Massive v1.9 Update Now Available for Galactic Civilizations III

from GalCiv3 Forums

Your Holiday Present is Here!
Faster Start-Up Times, AI Improvements, New Capstone Techs, and more in v1.9

Do you like a good challenge? Then buckle up your space seatbelt and get ready for a ride. Our CEO Brad Wardell has been working on the game and has some serious updates to share! If you’d like to read a bit about his process, check out his posts here and here. To see everything that went into v1.9, make sure to check out the full change log below.


Some of v1.9’s highlights include:

  • Capstone Techs: Research new techs in the Age of Ascension! These techs provide large (though temporary) empire-wide bonuses that stack as you get them
  • Performance Optimization: A newly enhanced multithreaded system dramatically improves load times and reduces memory usage.
  • A.I. and Balance: The AI has received a bit of a boost! You’ll notice that they are smarter about expanding, building fleets, and spreading influence, and more. Ready for the challenge?
  • Rich, Unique Galaxies: Performance optimizations have allowed the addition of more stars and planets, making galaxies feel even more vast than before.
This massive update has been brought to you thanks to your feedback. As always, we appreciate our community and we absolutely listen to what you have to say. If you have some thoughts on the update, please feel free to let us know in the comments!

v1.9 is now available and waiting in your Steam client.
To see the full list of changes, please check the change log below.

For more information on Galactic Civilizations III, please visit www.galciv3.com. 

v1.9 CHANGE LOG: 

Optimization

  • Memory: introduced new texture compression for planetary and ship textures to greatly reduce memory usage and dramatically improve startup times.
  • Removed legacy stopwatch code from the sound system
  • Moved old profiling junk
  • Reduced CPU usage of the particles and main graphics threads
  • Removed redundant debug output
  • Multithreaded the texture loading at the start of game to improve performance.

AI

  • AI builds scout ships later in the game to keep exploring very large galaxies
  • Dramatically reduced AI >normal economic bonuses (no longer needs them)
  • Re-designed the way the AI expands into the galaxy with colony ships so that its expansion no longer stalls on large maps
  • Dramatically reduced the amount of time an AI will interact with a player if they are not within ship range
  • AI doesn't try to bribe other players to go to war unless they and the other players have a decent military already
  • AI will no longer give tech gifts to players with a different ideology (i.e. no more Drengin giving you tech if you're a nice person)
  • AI now scales the number of similar ship projects based on number of colonies rather than a flat number
  • AI pumps up colony ship production priority if there are a lot of nice planets laying around
  • AI pumps out fewer Constructors in general
  • Re-designed the way the AI determines which planets should get a shipyard to be more (way more) intelligent
  • Updated AI's handling of adjacency bonuses to be more intelligent
  • AI values planet quality more when picking planets to colonize 
  • AI somewhat more heuristic on tech research
  • AI somewhat quicker to war
  • Auto Surveying Survey Ships will now survey extra anomalies if the ship has extra movement points.

