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Galactic Civilization III: Crusade v2.2 Change Log

Galactic Civilization III: Crusade v2.2 Change Log

We are pleased to unveil the first major update to Galactic Civilizations III: Crusade (Crusade being based on version 2.1 of the base game, we now unveil version 2.2).

Release date: May 24, 2017.

Below is the change log:

New Map Size: Ludicrous

Map sizes made bigger.

  • Tiny: 18 to 20 hex sectors
  • Small: 32 to 36 hex sectors
  • Medium: 40 to 50 hex sectors
  • Large: 75 to 90 hex sectors
  • Huge: 95 to 120 hex sectors
  • Immense: 240 to 250 hex sectors
  • Excessive: 290 to 300 hex sectors
  • Insane renamed to Ludicrous 
  • Ludicrous: 500!

== AI ==

  • The AI will have harder time stealing techs from you if you have counter agents (e.g. unassigned agents).  
  • The AI no longer tries to bribe you to pick on minor factions.
  • AI now fully uses the new Crusade multicore engine in pathfinding, diplomacy, ship movement, tactical analysis, economic planning, planetary invasions, citizen assignments, etc. are all broken up into tiny jobs and sent out to your CPU cores drastically reducing turn times.
  • AI is much, MUCH smarter in what ships to build when (thanks to the GalCiv Discord community for rapid strategy testing responses) and how.
  • Substantial improvement in the general feel of AI intelligence when dealing with other civilizations diplomatically.
  • Improvements to AI trade intelligence based on the new multi-turn need analysis system.
  • AI more savvy on how to use spies as it now takes the consequences of retaliation into account before targeting someone.
  • Easy AI no longer rushes defensive units
  • Easy AI is no longer capable of rushing colony ships
  • AI no longer tries to reinforce planets with individual defender units if they are far away (this is the cause of lone ships streaming to their death in far off places)
  • The AI will have a harder time stealing techs from you if you have counter agents (e.g. unassigned agents).
  • The AI no longer tries to bribe you to pick on minor factions.
  • AI will no longer trade ships away on the cheap
  • Lots of new alien dialog based on more background data (what the galactic situation is).

== Gameplay ==

  • Ported more of the GalCiv III base game tech tree elements to the new Trait based system.  Crusade replaces the monolithic tech tree system with one that is procedural generated based on what traits you have for your civilization.  
  • First internal pass on getting ready to let players submit their own tech tree parts via Steamworks (i.e. create a bunch of techs, tie them to player traits, and have them just work).
  • Anomalies and Events from other DLC have had their rarity adjusted to be in line with Crusade's new rarities (basically, other DLC stuff was relatively rare).
  • AI is more chatty

== Multiplayer ==

  • General multiplayer performance improvements.  
  • Reduced multiplayer Checksum fragility to only deal with differences that are material.
  • First pass at networking layer upgrade to pave the way for fully customized civs playing each other (i.e. you play as your favorite sci fi civ vs. someone else's sci fi civ). The main challenge here is bandwidth on sharing what amounts to some pretty big assets.

== User Experience ==

  • Adjusted the Espionage screen to clarify that unassigned agents lower the chance the AI can steal techs from you.
  • Resource upgrades improvements are no longer flagged as one per planet.  
  • You can now select a fleet even if there's a non-selectable ship on the same tile. 
  • Decommissioned ships refund their administration points and legions.
  • Improved up the commander information on the citizen summary screen
    • Removed access debug error messages. This matters because modders could find themselves with a lot of debug output which on non SSD drives could slow framerate.
    • Reduced the number of event log entries displayed

