GC4 EA Feedback Test Branch | VERSION 0.70.274916

NEXT BUILD.

Hate to be a nag, and I know this is trivial, but.... 11"th" is still showing as 11"st" in the Civ rankings

Bugs:
- new game -> ideology ->you get free research points (enough for two techs)
- Land Exploitation policy: approval is updated once you remove this policy and not when it is applied (Civilization overview)

- Manufacturing of Planetry Stimulas is not applied

Feedback:
- I like approval to be a unique multiplier. It is nice to see the global effect on civilization outputs after changing tax rates
- Nested tooltips: Planet list, sort option: from right to left, tooltip is in the way. Same at core world, status report (from left to right). Same at planet list, uncolonized planets (from right to left). Loading citizens into a colony ship (citizens from left to right)
- Baratak: would like to sort planets by pollution
- Nice that higher class planets got significantly larger portraits
- I zoomed in a little too much and did not recognize a sniper (yeah, I know I repeat this topic). I guess the issue is as follows: I zoom in to see the hex fields better but then I do not get icons for ships anymore. This is why I want to be able to adjust the appearence of icons at the lower end of the spectrum, too. Exploring a black hole is similar: no icons -> antimatter is almost indistingueshable from "junk"
- I encountered a minor civ before a major civ. Universal translator event is not triggered. Maybe no big deal for experienced players but could be very inconvenient to new players. (Later) I see that Universal Translator is a requirement for Against the Tide. So you want to make sure that we do not fight against a single minor civ. I understand it but this is not an overall good solution. Maybe change the requirement to "must be in contact with at least one major civ" and let us communicate with minor civs once we encounter them
- Factions: before assigning the first leader. How do leader skills effect faction bonuses? Maybe this could be explained in the tooltips of each faction
- Factions: multipliers got nerfed a lot -> good (based on: turn 17, first faction leader)
- Not enough control for an election: I know I need to save 30 control. But new players? I would make it visible
- Foreign ships without open borders: you may want to ignore minor civs during peaceful times

Ideas:
- A filter to show only colonizable planets would be nice (or a little icon)
- Available policies: a filter would be great. E.g. show all policies that impact approval
- As homeworlds are placed at the corner of a sector: maybe there could be a policy or improvement that reduces decay. Another idea: freighters: you got 10 freighters and 2 core worlds: every core world loses 5% decay (simple solution) or you assign a number of freighters to a core world (advanced solution). Could be comined with nanobots to create additional flair

Bug: Sometimes the core planet screen does not fully appear as in below. Notice the left-had side of the screen when the Governor's face should be.

To reproduce the above screen, you need an unhappy core world.  The Advisors on the upper right-hand corner of the screen will state that "Citizens of 'Core World' are unhappy."

Do not go over to the core world. Instead, click on the advisor message.  You will get a Blank Screen except for the bar at the top of the screen. Now, click on the Research to go to the research selection screen.

Once in the research selection screen, just click on "Done" to return to the main galaxy view.

From the main galaxy view, go into any Core World and you will get something like above where the left-hand side of the screen is cut off. I found no way to scroll it over.  The only way to correct this is to exit the game.  I did a full exit (not just go to main menu, but that might work too).  When I came back later and reloaded GalCiv and restarted the save game, it was fine.

liking all the new changes. esp like starting off with a policy slot. growth rates seem much better for keeping things going at a good rate while still rewarding you good for building growth upgrades too.

a couple tech issues... games start off well with good response times, but by like turn 50 the lag still gets really bad and the game therefore becomes a lot less fun. (I have presets on low)

second, the map sizes for starting sector seem to vary a LOT. while starting several games with a small starting map size and identical other settings, the number of star systems in my starting map size varied from as little as 3 stars total, to as many as 43 stars total. I tried a tiny map too that had 4 stars, so yeah, something's a little off there.

so yeah, overall liking it a lot, but with that lag that builds up i still havent gotten a game past like turn 50 before i gotta stop.

Here is another strange typo like the one I reported here.

