Angry feedback regarding the current state of the game.

The AI plays by the same rules you do, they may get extra bonus's as the difficulty goes up (cheat) but, they play by the same rules.

What map type are you playing, as abundant planets should have allowed you to get 2 ideology picks after colonizing 3 planets?  Abundant I agree could be more as it appears greatly reduced from Gal Civ II, however, nothing in the scale you're describing.

I don't see this as an issue, you can build a shipyard or not, I normally choose to focus on building a few manufacturing buildings on a planet I'm building a shipyard on then build the shipyard goes a lot faster.

You expect a carrier to be an all powerful ship that can't be destroyed and can take out everything?  It has to be balanced...

You had to wait in Gal Civ II as well, one would get annoyed with you if you were constantly bugging them with crap.

AI will only get smarter, 

The only thing I have to say about this is, you appear extremely negative, I hope you can get past this and enjoy the game I know I do.  

1) Build some military, kill the pirates?

2) Sounds like you are doing something wrong. You know you get 10 ideology points every time you colonize a planet right? So you are saying after 220 turns you have colonized less than 6 planets? Maybe try a map with more room to grow next time.

3) Kill pirates, send constructor, build shipyard. Simple.

4) No comment, haven't tried the carriers yet.

5) They limit it so it can be balanced, in other words precisely so that you can't get massive trade income as fast as you can pump out trade ships, as that would render the game's entire economic system meaningless.

6) Really, you are going to compare the AI in a 4X game to shooter games? The AI for 4X's has to be an order of magnitude more complex as there are so many more rules and variables the AI has to know about to play reasonably well. The strategy genre has a long long long history of providing the AI bonuses at higher difficulties to be able to compete because the truth is we aren't very good at coding AIs that can handle this level of complexity. See MOO, Civ, just about every 4X ever made.

Uhh, what? If the pirates played by the same rules as us, they'd be a civilization, not pirates. Barbs in Civ don't get research either, and yet they upgrade their units with the ages all the time. Pirates don't heal after combat, just like barbarians. Just show up and start raiding is what barbs/pirates are supposed to do. They're there so that you don't constantly feel safe sending unarmed ships out into no man's land. Fortunately, they're slow as hell, so you can usually just avoid them.

Did you never found a single colony!? Sorry, OP, this one's on you. You get 10 ideology points every time you found a colony, which is enough to get your second ideology point after 3 planets - you're not supposed to rely entirely on events to get your ideology... I get the feeling you weren't focusing on any one ideology and were just making decisions randomly, if you were expanding at all.

You know, even in GC2, you couldn't start building ships on a planet until it had a shipyard, and back in GC2, Shipyards cost just as much as the current ones, plus took up an entire tile on the planet below. They moved shipyards off-world to reduce micromanagement, free up planet tiles, and allow planets to pool their resources together, and it worked. I love shipyards. To wit, any planet with enough production to be a viable ship-production planet can build a shipyard in like 3 turns or less. 

Dude, wtf are you talking about? Carriers are amazing. My custom Star Destroyer is a mix of Carrier and Capital Ship, and they annihilate everything they come across. This, despite them being a MEDIUM hull, not a Large hull like most Carriers. If they didn't require 3 Durantium for their guns, I could win the game spamming nothing but. The cost isn't even that big a deal, my homeworld rams them out in 2 turns or less.

Are you using Drone Carriers? Drone Carriers are much weaker than Assault Carriers, as a trade-off for Drone Carrier modules being much smaller than Assault Carrier modules. Assault Carriers are the GOAT. They carry a self-replenishing, self-repairing, self-upgrading, logistics-ignoring squadron of Small ships that have the best of all 3 weapon and defense types. I have yet to lose a single Star Destroyer in combat across any of the games I've played. Maybe you need to increase your Miniaturization? I do contend that it did take an a**load of miniaturization for me to finally be able to fit all that into one medium hull.

I'm not exactly sure what you're complaining about here.

Dude, they still aren't even done writing the code for the average AI. To get it to the point it's at now, it took an eternity of testing and watching how the AI screwed up, then teaching it not to do that anymore. This being a GalCiv game, the AI is going to continue to evolve as time goes on, but AI doesn't invent itself. All of those games' AI that you mentioned are shooters, as well, and those games don't require nearly as much intricacy as a 4X AI. There's so much that the AI has to keep track of, and if you over-code the AI, the game slows down because they need processing power to make decisions.