    == Balance ==

    • Beam Weapon space usage reduced from 5% to 3%
    • Kinetic Weapons cost reduced substantially.
    • Entrepreneurs now provide a trade route to their civ as well
    • General comes with Xeno Combat techniques
    • Colonizer Ability changed such that every time they colonize a planet, they get their administrative point back.  
    • Xeno Combat Techniques now unlocks the General. Combined with Station Garrison, player can protect planets without having to research invasion.
    • Port of Call tourism improvement moved to only require Universal translator
    • Capital city now allows up to 16 population
    • Computer Core cost reduced from 35 to 16 so that players that don't want to rush it don't wait too long
    • Port of Call cost decreased from 150 to 32
    • Port of Call benefit changed from a 10% tourism income boost to a flat 1 with each level adding another 1
    • Starport now military production increased from 1 to 2
    • Space Elevator general production decreased from 2 to 1
    • City population cap increased from 8 to 16
    • Silicon city population cap increased from 8 to 9
    •  Military Academy improvement now requires planetary invasion to eliminate confusion in which players thought they had to train legions to invade.
    • Station Garrison cost reduced from 75 to 50
    • Influence specialization now provides a flat 1 influence to every colony instead of a 10% boost.
    • Majesty Tech now quires the diplomatic ability
    •  Master Trade now requires the entrepreneur ability
    • Other high-level biz/trade techs now require entrepreneur race ability
    • Robots can't have cruise lines
    • Improved AI conquest strategies
    • Slight balance tweak to opposing culture affect.
    • Mild balance pass on the weightings of faction power.
    • Hot Springs moved to require Planetology (for frog races)
    • Hot Springs benefit changed from 3 to 2.
    • Increased AI's guts by 25%. Basically, AIs tend to be a bit too careful in when to attack. This is partially because players think AIs are "dumb" if they make suicide attacks. But there is a time and place to use suicide attacks to wear down an opponent.  Cracking a turtler requires sacrifice.
    • New ship design method that lets us see how many ship designs are in the library.
    • General increase in late game tech costs.
    • Defenses now use less space but cost more
    • Carrier modules cost more but use less room
    • Eyes of Universe now requires "Interstellar Travel" instead of "Interstellar Survey"
    • Farming no longer requires "Xeno Adaptation" but comes sooner with Planetology
    • Cities now require Planetology (or "Torian Planetology")
    • Slight increase in cost for later improvements
    • Minor balance updates
    • Xenophobic tripled benefits at the cost of decreased "Ship Construction".  
    • Set default faction to Terran Alliance
    • Nerfed Renaissance event's research bonus

    == Performance ==

      • Continued improvement to turn times thanks to Crusade multicore
      • Improvement to speed of clearing out an old game so you can get back to the main menu.

      == Bug Fixing == 

      • On the starbase list, the "upgrade" icon isn't always enabled.  
      • Fix Virtual World improvement, now requires Promethean instead of Promethean Stones (which are no longer in the game)
      • Stuck turn fixes.  This issue is caused by the very delicate balance between turn speed and the difficulty of resyncronizing the threads quickly.
      • Various crash bugs fixed.
      • Fixed the Scientist Coerced Promotion which was giving 10x points
      • Fixed a bug where if food was ever >0 but then later became 0 that it would never update again.
      • Fixed strange bug that was causing pirates to not get to take a turn because the game thought they were dead. They're not dead!
      • Fixed bug where asteroids from dead players would become owned by pirates and unkillable. Mining bases are now autodestroyed when a player dies.
      • Fixed edge case bug where the player somehow allies with an event race which in turn causes a strange diplomacy flag to show up.
      • Fixed minor bug where planned destination of a virtual fleet wasn't being copied from the source fleet. This would sometimes cause the AI not to attack targets of opportunity.
      • Typo fixes. English isn't our first language. Our first language is Drengin which doesn't have vowels.
      • Graph power buttons now toggle properly
      • Updated the Entrepreneur Citizen text to better reflect its ability.
      • Ship designer window: removed a duplicate resource bar

      Have fun!

       

       

       

      373,766 views 86 replies
      Reply #51 Top

      Quoting Dougiegee, reply 50

      Hi folks, quick question...

      Do the opt in patch changes affect a saved game or will it only be for games started after the patch?

