Octopus Overlords

I've been attacked maybe once on Normal, outside of asteroid mines. Every game on gifted I've rage quit when I start meeting races and discover they have twice as many planets and three times the tech somehow. This is with Tech Trading off, btw.
Sliders are replaced by Citizens, as noted above.
Ship combat is affected by ship Roles, also as noted above. I can't remember if the details are in the manual for pre-Crusade or if I had to use the wiki. Pre designed ships already have assigned roles. Ship combat is still lacking regardless.
What goes into social and what goes into ship production is based on what you build. You will fill your tiles fairly quickly, and then need to either upgrade our replace things as your tech improves. I never get beyond the beginning of this stage, as by then the exciting part of the game is done.

Zenn7 wrote:
Ship combat - nothing during fights. But you can assign ships different roles like ESCORT. I believe ships in the ESCORT roll are targeted first (so that's the ship type to pile on all your defenses and automated repair and everything).

How do you do that? I only use the default ships, never even opened the ship designer and hope I don't ever have to.

Kraken wrote:

Zenn7 wrote:
Ship combat - nothing during fights. But you can assign ships different roles like ESCORT. I believe ships in the ESCORT roll are targeted first (so that's the ship type to pile on all your defenses and automated repair and everything).

How do you do that? I only use the default ships, never even opened the ship designer and hope I don't ever have to.

Sorry, that's in the ship designer. The pre-designed ships have pre-defined roles. I do not believe you can change the roll of a ship class (each individual design, if you upgrade an existing ship design or build another ship of the same size (2 different frigates), you can assign them different roles.

On the plus side, you can probably just open up the designer with existing ship design, upgrade it and just change the ship role without changing anything else. Though if you are using predesigned ships only, not sure you would want to change the roles much. Assuming the predesign makes some minimal basic assumptions about the role the ship is designed for in the AI's mind.

Other than that, you remaining combat impact options are not for individual combats. The citizens will have a limited impact (think you can make one a fleet commander/admiral that will give you various bonuses). Mercenaries (mercs are actual ships, not individual commanders you can assign to a ship) have lots of ships with all kinds of different bonuses (combat and non-combat - things like increase production or research or influence, etc). Other than assigning the citizens/mercenary ships to fleets, you still have no greater control over the battles.

Glad you are enjoying it at least as much GC2. Hate to have recommended it to you and have you think it was vastly inferior/waste of money.

All of the predefined warships were set to Escort. I had no idea what that meant, but it didn't matter anyway since I had very little combat. Won my diplomatic victory and got a score of 8. I know it wasn't a great victory, but 8? Really?

Started another game as the Drengin. Haven't gotten to the combat stage yet, but wow, it's going to take a very different strategy than the Terrans. Probably won't be able to ignore the ship designer when I play it as a wargame.

How do you interact with minor races? I can't find them on the Diplomacy screen or anywhere else.

Galactic Civilizations III is on sale for $8.99 U.S. from Stardock.

Kraken wrote:How do you interact with minor races? I can't find them on the Diplomacy screen or anywhere else.

You don't. Diplomacy with Minor Races was dumped due to some exploit that occurred before my time. Best you can do now it's send trade ships to them or conquer them.

Freyland wrote:

Kraken wrote:How do you interact with minor races? I can't find them on the Diplomacy screen or anywhere else.

You don't. Diplomacy with Minor Races was dumped due to some exploit that occurred before my time. Best you can do now it's send trade ships to them or conquer them.

Well, that's lame. Might as well just yank them if they don't want to write AI for them. The exploit was that you could mine them for tech, but that's easily addressed without nerfing them completely. They ought to resemble city-states in Civ.

Is there a way to see how many legions are garrisoned on a planet without mousing around the map? Doesn't seem to appear in any reports, and it's especially not on the planet building screen, where you most want to know. Also: Is there a way to transfer legions from planet to planet without using transports as buses?