Even those games you listed don't have true learning AI, they straight up cheated too, and made it look like they were learning. Writing an AI that actually learns is a pipe dream, especially when you have to write each one from scratch every time you make a new engine.

1. I don't care for the pirates. They are one dimensional, boring, and a general pain in the ass after 50 turns of dealing with them. Not a problem though, some like them fine and I can turn them off if I wish to. That's fair, as the AI says.

2. I am sure the ideology works great on abundant everything but in the more sparse games I play, it takes me 150 turns to activate 1 line of traits. I don't consider this much of a problem, if it were faster the insane map abundant players would probably run through all the traits in all 3 ideologies by turn 300.

3. The shipyards are okay as is. I was a little shocked by the new cost of building, so I just use a 1 module constructor now. I only build shipyards on every 5th planet anyway.

4. The carriers are not what they used to be, but what they used to be was a game breaker that could not be defeated by the AI. If you have all the carrier tech they are still good but the carrier modules are more like sticking on a couple of extra doom ray banks, and less like hell cometh. 

5. Do you have to wait? I don't send freighters that much. Edit: Oh, I guess you mean the 10 turn (or what ever it is now) wait to contact the AI. I modded that out in an earlier version but I am waiting for the final release to decide going forward. Now that they have wised up the AI, I don't need to talk to them as much. I can no longer get 400-500 BC per turn from the minor races.

6. We are told that the AI only gets what we get on normal and I have no real reason to doubt that. I see some odd things occasionally but they are likely just false impressions.

Others have already stated pretty much what I was going to.

 Turn off your pirates. They are a raiding force that lives in Starbases, more will be done with them at a later date.

IF you have played 220 turns without being on your 7th or 8th Ideology you are doing it wrong. Change your settings. I play on RARE and RARE and I usually have about 10 planets by turn 180 and I STILL have 5 or 6 ideology pics. Make your first Ideology pick the building that gives you a point per turn. Each Ideology has this building in their respective first tier.

Carriers are WAY OP, period. They are the players I WIN button.

Trade has always required the respective tech to do so, All Civ games and GC I, II.

The ai in this game is perhaps the best coded AI I have seen in 20 years of 4x gaming. Nothing and I mean NOTHING has had (at a gold launch) ever had a better AI than the one in this game.

You sound angry, I am glad you are enjoying the game enough to come here and post!

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I'm sorry that you are not enjoying your experience at the moment. I would like to add my 2 cents to these subjects and perhaps expand upon or at least discuss what I know about these points. As well as add my opinion on them naturally. 

1) The pirates are not meant to be similar in any way to to races. They are an entirely different element. The barbarian comparison is a good practical reference. Pirates being pirates are prone to looting and plundering. These space pirates are out there intercepting ships and selling off the scrap. Actual game mechanic... of course not, but when games can include anything from 2 races with around 10 billion people each to 100 races over 100 billion people each, you have to assume that space faring races will have citizens traveling the galaxy, for various reasons... tourism? The pirates are out there raiding. When you personally encounter this band of rebels the will have ships that the build upon over time. getting new parts from the scrap they collect. The pirates have limitations, and I'm sure being tuned from the way they act to what they can be/do. The current pirates are a game feature that presents a problem for a player to solve by researching and producing war ships. They are basically an intro to battle. They start out small enough that they can only get your unarmed ships and thats if your unlucky. With a very limited move speed they can't really give chase to ships. You could even skip that early urge to build weapons to engage them with and go with sensors to avoid them. Or speed to zip past. Of course they will build up with time if left unchecked. The survey ship everyone starts with is more then a match for them. If you have an early pirate problem use it to hunt them down then park it near their shipyard and kill anything they try to get flying until you have the ability to remove the shipyard. I suppose in my honest opinion, I really like the pirates mechanic as it is right now. I wouldnt mind if they had a very limited diplomatic actions... ex give safe passage if paid, or hire them to attack a certain race if they can. I would suggest these be pricey and short lived. Pirates aren't the reliable bunch that johnny depp  would lead us to believe. They can also be turned off for players who prefer not to have that element in play.