This is in FlavorText.xml and is caused by the same weird character that doesn't print in the conversation.

behaf should be behalf.

There are major problems with the AI and colony ships.

I first noticed that some AI colony ships stop near a planet, then don’t colonize it or do anything else.  They will move away when I colonize the planet.  It can be seen in this save game.

Load the save, zoom out a little and move right to the white star.  Zoom in enough to see something like this.

My colony ship is next to the planet.  A Drath colony ship is near.  I played several more turns while I didn’t do anything with my ship.  The Drath ship didn’t colonize the planet or move anywhere or do anything besides nothing.

I used console commands to take control of the Drath and found the colony ship doesn’t have a colonist on board.   I then went to the list of ships and sorted them by power.  I then checked all the colony ships.  One had 1 each of weapons and defenses, but no colonist.  I checked the other 36 colony ships and found only 2 with a colonist.  Somehow they are able to launch empty colony ships and spend most of their effort doing that.  The game is smart enough to know that an empty colony ship can’t colonize a planet and doesn’t allow it.  The AI doesn’t know what to do, so the empty colony ship just sits there.  I didn't look closely at all the colony ships, but a lot, maybe all, were stopped near a planet that could be colonized if they had a colonist.

If I stay as the Arcean and colonize the planet, the empty Drath colony ship realizes that planet can no longer be colonized, so it moves away, probably to another planet.

I have seen colony ships of other races stopped near planets, so it isn’t just the Drath that have the problem.

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Captured colony ships sometimes have a colonist, other times they don’t.  After seeing that the AI can launch empty colony ships, I think that is the reason a captured colony ship may or may not have a colonist.  I’m able to see a lot of information about the colony ships I see.  Maybe it’s because I have high overall espionage?  I can select an AI colony ship and see if it has a colonist.

This save is later that then previous one.  It will show more of the colony ships without a colonist.  At the end of the subspace stream at the southern part of my starting sector is a stack of 2 Minot colony ships.  Clicking on the stack will show the information for one of the ships.  Clicking again will show the information for the other.  One shows a colonist, and the other does not.

The next sector in that direction has more colony ships.  Some have a colonist, and some don’t.  Those that are mine (Arcean) are all captured.  Some have a colonist, and some don’t.

The next sector has a Terran colony ship without a colonist.

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A lot of these colony ships are going past my home sector to the next sector, which is the home sector of the Drath.  The AI seems to prefer sending colony ships and constructors to sectors that are far way instead of to sectors that are closer.  This seems to also mean that a planet in a distant sector is preferred over one in the same sector where the ship was built.

The several sectors away distance is using the subspace streams.  It is usually closer in a straight line.  I wonder if the AI is using the wrong way to determine the distance.

Is the quality of the target given too much value?  Is the best planet in the galaxy that is far, far away considered to be the planet to colonize instead of a very good planet that is a few stars away from where the colony ship was built?  It may take many, many, many weeks to get to the far one instead of a few weeks to get to the near one.

I think the method to determine which planet to colonize has a lot of problems.

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Finally, the AI builds colony ships like crazy when at war.  I’ve been at war with 4 of the AI for quite a while.  It seems like about 98% of the ships they send out are colony ships or constructors.  They don’t even try to attack any of my planets that may be near to them.

I did see an AI (Baratak Grove) attack and capture a core world of an enemy (Terrans) we both had after I destroyed all ships defending it.

My fleet with transports wasn’t there yet, so I decided to let them have it instead of taking it myself.

A couple of things.

1) I have also noticed the AI colony ships stopping at a planet and not colonizing it.  Guess my Intel wasn't up to snuff to see if it had a colonist.

2) Seems that now damn near all of the Leaders I see are horrible.  Low stats AND low loyalty.  yeah, I know you don't want them all to have really good stats like back in 0.65 but I think you overcompensated here.

3) Again on Leaders, I am not getting any Leader events.  No statues, money or criticism.  

4) When selecting colonists for colony ships or constructors, I noticed some colonists have an "Expectation" of zero.  Some have expectations of "-2".  While the "-2" expectation can make sense, I just wondered if it was on purpose.  

5) AI sends colony ships to the far side of the Sector (beside me) while leaving nice juicy planets closer to its home world.  And the planets it colonizes by me aren't necessarily great. 

6) Growth rate seems pretty good now. A nice balance, especially with a couple more to start with on Earth.

7) Liked the addition of 2 techs that let you place an extra item (or 2) onto ships. The second is called Extreme Miniaturization.

8)) Seems like there are an awful lot of useless research techs, whose only purpose appears to be to make you spend a few extra turns researching.   For example, you will get a tech that miniaturizes your beam weapons.  But it doesn't, you can't get more items on the ship and you don't get a damage increase.  Of course it could be that this is an Alpha release and these things still need to be coded.  But I preferred the ship space/miniaturization methods used in previous GC games instead of just having a tech and you can place 3 items of any type instead of just 2.

Idea: I would like to see the diplomacy sliders in the summary. It would be a nice way to check diplomacy from time to time. Alternatively only emojis could be shown but sliders got more information value.

Just wanted to mention a couple more things on my wish list.

Firstly, there seems to be a lack of "fun immersion" in the game like there was in GC and GC2 (it was missing in GC3). Something about the game interface and your interactions with the other civs.

One thing that would help would be CNN GNN!  I really miss the occasional news flash concerning galactic events.  Who has declared war!  Who is winning that war!  Maybe who built a galactic achievement!  And the cute little robots that reported things whose look changed depending on your alignment (now it would be ideology).

Secondly, I still hope that the minor races do a little more than sit there. I once completed a mission for a minor race, and it became my ally. So then what?  It still didn't do anything that I could determine.

Thirdly, bring back the random events.  Sudden appearance of resources, juicy planets and anomalies.  Strange factions that appear and declare war on all governments of a particular alignment/ideology.  Sudden diplomatic blunders!

Finally, I miss having an involved and effective espionage system. I'd have to install and run GC and GC2 to get an idea of what I think is best.  GC3 had a system that was rather long and ineffective.

Augmentation Center should have at least a +1 Intelligence to all citizens in my Civilization as one of its listed Improvement Effects since that what its description says it does.  Maybe it does do this, but then even more important it be listed.  As configured this improvement is not worth building since it is not as good as a regular Research improvement. 

Okay, this one goes with 11"st" when it should be 11"th"- it's 13"th" not 13"rd".  Haven't seen it yet , but I bet 12"th" shows up as 12"nd"

Looks like someone programmed a table based on last digit, but it doesn't work for these three integers in the teens   

Here is another typo caused by that strange character I have already reported twice.  Righta should be Right, a with a comma after Right.

The strange character is the same as in the first two reported earlier.

It is in FlavorText.xml.

I was able to search all of the file and found it only in the three places I have reported.  I also checked FlavorText_Old.xml and didn’t find it there.

Here is more information about the AI building colony ships without a  colonist

I loaded a save I made at the beginning of the game I used to report the previous information.  I used console commands to unlock all the techs and remove the fow.

I put all my ships on sentry, then moved my view to the upper right to get to the sector with the Drath, then zoomed in on Dratha.  I then ran through turns without really playing until an AI was in a situation where it had a chance to build a colony ship without a colonist.  I then saved the game.  Here is that save.

Load the save, zoom out some, move to the upper right to the sector with the Drath, then zoom in on Dratha.  The shipyard has just completed a constructor to reduce the population of Dratha to 1 and has started building a colony ship.  The constructor has not launched.

Go to the next turn.  The constructor will launch, the colony ship will be completed but not launched.  The population of Dratha will still be 1.  The shipyard will then begin building a supply ship.

Go to the next turn.  The colony ship will launch without a colonist, the population of Dratha will still be 1, the supply ship hasn’t launched yet, and the shipyard will begin building another colony ship.

Continue going to the next turn, and several colony ships will be built and launched without population.  The population of Dratha will always be 1.