I abandoned my Drengin game tonight despite still being competitive with 11 colonies. I started in the middle of a spiral galaxy -- surrounded -- and by the mid-game most of the AIs were at permanent war with me. I couldn't secure even one flank, and I couldn't build ships and legions fast enough to defend from all directions. Might have been able to run at the ascension crystals (I already had two and knew where the rest were), but that would have been a very slow project given the constant need to protect my colonies. The Drengin need at least one safe border at their backs, and it would be good if they could keep a friend or two. Even using half of your citizens on generals, you can't build enough legions to garrison all of your colonies AND invade, and I was spread too thin to keep the attackers away from them.

It was fun figuring all of that out, anyway. For losing, I got a score of 2. I think I'll try a more benign race next.

Glad you had fun. Were the other races attacking you, then? Normal difficulty? I'm afraid I can't remember the answer to your question, it's really been awhile since I picked it up. I can't even recall if you can truly bus around your troops to your own planets or not; I only remember building them on each planet.
As I mentioned earlier in the thread, I really struggle to enjoy the game after the initial exploration and organization of infrastructure phases. I don't find interaction with the other races or combat very immersive, and that's all that is left once you have found all your planets.

Freyland wrote:Glad you had fun. Were the other races attacking you, then? Normal difficulty? I'm afraid I can't remember the answer to your question, it's really been awhile since I picked it up. I can't even recall if you can truly bus around your troops to your own planets or not; I only remember building them on each planet.
As I mentioned earlier in the thread, I really struggle to enjoy the game after the initial exploration and organization of infrastructure phases. I don't find interaction with the other races or combat very immersive, and that's all that is left once you have found all your planets.

Yeah, the Snathi started it, and after I started to whittle them down the others piled on. I was at war with 6/10 races, one of which (Iridium) posed a serious threat. Didn't help that I was malevolent and had two ascension crystals.

Agree that the early game is the best. That's why I went for the fast diplomatic win in my first game and abandoned my second -- I couldn't face the potential hours of boring combat that lay ahead.

Kraken wrote:
Is there a way to see how many legions are garrisoned on a planet without mousing around the map? Doesn't seem to appear in any reports, and it's especially not on the planet building screen, where you most want to know. Also: Is there a way to transfer legions from planet to planet without using transports as buses?

Legion# is on the planet screen under Colony Stats. Transport are the only way I know to bus them around.

I tried a synthetic race and I could not build any markets so I could barely bank any $? I can research it but cannot build. Bug or a feature to lesson the synthetics power?

I can build the financial district and colonial bank but it is just one, cannot build any markets to take advantage of the adjacent squares.

We were browsing through the workshop and found one of the best factions available.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... earchtext=

Island Dog wrote:We were browsing through the workshop and found one of the best factions available.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... earchtext=

Awesome

Although I'm thinking most of the folks here have never encountered Clippy in the wild.

Brad posted the July dev journal which talks about balance, polish, and more.

http://www.stardock.com/games/article/4 ... nd-Balance

If I can make just one UI sugg: Show me on the colony building screen how many legions are garrisoned there so that I can decide whether or not to garrison (another) one without having to exit and go to the Planets report.

There was a small stability patch released today for the base game and Crusade.

Full changelog here: https://forums.galciv3.com/484539/

Walked away from this game as described earlier in the thread and just cannot find any appeal to returning to it. That's pretty remarkable, actually.

Brad has the August dev journal up and talks about the next DLC and the work that’s being done on GalCiv.

http://www.stardock.com/games/article/4 ... onvergence

The enormous update for Galactic Civilizations III and the Crusade expansion is out today!

This update focuses on modifying the base game by strengthening parts of it with elements from Crusade while also improving performance overall. Crusade is also benefiting from balance adjustments, smarter AI, and increased performance.