2) there sounds like something was wrong with your game. That is not typical. Perhaps a ticket would help them or more details on what your settings were at was it single or multiplayer? I believe the settings they would need are things like map size, game rate, event rate... not entirely sure what else but as much as you can think of.

3) Building larger ships on planets isn't "realistic". Even if it was assumed that you built them from your planets would you not need to build a shipyard on your planet? The space shipyards I think add an element of depth to the game. It can add game play potential as well. Intel into what they are working on is visible by looking at them, as well as in the info bar. Sending ships really depends on where they are and where you need them. If you have a newly colonized planet with a shipyard, your production is still going to be low. Meaning it wont be able to just start springing ships out quickly anyways. Other then early game, I tend to send mine with a warship to defend it if I feel there is any threat.

4) I can't say much about them as I have not been known to use them often. I just today used them in a fight for the first time since probably beta 5. I really couldn't make a comparison. They were effective for my needs. Obviosly they shouldnt be used as a battle fleet but as a support for a fleet. They aren't built to get beat up.

5) I believe you are talking about trading to other races via the diplomacy. The other races simply don't want to talk to you all the time. It is something I think will be tweaked a bit at some point but the frequency is determined by map size and race count. To be honest them not letting me trade whenever I want changed how I trade a bit. It also helps to keep me from gaming the AI by grabbing say every colony ship they produce. As it's set I would personally prefer being able to trade with them sooner then I can but its not bothering me to much.

 6) The AI balancing for each setting was recently tweaked and admittedly the AI is scary good at higher settings. As it should be, at normal I don't think they gleam any unfair advantages. 1 step above that is at this time a whole other matter. This has been recently tweaked and I'm sure is still going to be. Its just dialing it in. The AI will respond to a players play style some at this point, certainly more with time. 

Pirate are breakaway/criminals etc,  they are not a civilization.  Now personally I do look forward to seeing them become more invovled (I would love to see LOW moral planets 'spawn' pirates (and likewise pirates lower morale of nearby planets)

Personally pirates seem to be a bit tech stale to me, after the beginning they are usually just a steam role (and often a free ship ,  personally  when spawned I would like to see them have ships equivalent to the 'average' ship in the nearest ('source') civilization. (or if possible they 'olderst combat in use),  Bonus points if ships could actually 'rebel' and leave your fleet to become pirates.

Again,  as others have mentioned, how many planets do you have, the main (initial) source of points is colonization of planet.  the 'random; events are 'extra'  also if playing on small number of planet maps,  building the 'point' buildings is important and a valid trade off.  Get the free Colony ship (my favorite first), or get a building for free points every turn.

Now I do think that the points needed, should be scaled by map size (or perhaps points awarded per planet equal X/Number of planets.  So on a small map, you may get even 20 or so points for each colony (but likely only 10 colonies) on insane abundant map, you might get only 1 point,  BUT you likely have 20+ colonies before you meet another race.

Shipyard a a VAST VAST improvement over previous versions.  Shipyard no real complaint (although would agree a 'lsit' view of them all would be nice,  though the 'mini; list on the right hand side works, it would be nice if you could open it up to a full screen window.

Only other thing I would change/add (and maybe I jsut havent figured out how), is if we could specify the default launch direction

Useful to worthless?  ¿WTF?  They are still the 'best' bang for your buck on building a fleet.  Especially per Logistics point.  (cost to me is usually less of a concerns, my manufacturing planets usually have plenty of production power).

Now my ideal change would be:  1) part of the 'mass' is hard code (non reducable) based on the base 'size' of the hangar (I.E. you want 100 'size' of fighters,  your mass is going to be 100 + overhead,  only the 'overhead' is reducable by tech.

And secondly (especially combined with the above), we could customer build the 'wing' in each hangar.  I.E. we could build say 2 guardians and 1 assulat ship that used up the hangar space and that was the 'fighters' in the wing).

Now if the above was done (and in truth any way),  I personally thing the status of the 'fighters' should be tracked seperately and they really shoudl track damage, having had a carrier use its flight wing 6 times in one turn,  and each of those times lose about half the fighters, but magically they are back 1 second later is a bit overpowered.  at a bare minimum it should track the fighters health status for the 'turn' even if they fully respawn each turn, but ideally (to me),  they really should just heal as indvidual ships (perhaps even with a bonus for the 'hangar' bay repairing them).