Balance

  • Made low level factories cheaper, provide smaller bonuses.
  • Reduced the size of maps while keeping the same number of objects, effectively increasing the galactic density.
  • Increased the zoom distance. 
  • Lowered diplomacy bonus of the Diplomacy Techs.
  • Diplomacy tech effect to Diplomacy ability increased from 0.5 to 1
  • Influence MinToClaim increased from 0.33 to 8
  • Influence Radius root reduced from 3.25 (^0.325) to square root (^0.5)
  • Eliminated the Influence Bell Curve target divisor.
  • Influence fall off is increased from -0.3 to –10
  • Capital Influence per turn increased from 1.5 to 3
  • Colony Influence per turn reduced from 2 to 1
  • Removed the faction ability bonus from the Diplomatic Office
  • Removed all faction ability bonuses from starbase modules
  • AI is much MUCH smarter about detecting cultural flipping strategies
  • AI is much better about detecting fast alliance strategies
  • Colonies now instantly update when you rush build to show the effect of the new building.
  • Adjusted tech cost to increase per tech age
  • New capstone technologies that can be researched repeatedly for galaxy wide bonuses
  • Minor races will now establish trade routes.
  • Tweaked influence such that growth is now slower in general, but influence improvements and modules are now much more powerful.
  • Increased starbase spacing by to 3, from 2, until we get the new Administration cost stat implemented.
  • Adjusted intensity on several strategic map icons and the grid.
  • Starbase minimum distance reduced from 5 to 3 tiles.
  • AI tends to focus more on tech (generally) than previously.
  • AI will build survey ships late ingame.
  • AI provided with a much wider variety of ship designs to choose from with the various strategies.
  • AI weights units much more closely than previously in order to not make one virtually impossible to build.
  • Opposing culture diplomatic penalty reduced from 1.25 to 1.1 if AI is benevolent.
  • Opposing culture diplomatic penalty increased from 1.25 to 2 if AI is merciless.
  • Opposing culture diplomatic penalty increased from 1.25 to 2 if AI is cruel.
  • Close to victory diplomatic penalties increased from 1 to 5.
  • Ripe for conquest diplomacy penalty reduced from 0.75 to 0.1 if AI is benevolent.
  • Ripe for conquest diplomacy penalty increased from 0.75 to 1.25 if AI is aggressive.
  • Minimum planet class to be a manufacturing world reduced from 7 to 4.
  • Max number of colony ships the AI will construct at once increased from 2 to 3.
  • Max slider focus reduced from 95% to 75% (to deal with coercion penalty).
  • Coercion forgiveness eliminated (there is always some coercion if you move off from center).
  • Maximum coercion reduced from 50% to 35%.
  • Colony Capital production points reduced from 5 to 1.
  • CivilizationCapital production points reduced from 5 to 1.
  • Influence Radius root increased from 1.75 to 4 (i.e. influence ZOC will start out much much smaller now).
  • Tech inflation penalty significantly reduced.
  • Penalty for switching a constructor to a colony ship increased from 50% to 75% (yea, you know who you are).
  • Pirates moved further away from starting location.
  • Increased the variance for the various settings (minors, pirates, etc.).
  • Modified the governor script to provide a bit more flexibility based on planet bonuses when building improvements.
  • Colony capital maintenance eliminated.
  • Colony capital hub provides a 2 (was 1) level bonus to adjacent buildings if they are population or manufacturing or research.
  • Civ capital hub provides a 3 level bonus (was 1).
  • Reduced maint. slightly on research buildings.
  • Rare habitable planets decreased from 30% to 25%.
  • Nebula and black holes and anomalies made much less common on all settings.
  • Occasional planet frequency amount doubled from 1X to 2X.
  • Common stars modifier increased from 0.9 to 1.
  • Common planet frequency amount increased from 0.75X to 3X (this also fixes a bug where common was less than occasional).
  • Abundant stars increased from 1X to 1.5X.
  • Planet Frequency increased from 0.25X to 3.5X (also fixes bug).
  • Tiny map base objects increased from 32 to 120 (i.e. tiny maps will be a lot more filled).
  • Small map base object count increased from 64 to 150.
  • Medium map Base object count increased from 110 to 200.
  • Large map base object count increased from 155 to 300 (i.e. over twice as many stars/planets/etc. in a particular size).
  • Huge map base object count increased from 250 to 350.
  • INSANE map object count INCREASED from 1200 to 1400!
  • Sensor cost components reduced slightly.
  • Cargo module cost reduced from 27 to 10 (cheaper colony ships -- but remember, planets now rely more on population for their production).
  • Tiny hull cost reduced from 11 to 10.
  • Small hull cost reduced from 25 to 20.
  • Medium hull HP increased from 100 to 120.
  • Large hull cost increased from 128 to 300.
  • Large hull HP increased from 250 to 600.
  • Large hull storage increased from 100 to 120.
  • Large hull logistics cost increased from 7 to 10.
  • Huge hull cost increased from 432 to 500.
  • Huge hull HP increased from 500 to 800.
  • Huge hull storage increased from 250 to 300.
  • Huge hull logistics increased from 10 to 16.
  • Cargo hull cost reduced from 42 to 24.
  • Cargo hull HP reduced from 10 to 1.
  • Cargo hull logistics increased from 5 to 6.

