GC3 Founders: Crusade Preview

from JoeUser Forums

 

Greetings GalCiv Founders.

 

This week, we will be announcing Galactic Civilizations III: Crusade.

 

Here are the six major bullet points:

 

#1 Civilization Builder

Players can, from the main menu, design a civilization from scratch.  That includes the default ships they use, what they say in diplomacy and how the AI will make use of them.

 

Crusade-2 Crusade-30

Completed civilizations can then be uploaded to Steam workshop for others to download.  This differs from the custom race feature in GalCiv III in that this is all-inclusive – ships, techs, flavor text, everything in a single package.

 

#2 Citizens

This is the most far-reaching change we’ve made to Galactic Civilizations.  The production wheel is gone. Both the the planet and globally.  Instead, you will customize your civilization based on what you do with your citizens.

Crusade-6

Citizens are born on your home world every so often.  What you do with them is up to you.  You can train them as leaders, spies, diplomats, merchants, scientists, engineers, technicians, etc.  It all depends on how you want to run your civilization.

The screenshot above is misleading because it only shows the 3 default specializations (production, research, wealth) but others will be showing up as well as the game progresses (such as shipyard building, etc.). 

You can also send citizens to specific worlds to boost their production in a particular area.

 

#3 Espionage

This works somewhat similarly to GalCiv II.  You can use spies to learn what other civilizations are up to and steal their tech and  you can use them to disable important planetary improvements.  You can also use them to eliminate spies that show up on your planets.

image

 

 

#4 Invasions

No screenshot for this yet, it’s programmer art.  Invasions now require a lot more thought and effort than before and also are interactive. 

First, soldiers come from your citizenry.  You can’t just load up population from a given planet and send them over.  Instead, they come from your available citizens.  You can also train citizens to be soldiers which makes them that much more effective.  Of course, once a citizen is killed, it’s gone forever. 

When you invade a planet, you get a map of the planet and have to decide where you’re going to land your troops.  If the defender has citizens on that planet (and often, they will not making invasion pretty easy), they will get to place their defenders.  Neither side knows where the other has placed their units until the battle begins. 

The invasions are, in effect, a very fun mini game.  Late game, when the stakes get really high, the invasions become pretty nail biting.

 

#5 Crusade

Crusade is the story that puts it all together.  It introduces a few civilizations and finally gives the player a clear understanding of why the Altarians and Humans are similar. What the Bane is.  Why the Thalan went back in time back to stop the humans and so forth. 

image[24]

 

#6 New UX

Across the board the user experience is being updated.  The  units look better, the user interface is new, the way things work is cleaner.  Overall, the goal is to make the game more approachable to new players as well as make it much easier to deal with a larger empire.

Crusade-1[6]

I will be writing, at length, a series of dev diaries over the major features for Crusade.  One per week.

Stay tuned.

106,796 views 186 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Looks a great improvement.

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

..... DROOLS

 

ObjectDock - Access shortcuts and frequently used applications from an animated dock.
Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

So when do founders get to play it?  will there be a beta period?

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Assuming that starbase still have a planet que like they do now. It wouldn't be much harder to give starbases an optional shipyard que for building constructors. 

It would be a challenge to require resources for building ships, and starbases. How about instead of anomolies finishing your techs that instead providing one of a kind techs you can't find anywhere else. I would like to see combined research where multiple civs could combine to research the same tech. Under custom civ I hope you have a selection to create your own tech trees based on a larger choice of techs. You could use all the currently preexisting techs. There would have to limits on this. 

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting admiralWillyWilber, reply 4

Are we bringing back the ability to shut down shipyards again, or a build nonthing que for starbases.

There is a button on the lower left of the shipyard screen that says "Do not notify if the queue is empty."  It won't bug for orders, but it will answer requests for upgrade constructors from starbases.  Isn't that the behavior you want?

Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Oh i NEVER SAW that I will have to try it out and see. If I remember I will get back to you on that. Thanks I apreciate your response. 

Reply #7 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Will there be any editors released or built-in with Crusades.

Will my Tech Tree Editor become obsolete after its release?

https://forums.galciv3.com/477456/

 

 

 

Reply #8 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I'm impressed so far, and excited as a little child before Christmas. Especially the new economics and population model, the backbone of the game. Perhaps the leader system could be mixed into the administrators system somehow? Of course I don't fully grasp the mechanism yet of leaders.

Reply #9 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Taslios, reply 3

So when do founders get to play it?  will there be a beta period?

I would say mid February.

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Reply #10 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting NorsemanViking, reply 8

I'm impressed so far, and excited as a little child before Christmas. Especially the new economics and population model, the backbone of the game. Perhaps the leader system could be mixed into the administrators system somehow? Of course I don't fully grasp the mechanism yet of leaders.

You got it!

Reply #11 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 10

Quoting NorsemanViking,
reply 8

I'm impressed so far, and excited as a little child before Christmas. Especially the new economics and population model, the backbone of the game. Perhaps the leader system could be mixed into the administrators system somehow? Of course I don't fully grasp the mechanism yet of leaders.



You got it!

 

Wow! I have a feeling that might/will end up very, very well. This sounds interesting indeed.

Reply #12 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Great to be a founder! TYVM.

I offer a couple of cautious concerns. 

1) Will the AI's have so much cash that it will be nearly impossible to deal with spying when playing Impossible or much worse Godlike?

2) I hope there's plenty of play testing for invasions. If it becomes too hard to take AI planets, the game will bog down and players will lose interest. Also a healthy back and forth exchange of planets with AI's conquering each others' planets.

