I'm also unhappy about the nerf to insane, even considering that my machine can't run such maps.

Edit: For comparisons sake in GC2 I once managed to have 400 colonies. This was with everything set to abundant and after absorbing almost all major factions.

That's true, but it's far easier for the player to change their settings in map size and type than it is for someone with no knowledge to mod something even so basic as a xml.

It would be better for them to just add a "Star Count" slider with actual numbers instead of hard coded size limits and just let the player pick the star count right from galaxy creation/generation right at the start.

Even though it's not "Hard Coded" and is easily changeable by changing a xml, your average player doesn't mod. They look for mods to download and even take ones they don't like because it has one setting or one option they like even if it changes elements they don't want changed. Most people's first experience with any kind of modding or even xml changing usually comes from people trying to cheat and get bonuses or to make "Trainer Mods" for the lazy. They aren't even interested in modding in any form beyond that.

Agreed we can't cater to every type of player out there, but we shouldn't gimp things normal players can't fix to their liking without having to resort to learning how to mod in a game based around the choices and setting the players pick. In a Grand Strategy game players looking for a smaller game or faster experience are always going to be in the group that plays on the smaller maps for the most part anyway. Being that it is a grand 4x game however those of us who stick around for the long haul are those of us looking for the larger experience.

We shouldn't always fall back on the "modding is the answer" in a game that's designed just as much around player choice and customization just as much as it is around the gameplay mechanics. The average player doesn't know how to mod anyway which is why we always see so many basic questions of how to change things on the forums.

 

Ya, my system isn't state of the art anymore, but I do milk it to max performance.

i5 sandy bridge 2600k OC'[email protected] 32gigs of ram. I'm not even running the game on my SSD. Game runs smooth as butter for me. The only slow down I experience late game, is when I have vision over large sections of the galaxy and see everyone moving their ships. Even then, 10s is a slow turn.

I'm currently running an immense map, scattered, I bumped the star count back up to 500 or 600. Playing with 30 AI and the galaxy is laughably sparse. AI factions spawning on top of each other, with 2 or 3 colonizable planets within 10-15 turns of their starting positions. This is with abundant planets AND abundant habitable planets. I don't know what to say. As far as I know I can't mod the planet spawning rates.

The other consideration here is the Ideology system.  It is heavily dependant on planet colonization.  I already had worries about really playing with the tables with the current setup, but as long as there were a good number of planets to colonize, it was still working before one had to go to the improvement building route.  If there are "only" 200+ planets on an I/A/A/A game, I can only imagine what it is like on smaller maps (think I'm gonna test that actually).  Unless more vectors of Ideology comes into the game, this is going to force ideology building (and early) as opposed to making it something of a choice.  

Well, I suppose the choice is: Do I even bother pursuing Ideology.  Which is a valid argument in the "is/is not" a choice area.  But, IMO, ideology was already difficult to earn.  This just adds to the difficulty.  

Which isn't inherently bad.  But it is a factor here. 

True. Maybe point out a bit that it's purely a 64Bit game. If need be up the system requirements a bit . People only meeting the minimum specs shouldn't be complaining when they can't max things out anyway.

Add a warning label: Warning, 64 Bit God Game of Awesomeness. Do not run on Potato. Game Will Run on potato, however only on mid ranged settings.

Alright.  Time for more empirical testing.

All settings Abundant/Abundant/Abundant/Rare (Stars, Planets, Habitable, Extreme) on a Scattered Map with 7 opponents. 

NOTE:  FOLLOWING ANALYSIS DOES NOT INCLUDE THE PLANETS HELD BY MINOR RACES.  OOPS. :p SO TREAT AS A ROUGH GUIDELINE BUT STILL MORE OR LESS ACCURATE  - SEE REPLY #48 FOR UPDATED ANALYSIS

Tiny: 25-29 total colonizable planets (two tests) 

Small: 40-45 total colonizable planets (two tests)

Medium: 78-87 total colonizable planets (three tests)

Large: 105-127 total colonizable planets (two tests)

Huge: 134-157 total colonizable planets (two tests)

Gigantic: 174-177 total colonizable planets (two tests)

Immense: 215 total colonizable planets (two tests)

Excessive: 215 total colonizable planets (two tests)

Insane: 215 total colonizable planets (two tests)

The main problem here is the map size grows much faster than the number of planets.  It seems like it is at around Gigantic when the map size starts to outstrip the number of planets.  Just by a look at the minimap, at least.  And it flat out stops growing at Immense.