Presuming your really mean 'Diplomacy' not sure of a delay on trading (now limit to number of trade routes, but no 'delay').

The limit is fine (or better yet, just make it a -5 reaction, each time you click 'request meeting' to limit spam, even your BFF, if they call you every five minutes will turn into an enemy.

Now to me, personally they changes I would like to see are:

1) You contacting me, does NOT reset my ability to contact you.  I have had the AI contact me the turn after I contacted them,  why can't I contact them the turn after they contact me?

2) The ability to 'close the communication window' without actually responding,  so exactly what is going on can be reviewed.  (less important on dialogue initiated BY you (as you should have your Ducks in order before calling),  but to expect me to answer a call at 2am, and not put you on hold, why I go check my notes/what is going on with another race, when you call and say hey lets go to war with Y, nadda.  I really want to be able to see my relations with the other race,  check my suppply of Rare item X, etc before agreeing to a trade that just popped up.

All depends on the Difficulty level you play on.  Havent really looked at the numbers, but pretty sure at the easiest they are getting a penalty (and or you get the bonuses).

This seems like a blatant troll post to me...

Just sayin.

Oh, dear, oh dear, take some deep breath and try and relax, I'm sure you and your friend aren't the only ones with some bugbear or other with the game, doesn't mean your subjective opinions are right though;

1) If they had planets they would be minor civilizations not pirates, so the answer is simple turn them of and play with minor civilizations on and you have just what you want as minors can build ship yards and their resources are planet based. Your making a drama out of absolutely nothing here. 

2) No idea how you managed to do this I normally unlock my first ideology pick about 3 - 4 turns in when I colonize a planet if not sooner and the second one probably about 20 turns later when I grab a couple more. If anything I think it's too easy to progress up the ideology tracks too quickly.

3) It makes no sense to build large spaceships at the bottom of a gravity well if you don't have to from a sense point of view, also having shipyards be sponsor-able by multiple planets allows you to pool your production in them. this is one of my favorite changes, but you can't please all of the people all of the time and some people are bound to hate any design change.

4) I can't comment here I haven't tried them out, but from your rant sounds like they where over powered and got nerfed, and your complaining they nerfed them too much. Let you know once I've tried them out properly what I think, but I expect like statecraft there will be balance changes for a while after release.

5) Might have to ask someone else to decipher what this particular part of the rant was about, are you complaining you have to unlock things from the tech tree to establish more trade routes? As I say it's hard to understand exactly what you mean here.

6) Explain to us how you would implement this learning AI, I have just completed a machine learning course and their is no way for a learning AI using any current technique to learn to play this game, computing power issues aside we don't have the techniques. An FPS is a different beast an exponentially easier issue as a machine learning problem.  AI improvements will come at the moment I find the AI more than adequate on normal and below to beat the average player, collected stats show 76% of players in the beta played on Beginner.

Personally I'm really loving the game now despite the fact it still has a few real bugs and flaws and not every design decision is exactly the one I would have made I still think it's a great game. But no game works for everyone, hope you and your friend enjoy whatever you end up playing. 

This is good advice, I played a map where I was only able to colonize two planets! Which made moving down the ideology tree somewhat difficult.

But that mechanism seems broken to me. If there's one obvious first choice then it's not really a choice, is it? And if a new player doesn't pick that choice (assuming, as I did, that they will have opportunities in the flow of the game to generate ideology points) then the whole thing is going to appear pointless.

It seems to me that once you unlock an ideology you should be able to build that ideology's building. Though that might be IMBA, perhaps you need to unlock the second level of the ideology. but anyways, it shouldn't be a choice. At some point you're going to run out of colonizable planets and then, if you haven't unlocked the ideology building tech, you're pretty much done with that feature.

Edit:

So pirates are broken? Then they shouldn't be in this release (or at least they shouldn't be turned on by default in the release).

In general, after wading into the EWOM mess I think this community needs to be more open-minded about criticisms like this. People are going to like the game. People are going to hate the game. But it's not in our (or Stardock's) interest to dismiss the complaints of people who should like the game out of a knee-jerk defensiveness.

