Galactic Civilizations III

[General Maxson]

Another Stardock garbage...

 

[Gord]

5 minutes in I wanted to punch the guy through my monitor for being annoying. Also he never played a GalCiv game previously. The only thing that I cared about, the stupid rock-paper-scissors weapons system, is back, game will suck move along.

They said they will make lasers and weapon different with different accuracy, projectile speed etc. But IMO it's a bullshit. We'll see another Torpedo II and all the way till Torpedo XXXXXXXXVII. And 99% of battles will be won by refitting your fleet to appropriate weaponly and armor.

Didn't he say in the video that they want to do more varied special systems for your ships?
I wouldn't mind keeping the RPS system, if they provide special systems with more interesting effects. Like the stuff we got in the MoO games, e.g. Black Hole Generators and such.

Maybe I understood him wrong though and it's wishful thinking.

 

[Space Satan]

There were screenshots that proved that Rock-Paper-Scissors faggotry is still in.

 

[Renegen]

5 minutes in I wanted to punch the guy through my monitor for being annoying. Also he never played a GalCiv game previously. The only thing that I cared about, the stupid rock-paper-scissors weapons system, is back, game will suck move along.

They said they will make lasers and weapon different with different accuracy, projectile speed etc. But IMO it's a bullshit. We'll see another Torpedo II and all the way till Torpedo XXXXXXXXVII. And 99% of battles will be won by refitting your fleet to appropriate weaponly and armor.

I don't have a problem with the combat being simplistic, the game was never meant to compete with the depth of MOO, but what it had was interesting strategy. Sort of like chess, as long as you know from a glance what everything does, you can plan 5 moves ahead. The AI being much better than you at instantly refitting their ships or adapting to what everyone else is doing, the 3 way weapons system is just pointless micromanagement that accomplishes nothing. The reward for successfully microing things is just simplifying the combat to what it should've been in the first place.

 

[Misconnected]

But Twilight of Arnor actually broke the AI, they mixed up tech paths, added a bunch of new techs to every race and tried to make them wildly different. The Yor are perfect example of how the AI was screwed by this. So if they are making custom tech trees for every race I hope they are going to make competent AIs to go along with them.

They broke the AI because they didn't update the AIs to use the new tech trees. In theory the AIs were independent of the tech trees, but in practice some of them weren't actually. So a couple of them would, for example, stall out because they needed to build stuff that simply wasn't there for them to build, and similar issues.
That is, of course, ridiculously unacceptable. But at least in this case mods really did fix it.

So, they're saying people complained about two independent variables represented as lines dictating economic development, and they decide to replace it with a fucking plane?! Do they not fucking realize that, outside of aesthetics, they're mechanically fucking identical!?!

They actually replaced 3 sliders, so yeah, the difference is purely an ease-of-use thing. Though even without having tried it, I'd argue the 3 sliders were better. This, after all, is not colour selection we're talking about, but simply what percentage of the economy to dedicate to 3 separate tasks.

 

[Gord]

They broke the AI because they didn't update the AIs to use the new tech trees. In theory the AIs were independent of the tech trees, but in practice some of them weren't actually. So a couple of them would, for example, stall out because they needed to build stuff that simply wasn't there for them to build, and similar issues.
That is, of course, ridiculously unacceptable. But at least in this case mods really did fix it.

Could you point me to the mod? Might be interesting if I replay it.

 

[Misconnected]

Could you point me to the mod? Might be interesting if I replay it.

You're looking for Altarn's Polished Twilight of the Arnor 2.

APT1 is a purist AI fix mod, which introduces as minimal changes as Altarn was able to.

APT2 is not "modder's vision" kind of mod. You won't find the equivalent of Cloud's sword or anything. But it does go beyond strict fixes and tries to improve the game balance in a way that is consistent with the spirit of Twilight of The Arnor. Both mods can be found behind the link, but I strongly encourage you to use APT2. It makes for a far better game.

Have fun

 

[SmartCheetah]

Hm, from what I've seen so far, they're reusing a lot of assets from GalCiv II (Vide, technologies)
I hope they'll implement most of the stuff they had in GalCiv II with addons then(Terror stars, events and other shit)
I'm probably just day-dreaming about this, 'cuz DLC's and stuff. Sigh.

 

[Misconnected]

I certainly hope it's only assets when it comes to the Terror Stars, because those things fucking suck in GC2. If there were prizes for uselessness, Terror Stars would pwn the Hall of Fame.

Apropos nothing, I'm kind of tempted to fork over $99 because that supposedly pays for all future content for the game. In the local currency monies, it's basically what a new console game costs...

EDIT: Trololol Steam thinks 99USD = 93Euro. What is that, like a 30% price hike?

Oh Steam how I wish you'd been aborted.

 

[tuluse]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_added_tax

 

[Ashery]

So, they're saying people complained about two independent variables represented as lines dictating economic development, and they decide to replace it with a fucking plane?! Do they not fucking realize that, outside of aesthetics, they're mechanically fucking identical!?!

They actually replaced 3 sliders, so yeah, the difference is purely an ease-of-use thing. Though even without having tried it, I'd argue the 3 sliders were better. This, after all, is not colour selection we're talking about, but simply what percentage of the economy to dedicate to 3 separate tasks.