See all the details and the full changelog here: https://forums.galciv3.com/484890

Brad has the September dev journal up for GalCiv and shares his thoughts on v2.5 and what else is to come for GalCiv III and Crusade.

https://www.stardock.com/games/article/ ... ember-2017

BIG Steam sale on Gal Civ 3 and all expansions in a Gold package for under $30. I am tempted to finally give it a try...

The Gold bundle really is a good deal.

It's worth $30.

I had shelved GC3 after playing just three games. The last one dragged on way too long after the outcome was obvious, and I got bored. Started a new game a few days ago and I'm enjoying it more -- probably because I drew an unusual map with a few large, widely-separated clusters. Pretty sure I'm going to win, but I don't know how yet, and I haven't even quite explored the whole galaxy. I just hope the endgame doesn't turn into another boring hours-long slog to inevitable victory.

Just bought it for some weekend fun (hopefully)

Do you need to use the ship-designer in this game, or are there pre-canned ships you can be just as effective with? I didn't care for the move from pre-canned to ship-designer from GalCiv 1 to 2.

wonderpug wrote:Do you need to use the ship-designer in this game, or are there pre-canned ships you can be just as effective with? I didn't care for the move from pre-canned to ship-designer from GalCiv 1 to 2.

If I am not getting my games mixed up, I think there is an option you can turn on that will auto assemble the most powerful ship available for you in different categories. Been a while since I played but I remember something like that in some space game I played and I am pretty sure it was this one. So I didn't bother designing ships.

err, or was that Stellaris...

someone one will clear it up for me.

wonderpug wrote:Do you need to use the ship-designer in this game, or are there pre-canned ships you can be just as effective with? I didn't care for the move from pre-canned to ship-designer from GalCiv 1 to 2.

I use the canned ships exclusively.

Last night for some reason the canned ships all switched their defenses from shields to point defense, even though I was fighting against beam weapons at the time. Opened the ship designer to try to change that back to shields, couldn't figure out the interface, and gave up after a few minutes. Won my war anyway. If there is a toggle somewhere that tells the program what defenses you want it to emphasize, I couldn't find it.

The only advantage that I can see to using custom designs is defining your ships' roles: escort, assault, etc. Supposedly it affects their tactics. The canned ships almost all default to escort duty. Doesn't seem to matter much, though, and I couldn't figure out how to set that either.

Kraken wrote:

wonderpug wrote:Do you need to use the ship-designer in this game, or are there pre-canned ships you can be just as effective with? I didn't care for the move from pre-canned to ship-designer from GalCiv 1 to 2.

I use the canned ships exclusively.

Last night for some reason the canned ships all switched their defenses from shields to point defense, even though I was fighting against beam weapons at the time. Opened the ship designer to try to change that back to shields, couldn't figure out the interface, and gave up after a few minutes. Won my war anyway. If there is a toggle somewhere that tells the program what defenses you want it to emphasize, I couldn't find it.

The only advantage that I can see to using custom designs is defining your ships' roles: escort, assault, etc. Supposedly it affects their tactics. The canned ships almost all default to escort duty. Doesn't seem to matter much, though, and I couldn't figure out how to set that either.

I don't think you can tell the auto designer what defenses to use. There are rules to what it will use, it's nothing to do with what you are fighting against, it's around your tech (if you heavily research shields and mostly ignore armor/PD, you'll get shields). Don't know if it's highest tech or whatever it can fit the most on or can get the highest rating with or what. But that's why it switched on you, it calculated based on your tech, the other defense was better. 100% ignores what the enemy has.

Auto-design will not use any of the fleet-wide enhancements. You might find some of the specific ship enhancements (targeting computers, auto repair, etc) if you look through the options, but I think if any, only offensive ones, no defensive ones.

One thing I read on the forums - design your escorts with your best defenses - the unique bonus items you get or just whatever best tech you get - self repair, extra HP, etc. Make your fighting ships a different role (not escort, and guessing not support). Make support ships with the fleet wide buffs (you'll only need one of each for each fleet, cram as many of the different ones onto a single support ship - use a cargo ship if you don't have larger hulls, the 1 HP is not a problem, it's not going to get attacked until the rest of the fleet is wiped and you don't want to waste logistical points in the fleet taking more support ships than you need.

