Galactic Civilizations III Released!

Zenn7 · Post by **Zenn7** » Sun Jan 03, 2016 9:45 pm

Jeff V wrote:I don't play campaigns, so the mega-events was the only one I bothered with. It's ok.

I was of the impression that Revenge of the Snathi and Precursor added new races/techs/abilities (not just new custom races which you could make on your own with a custom race, but something new that goes with them)? Have not b ought the game yet. Almost did but decided to get Endless Legends and Deathtrap for now. Next sale, maybe get this.

jztemple2 · Post by **jztemple2** » Sun Jan 03, 2016 10:34 pm

Zenn7 wrote:
Jeff V wrote:I don't play campaigns, so the mega-events was the only one I bothered with. It's ok.
I was of the impression that Revenge of the Snathi and Precursor added new races/techs/abilities (not just new custom races which you could make on your own with a custom race, but something new that goes with them)? Have not b ought the game yet.

I posted a question on the GC3 Steam forum asking if the content of the Precursor Worlds DLC was presented as a new campaign, or is it added to the sandbox play and the answer posted was sandbox only. That's good for me since I don't do campaigns either.

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Sun Jan 03, 2016 11:39 pm

I bought Precursor Worlds today, but I'm mired in an Insane game at the moment and each turn takes about 10 minutes. Not sure when I'll be starting a new one, although once I obliterate my one enemy, I might just try to kumbaya the other races for a diplomatic victory.

Island Dog · Post by **Island Dog** » Mon Jan 04, 2016 7:14 pm

Jeff V wrote:I bought Precursor Worlds today, but I'm mired in an Insane game at the moment and each turn takes about 10 minutes. Not sure when I'll be starting a new one, although once I obliterate my one enemy, I might just try to kumbaya the other races for a diplomatic victory.

Island Dog · Post by **Island Dog** » Wed Jan 27, 2016 2:59 pm

GalCiv III: Mercenaries was announced today! The first expansion for Galactic Civilizations III with New Factions, New Ships, Mercenary Bazaar and more.

Visit the Galactic Bazaar and hire dozens of Mercenaries
Discover Galactic Bazaars and choose from dozens of mercenaries for hire! Is that anomaly a little too dangerous to risk your own life and limb over? Pick a mercenary suited for the job and order them to do your bidding. Your bones are fragile, after all.

New Campaign! Lead the Torians to freedom from their Drengin oppressors
Hire mercenaries and use them to help lead the Torians to freedom from their Drengin oppressors in an exciting new campaign. Rebuild your shattered empire from the ground up and thrive in the face of adversity.

Tons of New Ship Designs
Every mercenary has their own unique ship for traveling across the galaxy in style. Speaking of style, there are lots of new ship parts to enhance your own customizations and styles!

Play as an Ancient Race of Warriors
The Arceans, an ancient and honorable civilization of warriors and long-time enemy of the Drengin Empire, make their debut in Mercenaries! The Arceans have new racial traits and abilities and a unique tech tree to boot!

Play as an Old Familiar Race from Galactic Civilizations II
The aquatic Torians are back and ready to fight! ...Well, sort of. They're ready to hire a bunch of mercenaries to help them escape their enslavement from the cruel Drengin Empire. The Torians are at the center of the Mercenaries campaign and also have new racial traits, abilities, and tech trees for you to explore.

More info: http://forums.galciv3.com/474543/

baelthazar · Post by **baelthazar** » Wed Jan 27, 2016 6:10 pm

The Torians look as sniveling as ever!

jztemple2 · Post by **jztemple2** » Wed Jan 27, 2016 6:13 pm

Island Dog wrote:GalCiv III: Mercenaries was announced today! The first expansion for Galactic Civilizations III with New Factions, New Ships, Mercenary Bazaar and more.

Meh. Since I don't play campaigns that part of it doesn't interest me. And since I don't spend untold time designing ships to look like Pamela Anderson's bosom, the new ship parts aren't a draw. The mercenaries look interesting... maybe.

I'm intrigued by the Arceans. A new tech tree might be worth looking into.

So, I'll wait for impressions I guess.

Island Dog · Post by **Island Dog** » Thu Feb 18, 2016 3:11 pm

GalCiv III: Mercenaries and the v1.6 update are out today!

Mercenaries info: http://forums.galciv3.com/474801/

v1.6 changelog: http://forums.galciv3.com/475427

In Galactic Civilizations III: Mercenaries, the human race is fighting a war against the remorseless Drengin Empire. Both sides have become increasingly desperate, leading them to turn to the galactic underworld and their elite mercenaries.