And if all they had done was present it in a new manner, I would've replied with a simple "Neat."

Instead, they hype it up to all hell and claim "We heard the complaints! Here's a dramatic change to how the game's played!" when, in fact, all they've done is a minor aesthetic change. Which is, of course, par for the course when it comes for Stardock and is why, after the Elemental fiasco, I now wait until one of their game's is <$5 before buying.

Now, if they had eliminated waste production and pushed the surplus production to the next building in the queue, then we could talk about a change in how the game's played.

 

[Stokowski]

 

[Curious_Tongue]

A 4x space game? You might be surprised how many will be willing to pay.

 

[Space Satan]

I would. But not for GalCivIII after GalCivII. If, for example, russian mafia from Wargaming.net would say that they'll release Master of Orion, which would be just a MoO2 with 2014 graphics and tweaked UI I would totally buy it.

 

[Misconnected]

A 4x space game? You might be surprised how many will be willing to pay.

It's worth noting the $99 gets you all future DLC & expansions for the game.

Of course, it's also worth noting Stardock released their last 4X as 3 separate games; War of Magic, Fallen Enchantress and Legendary Heroes.

 

[Trash]

I'd ploink down that amount of money for a game that's as good as MoO II without a second thought.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

A 4x space game? You might be surprised how many will be willing to pay.

It's worth noting the $99 gets you all future DLC & expansions for the game.

Of course, it's also worth noting Stardock released their last 4X as 3 separate games; War of Magic, Fallen Enchantress and Legendary Heroes.

Exactly, you can bet your ass they'll re-release this crap as GC III the legendary spacepeople and claim it's a new game for which you have to pay.

There were recent news that they will be making another "game" out of Elemental ffs.

 

[Infinitron]

Early Access now available: http://store.steampowered.com/app/226860/

 

[Genma:TheDestroyer]

Great, now I can return to constantly getting harassed by the Torians. "Wahh, we were enslaved and fed to Death Furnaces, we know the horrors of war!"


*Pause*

"Your civilization is so weak, how hasn't it died yet?! Give us 749 gold to continue living!"

 

[SmartCheetah]

I always laughed at how every faction tried to demand your jewgold just because you haven't had a huge fleet. And if you had one, how much they wanted to lick your ass just to be friends, lol.

 

[Genma:TheDestroyer]

It'd help if they took into account your potential productive capacity (maybe that would justify all those freaking spies...) before starting shit. You're right, I am currently outclassed by three half formed fleets and weaponless scout ships buzzing around the known galaxy. But it's not like you have Planetary Invasion, and even if you did it'd take about twenty turns to get over here at your speed.


Oops, three turns later I've churned out enough ships to drown you in scrap.

 

[Renegen]

I always laughed at how every faction tried to demand your jewgold just because you haven't had a huge fleet. And if you had one, how much they wanted to lick your ass just to be friends, lol.

That's the best part, the AI tells you exactly how it feels about you and they are also not afraid to declare war if you're weak or have a permanent alliance if things work out.

Haven't tried anything about GC3 tho, it looks exactly like the previous ones.

 

[SmartCheetah]

At times, I was really pleasantly surprised by AI actions in fully patched GalCiv2. And I mean really, no sarcasm here. Good example is the backstabbing action of Terrans who broke their alliance with Drengi, just to form another one with all the lesser species - giving them money to boost their economy which eventually lead us to total annihilation of Drengi. That was awesome.
At the same time, there were things like this demanding shit, which was feeling totally out of place, where every step of AI was so goddamn predictable and pretty much forced you to maintain fleet and play however they want. Enjoy your peaceful civilization with most peaceful AI's threating to wipe you out because you haven't got enough ships x.X IMO this would be good with enough espionage to actually tell how big your fleets is, but I bet AI was simply cheating and "looking at statistics" - just like you could.

But like Genma said, it would make partial sense if they were also looking at your treasury and production potential. With horrendous economic power, I could easily buy myself those few ships which would outclass any AI at point where they were sending those threats.

I wonder if they kept those awesome and totally overpowered global events which could totally change a pace of game in GalCiv2 (Precusor ship, anyone? :D)

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

in 4x defenses should be formidable, an entrenched position should be incredibly tough to overcome, that's the only way a peaceful race could endure.
i've seen this properly done only in master of orion 3, where some defenses couldn't be beat no matter what, even with infinite numbers. a properly built solar system could stand any siege for ever.
in civ-like games the only defense is offense, wars of attrition are just not allowed by game rules, instead sometimes even just a quick raid from the enemy could cripple an empire by pillaging installations which are sometimes more valuable than the very same city/planet nearby.
it's awkward that civ5's shooting cities are the best bet at a defensible position, but they're going down anyway. foot soldiers in space 4x? they could just not be there, i've yet to see a failed invasion.

 

[Genma:TheDestroyer]

Well it depends, if you go down the starbase tech tree and manage to slap a few militarily-focused ones down with all the upgrades...they're gonna stay there till someone manages to research Black Hole Guns and can fit several on a hull. And considering the AI has a hard on for any base in a war they'll happily suicide themselves long before that point.