       

       

      Mostly NO I believe but a longer winded answer follows


      Any of the XML changes will not affect a Saved game well to the best of my knowledge (there may be some exceptions for things like Graphics Icons or text changes but I believe that the game builds a "database" of things like Technologies, Improvements, and other features that is kept and reused from inside the Save game file)  but any of the GC3Crusade.exe code changes will affect how the game operates.  Generally most of the patch changes are positive and improves bugs and gameplay.  They are primarily focusing on fixing the more major issues with Crusade in its initial launch state.

      Some of the lag in game play and stuck turns will likely be fixed by using the Patched Game Engine and likely will not affect you using the old Save game.

       

      Reply #52 Top

      Quoting barrybeal, reply 49

      The problem with the 2.14 Patch is that there are a lot of numerous fixes and updates in the 5/14 update. And from 2.13 they rearranged the flow of techs in MasterTechDefs.XML so they are now more organized in order (generally a good thing for parsing the game code depending how they build the research tree internally. So unless you rearrange your version of the 2.13 XML file you can't just compare side by side the 2.14 and 2.13 versions. Later I did eventually to help with the secondary passes of checking the differences. Firstly there are a lot o changes to 2.14 that are not entirely obviously and since they deleted Specialization techs the old version of the MasterTechDefs.XML won't even run now - Tech tree creation crashes due to not being able to handle the abandoned Tech Specializations because I didn't keep a copy of the old MasterTechSpecializationsDef.XML file in my mod. Then there is that in additional to deleting three dozen or more tech definitions - some abandoned - they removed some and then changed the previous functioning definitions in ImprovementDefs.XML so that custom races now use the equivalent "standard" techs (not necessarily a bad thing with possibility that you loose ability to change the AI research weighting system differences between those races).

       

      If you have copies of the MasterDefs.xml, SpecializationDefs and Text.xml's from 2.13 you could place them in a separate mod folder. Fire up 2 copies of the tech tree editor, point one at the old and one at the new, so you can compare them.

      The latest mini update (0.1.7.5) has re-enabled partial modding and fixes a couple of bugs.

      Reply #53 Top

      Quoting Dougiegee, reply 50

      Do the opt in patch changes affect a saved game or will it only be for games started after the patch?

      xml changes only take effect with new games

      Reply #54 Top

      Quoting barrybeal, reply 51


      Quoting Dougiegee,

      Hi folks, quick question...

      Do the opt in patch changes affect a saved game or will it only be for games started after the patch?

       

       



      Mostly NO I believe but a longer winded answer follows


      Any of the XML changes will not affect a Saved game well to the best of my knowledge (there may be some exceptions for things like Graphics Icons or text changes but I believe that the game builds a "database" of things like Technologies, Improvements, and other features that is kept and reused from inside the Save game file)  but any of the GC3Crusade.exe code changes will affect how the game operates.  Generally most of the patch changes are positive and improves bugs and gameplay.  They are primarily focusing on fixing the more major issues with Crusade in its initial launch state.

      Some of the lag in game play and stuck turns will likely be fixed by using the Patched Game Engine and likely will not affect you using the old Save game.

       

      Thanks, figured this would probably be the case.

      Reply #55 Top

      Either I don't understand how they are supposed to work or some of the adjacency bonuses aren't working.

      I'll have to start making notes since I can't recall which ones :)

      Reply #56 Top

      = 5/22 Update =
      == Gameplay == 

      • General increase in late game tech costs.
      • Defenses now use less space but cost more
      • Carrier modules cost more but use less room
      • Eyes of Universe now requires Interstellar Travel instead of Interstellar Survey
      • Farming no longer requires Xeno adaptation but comes sooner with Planetology
      • Cities now require planetology (or torian planetology)
      • Slight increase in cost for later improvements
      • Minor balance updates
      • Xenophobic tripled benefits.
      • Set default faction to Terran Alliance
      • Nerfed Renaissance event's research bonus