Visit the Galactic Bazaar and hire dozens of Mercenaries
Discover Galactic Bazaars and choose from dozens of mercenaries for hire! Is that anomaly a little too dangerous to risk your own life and limb over? Pick a mercenary suited for the job and order them to do your bidding. Your bones are fragile, after all.

New Campaign! Lead the Torians to freedom from their Drengin oppressors
Hire mercenaries and use them to help lead the Torians to freedom from their Drengin oppressors in an exciting new campaign. Rebuild your shattered empire from the ground up and thrive in the face of adversity.

Tons of New Ship Designs
Every mercenary has their own unique ship for traveling across the galaxy in style. Speaking of style, there are lots of new ship parts to enhance your own customizations and styles!

Play as an Ancient Race of Warriors
The Arceans, an ancient and honorable civilization of warriors and long-time enemy of the Drengin Empire, make their debut in Mercenaries! The Arceans have new racial traits and abilities and a unique tech tree to boot!

Play as an Old Familiar Race from Galactic Civilizations II
The aquatic Torians are back and ready to fight! ...Well, sort of. They're ready to hire a bunch of mercenaries to help them escape their enslavement from the cruel Drengin Empire. The Torians are at the center of the Mercenaries campaign and also have new racial traits, abilities, and tech trees for you to explore.

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Thu Feb 18, 2016 5:54 pm

Maybe I'll have some time to look at this over the weekend. I have to finish a current game first.

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Fri Feb 26, 2016 2:31 pm

I'm in my second game now with the Mercenaries add-on -- did it disable previous DLC? I no longer see the precursor planets or anomalies from the last DLC I bought.

Sepiche · Post by **Sepiche** » Fri Feb 26, 2016 2:32 pm

Jeff V wrote:I'm in my second game now with the Mercenaries add-on -- did it disable previous DLC? I no longer see the precursor planets or anomalies from the last DLC I bought.

Hmm, must just be unlucky. I'm seeing them in my current game.

I really kind of like the mercenaries. It's a nice way to change up the game. I especially like being able to hire awesome mercenary scouts early in the game to actually get some serious exploring done.

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Fri Feb 26, 2016 2:43 pm

The mercenaries are cool, but so far the resource costs make some of them near-unattainable. Some of them also have a rather steep RoI -- the one that gives you $5 per turn costs around $2200, putting the break-even point at an astounding 440 turns.

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Fri Feb 26, 2016 11:48 pm

Well I'll be damned. The very next turn this evening uncovered a precursor anomaly.

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Sat Feb 27, 2016 12:15 pm

Slight derail: I recently tried again to get the last version of GC2 and still could not download it. Some forum detective work revealed that one must have the Ultimate Edition -- the older individually-bought games were not upgradable. Opening a support ticket led Stardock to kindly upgrade me to Ultimate Edition for free, so I finally have the final GC2 (v.2.20, I think it is).

Haven't actually played it yet, but I intend to give it another go or two before I buy GC3.

Island Dog · Post by **Island Dog** » Fri Mar 04, 2016 12:19 pm

The v.161 update went out this week with fixes and tweaks for both Mercenaries and the base game.

Gameplay

The Starbase Military ring and its two upgrades now give a flat bonus.
All other Starbase military modules still give multipliers but at higher values.
Reduced the Starbase Range boost given by Military ring by 1.
Starbase culture bases and modules now generate more influence per turn
Increased the anomaly counts on mid-range settings.

Full changelog: http://forums.galciv3.com/475641/

jztemple2 · Post by **jztemple2** » Fri Mar 04, 2016 1:52 pm

I have kind of an odd question, but someone might know. If I change the victory conditions of a game of GC3 to, say, make conquest the only viable option, will the AI still attempt to pursue victory via other methods? Even though those methods are no longer valid in the current game?

baelthazar · Post by **baelthazar** » Sat Mar 05, 2016 12:33 pm

jztemple2 wrote:I have kind of an odd question, but someone might know. If I change the victory conditions of a game of GC3 to, say, make conquest the only viable option, will the AI still attempt to pursue victory via other methods? Even though those methods are no longer valid in the current game?

I have never done this, but I think they will only try to achieve conquest if that is the only option and forget the others (although, technically, going for other types of victory will aid a conquest victory goal). The AI for GalCiv (all of them, really) is fairly strong so I can't imagine this would be an oversight.