Many of us have been playing this game for months (or years, if you count GC2). But there are going to be thousands of players who have never heard of GC2 before, never played a TBS like this before. In another AI thread, Brad said that most people play this game on "Beginner" difficulty!

So saying "turn off this BS feature" is not a good sign. Saying a feature works as long as you apply a non-obvious strategy is not a good sign. And dismissing angry reviews as trolls is definitely not a good sign.

The ideology buildings are not always the right pick depends on circumstances but can be useful. With plenty of planet to colonize you really don't need them.

No pirates aren't in anyway broken you and the OP just don't like them, so we suggest turn them off when you play, you can't please all of the people all of the time. I enjoy the pirates. For the record I always play with pirates on because I like them, are you saying that option should be removed from me because you don't like the way they work?

I don't think we where dismissing these criticisms, just saying we didn't agree with most of them and that in some cases like pirates if you didn't like them you could turn them off.

You shouldn't dismiss constructive criticism and I'm all for logical debate on the way things work. But when dealing with an OTT rant where the poster seems to think Stardock should  immediately change the entire game to suit their preferences no matter what other players may think I feel compelled to point out where I disagree if for no other reason than so stardock can judge the balance of opinion.

I'm more looking at it from the perspective of someone playing the game for the first time. What choices are fun? What makes sense?

Ideology and Pirates are both really interesting game mechanics that can (and sometimes do) add spice to the flow of the game. But if pirates are just annoying for 50 turns and then irrelevant (or annoying throughout the whole game) then they're not working. Telling people to "turn them off" is not really addressing the problem. What other features of the game will we commonly suggest players "turn off"?

But would a new player know this? Would they say "Oh, ideology. Well clearly, instead of all these fun choices that make the game more interesting, I'll pick this 'strategic' choice which should hopefully let me make some more choices in the future."

Come to think of it, Elemental was plagued with crap "choices" like that. So I guess the only thing that should surprise me is that Stardock hasn't learned their lesson.

The attitude presented in the OP results in a similar attitude in responses.  Lines like "wow, did you screw this up" don't exactly get people on your side.  Here let me answer your questions the right way(except no.4 with which i have little experience):

1)lolwut

2)Bro, do you even colonize?

3)If you can't afford to build a shipyard, you can't afford to build anything with a shipyard.

5)balance.

6)these oranges taste oddly like apples, don't they?

If you can rephrase your concerns in a way that is constructive and civilized, maybe I'll take the time to respond in kind.  As far as I'm concerned this is only response the OP warrants.  Have a nice day and enjoy the detailed, well thought-out responses the other forum members have been kind enough to provide.  I'm obviously not as nice as they are.

Probably not, but then learning and experimenting with this kind of decision is part of learning to play the game. Just because something is not immediately clear to a new player does not mean it's broken or wrong.

Well yes because to be honest I rarely pick them, as some of the others seem more immediately useful early on and it's been that way since they where new to me so I was a new player.

As for the pirates, they add some interest in the early game and a bit more challenge as far as I can see that's all they are intended to do, hence I don't think they are in anyway broken but that's a subjective opinion as is yours. 

I respectfully disagree that GC3 has the same sort of problems that Elemental had, but respect you right to hold that opinion or any other opinion you may hold. I do agree elemental had a lot of issues mostly around them trying to add to many conflicting elements to the game that didn't gel, I don't feel that way about GC3.

GalCiv isn't a novice 4x. In the past several years there has been, IMO, a lot of "streamlined" 4x games releases. people new to 4X may find galciv 3 intimidating at first. But I'd rather have that than the alternative.

When I played my first game I would immediately recognize the importance of the ideology buildings as something very important as a long term investment. Anything that give you points over time is better to get now rather than later in most cases. So I really think this will have more to do with you as a person than the choices being unintuitive or not.

I"m not saying everything in this game are crystal clear though...

I did go for the industrial techs in my first few games before I realized that approval, growth and food are more important for early expansion, but that has to do about learning the game mechanics.

When I read "reviews" like this and I spot so many logical flaws in the players thinking I usually disregard them as player error rather than anything else. If you as a player don't even bother to stop and think about how things work and just play by intuition that fault is on your side. Intuition are not always right, knowledge is always so much stronger and you are responsible for informing yourself. All the data are there in the game, you just have to experiment a little during your first few games.

I always start a few times and end after an hour or so and start again with new game. I want to understand the game so I know what I do, I hold everyone to the same standard and feel that you are the only one who can decide if you want to be informed or not.. do you swallow the red or the blue pill!!!

drakkos137  I think we are never going to agree on most of this we are looking for different things from this game. I believe you are looking for a much simpler, smaller scale game with for examples few planets to manage. Try Moo2 or maybe ascendancy. GC3 is very much the descendant of GC2 and has more in common with that than GC1.

One thing you might try is playing on a small map with no pirates and some minors seems that would suit your style more; but in all honest GC3 just might not suit you, a pity.

So by "yes", you mean "no, new players will not make that choice".

I just played a game (I won) where I was only able to colonize two planets. I think I ended up picking 3 ideologies in the entire game.

This conversation about ideology is pretty much the exact same conversation I remember participating in about the "+Experience" trait for heroes... I think that was during the 2nd expansion of the game actually. There was a discussion about whether it was worth doing, people posting math, what conditions it made sense to pick it (it almost never made sense), etc.

But the end result of that conversation was that, while there might be some strategic choice involved, it just wasn't fun.

Anger against injustice shows strength of character.  Anger about a video game shows the inability to control a temper tantrum.  Your posting style invalidates any points you might or might not have and brings the whole conversation down to the level of squabbling two year old children. 

The only question in my mind is if this is a clumsy failure in communication, or a deliberate choice to be antagonistic then blame the reader for what follows.

I play with a friend named bugbear. I assure you that term brings a whole new meaning when he is involved

Difficulty grasping concepts is not the problem here.

Balance issues, and cheating AI, is the problem here.

Do go ahead with your condescension, however, its clearly that I'm simple, haven't planned this out well enough, or considered options.

You don't like the format of my angry rant?

Oh noes.

If there be pirates, the pirates should be using 1) the tech they can acquire, unless you care to explain why and how they are performing research themselves (pirate research labs?) 2) and should be required to spend the resources they steal to create ships.  Otherwise, it isn't realistic in the slightest.

I didn't ever say I had issues building stuff, and its amusing someone should mention ideology, as that's my favoured playstyle; "tall", benevolent, culture.

Been that way since Gal Civ 1.

So, this game is like Gal Civ 2, not Gal Civ 1, and no matter how much feedback I give, that'll always be the case?  So my $100 is worthless, because you say so?

Well, I'll just stop the feedback right now, then, on your command.

Also, ironic, "smaller", this iteration of the game feels like everyone is in your back pocket.

Space, the Final Shoebox... these are the very brief voyages of the AI, to steal all your resources, build starbases in your ZoC, colonize your planets, and then complain at you every turn about how you're bothering them.  Here's some quick tech advantages, AI!  Faster!  Faster!

I'm still chuckling at that "you can't trade every turn, the Ai doesn't like to be pestered", then the damn AI is telling me every single turn how weak I am, how much better my worlds would be with them, then its all about how my trade with them is great, and strengthening our relationship.  It won't shut up. 

"Deliberate choice to be antagonistic", as the trend is not reversing, and I've made several comments on this matter, as I've alluded to before.

Oh, I'm sure some of it could have been formatted better, presented more clearly, worded better, but I'm not getting paid to do this, I'm paying to do this.

A two-year old?  Really? 

That two-year old must type like a sum-bitch.

At the end of the day, I DON'T FIND THIS FUN.

I played the HELL out of Gal Civ I: Ultimate, and STILL find it fun, in spite of massive technical limitations, and that damn ship battle slowdown bug.

So, if I don't find this fun, maddeningly so, I'm to sit back, shut up, and let my hundred bucks fuel your enjoyment?

Thanks, but no thanks.

I'll continue to comment on stuff I see as a problem, and I'll get more vocal and more vitriolic the longer I feel its ignored.

Power overflow setting player might to zero?

Great example of "important stuff that really should have been dealt with a while back".

I'm also incredibly unfond of Sid Meier, and Civ 5, so if I see the game going that way, you can be sure I'll comment in the negative.