I bought Civilization III and could of swore I played exactly the same game before.

I agree in a way - new concepts are good if you don't lose the concepts that made the success of the game in the first place. By changing too much, you create a completely new game. A good example for this is MOO3 - they just changed the game too much and players used to MOO1 and MOO2 flamed the thing with good reason.

And moreover: I WANT more of the SAME, but better. GalCiv is great as it is, just improve it and I'll buy it every time. Like the Civilization series: always the same, but always a little better. And if you compare Civilization I with Civilization III, you also find those new concepts and all, but at the core nothing has changed

I would like the option to build custom ships and determine the component costs, just as the os/2 version of shipyards permitted. This a serious area of weakness that should be corrected immediately.

~SDC~

I agree with much of what has been said about evolving GalCiv II but also think that we need to be careful not to turn GalCiv II into MOO4 or the like.

I like the idea of being able to mine system resources, Conquest:Frontier Wars did this quite well I think.

I'd also like to see the ability to modify the starting parameters of each game more. AP has now introduced senarios, but I'd like to see this expanded:
1] I'd like to setup a senario where every race's homeworld is destroyed 2-3 turns in, supernova/catastophic disaster/Industrial accident etc and its game on from there with any ships surviving
2] Or, every race starts in the same system, it goes nova destroying everything in certan radius and leaving each race with, say, a colonyship; couple corvettes; a scout; no money
3] The player starts as a Minor race...builds to graduate to a Major race and then game on...

Well, thats my second 5c worth.

Should that be 5bc's ?

I don't get that one. Slowing a turn based game? If that's just renaming month into day, there's no point. If that's about being able to focus on a ground battle for three days while the other month-based turn is on hold or slowed, I don't want it. I don't want to have a slowed down game becuase of ground battles.

They already do. That's called the I-League.

If some minors were considered as majors for victory conditions (I-League, Fundies), the game would be much better.

Steal some ideas from Spaceward Ho!, which should be the model for how to make a space resource game fast and fun. Personal favorite touches: Planets are rated for temperature and gravity, recentered so that your species' sweet spot is listed as 72F and 1.0G. Temperature can be adjusted by dumping money into terraforming, but bad gravity is forever. Heavy or light planets are only valuable as mining facilities, but metal is precious so you end up using them anyway.
Almost everything is adjusted by sliders, including what percentage of your galactic income each planet gets to spend. There is never any waste of money.
The game is self-expanding. It will remember your name as a possible CPU player name when someone else plays, and when you when you get to name a new star. I believe that when you give a new ship a custom name, that enters the list of what the computer will name its ships, too.

What I mean by turn progression is changing from a "press enter to end turn" system to a system that "turns" automatically and you are able to change the speed of said turns.
Like in Imperium Galactica 2 or Europa Universalis 2, or even Warcraft/Starcraft.

Maybe it wouldnt be feasible for a game like this and a turn based system is better. I dont know - was just a suggestion that maybe an alteration would be needed to facilitate the changes I suggested.

As for the Splinter Empires thing. I know they can form the I-League and such; but I was thinking that it should be refined.
And it should be more likely that a planet will form a new "Empire" than it is to join another Empire; especially if the planet/system is a culturally strong planet/system.


Also I have thought of something else in relation to my vassals, rebellion, and splinter empires ideas.

AI.
How about more AIs? Like each Major has its own AI which governs how it behaves - and there is a single AI for EVERY single minor. Which kinda sucks.
Maybe it could be categorised like this.
Majors AIs=
-Drengin AI
-Altarian AI
-Arcean AI
-Torian AI
-Drath AI
-Korx AI
-Terran AI
-(AI for each additional GC2 major)
Minors=
-I-League AI (An AI governing systems which choose to join the Independent Worlds League which ismore of a common defense alliance rather than a Empire -governed by a Universalist approach)
-Merchantile AI (For Empires that put profit before war)
-Militaristic AI (For Empires that believe in having a strong defensive armed forces)
-Warrior AI (Self explanatory Warlike AI)
-Diplomat AI (Peaceful Diplomatic AI)
-Passive(Pussywillow) AI (Self Explanatory)
-Pirate AI (Governing Pirate states)
-(Any other Minor AI that could be applied)

Finally what I forgot to put in...

Pirates.
Pirates should be given a more serious role so that they are a greater threat to everyone earlier on in the game.
They should be drawn to assaulting Trade Routes and the stronger Empires Major and "Minor".
Also I think that the possibility of there being "Pirate States" that conquer entire worlds and systems to use as bases for pillaging star lanes - after all in real life many pirates went as far as to organise Pirate Kingdoms on the Barbary Coast.

Civil Wars.
One thing I liked about the Kra'Hen campaign in IG2 is sometimes you as the player had to put down a revolt of a subordinate who claimed you had no right to rule and that he was in fact the legitimate ruler of the Kra'Hen in our Galaxy.
That idea of a "Civil war" could be adopted into GalCiv. Dont know if it is feasible but its something to think about.

Okay I got it. I'll definitely NOT buy a game that is real-time. That makes me purchase less and less games, but I don't want a continuous game where you suddenly want to pause and sometimes get bored because the 'fast' isn't fast enough. I'd rather have a button 'Play 1 Turn' next to a 'Play 10 Turns' or a 'Play Until Something Unexpected Happens Or A New Choice Has To Be Made'.

One thing to know: sometimes a major civ see a revolt and there is a split in its civilization. I have witnessed it only one time, and it was with the Drengins: there were the Drengins (major AI) and the separatist Drengin (minor AI)

Do you know that there is an option about autoturn? One of its characteristics is when you move your last ship, the turn proceed without you hitting "next turn".

I agree will only by turn based Strategy games.

Yes, in fact I use it all the time. Which means I'm happy with the game as it is rather than real time.

My suggestions are what I thought were the best points of a lot of other games.
I gave them for consideration because well if there was a way to include some measure of most of my suggestions into GalCiv 2 then I think it would be the perfect space based strategy game.

I realise that there is no way in this earth that all of my suggestions would be used - but my first 6 points I think are a must for GalCiv 2; something that we all agree on.

This is one that I think is worth considering, that I haven't seen mentioned before. In the old OS/2 game, each star system had a certain amount of "resources" (NOT the same as the current cultural, morale, military, economic, and research "resources") based on the number and class of the planets in the system. These "resources" contributed to the productivity of the colonized planets, as if, for instance, asteroids and uncolonized planets were being mined. The additional production could be dedicated to social, military, or research.

This led to complications in play, as leaving a colonizable planet fallow would boost the productivity of the other planets. I recall experimenting once, leaving one of two class 20 planets uncolonized in one system and finding that later in the game the colonized class 20 planet was more productive than a class 26 I had in a different system.

~SDC~

IMHO it is quite logical - uncolonized planets can be mined better than highly populated ones. On a highly populated one, you would end up mining the soil from right under the people's feet, with all the drawbacks of that - uncolonized ones you can take apart without a fuss, so you end up having higher production levels in systems that have a few uncolonized planets...

But you could also say that it's got nothing to do with that at all, because the workers on the class 26 planet were simply spending more time having fun and enjoying the sweet air and wonderful scenery than those on the dull class 20 planet, working hard to get to class 26 themselves


~SDC~

Actually 1 I don't care. I still play Nethack, after all, so that should tell you how much I care about GUI.
2 is nice to have, but not mandatroy.
3 I don't care if each planet is fought on separately, it depends on (2). However, a better fighting model could be used, but again, I don't think it's mandatory.
4 Fleet combat yes to allow combined arms. No to controlling the combat. I'd rather have a Call To Power-like combat than a MOO - abuse the ai - combat.
5 This is already feasible. Build a ship with speed of -99.
6 No, the current system is fine.
So all in all, we don't agree. I think the only mandatory thing is fleet combat with some ship design, but not a controlled fleet combat. Separate planets would be nice, but nothing more.
More events, minor races becoming majors, would be nice.

1 - Well do excuse me for thinking that everyone would want a nicer looking game for the sequel. Stupid that.

2 - Seperate planet colonisation IS definately needed, simply because a race colonising one world in a system and blocking that system is totally unrealistic and wouldnt happen in real life. Not to mention the abuse in games that it gets from players quickly colonising as many systems as the can and thereby blocking off dozens of worlds to the AI and potentially crippling said AI.
The only thing that can offset this abuse loophole currently is the spatial resources thing. But with it costing an additional 200 BCs for every starbase now in the latest patch even this barely has an impact now on AI performance against veteran players.
I wonder if you are arguing against this because it would stop you from abusing this loophole?

3 - Again necesarry because it wouldnt happen in real life. Entire system invasions would be far too costly and logistically difficult to carry out in real life so it really shouldnt happen in the game.
Also the fact that you have to fight the entire population is unrealistic too.
But then entire system invasions COULD be kept if it was too complicated BUT change the fact that u have to fight the entire system population to take it.

4 - I dont mind if it is a Call to Power type battle or a IG2 type battle. But the battle system in Call To Power was one of the main gripes gamers had about that game.

5 - Orbital combat isnt feasible. Simply because this 2 dimensional game - not 3d. At least not the kind of Orbital combat I was thinking about.

6 - The current system isnt fine. Its unrealistic. And supremely annoying as well. You have to practically empty entire systems to load up transports with "troops" to launch invasions. It doesnt have to be in game as a mandatory, ya know every time u take a world u need to conduct a on the ground combat. It could be optional - like the game asks when u attack a world "Do you want to watch/participate in this attack?" and u can say yes or no. If yes you go down to the world and control your units fighting. If no the battle is automatically calculated by the game.

I like the idea of having leaders which would provide bonuses to the race which manages to recruit them. This was on another space game I played (cant remember the name but it had 3 playable races on 4 CDs)

Each civ could have a quantity of positions depending on the type of Goverment they have. The more liberal the Government the greater number of leaders available. (maybe Qty 1-4).

The abilities could be military bonuses for a general, loyalty for charismatic etc.

The bonus/negatives for different governments should be more varied too.

Your argument about people settling systems to prevent the ai from gaining them would hold for settling planets too (if you skip 2 planets in a system to settle a one planet system that will cut down the ai range, it works as well - backfilling is already used).
The main problem here is the massive early expansion strategy is required by the game. If the game was changed to require lots of techs before you could expand, so you'd have to choose either expansion or better techs in military/production/science/econ sectors, there would be a choice for the game that wouldn't require players to expand like crazy.
It's currently possible to mod that, but if you do, the ai likes like stupid and never expands at all, so you would have to give the ai alternative long term strategies, which I am unable to do with the current tech files.

That's not what I heard. The main gripes were special units, bugs, the future age, and the public works. Add pitiful ai for CtP2. On apolyton, where there are many anti - CtPers, the majority of people think its combat system is way better than civ's.

About orbital combat and 3D: I fear 3E like plague in terms of ergonomics. Could you elaborate?

6- currently it does the job. You ould replace it with another system where you'd produce soldiers like you produce ships, but then population wouldn't be as important as today.

I confess not being bothered by the 'realism' in a space based game (where's the realism in FTL travel?)

I think people just bitched about Call to Power for the sake of bitching about it really lol.

Have you ever played Imperium Galactica 2? Cos id have to say that they have the best combat system I have ever seen in a Space Strategy game.
Its similar as the system in MOO but not quite as unweildy and confusing. Its ten times simpler and easier to use.
Its also far more pleasing to the eyes too.
Its hard to explain it really...
You view the battle from above, and the battle takes place on a grid over a background.
Before the battle begins you choose your "tactics" ie what formation and attack style to use - and then begin.
The fleets start at either end of the grid and fight automatically - but you can control the battle too if you want (its actually prudent to because you can fight better than the AI as the AI just fires at the closest enemy).

The same battle grid is used for Orbital battles except a planet appears in the background and on the planet appears "Target reticles" signifying the presence of planet defenses such as ion guns which fire upon your fleet and you can fire upon.
Also hovering above the planet is any defensive star bases and ships that you need to fight too.

Once the "Orbital" and "Planetary" defenses are defeated you begin a ground battle to seize the planet.
It appears on a similar battle grid to the fleet battles except you are on the planets surface and the colony/capital city/main base is in the centre of the map along with any defensive ground based forts and any ground units like Tanks and Rocket Launchers.
Each ship can carry one ground unit in IG2 - and they are sent down to the planet to fight. Again battle is automatic but it is prudent to control it urself.

Go to www.imperiumgalactica.com for piccies n stuff. It will give u a better idea than what I can by trying to explain.
[Message Edited]

Looks like an interesting system.

As Imperium Galactica 3 is in late development, and has a much larger budget than I think Stardock can afford, Gal Civ II should probably avoid drawing too close to the imp gal formula.

Actually IG3 was renamed to Galaxy Andromeda - and then later cancelled because the company making it screwed up and miscalculated the cost of making SEVERAL Of the games they were working on.
So they cancelled the one that they deemed to be "Least" popular.

Well, I think Galciv should have...

1. More ship designs and ships
2. Fleet Battles with a new window etc
3. Definatly MORE planets
4. Faster turns etc, my game sometimes freezes up when i press the turn button even though i have 256 mb ram and 1.6 ghz processor allong with no programs running during gameplay
5.To be able to play as any other race, not just humans.
6. More ways of saying things eg, more conversational stuff in diplomatics.
7. NO I do not want people to be able to colonize the same system as me.., but it would be interesting to have the option
8. Races in alliances would be able to form a Federation or Super Alliance where you get their systems and control their ships
9. Pirates become a majour race and when you speak to different worlds you get different faces because pirates are from all races also their ships would not be weaker.
10. Sensor Stations [to extend sensor range, eg stationary that could be built with a constructor]
11.Minor races get their own sectors and are able to join a Trade Federation that is organized in provoding each race majour and non majour alike with needed goods.
12.The ability to capture a starship.
13.The option to have your ship explore unknown regions [if that isnt already there]
14.BETTER ability to submit points to the metaverse For DSL users and dial up alike
15.More Frequent events eg every 10 turns
16.The knowledge of when UFP meetings take place
17.The ability to invite a race to the UFP minor or not.
well thats all my wants/suggestions for now