Improvements/Bugs Fixes

  • Stuck Turn fix involving battle system in multiplayer
  • Increase the opacity of the alpha on the un-owned grid
  • Escape key now prompts the user if they are designing a ship, instead of instantly leaving the view.
  • Added an option skip the upgrade notification on the starbases window.
  • Fix some bad prerequisites some hidden minor race tech tree.
  • Fix bad tech description for Technological Outreach tech, in the Torian Tech Tree.
  • Added check in Galactic Events that prevent random crashes with event that pops up twice. 
  • Fix bad prerequisite for Xeno Geology in the Arcean techtree.
  • Fix bad prerequisite for Drengin Manufacturing Stimulus.
  • Fixed a major late-game memory leak
  • Removed normal map corrections and Lean Maps from game as they didn't look good and were taking up too much space.
  • Fixed false positive on culture flipping penalty in diplomacy window
  • Fixed bad normal map for merc textures.
  • Fixed issue in Krynn tech tree causing the Coordination Temple to be hidden.
  • Fixed some issues that were causing some of the techs at end of the tree to have the wrong cost calculated.
  • Fix text wrapping on starbase window
  • Fix for capstone alerts showing up for non-local player and for tech victory alerts showing up for non-tech victory items
  • When vram is maxed out, the game will no longer generate a massive log file. 
  • Increased the halo size on non-colonized planets 
  • Added author fields for maps, factions and ships.
  • Starbases will now notify the you that they need to be upgraded after being initially built. 
  • Fixed double counting of trade routes for AI diplomacy purposes.
  • Fixed late game crashes related to textures on large maps.
  • Fixed an infrequent crash on loading large maps.
  • Fixed bug that could cause the AI to see tiles in the opposite map position of where they were exploring.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause the AI to reduce the priority weighting on colony ship production based on the # of targetable planets.
  • If a player faction is set to random in the prefs.inifile, the quick-start tooltip will no longer display an invalid faction.
  • Fixed an issue where if you changed the planetary spending wheel, the displayed. manufacturing time for improvements wasn't being updated at the same time.
  • Clicking available projects tabs no longer resets the improvement cursor.
  • Add ESC to close Ship Designer and Diplomacy screens.
  • Starbases no longer incorrectly show the upgrade option when none avail.
  • Fixed a crash related to the AI defying the UP.
151,738 views 39 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Holy crap! Nice going guys!! Thanks.

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

First off thanks for all the hard work on making these changes.  I look forward on continuing to play this great game.  

On a different note, I don't see anything on this patch related to galaxy sizes?  Does this mean that did not end up getting put into the update?  If that's the case thank you.

CursorFX - Customize your Windows cursor
Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Thank you for the update. I was going to fire up a game tonight after I got home. 

 

Thank you Stardock, your hard work is appreciated. 

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Good Grief ..... !!!

Thank you Stardock, you have yet again excelled yourselves; whilst that state of  affairs is approaching the Norm, its still - nontheless -  a source of delight and satisfaction to play this well thought out and presented game.

Well done guys ..... take a bow (again!) ...... :)

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Thanks for the hard work.

Was hoping however that new administration system will make it into this one, finally. Hopefully it is not postponed till Crusade...

Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Is there an ETA for folks owning via GoG?

Reply #7 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

One of the highlights for the new patch states that "performance optimizations have allowed the addition of more stars and planets, making galaxies feel even more vast than before".  At least on the Immense size galaxy, the opposite seems to be true.  The total area of the galaxy seems smaller and more cramped, with fewer stars (bunched closer together) than in v1.83, despite using the same map generation settings.  By contrast, the Immense galaxy in v1.83 felt vast and spread out, with the Insane galaxy size being that much more ridiculous (which is a good thing).  In v1.9, Insane is pretty big, but it still seems smaller and inferior to its v1.83 counterpart.