That actually sounds like a bug to me.  

Just by glancing things seem "reasonable" up to either Large or Huge.  Depending on preference.  But once it hits Huge, the problems start.  Just from eyeballing it at least.

Good work. Man those numbers are like a kick in the nads though . Hopefully them not changing at all after immense is indeed a bug. Either that or he just didn't change any after immense for testing purposes.

I checked the <Base> values in MapSizeDef, and they are different (368, 500, 600), so that's not it.  And I have a brand new fresh install and patch since I redownloaded the game yesterday, so that shouldn't be it either.

Looking at MapSetupDef I really can't see much different from now and before, so I don't think that's it, either.  Is odd though.  Most odd.

 

That suggests it's bugged, since the devs believe we'll be seeing about ten times that...

I don't necessarily like this new change either, though actually it did kind of make tight clusters more like islands as I believe was originally intended. It also made range more important and changed the nature of the game.

 

I actually like the idea puff having the base number set on a slider as it has a huge affect on how the game plays out.

 

I imagine once steam workshop integration is online that there while be hundreds off easy to download mods in this area.

 

Still I agree good to allow tweaking in game.

Well, the devs and I might be talking about slightly different things.  The numbers I have quoted are the planets that can be colonized at the start of the game (the one from my first post of testing didn't include the seven planets already held by opponents), including all Extreme Worlds. That IS NOT the total number of stars/planets in the game, however as it does not count all of the Dead Worlds in the game (a fraction of which can be turned into livable worlds via traits and possibly other things).

I really have no idea how many stars/dead worlds there are now in the various map settings.  And since I don't have sector lines, I'm not about to try to count them all (or the amount in a given area).

I`ve noticed a couple of buggy issues also, but this is the opt-in patch, it`s not the Official patch. We have to assume that by the time 1.02 proper is out these things will be better. They are no doubt working on it right now, so give them a little slack.

 

Nah, it's bugged all right - I've tried modding the values in the map files and it's just stuck at 208. 

 

Then I decided to try doing the same thing with planets set to common - you still get 208. They've left the map modifier out of the calculation.

 

EDIT: tested further. Changing the habitable Planet setting has no effect whatsoever on the number of planets - it's ALWAYS 208 on an insane Spiral map with everything else set to abundant. There's slight variations, based on minor races and opponents, but no change in the total number of habitables. That's it.

Even though it looks like it's bugged to some degree, I think a base number of usable planets generated v map hex count ratio should prove interesting.

Let's do that and see what we get.

NOTE:  FOLLOWING ANALYSIS DOES NOT INCLUDE THE PLANETS HELD BY MINOR RACES.  OOPS. :p SO TREAT AS A ROUGH GUIDELINE BUT STILL MORE OR LESS ACCURATE - SEE REPLY #48 FOR UPDATED ANALYSIS

Tiny: 2791 tiles 27 colonizable  planets generated (mid point)
Small: 4921 tiles 43 colonizable planets generated (mid point, rounded up)
Medium: 10981 tiles 83 colonizable planets generated (mid point, rounded up)
Large: 24571 tiles 116 colonizable planets generated (mid point)
Huge: 51091 tiles 146 colonizable planets generated (midpoint, rounded up)
Gigantic: 97741 tiles 176 colonizable planets generated (midpoint, rounded up)
Immense: 173521 tiles 215 colonizable planets generated.

Ratios:
Tiny: .96%
Small: .87%
Medium: .76%
Large: .47%
Huge: .29%
Gigantic: .18%
Immense: .12%

So once the map size hits Large, it falls off a cliff, with it accelerating as the map size increases.

My God, It's full of stars!

Well, not full of, but still a lot.

Awww, crap. I forgot to include the number of minors in my assessments on colonizable worlds (I didn't include them in my counts, like at all).  Knew I forgot something.  Hmm, though if your seeing the same thing that really doesn't matter THAT much, I suppose.

Guess I should try to rework my tables slightly, though the overall point still is valid.

Full of stars, maybe.  Full of planets?  I beg to differ.

 

Yeah, I forgot to get rid of them and other major races (of which I have 20), so I'm guessing there's around 240 being created. Might be worth checking if Habitable Planets is having any effect on any other map sizes - if it is, then we may be able to modfix this out.

I'm in the middle of doing a No Minors, Eight Base Faction series of tests on Everything Abundant except for Extreme Worlds.  I'll pop them in thread in a while.

 

I`m surprise it was reduced that much I`d reduce the base before to get less on the map but reducing it over a 1000 seem to be a lot!.

I have a Insane map I`ve been playing I`m on turn 170+ ATM I`ll have to play with the new setting to see how it play now.

I didn't realize it was this bad.  In my game I was playing in version 1.0 (continued in version 1.01 and 1.02) I have 196 planets right now and control about 20% of the galaxy and I don't even have all of the extreme planets colonized in my area of influence.  That means that in the current build when I generate a map (which I just did) I get 216 planets in the same settings in Galactic Civilizations III.  This means that planet/star generation has been cut by 80% or more approx.  Right now we can't even colonize thousands of planets which is what was promised pre-release through beta's.  Saying you can literally control thousands of planets.  Right now you can control 200 (hundreds of planets), which if memory serves me is less than Galactic Civilizations II.  

In the last game I played of Galactic Civilizations II I had around 380 planets in my control (give or take 20 as I had to manually count).  That is about twice as many as the current version of Galactic Civilizations III on a map many times larger.  Why is it that a game released 8+ years ago gave us more planets/stars to work with than the current version of the game?  I thought 64 bit gave us thousands of planets on a much larger map?  I guess not.  

Now like Frogboy stated it's still being adjusted but, it needs to be put back where it was or very close or it's a let down and, not what was promised as "thousands of planets" Please fix this soon.

It appears to just be limited to Insane - smaller maps (even Gigantic) have a variation. But around 200 appears to be some kind of hard limit for habitables - once a setting hits 200+X, it stops increasing no matter how much higher the setting is.

 

This means you move from tiny, where the most abundant setting is around 500% the lowest, to Gigantic where it's 200%, to Insane, where they're equal. I suspect they were trying to introduce a hard cap of 2500 and missed a zero.

No Minors/Eight Total Factions Test (planets held at start of game by opponents included in planet count):

Tiny: 31, 24, 24 [1.11%, 0.86%, 0.86%]
Small: 41, 44, 46 [0.83%, 0.89%, 0.93%]
Medium: 88, 108, 101 [0.80%, 0.98%, 0.92%]
Large: 126, 111, 113 [0.51%, 0.45%, 0.46%]
Huge: 152, 148, 131 [0.30%, 0.29%, 0.26%]
Gigantic: 206, 191, 189 [0.21%, 0.20%, 0.19%]
Immense: 215, 215, 215 [0.12%, 0.12%, 0.12%]

Interesting. The number of minors didn't change things as noted by naselus on Immense. It was 208 + number of other factions present.

Huh.

Did see a minor (no pun intended) bump on a couple of map sizes, but that might just be down to random luck and me hitting the extremes. Also makes me think my original anaysis is more or less accurate when it comes to planets to map size ratio.

I think pregenerated star systems for the factions is coming in somewhere.  I just did a test on Immense with only the Terrans and Drengin.

This time 204 planets were generated.

So, 1 for Earth, 1 for Mars, 1 Drengin, 1 for Kona, and 200 for everthing else.

Sounds like a cap problem indeed.

Also sounds like this is time to start sending in tickets to Stardock now that we might have narrowed the problem down.

 

Yup, seems like faction and minor race homeworlds are added after the galaxy is laid out - probably converted from dead worlds. Tried the same thing withjust me and one other race, no minors - and actually came out with less planets, only 203. This was still consistent at both least and most abundant habitable planets.

 

That's quite handy - colonize all automatically tells us the exact number of habitable planets that spawned, rather than not.