Roles: I don't know what all the roles do. But I do know that escorts are attacked first. So you make your heavy defense ships escorts. AI has the enemies whack on those first.

All that said, I have not played on anything harder than normal but I did not need these designed ships. I was just exploring/checking it out and wanted some of these cools techs I was researching. I suppose at some higher levels, they may become more valuable. Guessing at much higher levels, AI gets cheat bonuses and you will need to tweak to be able to compensate against their numbers, but I do not even know if it really matters then. I haven't played on those levels.

Zenn7 wrote:

Kraken wrote:

wonderpug wrote:Do you need to use the ship-designer in this game, or are there pre-canned ships you can be just as effective with? I didn't care for the move from pre-canned to ship-designer from GalCiv 1 to 2.

I use the canned ships exclusively.

Last night for some reason the canned ships all switched their defenses from shields to point defense, even though I was fighting against beam weapons at the time. Opened the ship designer to try to change that back to shields, couldn't figure out the interface, and gave up after a few minutes. Won my war anyway. If there is a toggle somewhere that tells the program what defenses you want it to emphasize, I couldn't find it.

The only advantage that I can see to using custom designs is defining your ships' roles: escort, assault, etc. Supposedly it affects their tactics. The canned ships almost all default to escort duty. Doesn't seem to matter much, though, and I couldn't figure out how to set that either.

I don't think you can tell the auto designer what defenses to use. There are rules to what it will use, it's nothing to do with what you are fighting against, it's around your tech (if you heavily research shields and mostly ignore armor/PD, you'll get shields). Don't know if it's highest tech or whatever it can fit the most on or can get the highest rating with or what. But that's why it switched on you, it calculated based on your tech, the other defense was better. 100% ignores what the enemy has.

Auto-design will not use any of the fleet-wide enhancements. You might find some of the specific ship enhancements (targeting computers, auto repair, etc) if you look through the options, but I think if any, only offensive ones, no defensive ones.

One thing I read on the forums - design your escorts with your best defenses - the unique bonus items you get or just whatever best tech you get - self repair, extra HP, etc. Make your fighting ships a different role (not escort, and guessing not support). Make support ships with the fleet wide buffs (you'll only need one of each for each fleet, cram as many of the different ones onto a single support ship - use a cargo ship if you don't have larger hulls, the 1 HP is not a problem, it's not going to get attacked until the rest of the fleet is wiped and you don't want to waste logistical points in the fleet taking more support ships than you need.

Roles: I don't know what all the roles do. But I do know that escorts are attacked first. So you make your heavy defense ships escorts. AI has the enemies whack on those first.

All that said, I have not played on anything harder than normal but I did not need these designed ships. I was just exploring/checking it out and wanted some of these cools techs I was researching. I suppose at some higher levels, they may become more valuable. Guessing at much higher levels, AI gets cheat bonuses and you will need to tweak to be able to compensate against their numbers, but I do not even know if it really matters then. I haven't played on those levels.

I was researching shields most heavily, but I probably traded for a high-level PD tech that threw things off. GC2 had sliders that let you prioritize which defense and weapon types the program would serve up. I was looking for the equivalent in GC3 but couldn't find anything. Apparently Brad really hates sliders.

When I tried to design a ship from scratch, all it showed me was about a million cosmetic hull elements, and I couldn't figure out how to switch to functional items. When I tried to edit an existing design I got overwhelmed and decided it wasn't worth the trouble. Like you, I play on normal, where having the biggest stack matters a lot more than what's in the stack. The ship designer just wasn't worth the time it would take to figure out how to change PD to shields, change escort to attack, and rename the design.