Has anyone else noticed this as well?  If so, perhaps there is a way to change the XML settings to get back to the v1.83 map generation behavior?

Reply #8 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

All maps seem much smaller.  Gigantic which I usually play for multiplayer is half the size previously with 60% less stars with the same setting used prior to the patch.  The same is true for all other map sizes on both single and multiplayer.  With 16 races on gigantic setting, races are almost touching.

Reply #9 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Welcome back Ms...You did a fine job with the earlier versions; a pleasure working with you on them; can't wait to see what you can bring up/back now.

Great, and impressive to see these fine updates and fixes. There are more to do in my opinion, but you all have my confidence that it will happen.

To be honest, I haven't played the game in awhile, partially because of a number of things that you have been working on. I will make it a point to return to the clan of fine, intelligent and friendly players (and the Stardock clan as well, of course)

Only one thing- I have tended to get addicted to the game and those that play it as well. Oh heck, does anyone there have a clean electronic needle that I can use? I need that GalCiv fix again!      -Mistralok-

Reply #10 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Yeah, I used an Immense galaxy with 22 races (where the recommended is 32), and I got contact on turn 1.  Perhaps when they said "more vast than before", they meant "vastly inferior" -- and "more stars and planets" apparently must include the new invisible kind, which drastically reduces the number of visible stars and planets.

Reply #11 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Its possible they are reduced in size instead of increased by accident.  Hopefully that is the case and can be corrected as it is not playable for large multiplayer games atm.

Tiny has 5-6 stars total when setting abundant.  I loaded a save for a gigantic map and was twice as many stars with common setting as compared to the new map (same size) with abundant star setting (old game had 3.1 times as many stars.   With two additional planets and no range enhancement tech you can now reach 90% of a gigantic map for a 16 player multiplayer game.  Sadly unplayable.

Reply #12 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

The distance reduction is too much.  It makes a lot of the technologies (like distance, speed, and sensors) much less useful and the higher techs not needed at all.  

Reply #13 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting EnormousD, reply 7

By contrast, the Immense galaxy in v1.83 felt vast and spread out, with the Insane galaxy size being that much more ridiculous (which is a good thing).  In v1.9, Insane is pretty big, but it still seems smaller and inferior to its v1.83 counterpart.

Has anyone else noticed this as well?  If so, perhaps there is a way to change the XML settings to get back to the v1.83 map generation behavior?

Quoting LexieSophie, reply 8

All maps seem much smaller.  Gigantic which I usually play for multiplayer is half the size previously with 60% less stars with the same setting used prior to the patch.  The same is true for all other map sizes on both single and multiplayer.  With 16 races on gigantic setting, races are almost touching.

So they DID reduce the size of the galaxies although not in the official change above?  :@ Don't like this, if you're changing it officially please say so.  Not happy at all with this change, just saying making the game smaller please explain why this is needed and this put in place 18+ months after release.

Other than that I'm happy with the majority of the other changes good work.  Thank you very much for the ongoing support of the game.

Reply #14 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Seilore, reply 2

On a different note, I don't see anything on this patch related to galaxy sizes?  Does this mean that did not end up getting put into the update?  If that's the case thank you.

Second line under balance.

  • Reduced the size of maps while keeping the same number of objects, effectively increasing the galactic density.
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Reply #15 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Rhonin_the_wizard, reply 14

Second line under balance.

Reduced the size of maps while keeping the same number of objects, effectively increasing the galactic density.

Thanks Rhonin I missed this... I still don't understand why but, thanks for pointing this out.

 

Reply #16 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Seilore, reply 15


Quoting Rhonin_the_wizard,
reply 14

Second line under balance.

Reduced the size of maps while keeping the same number of objects, effectively increasing the galactic density.



Thanks Rhonin I missed this... I still don't understand why but, thanks for pointing this out.

 

I can't specifically say why, but one obvious candidate is to speed up search, pathfinding, and area calculations by simply reducing the search space of the algorithms (i.e. "less tiles make CPU think less"). This, in turn, is what makes the turn times go faster.

