Galactic Civilizations III

[Irenaeus]

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Wait, what. They were specifically advertising high system requirements as a feature, cause "technology!!!" and then they show... that? I mean, sure, we all loved Homeworld, but it did actually run on 32bit OS.

 

[Turisas]

http://www.explorminate.com/#!My-Lu...ck/c15kj/1BE537BA-FEBD-4363-AB58-FFFBE7A61B41

I asked him about Stardock’s future plans with Galactic Civilizations 3 and he was excited to tell me that they have a “rough story arc” planned with the game and since they built it in 64-bit, they’ll be supporting it for years to come (like they did with its previous iteration). Multiple full expansions are planned, each with its own focus on that story and new gameplay elements being introduced. As the expansions progress, they’ll start to focus around the (redacted). I won’t tell you actually. I don’t want to spoil it.


As you may or may not know, they’re shooting for a May release of Galactic Civilizations 3. Originally they had planned for April, but Brad wants some extra time with the AI before it ships. That’s a good thing in my book. It’ll be interesting to see if they end up releasing Sorcerer King in April now, to avoid those other games. All in all, Brad and Stardock’s various groups have some very exciting games lined up this year. Not only will see Sorcerer King and Galactic Civilizations 3 in the same year, but we might see two more! Both of which sound like great games by how Brad describes them. You’ll see soon enough at GDC in a couple weeks.

 

[Curious_Tongue]

Wait, what. They were specifically advertising high system requirements as a feature, cause "technology!!!" and then they show... that? I mean, sure, we all loved Homeworld, but it did actually run on 32bit OS.

I was playing Starcraft 2 on my 2008 junker (on-board video card). It looked and played great.

High system requirements for strategy games just scream "cheap-ass development!" to me.

 

[Irenaeus]

Looking forward to this. Don't screw me, Frogboy

 

[Spectacle]

Wait, what. They were specifically advertising high system requirements as a feature, cause "technology!!!" and then they show... that? I mean, sure, we all loved Homeworld, but it did actually run on 32bit OS.

I was playing Starcraft 2 on my 2008 junker (on-board video card). It looked and played great.

High system requirements for strategy games just scream "cheap-ass development!" to me.

64 bit should allow for bigger galaxies with more civs without the game slowing to a crawl. It's not for eyecandy in battle screens that most people are going to turn off anyway.

 

[Destroid]

Wait, what. They were specifically advertising high system requirements as a feature, cause "technology!!!" and then they show... that? I mean, sure, we all loved Homeworld, but it did actually run on 32bit OS.

I was playing Starcraft 2 on my 2008 junker (on-board video card). It looked and played great.

High system requirements for strategy games just scream "cheap-ass development!" to me.

64 bit should allow for bigger galaxies with more civs without the game slowing to a crawl. It's not for eyecandy in battle screens that most people are going to turn off anyway.

What exactly does 64 bit over 32 bit that would result in this at anything like the scale of a 4x game?

 

[Spectacle]

What exactly does 64 bit over 32 bit that would result in this at anything like the scale of a 4x game?

Usable RAM, mainly.

 

[tuluse]

What exactly does 64 bit over 32 bit that would result in this at anything like the scale of a 4x game?

Keep in mind for all intents and purposes, 32 bit means limited to 2 gigs of ram for a single application. While really that should be plenty anyways, it's not like they're using the full 4gb 32 bit lets a system address.

 

[Alienman]

Laser overload in that video.. and that is some underwhelming explosions. Look almost 2D. It would be cool if the bigger ships break a-part go down in a series of explosions a la Starship Troopers. Oh well.

 

[Spectacle]

The game is on sale at Steam this weekend, so if anyone wants to get in on the early access for half price, now you can.

It still baffles me to see a game getting such a steep discount before it's officially released. Very strange way of doing business.

 

[Irenaeus]

????

 

[Branm]

What exactly is still missing from the current beta?

Is diplomacy in? Is the AI halfway competent yet?

 

[Gord]

Strange, unless they desperately need more beta testers or moneyz for prolonged early access.

Anyway, if they continued the improvements from GC2:ToA, managed to get their AI working this time and expand ship construction beyond the old RPS system, it might be worth getting.
I did get my fun out of ToA, even though it's just methadone for a MoO2-heroin addiction.

 

[Branm]

Strange, unless they desperately need more beta testers or moneyz for prolonged early access.

Anyway, if they continued the improvements from GC2:ToA, managed to get their AI working this time and expand ship construction beyond the old RPS system, it might be worth getting.
I did get my fun out of ToA, even though it's just methadone for a MoO2-heroin addiction.

Been ages since I played Gal Civ 2, and i did play it after a bunch of patches but I seem to remember their AI was better than a bunch of other 4X games....

 

[Gord]

Been ages since I played Gal Civ 2, and i did play it after a bunch of patches but I seem to remember their AI was better than a bunch of other 4X games....

They managed to break some of the AIs in the ToA expansion, sadly:
The expansion introduced semi-unique tech-trees for every race, making the races more varied and interesting, but unfortunately some races couldn't deal with the new tech-trees, making them suck hard (non-existent expansion, no military, etc.). Otherwise the AI was fine, I guess, although it usually wasn't too difficult to fool them in the RPS meta-game.