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Mon Mar 07, 2016 12:44 pm

I'm liking the mercenary ships, there's certainly some creative bonuses in there. One of the ships I hired is a culture bomb...I station it at a frontier planet, he expands the borders and when an enemy planet flips, I move him forward. I'm wondering how quickly I can achieve a culture victory with this method.

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Sat Mar 12, 2016 9:51 am

Island Dog - it appears the Metaverse is not accepting my wins with the new expansion. I won 3 games (2 as Torian and one as Arcean) and the win count is not updating.

Island Dog · Post by **Island Dog** » Fri Mar 18, 2016 12:03 pm

Jeff V wrote:Island Dog - it appears the Metaverse is not accepting my wins with the new expansion. I won 3 games (2 as Torian and one as Arcean) and the win count is not updating.

Still happening? They were doing some maintenance recently on it, so that might have affected some thing.

What's your username on the Metaverse?

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Tue Mar 29, 2016 11:12 pm

I'm Overlord Jeff. Just finished another win, still stuck at 19 wins. That's at least 4 in a row that were not counted, all since the expansion was installed.

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Wed Apr 06, 2016 8:03 am

Another thing undoubtedly related: achievements did not unlock for victories as Arceans or Torians although I won multiple times with both. Any idea what is going on?

Island Dog · Post by **Island Dog** » Thu Apr 07, 2016 2:56 pm

http://galciv3.com/metaverse#/personas/ ... ladderId=x

Yeah, the games aren't being reported as finished.

Are you seeing the "End of Game report" and if so, you are online?

They're looking more into this, but if there' any other info that might be useful please let me know. Errors, etc.

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Fri Apr 08, 2016 1:14 pm

Island Dog wrote:http://galciv3.com/metaverse#/personas/ ... ladderId=x

Yeah, the games aren't being reported as finished.

Are you seeing the "End of Game report" and if so, you are online?

They're looking more into this, but if there' any other info that might be useful please let me know. Errors, etc.

I am getting the end game report; no error messages though. Maybe I can send a save game if that will help? I'll have to see if I have any close to the end game.

Island Dog · Post by **Island Dog** » Fri Apr 08, 2016 3:23 pm

Thanks. There's something the team would like to look at, but I'll PM you the details.

Island Dog · Post by **Island Dog** » Wed Apr 20, 2016 2:01 pm

Lead Designer Paul Boyer has written a dev journal on what's new in the 1.7 update for Galactic Civilizations which should be coming soon.

http://forums.galciv3.com/477007/

jztemple2 · Post by **jztemple2** » Wed Apr 20, 2016 2:33 pm

Island Dog wrote:Lead Designer Paul Boyer has written a dev journal on what's new in the 1.7 update for Galactic Civilizations which should be coming soon.

http://forums.galciv3.com/477007/

Interesting changes, looking forward to their implementation. I like the idea of more ways to help wade through all the ships in the Designer.

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Wed Apr 20, 2016 7:00 pm

(Mostly for JeffV, but anyone can answer): I've been enjoying the GalCiv2 Ultimate edition for the past few days and asking myself why I would ever want to replace it with GC3. Given that I don't care about graphics or the ship builder, how is GC3 a better game than the fully patched and balanced Twilight of the Arnor?

I've asked this once or twice without getting a compelling answer. Thought I'd ask again since GC3 has had time to bake. I have the good fortune to buy a new game this year and GC3 is on my short list.

Island Dog · Post by **Island Dog** » Thu Apr 21, 2016 2:36 pm

The big 1.7 update for Galactic Civilizations III is out today!

Full changelog: http://forums.galciv3.com/475888/

Queue Upgrades Directly from Shipyards
Constructors are ordered from the Shipyard that can deliver the upgrade in the shortest amount of time and will now automatically travel to the Starbase.

Plan Your Battles...and Your Retreats
The new "Battle Assessment" feature allows you to hover your mouse over an enemy fleet to see an estimation of your fleet's victory against them.

Sort and Group your Ships with Ease
New options make it easier to find the ships you want when you want them. Mark your "favorite" ships so that you can snap right to them in a hurry!

Make Friends, Not Enemies
The update to diplomacy has made it so that your allies are more likely to give you a good deal on trades! Trade value will now scale based on the game's difficulty setting and your relationship with other factions.

Easily Access Starbase Modules and Effects Info
The "Starbase Window" displays more detailed statistics and will aid you in managing the Starbase and the rest of your empire.