      == Bugs ==

      • Removed access debug error messages.
      • Reduced the number of event log entries displayed
      • Fixed a bug where if food was ever >0 but then later became 0 that it would never update again.
      • Fixed strange bug that was causing pirates to not get to take a turn because the game thought they were dead.
      • Fixed bug where asteroids from dead players would become owned by pirates and unkillable. Mining bases are now
      • autodestroyed when a player dies.
      • Fixed edge case bug where the player somehow allies with an event race which in turn causes a strange diplomacy flag to show up.
      • Fixed minor bug where planned destination of a virtual fleet wasn't being copied from the source fleet.
      • Typo fixes
      • Graph power buttons now toggle properly
      • Updated the Entrepreneur Citizen text to better reflect its ability.
      • Ship designer window: removed a duplicate resource bar
      Reply #57 Top

      Glad to see the mining base bug fixed.

      Eagerly awaiting the Commander Logistics bug fix ;-)

      Reply #59 Top

      Quoting gnomezz, reply 58

      More multiplayer fixes coming anytime soon?

      +1

      My preferred way to play is with multiplayer so I've been waiting for those fixes. Here's hoping they fix MP bugs, allow custom races, and eventually, larger map sizes in MP.

      Reply #60 Top

      Quoting Franco, reply 55

      Either I don't understand how they are supposed to work or some of the adjacency bonuses aren't working.

      I'll have to start making notes since I can't recall which ones :)
      My guess is that you are talking about the description adjancencies. I had that problem a couple of years ago. The first is for the space you are on. The second is for the adjancencies. Another problem I had a few months ago was the building type it's at the top. These have to line up. If your talking about crusade in particular the all manufacturing social and ship constructions Yah still figuring that out.

      Reply #61 Top

      Quoting Naric, reply 59


      Quoting gnomezz,

      More multiplayer fixes coming anytime soon?



      +1

      My preferred way to play is with multiplayer so I've been waiting for those fixes. Here's hoping they fix MP bugs, allow custom races, and eventually, larger map sizes in MP.

      I don't know this ai is playing more like a human.

      Reply #62 Top

      Quoting admiralWillyWilber, reply 61

      I don't know this ai is playing more like a human.

      Which is great, but I enjoy playing with friends more. We kind of 'lan' it by playing in the same room.

      Reply #64 Top

      While I appreciate the quick pace of all these patches, the single most annoying bug that I seem to be running into that has not been addressed yet is the planet colonization events not happening.  Will that be addressed in an upcoming patch?

      Reply #66 Top

      Quoting gerardo58, reply 65

      They are happening to me

      Most of the time they do, but there is an occasional planet that doesn't fire off. Like the game assumes it is a home system planet instead of one on the far side of the galaxy.

      Reply #67 Top

      Just noticed an annoying bug when upgrading survey vessels - it treats them as a new build and costs an administrator rather than just the cost of upgrading the ship.  Just imagine Capt Kirk being told "Good news, we are upgrading the Enterprise - oh by the way your sacked and being replaced".  

      Reply #68 Top

      Quoting Strategos909, reply 67

      Just noticed an annoying bug when upgrading survey vessels - it treats them as a new build and costs an administrator rather than just the cost of upgrading the ship.  Just imagine Capt Kirk being told "Good news, we are upgrading the Enterprise - oh by the way your sacked and being replaced".  

      Confirmed and very easy to repeat. Just noticed the same thing myself.

      Reply #69 Top

      Actually it wasnt kirk, but benjamin pike. It did happen see episode 1.

      Reply #70 Top

      There are some mistakes in the patch notes:  

      - Hot springs are listed twice. They actually give +2 morale now

      - Port of call gives +1 tourism income, not +3 as listed

      - Xenophic is listed twice in the patch notes. Tripled manufacturing, tripled research and half ship construction is correct.

      - Some AI changes are also listed again with the balance changes

       

      There also is a problem with how the game patches (at least when u use Steam):

      If u select "no beta", it patches to 2.133.

      If u select the "patch 2.14 opt in", it patches to 2.2. 

      This should be adressed.