There's a mod, however, that will fix the AI issue at the cost of taking back/scaling down some of the changes ToA introduced. Definitely worth a game or two, however, if one owns ToA.

 

[Hobo Elf]

I've been on the fence about this game for a while due to the high price for an EA game, but now that it's 50% off I'm getting it.
I've been jonesing for a new space 4X game and this is the perfect game to play in between MonHun4U when I have to charge my 3DS.

 

[sser]

I feel like this is the second time it's been -50% off. Interesting that they do it so early. Well I'm tempted anyway, damn frogs after my monies.

 

[Marobug]

Wait, what. They were specifically advertising high system requirements as a feature, cause "technology!!!" and then they show... that? I mean, sure, we all loved Homeworld, but it did actually run on 32bit OS.

I was playing Starcraft 2 on my 2008 junker (on-board video card). It looked and played great.

High system requirements for strategy games just scream "cheap-ass development!" to me.

64 bit should allow for bigger galaxies with more civs without the game slowing to a crawl. It's not for eyecandy in battle screens that most people are going to turn off anyway.

What exactly does 64 bit over 32 bit that would result in this at anything like the scale of a 4x game?

It's not quite about the game slowing to a crawl, to put it simply if an application doesn't have enough memory or the system won't allow it, it will crash eventually. No one develops software knowing it will eventually crash so devs have to work with what maximum memory they can use. The main difference here is that 32bit systems are limited to 2gb per application while a 64bit system has a virtually infinite amount (kinda, but you won't hear about limitations in at the very least two decades).

This means you can cram a infinite amount of shit in the game (planets, stars, ships, AI players, etc), provided the users have a decent enough CPU to run it. Since the large majority of all computation in a TBS game is done during AI turns instead of continually, framerate is not really an issue so it shouldn't really require a nasa cpu either and visually it's the turd everyone can see so gpu are even less of an issue.

But what's more puzzling is that none of the features they announced actually REQUIRE a 64 bit system. They could very well allow 100+ ai players to be for 64 bit only and allow people with a 32 bit system to play a normal, 8 to 10 player game. It's not like I see a 100+ AIs, 2 months long gal civ game being particularly fun either, and none of the few new features/additions do anything to change that.

It's still the same bog standard space 4X game, it isn't a paradox game that was designed from the start with a large number of AI and/or human players in mind.

 

[Destroid]

Waiting for 100+ AIs to take their turn will be like this:

 

[Turisas]

Naw man, it's 64-bit so it'll be zomg fast!1

 

[Angthoron]

Caved in and bought it at 50% off.

Shocking twist: It's not shit! In fact I kinda enjoyed it so far. It has optimization issues, but at least the AI plays consistently, the mechanics are decently implemented, turn speed seems OK, diplomacy (mostly) works, and techs SEEM more distinct compared to GalCiv 2. Also, some nice animations/texts. Like the Kind/Pragmatic/EVUL!!! paths that you can take, basically each has "skill trees" that you can pick from as you collect the alignment points, which you get by building shit planetside/random events/colonizing planets.

Game sorely misses an event log window though, I'm still not sure what happened to AI2, did AI1 annex it through culture, or did they have a war, or what the hell happened. All I knew is that one turn AI2 was gone. Oh well, I won cultural victory 20 turns from then anyway.

 

[Ulminati]

Angthoron is it as soulless as its predecessors? GalCiv 1-2 always felt like you were playing a spreadsheet.

 

[Angthoron]

Angthoron is it as soulless as its predecessors? GalCiv 1-2 always felt like you were playing a spreadsheet.

I know what you mean, but actually, I'm so far shocked to report that no, it isn't. Will need to test it further, but so far, it actually has the little extras that make it NOT look like a dull spreadsheet fifteen turns in. I'm not actually sure why, and will need to play longer to see if that's a feeling that hold up.

The only part of the game I don't currently like (and assume will still be changed/improved on) is the colony management. It has a lot of good ideas - terraforming, tile improvement, synergy boni, but it just feels kinda dull - probably the only part of the game I'd really compare to the classical GalCiv experience of spreadsheetin'. Fortunately, it's a small portion of the game, and there's star base building to engage in that's actually more fun (though also more simple: use a Builder to plop down a base, then send more Builders to upgrade it, 1/upgrade. Can have a defense, mining, culture or research base, depending on what's near it - or a blend of two). I think my problem with colony management is "too much micro for too little benefit", why not just pick from a list and be done with it.

AI also "likes" you more if you have a bigger battlefleet than they do, or better diplomacy. Trade, ideology, interstellar council votes etc also affect it. Seemed pretty stable - never had AI declare on me out of the blue, a-la Civ AI.

 

[Burning Bridges]

So I need to install a new popamole OS to play this?

2Gb is an insane amount of memory if you optimize your applications. Most programmers seem to not know how to use because they will use default types. Int32 becomes Int64 etc and most of the extra memory is just wasted.
I bet the real reason is that that they dont know how to setup the newest version of their favorite tools.