - they seem - from my experience so far - to gang up on him. I set out with the aim of being a peaceful, trading civ, but this isn't possible - the AI will declare war on you for apparently no reason. One of their complaints is my militarization (purely for defensive purposes), but it's OK for the AI to militarize(!)

- I think being able to make alliances takes way too long - you should be able to diplomatically approach other civs about this early in your diplomatic development - it's not rocket science, after all...

Questions:

- How do you get the planetary invasion tech (other than tech trading)?

- I can't see a diplomatic option for asking for peace (perhaps in return for something(s))

Thanks for your further thoughts

Planetary invasion is an age of war tech in order for you to get it you need all the prerequisite techs for it and have enough age of expansion techs unlocked to advance to the age of war

The peace treaty option does not appear until you are at war. If you are at war and there is no peace option, it must be off of the table for some reason.

The game is funny that way. Sometimes when you can't do something it is hard to figure out why. Usually to get peace you have to get ahead militarily, or pay through the nose. If you are beyond help the option might not be there. If you have enough BC sometimes you can buy enough fleet from other players to get you back in it.

Remember the game is beta and there is still a lot of balancing to do. When this latest release came out I commented elsewhere that the AI seemed too grouchy. You have to stay equal with them to avoid war with those with a different ideology. They always bitch about military build up, even if you have no military ships. 

If you get too far in a hole I recommend starting a new game. While you are learning there is no reason to fight lost causes. You might also take the difficulty down a notch to beginner, if you are not there. I played a lot of games on beginner before I learned the game. Think carefully about every decision. I like single player turn based games because I can not be forced to make a bad move because the barbarians are at the gate or because I am worried that other players are getting impatient.

How you develop your planets and run your economy is critical. Keep asking questions and read the forums. There will eventually be a tutorial but you will learn a lot more by asking questions and reading the answers to yours and others. 

GC2 (at least TA) did have a list of unowned planets, it was a tab on the planet/ship list on the left side of the screen.  I do recall another game having a more useful list, don't remember which one though.  As I recall, it listed discovered but unowned planets by planet quality and allowed you to queue a colony ship to go there from that window.

I had forgotten the list. Now I'm going to have to go back and look.

I'll bet the game you are thinking of is Distant Worlds. Their list is exactly as you describe