Maximize a Colony's Potential
The new "Planetary Alert System" will warn you when your influence, population, or approval are holding your colony back.

jztemple2 · Post by **jztemple2** » Thu Apr 21, 2016 2:59 pm

Island Dog wrote:The big 1.7 update for Galactic Civilizations III is out today!

Full changelog: http://forums.galciv3.com/475888/

That's quite a change list! I'll be starting a new game shortly...

Lassr · Post by **Lassr** » Thu Apr 21, 2016 3:12 pm

I think it is time to revisit the game

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Thu Apr 21, 2016 9:24 pm

Same here. Is it worth playing through the campaign for a beginner? Or can i just load up a big map and go? I usually prefer the latter.

Pyperkub · Post by **Pyperkub** » Fri Apr 22, 2016 12:55 am

hepcat wrote:Same here. Is it worth playing through the campaign for a beginner? Or can i just load up a big map and go? I usually prefer the latter.

Easier to learn on smaller skirmish maps than in the campaign

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Fri Apr 22, 2016 9:00 am

Cool, thanks!

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Sat Apr 23, 2016 8:53 am

Built my first starbase...and now the game crashes to desktop constantly afterwards. Is it just me? Or was the latest patch the issue? Not sure if the starbase was the trigger for the crashes, but I went back to an earlier save game and tried to build it again, only to get the same results.

I'm in the tutorial, by the way. I may start a new map and give it a go, though. Shame really. I was having a blast with it.

dbemont · Post by **dbemont** » Sat Apr 23, 2016 2:18 pm

I'm very late to the party with this game. Bought it long ago, played the tutorial and got discouraged for some reason, and then got distracted.

So I pulled it out to give it another go... and I am very surprised to find I am having trouble getting it to run properly on my system. It takes forever to load (and froze solid when something else was open) and visual things are very, very sluggish in-game. Things like setting the picture of the leader for your race -- you'd think the game had frozen, it takes so long.

I'm running Windows 10, 8 GB RAM, GeForce GTX 960.

Is this just the way the game is, or might there be some explanation?

Moat_Man · Post by **Moat_Man** » Wed Apr 27, 2016 10:46 pm

hepcat wrote:Built my first starbase...and now the game crashes to desktop constantly afterwards. Is it just me? Or was the latest patch the issue? Not sure if the starbase was the trigger for the crashes, but I went back to an earlier save game and tried to build it again, only to get the same results.

I'm in the tutorial, by the way. I may start a new map and give it a go, though. Shame really. I was having a blast with it.

They released a hotfix today that addresses your problem hep.
http://forums.galciv3.com/477168/page/1/

Island Dog · Post by **Island Dog** » Thu Apr 28, 2016 3:53 pm

hepcat wrote:Built my first starbase...and now the game crashes to desktop constantly afterwards. Is it just me? Or was the latest patch the issue? Not sure if the starbase was the trigger for the crashes, but I went back to an earlier save game and tried to build it again, only to get the same results.

I'm in the tutorial, by the way. I may start a new map and give it a go, though. Shame really. I was having a blast with it.

Were you able to get it working with that hotfix?

dbemont wrote:I'm very late to the party with this game. Bought it long ago, played the tutorial and got discouraged for some reason, and then got distracted.

So I pulled it out to give it another go... and I am very surprised to find I am having trouble getting it to run properly on my system. It takes forever to load (and froze solid when something else was open) and visual things are very, very sluggish in-game. Things like setting the picture of the leader for your race -- you'd think the game had frozen, it takes so long.

I'm running Windows 10, 8 GB RAM, GeForce GTX 960.

Is this just the way the game is, or might there be some explanation?

I'd first recommend making sure you have the latest video drivers, and checking the game cache with Steam. Maybe even try a reinstall.

http://esupport.stardock.com/index.php? ... eshooting

Island Dog · Post by **Island Dog** » Tue May 17, 2016 1:45 pm

The v1.71 update is out today that addresses bugs, optimize performance (esp. on larger maps/longer games), and introduce a few improvements to the gameplay and lobby.

Full changelog: http://forums.galciv3.com/477459

Zenn7 · Post by **Zenn7** » Thu May 19, 2016 7:44 pm

Steam has the game on sale this weekend. See the Steam sale thread for details, but sale items:

Base Game
Gold version
Mercenaries DLC (not the other DLC, but this is the newest) - this specifically, being what I wanted, is 50% off - $9.99.