       

      Apart from these smaller organisational flaws, I really like this patch. I just dont understand why Xenophobic got buffed. It was already overpowered before. The tripled effect is just rediculous.

      Btw: The AbilityDefs.xml also has a +2 Modifier to "CreditsPerTurn" for Xenophobic, which doesnt work ingame (would make it even more OP). Maybe that needs some cleaning.

      Reply #71 Top

      Quoting x-cessive, reply 70


      There also is a problem with how the game patches (at least when u use Steam):

      If u select "no beta", it patches to 2.133.

      If u select the "patch 2.14 opt in", it patches to 2.2. 

      This should be addressed.

      Uh, it is being released today. They weren't even awake when you posted this...

      Reply #72 Top

      Okay since I never get responses to my other questions, I will make another attempt to question some of these changes:

       

      • Port of Call tourism improvement moved to only require Universal translator
      • Port of Call cost decreased from 150 to 32
      • Port of Call benefit changed from a 10% tourism income boost to a flat 1 with each level adding another 1 by Adjacency Leveling effect and have a +1 Neighboring bonus is nice.

      --  Is this a response to our finding out Oops you initially locked out Interstellar Tourism to everyone but Diplomats.  The current solution of re-enabling Interstellar Tourism to everyone and enabling it by Cultural Influence Tech is adequate.  It is nice that you get Tourism income now earlier and instead of +10% per building you get one Credit via Tourism that apparently works as soon as you build the Port of Call building instead of waiting for "natural" Tourism to be enabled by Interstellar Tourism tech.  The adjacency bonus of adding another +1  Tourism by Adjacency Leveling effect and have a +1 Neighboring bonus is an added bonus.  Generally this is a good change; however, if the Change to Port of Call remains then you need to change the Leveling bonus for its upgrade buildings - TouristHaven and TouristDestination.

       

      • Capital city now allows up to 16 population
      • Per this forum post - there needs to be either a good Explanation of the new PopulatonCap / City / Morale philosophy by Stardock or you need to respond to the various issues and solutions brought up by this forum post.  Jumping up to 16 population cap for a non-upgradable building creates approval issues and not sure why Silicone based Cities get less of an increase.

      https://forums.galciv3.com/483272/page/1/#3679252

       

      • Hot Springs moved to require Planetology (for frog races)
      • Hot Springs benefit changed from 3 to 2.
      • I think you meant   Birthing Pools instead as Hot Springs is the Aquatic (Torian) first Morale Building similar to Entertainment Center.  (you may need to increase morale bonuses to scale faster as discussed above).  Originally Birthing Pools were given early to Aquatic (Torian) by TorianColonizationTech - it is a non-upgradable +15% growth building - not sure it should move to Planetology for consistency reasons but this is a change I can live with.   Note that Aquatics (Torian) still got the Colonial Hospital building at PlanetaryImprovement which is now essentially called XenoAdaption instead.
      Reply #74 Top

      I can confirm as well that the GC3 campaigns, as of 2.2, are still completely broken.

      It's a bit disappointing that so far, the campaigns have gone from wonky and a little broken at Crusade's release, to totally buggered in 2.13, and then to have no notes or communication regarding possible fixes in that span.  For me, part of the difficulty stems from getting a bit too hyped up reading Brad's dev journals in the months leading up to Crusade's release, and then fast forwarding to two and a half weeks after Crusade hit the digital shelves, still waiting to play the one thing I've wanted to ditch work time to enjoy.

      I understand that sandbox is where the vast majority of players hang out, and that there's been a significant amount of work needed there as well, but at this point, I'm just hoping for at least a little communication regarding timelines or fixes or even just where the campaigns fit into the bugfixing priority queue. Knowing I'd need to wait another couple weeks and not needing to come back and check the forums every five minutes to see if the game is playable for me would at least take a bit off my plate ;)

      So, devs, any chance you can toss us campaign-goers a bone and/or some news?

      Reply #75 Top

      I am thinking about money return. I bought all the DLC to play all the campaigns, but simply cant. You are selling broken, not working product.