I did use custom ships in GC1 and 2 because the interface was easier. GC3 seems to emphasize cosmetics, which I don't care about at all. Maybe I'll look at it again if I bump up the difficulty level, but (to answer wonderpug) it doesn't matter on normal.

Kraken wrote:

Zenn7 wrote:

Kraken wrote:

wonderpug wrote:Do you need to use the ship-designer in this game, or are there pre-canned ships you can be just as effective with? I didn't care for the move from pre-canned to ship-designer from GalCiv 1 to 2.

I use the canned ships exclusively.

Last night for some reason the canned ships all switched their defenses from shields to point defense, even though I was fighting against beam weapons at the time. Opened the ship designer to try to change that back to shields, couldn't figure out the interface, and gave up after a few minutes. Won my war anyway. If there is a toggle somewhere that tells the program what defenses you want it to emphasize, I couldn't find it.

The only advantage that I can see to using custom designs is defining your ships' roles: escort, assault, etc. Supposedly it affects their tactics. The canned ships almost all default to escort duty. Doesn't seem to matter much, though, and I couldn't figure out how to set that either.

I don't think you can tell the auto designer what defenses to use. There are rules to what it will use, it's nothing to do with what you are fighting against, it's around your tech (if you heavily research shields and mostly ignore armor/PD, you'll get shields). Don't know if it's highest tech or whatever it can fit the most on or can get the highest rating with or what. But that's why it switched on you, it calculated based on your tech, the other defense was better. 100% ignores what the enemy has.

Auto-design will not use any of the fleet-wide enhancements. You might find some of the specific ship enhancements (targeting computers, auto repair, etc) if you look through the options, but I think if any, only offensive ones, no defensive ones.

One thing I read on the forums - design your escorts with your best defenses - the unique bonus items you get or just whatever best tech you get - self repair, extra HP, etc. Make your fighting ships a different role (not escort, and guessing not support). Make support ships with the fleet wide buffs (you'll only need one of each for each fleet, cram as many of the different ones onto a single support ship - use a cargo ship if you don't have larger hulls, the 1 HP is not a problem, it's not going to get attacked until the rest of the fleet is wiped and you don't want to waste logistical points in the fleet taking more support ships than you need.

Roles: I don't know what all the roles do. But I do know that escorts are attacked first. So you make your heavy defense ships escorts. AI has the enemies whack on those first.

All that said, I have not played on anything harder than normal but I did not need these designed ships. I was just exploring/checking it out and wanted some of these cools techs I was researching. I suppose at some higher levels, they may become more valuable. Guessing at much higher levels, AI gets cheat bonuses and you will need to tweak to be able to compensate against their numbers, but I do not even know if it really matters then. I haven't played on those levels.

I was researching shields most heavily, but I probably traded for a high-level PD tech that threw things off. GC2 had sliders that let you prioritize which defense and weapon types the program would serve up. I was looking for the equivalent in GC3 but couldn't find anything. Apparently Brad really hates sliders.

When I tried to design a ship from scratch, all it showed me was about a million cosmetic hull elements, and I couldn't figure out how to switch to functional items. When I tried to edit an existing design I got overwhelmed and decided it wasn't worth the trouble. Like you, I play on normal, where having the biggest stack matters a lot more than what's in the stack. The ship designer just wasn't worth the time it would take to figure out how to change PD to shields, change escort to attack, and rename the design.

I did use custom ships in GC1 and 2 because the interface was easier. GC3 seems to emphasize cosmetics, which I don't care about at all. Maybe I'll look at it again if I bump up the difficulty level, but (to answer wonderpug) it doesn't matter on normal.

Going to bed in a minute, but I'll try to confirm tomorrow. I believe in the ship designer screen, there are 2 tab on the left towards the top that switches between cosmetic and actual component design. Someplace there or when you go to exist maybe, you assign the ship roll (same place where you put the ship type name iirc).

Never realized that in GC2 (but guessing I did not play nearly as extensively as you) that you could adjust sliders for your defenses (or if I did, I long ago forgot it as I haven't played it in years).

Zenn7 wrote:
Never realized that in GC2 (but guessing I did not play nearly as extensively as you) that you could adjust sliders for your defenses (or if I did, I long ago forgot it as I haven't played it in years).

IIRC it wasn't in the ship design interface, but buried somewhere else. You could weight rock/paper/scissors for both weapons and defense.

Incidentally, GC2 got a really nice final polishing before they finally abandoned it a year or so ago, and it's still a fine game -- I was still playing it up until a few months ago. There are some changes that I like in 3 but also some things I miss from 2.

Making your own ships:

Designer - new design.

There are 2 options on the top left:
Design Mode and Equip

Design mode is selecting your hull and cosmetic. After you select a hull, click on equip and you can start the mechanical design (putting weapons/defenses/etc on there).

When you complete the design and save it, you can name it, give it a description, assign it a role (6-7 roles, only know escort is what get attacks first - though I have to wonder if guardian would get hit before escorts?), and save it as a ship design or a ship template. Think templates are maybe what you see in future games?

Anyhow, that's how you get to the actual design and assign roles.

Thanks, that's what I was too lazy to figure out. Must not have seen the Equip tab.

I have a question about starbases...

Sometimes I can build a second or third module without a constructor ship, sometimes I cant, and sometimes I cant build a module even if i have resources and money and a constructor...

I have the tech, I just cant seem to figure out the reason for the differences.

Malacheye wrote:I have a question about starbases...

Sometimes I can build a second or third module without a constructor ship, sometimes I cant, and sometimes I cant build a module even if i have resources and money and a constructor...

I have the tech, I just cant seem to figure out the reason for the differences.

Do you have Crusade? I have not played it since the latest patch but prior to that at least...

Pre-Crusade, you just need a constructor, no resources/money. The only way you got multiple was with tech, I think maybe one of the more things (don't remember if it was good/neutral/evil), or possibly an anomaly might give you a one off bonus. It takes one to build the base and declare it's specialty. So if you get 2, the base build is 1 and 1 module. If you had something queued (only 1 module), when the constructor gets there, that one is built and 1 is sitting around and will get built when you select another module.

Post-Crusade, you only use the constructor to build the original star base. Modules require special resources. I believe the only limit to how many you can get in one turn is resources (can't recall if the modules take an admin or not).

Hopefully, something in that explains what you are seeing.

Thanks,

One of the main problems is that it doesnt say when you click or hover over a possible module what the resource requirements are, technology that needs to be researched, money costs, constructor cost or anything else that you may be lacking to construct the module. It is just "greyed out". One of the information fix it issues they havent gotten to yet, I guess.

The frustrating part was that one starbase might NOT have the expansion module greyed out for the same expansion. That was the confusing part.

I am using Crusade and have all the updates to the current version.

Malacheye wrote:Thanks,

One of the main problems is that it doesnt say when you click or hover over a possible module what the resource requirements are, technology that needs to be researched, money costs, constructor cost or anything else that you may be lacking to construct the module. It is just "greyed out". One of the information fix it issues they havent gotten to yet, I guess.

The frustrating part was that one starbase might NOT have the expansion module greyed out for the same expansion. That was the confusing part.

I am using Crusade and have all the updates to the current version.

I was pretty sure if you look at an individual module, it will tell you what resources are required in total. Then you look at the top to see if you have the money and the special resources needed.

Is it possible that if you are building module X and it requires 2 durantium (for example), you had the resources at starbase 1, built it, but did not have enough after building the first one to build a second one at starbase 2? That would explain why it's grayed out for one and not the other.

The v2.6 update is now available for Galactic Civilizations III and Crusade! Crusade receives some unique updates and both games benefit from balance improvements. v2.6 Improves Trade Routes, Colony Events, Game Balance, and More!

More info and changelog: https://forums.galciv3.com/485216

Video overview: https://youtu.be/70CfaaV5hCE