I do hope this expansion will be heavily pretested on Incredible and Godlike, although I expect with AI improvements Godlike may be impossible to do well against. Anyhow, I play currently vs Incredible and Godlike and if I can help pretest in anyway, please advise.

Thx .. neilkaz ..

Reply #13 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Thats great.

Administrators alone in 2.0 looks a bit insufficiently in my opinion. But when part of the citizens system, it is make much more sense for me.

Reply #14 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I am ecstatic...... WoW!!

Reply #15 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Looks great and thank you for the infos ...

Please have a look, if you could be friend with a third and fourth Tech Trading setup OPTION, as I and my brother still don't feel well with the TECH TRADING snowball system and that it ruins atm the unique tech trees from the civs !

At the moment we are only able to enjoy the game, when we turn off Tech Trading complete, so that we really have to decide what tech way we want to go, but when that option is disabled , not much is left to trade with the other civs !

We really would like an option, when turned on, you don't get the whole tech asap,
but only a bonus, like 20% to research for that area

AND also an option that SPECIALIZED TECHS couldn't be traded !

Thanks and best luck !

Reply #16 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting neilkaz, reply 12

Great to be a founder! TYVM.

I offer a couple of cautious concerns. 

1) Will the AI's have so much cash that it will be nearly impossible to deal with spying when playing Impossible or much worse Godlike?

2) I hope there's plenty of play testing for invasions. If it becomes too hard to take AI planets, the game will bog down and players will lose interest. Also a healthy back and forth exchange of planets with AI's conquering each others' planets.

I do hope this expansion will be heavily pretested on Incredible and Godlike, although I expect with AI improvements Godlike may be impossible to do well against. Anyhow, I play currently vs Incredible and Godlike and if I can help pretest in anyway, please advise.

Thx .. neilkaz ..

1. You can't buy spies.  Spies are citizens trained in espionage and citizens only come up once every N turns.

2. Most planets will be trivial to invade because to defend, there must be soldiers (legions) on the planet. And legions come from citizens and thus players will have to pick and choose which planets are worth putting ground forces on.  But on the planets that do have defenses, it should be quite interesting (it's a mini game).

Everything flows through the Citizen system.  No matter how large (or small) your empire, citizens are made at the same rate.  It's what you do with them that matters: Spies, Emissaries, Scientists, Entrepreneurs, Soldiers, Engineers, Workers, Fleet Commanders, Farmers, etc.

 

Reply #17 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting neilkaz, reply 12

Great to be a founder! TYVM.

2) I hope there's plenty of play testing for invasions. If it becomes too hard to take AI planets, the game will bog down and players will lose interest. Also a healthy back and forth exchange of planets with AI's conquering each others' planets.

I do hope this expansion will be heavily pretested on Incredible and Godlike, although I expect with AI improvements Godlike may be impossible to do well against. Anyhow, I play currently vs Incredible and Godlike and if I can help pretest in anyway, please advise.

Thx .. neilkaz ..
Not really arguing this, but I wouldn't want normal to take a backstage to this. The reason why is that anything higher than normal has bonuses to Ai. only. I would rather see a harder Ai., not bonuses to higher levels.

Reply #18 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 16


Quoting neilkaz,
reply 12



1. You can't buy spies.  Spies are citizens trained in espionage and citizens only come up once every N turns.

2. Most planets will be trivial to invade because to defend, there must be soldiers (legions) on the planet. And legions come from citizens and thus players will have to pick and choose which planets are worth putting ground forces on.  But on the planets that do have defenses, it should be quite interesting (it's a mini game).

Everything flows through the Citizen system.  No matter how large (or small) your empire, citizens are made at the same rate.  It's what you do with them that matters: Spies, Emissaries, Scientists, Entrepreneurs, Soldiers, Engineers, Workers, Fleet Commanders, Farmers, etc.

 

This gets me excited can't wait, and the civilization builder. Are the most promising to me. This sounds like civilization colinization to me.

Reply #19 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Holy cow, this looks interesting!

So the citizens are derived from your population, similarly to old MoO2 system? Or is it a completely independent system?

And how about long-awaited politics and elections? Will it be part of the Crusade somehow? o_O

Reply #20 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I like what I see.  Very excited.  

Reply #21 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

All the decisions to make. Can't wait to experience the new gameplay.

 

I'd love some slowed down expansion too, and requiring one of these population units (or more) to travel on the colony ship would make those expansion choices a ton more interesting. I'm so curious to see how this pop-mechanism works and how it effects the overall gameplay. So much great potential.

 

And yes, can't wait playing multiplayer with Crusades.

Reply #22 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Must say I expected more from espionage.  Particularly given we were told multiple times that the reason it was continuously held back was that it wasn't just going to be the GC2 system.  The other features sound good though.

Reply #23 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

The GCII system (of Espionage) was good and I suspect this is the same type of interaction but better implemented. More importantly I would like visibility to what the ai factions is going via espionage which we did get in GCII. Things like buildings being built or what the current research is (which is extremely helpful). 

Reply #24 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting jirkaesch, reply 19

Holy cow, this looks interesting!

So the citizens are derived from your population, similarly to old MoO2 system? Or is it a completely independent system?

And how about long-awaited politics and elections? Will it be part of the Crusade somehow? o_O

Not quite.  Civilizations are not tied to the size of your population.  They are tied to your civilization ability for creating citizens.  Thus, a small empire might actually have more citizens than a large empire.

Politics and elections will NOT be in Crusade.  Like the citizen and invasion system, I have something big in mind for that and it's too much to get done for now.

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Reply #25 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

The citizen system seems really cool.  I like the named leaders.

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