Reply #17 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Do you know if there's an XML setting that is used to set the map size for each of the galaxy size selections?  If so, perhaps there is a simple one-file mod. that can be used to set the galaxy size back to what it used to be?

Reply #18 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

MapSizeDefs.xml is what your looking for :)

Reply #19 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

So far, I am liking most everything.  I am still adjusting to some  of the production changes.

However, I cannot stand the new "launcher" thing.  All it is for me is one more useless click before I get to the game.  Is there any way to actually start GalCiv?  If I want a commercial for Stardock products, I will go visit their webpage.

Reply #20 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

For everyone wondering about the galaxy sizes, they have been reduced in size by 29 to 80% in the 1.9 update.

When the game had the original galaxy sizes, some people with weak computers complained that they couldn't play the galaxy
sizes they wanted to play.  As a result of these complaints, the sizes of the Large and Huge galaxies were reduced.  I don't remember when that was, but it was a long time ago.

Here is a table with the original sizes, the sizes before the 1.9 update and the 1.9 sizes.

  Original 1.83 1.9 Ratios for 1.9/1.83 Reduction
Galaxy Size HexSectorSize Total Hexes HexSectorSize Total Hexes HexSectorSize Total Hexes HexSectorSize Total Hexes in Hexes
Tiny 30 2,791 30 2,791 18 1,027 0.60 0.37 63.2%
Small 40 4,921 40 4,921 32 3,169 0.80 0.64 35.6%
Medium 60 10,981 60 10,981 40 4,921 0.67 0.45 55.2%
Large 90 24,571 75 17,101 60 10,981 0.80 0.64 35.8%
Huge 130 51,091 95 27,361 70 14,911 0.74 0.54 45.5%
Gigantic 180 97,741 180 97,741 80 19,441 0.44 0.20 80.1%
Immense 240 173,521 240 173,521 120 43,561 0.50 0.25 74.9%
Excessive 290 253,171 290 253,171 160 77,281 0.55 0.31 69.5%
Insane 380 434,341 380 434,341 320 308,161 0.84 0.71 29.1%

After I decided I didn't the like the change of the original sizes of the the Large and Huge galaxies, I made a mod for my use that restored the the original sizes.  I have now made a mod that changes all the galaxy sizes in 1.9 back to the original sizes.  Note that these are the original sizes, not the 1.83 sizes.  The only file that was changed was the MapSizeDefs.xml.  The only changes made were to the HexSectorSize values.  It should be compatible with all mods that don't change the MapSizeDefs.xml file.

The 1.9 version of the game has been balanced for the new sizes, so I have no idea what will happen with this mod.  I have used it only to make sure that is does change the galaxy sizes and doesn't crash.  I am playing without this mod to see how everything works now.  I have been enjoying the game in its current state without this mod.  You may feel differently.

If you want to use this mod, you can get it here.

To install, unzip the file in your mods directory.

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Reply #21 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Thanks, Spider.  I had narrowed in on this file, but hadn't yet gotten it to load correctly as a mod (apparently, the client does not like having empty folders in the mod folder, despite what the readme says).  As a note, they also modified the map setup definitions, in addition to the map size definitions.  I've created a little mod which restores both of these files to their original settings (including the restoration of the original Large and Huge map sizes).  In a few test games, the galaxies seem to be nicely restored to their v1.83 glory.

If you want to use this mod, you can download it here.

Reply #22 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Great patch! Was research speed addressed as well?

Reply #23 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Does anyone know the AI bonuses at the various levels with the 1.9 patch?

Reply #24 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Wow...even really big galaxies are itty bitty teeny tiny. I was pretty shocked by just how small the galaxy I was playing on was and I boosted up to the next size and yet it feels as if I went down at least one size.

I'm concerned that with the increased 'density' my computer won't be able to run a galaxy two sizes larger (which I think would be around the same size as what it was under the old version) which would be very frustrating as these really small galaxies just don't have enough room.

 

 

 

Reply #25 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Philocthetes, reply 6
Is there an ETA for folks owning via GoG?

There is now. It's now! :star: