Hi,

Just wanted to say that I got the game when it came out, and enjoy it for the most part, however the 'minor' races and random events always seem to gang up on me and obliterate any chance I have of success. I've become a bit suspect of the AI on the space monsters (like the space shark) as in several games I've played, they either escape from their 'theme park', or just randomly appear. While I don't have a problem with that part per se, I have noticed that the space sharks become very intent on taking out all of my space craft while ignoring craft belonging to other civilizations that are directly adjacent to it. This happens whether the 'theme park' is located in one of my systems, or not. On the subject of the minor races, in all honesty, it really *feels* like they're cheating. Within a month or two of appearing on the map, they become very powerful militarily, and often appear with technologies that are still years ahead of what anyone on the map has had previously. A 'minor' race popped up out of one of my own systems. It was a 'new' minor race, so I immediately sent over a fleet of dreadnaughts and combat transports to reclaim my system. I attacked one month after the race appeared on the planet (the next turn), yet they managed to destroy my entire fleet with a massive armada of ranger-class ships. I just don't see how this is even possible, and certainly lends to the feeling that the AI (at least in terms of the minor races) is cheating. What I would like to see is either:

a) a difficulty slider for minor races, and a frequency slider for random disasters (like the space sharks). The 'low' end of the frequency slider should be 'none' (no random disasters). Note that turning off disasters should also turn off the cause of the disasters (ie: the space monster theme park should not be available in games where the disasters are off.)

or

a checkbox to disable minor races from participating in a particular game, and a checkbox to disable random disasters.

I'm sorry for the *very* long post, I really do enjoy the game, but in all honesty, these two 'features' would greatly enhance my ability to enjoy the game (and might even let me win one.)

By the way, I'm a total newbie with GalCiv, and am playing with all the major races on 'fool', and it's frustrating to be on the verge of victory only to have space sharks spawn and wipe out my military, and then a new 'minor' race shows up and dominates the galaxy. (One final plea: Please add sliders or checkboxes for the minor races and random disasters.)

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and for an otherwise very enjoyable game.

-GeorgeT

Stellar Cartography - Since the AI players all in effect start the game with this tech, I'd recommend that it just be given outright to them. As it is, the human player can trade the tech to an AI player for cash/brownie points/whatnot which is odd for what is a useless and redundant tech for the AI. Either just have the AIs all start with the tech or at the very least make it a very undesirable item for trade for them.

~SDC~

I have a few suggestions concerning AI ship movements and combat in particular.

(1) Please at least make the option to *slow down* the AI movement animation. When the computer and auto pilots move, the screen starts jumping around so fast I can't keep track of where the heck in the galaxy these ships are moving and where they're moving to. This forces me to spend the beginning of my next turn scanning through the galaxy to see where the ships are now, and that's just a pain. Civilization 3 had a pretty good balance between making the AI's moves fast enough to keep it from the in-between round taking forever, and slow enough to give you a chance to see what's happening where.

(2) Space and ground combat. I'd suggest that you have an option to toggle the game between "quick battles" (pretty much how it is how, rapid) and "slow combat". Slow combat wouldn't have to be anything overly hard on your behalf, either. You just need to first slow down the animations a bit, or give a bit of a pause between firing, and then have some sort of number floating up from ships hit showing both hit points lost and ships lost in that barrage. We really, really need to see how the combat is progressing to plan our strategy in a lot of ways. Plus, it's more immersive. Same thing with ground combat: wayyyyy slower (it's over before I can blink) and show numbers for people dying on each side as the combat progresses.

Here's a wish list of ideas:

* Starbases are way too powerful and become the core of any strategy to this point (instead of planets, where your key resources and defenses should be).

* Planetary defense -- right now, if someone attacks my system, all I've got standing in their way is ships. I want mines, space forts, planetary missiles, etc. This could be a while new branch of the tech tree.

* Some way to make espionage interesting. Right now, I never use it because it doesn't seem to give me a noticable edge.

* Minor races are WAY too powerful for their size. I should be worried about the Yor, not the Alexians as I am often having to struggle with.

* I wish the military queue governor worked like the social list (telling it to pump out like one constructor, one scout, repeat) instead of merely switching old projects to new ones en masse. I never need to use that.

* I love how you hover the mouse over a planet and it gives a picture of the surface. I would love it MORE if the picture could change to reflect how much development you've given the planet (none, small city, large city, metropolis). It would be especially cool to see atmosphere domes for the lower quality planet colonies.

~SDC~

this is a simple suggestion, how about a thing that keeps tracks of ur past game's scores+data. with the date, game version, lord name, and inside it looks like the end-game screen that shows the score tallies

another idea:
at the end of each game, a short story about the events that happened under the user's role. It can be pretty generic, look at www.nationstates.net, they have a short desc of ur nation when u login.

~SDC~

Crap, I knew I forgot something! With the "1 per galaxy" projects, I've seen numerous times where multiple races will develop the same thing in the same year. That's a bug, I guess. But the suggestion is for when I'm building one of those unique items and another race beats me to the punch -- sometimes I have the time to switch my project to something else, but more often than most I lose all of the resources I've spent on that project. Those resources should be *saved* to give you a chance to switch to a new project -- having to scrap it is highly unfair and way too risky to make pursuing those items worthwhile (this same thing was handled nicely by Civ3 when a country built a wonder faster than you).

~SDC~

Not really a (in)game related suggestion, but this website is missing a Edit Account button... I had to visit another Stardock related website to be able to edit my account details, etc Nickname change.
So whoever is webmaster, you migth wanna put in a Edit Account button somewhere when you got free time

Here is a suggestion - diplomatic tonality.

I don`t like the fact that when I just ask for something from my ally it is a demand. I really just want to ask, not demand it. Demanding it seems to piss them off. They request things from me.. why I can I of them? "We need help.. someone is killing us..!"

When you want build a ship in the build que where it tells the ships stats, they should have in parantheses what they will be when you add in your racial picks and techs.

For example in my game today I finally got battle ship and its range was zero and I was like well that sucks cant really do much invading with that, but of course i forgot my gravity techs and when I built one, launched and clicked on it, for its range was actually 2

Some suggestions:

1) Add a difficulty-setting for the minor civs. I started my first game with all the major civs on 'Fool', because I just wanted to explore the game without having to think about strategies and the like. One of the minor civs however, was the best civ throughout the game, way better than the major civs. That was a bit weird.

2) You might want to add a very quick message saying the turn has advanced when I press the turn-button. Something like a hourglass turning in the middle of the screen. I had several times the feeling nothing happened, when I pressed the button.

3) It might be nice to be asked to confirm the destruction of a colony. Now, if you click wrong one time, Earth may be destroyed.

4) And of course, last but certainly not least, a civilopedia/datalinks-equivalent is a pre. For example, I wanted to invade a planet of my enemy, and saw that I needed a transport, but I could not build one. I would have given a lot at that moment to know what tech I should have researched. The only thing I found was a huge tech-map in the docs/gfx directory, but it was only techs.

Another one of those don't know if it's possible suggestions coming up...

1) Prevent minor civs from being able to instantly purchase and build galactic wonders so early in the game. I've seen reports of minor civs constructing em by turn 2183, and have personally seen two galactic wonders get constructed back to back (probably by different races) early in the game.

2) Separate the AI int bonus from the econ bonus.

3) Add an option to filter galactic wonders from the construction que. I'm probably missing something, but I haven't found a way to check and see what facilities have been built on a given system, so it gets confusing whether or not I've already built a galactic wonder of the same type elsewhere.

4) If it's not included, add the ability to scrap facilities to make a quick buck and to reduce maintainance cost.

Diplomacy Assistance

Something that tells you if you are close to a deal would be nice. For instance, in Civ3, your advisor tells you if a proposal is outlandish or not.

Esp as a newbie I am unsure how much certain items of mine are worth vs. others... thanks!

Computer AI Difficulty


Enable it's maximum thinking (Geninus) but give players a way to disable it's production bonuses. If necessary, disable Metauniverse scoring then, too.

Why? All my life, I have looked for a strategy game where the computer actually thinks competitively. The reason I bought GalCiv over MOO3, is that much was made about that here, and so far, this game may come closest to achieving that goal.

However, if I understand correctly, at the 2 top levels, Brilliant & Genius it still cheats. Why not just play intelligent? B/C that only gives the computer a 60% chance of noticing threats and reacting to them.

Very grateful for your consideration of this request

Diplomacy Screen, Very Minor suggestion

Keep proposed items on the table to a failed deal. When you offer a bunch of stuff for a bunch of stuff, and the deal just needs a bit of tweaking, it is tedious to have to enter in all the stuff on both sides all over again. Just a minor thing, but after hours of enjoyable playing from this superior product, it adds up

When I'm at war with someone, my autopilot (and even my autosurvey?) ships will auto-attack any enemies in their path. This is almost never what I want to happen. They should avoid the enemy ships just as they normally do (i.e., travel around them).

~SDC~

Maybe it would have made GameSpy review even better: to get to a tech tree by clicking on a technology, with the description of the technology (effects, not just roleplay stuff) near techtree with the tech you pointed out highlighted. the tech tree should be somewhere ingame.

Thx!

I reckon the minor civ did better cause the major ones were on fool. I played the same way and they can't keep their planets happy and they defect and join minors, a minor planet in my game was harder to beat then the major civs too.

OK, I've read through all 165 posts. HOPEFULLY, the developers are still reading this forum. Saying and HOPING they are...

1) PLEASE have an opening post in this forum that lets us know that you've read these posts. Sort of a "Suggestions So Far" post. In this post, you list what has been suggested and A) why it won't/can't be done or that it is being currently worked on or at least on the "to do" list and ETA in either case. THEN sort the posts by those that have been looked at by the development team and those that haven't been. Those that haven't been looked at by the dev team being ahead of those that have been. I'd give them different background colors to make this clearly stand out ... or a post by the dev team that those posts that follow have already been looked at. Lastly, enable us to vote for what's on the Wish List. Not vote against them. Just whether we want them. By doing all this, you show mercy on us and don't A) force those who don't want to be redundent to read all these 165+ posts in this forum, or force the lazy to simply post their suggestions that have already been suggested over and over again.

Now for my game suggestions. This is after playing the game until 4 am on my roommate's computer. LOL I'm seriously thinking of getting this game and not just playing it when my roommate isn't. If the below were implemented, I would DEFINITELY get it. So now without futher ado...

2) Feeling a bit railroaded. I really feel railroaded at the start in having to research the Communications tech tree. I've tried other routes but quickly drop into the red. If we all have to do the Communications tech tree, then just give us it (or at least enough of it) from the start. Move our tech to that point where we don't have to feel railroaded to do the money-getting tech. You're not requiring us to research hyper-drive so don't have us research stuff we have to research so not to fail shortly after beginning.

3) Related to #2 and probably my biggest issue with the game is making money. There's been a lot of good suggestions on how to bring this about. My own unique spin on the best of these suggestions is:

"Trade Goods" This should be available in both the military and social build queues. I would have three choices along this line: 1) "Materialistic", which would try to produce maximum trade goods by that production queue, 2) "Relaxed", which doesn't build maximum trade goods possible, but enables the workers to take it a bit easy thus also gives a morale bonus to the planet, or 3) "Work Holiday", which produces no trade goods but gives a MAJOR morale bonus to the planet. "MAJOR" = maximum morale ranking possible if both build queues are "working" on it. One of the nice thing about "Work Holiday" is that it could be used to at least temporarily turn a red frowning planet into a happy one. I would however temper "Work Holiday" with a 1% drop in morale of all the other planets in your empire that are also not on a "Work Holiday". This prevents you from using "Work Holiday" too much and mainly for just morale emergencies. It also makes sense since I, personally, would grumble if I had to work and another planet didn't have to, but I'd also understand the need if that planet was on the verge is succeeding from the empire if it wasn't done.

4) Sort of along the same lines as #3, I'd also have a "Help Other Build Queue" option in each build queue. This just makes sense. If a planet is rushing to build a Wonder, it makes sense not to have that planet make military ships but instead send those workers over to help the civilians build that Wonder. Afterall, a welder's a welder.

5) Someway to get a Wonder to be part of a planet's build queue. Some Wonders I don't want built until after a planet has built other things. Presently, I have to do some minute-by-minute micromanaging to do this. As it stands, Wonders are either currently being built or sit out of the build queue. This would really help when you want one planet to build more than one Wonder.

6) Related to #3 and #4, enable the governors to have their build queues end with one of the options suggested in #3 and #4.

7) Bonuses for being good. Why are all the morality choices for being evil given a bonus? Why not good be given at least occasional ones? I know my roommate likes playing the evil dictator in most games. It would be nice to hear him groan over being penalized for being evil. Right now, he's laughing like a madman for being so rewarded for always picking the evil route. Likewise there should be some choices where the neutral route is the only one to get the bonus.

8) A better tech tree. You should be able to see where research along a certain line will lead you ... or at least three steps ahead. Also, as many have requested, hyperlink what the specials / new buildings are so we can make better informed choices about where we'd like research to go.

9) Tell us just how productive, happy, etc. each planet is in the planet lists when we pick the different ways to sort them. A simple number in the lower right corner of the planet picture would be good. Have that number either have a "+"/"-" in front of it or have it be green, yellow, or red.

10) Zoom in/out. This is probably the second biggest issue I have with the game. I hate that you're stuck with either the barely readable mini-map or the nose-to-the-window-pane main view. I would really appreciate being able to zoom in and out on the main view so I can just see my empire or section of it. As it stands, this is a major pain when it comes to colonizing. The only planets I'd want to build colony ships are those on the fringes of my empire. Additionally, when I do build one, it is a pain trying to figure out where it is, which planet with a colony ship is closest to the planet(s) I want to colonize, etc.

11) Related to #10, I'd like some way to tell which planets are building colony ships, warships, constructors, etc. I zoom out to take in my entire empire and I should be able to see this and understand it. This way I can catch a now-interior planet building a colony ship. I click to that planet and can then adjust the queue.

11) My third biggest issue with the game is when I pull a ship (be it a colony ship or whatever) out of orbit at a star and then click it to go somewhere, it doesn't but a survey ship does. I cannot tell you how many times I groaned when that happened. Why on Earth is that happening? This is just plain stupidity. Why on Earth do you think I don't want to manipulate the colony ship I just pulled out of orbit? I'm sorry, but this really pisses me off. I then had to not only click on the colony ship and send it to where I wanted it to go, but I also had to find the survey ship that was given the wrong orders and get it back where it was suppose to go ... to say nothing about it wasting time doing the unwanted move.

12) Lastly, I'd like to second Charlesincharge's Sandbox suggestions (Message #140). Ideally, I'd like it to have its own goals to meet. One I could see is "Colonize All Habitable Planets and NEVER Fall Out of Power". This goal would reward you on how fast you were able to colonize the entire map. If you ever fall out of power, the game ends there and you get your score with a note that you failed to reach the goal. A related harder goal could be "Colonize All, Never Fall from Throne, Never Have a Succession." A planet leaves your empire and game over ... here's your score ... thanks for playing. I'd toss in an Anti-Expansionist Party that you cannot choice as your party and that would be your biggest polticial opponents.

In closing let me say that contrary to what you might be thinking after reading all the above, I am enjoying this game. It TOTALLY beats MOO3. It is what MOO3 should have been. Thanks for making the game!

I have a suggestion....it may have been mentioned already though...

I have noticed that it is kinda a pain trying to figure out where my ships are that I am giving over to another empire.

Is it possible to maybe make it so either we could see where a particular ship is in the diplomacy table screen?

Also, is it possible to make it where a ship is auto-given to an empire straight from the assembly line? A setting or something in the planet production screen or something, that says that once a ship is finished being built, it is automatically handed over to a specific empire?

Hi!

Okay, deep into my second game (have been playing for 16h non-stop), the game crashed on me (trade Alliance for Alliance -> crash). I wanted to post the SmartException data only to find that I wasn't running SE

Aaaanyway, here's a bunch of suggestions (yes, I read all 169 others in this thread). In no particular order:

a) Let's have more information on each planet. The graphs in "Domestic Policy" are great, and it would be useful to have these for each planet, too.

I mirco-manage my popularity by fiddling with the Propaganda setting. Is there any way to make this easier? Perhaps clicking on the morale value would pop up a slider.
(BTW, changing the production from the planet list directly is a GREAT idea - I use it a lot).

c) Optionally auto-jump to an event. Combined with the request to always show the mini-map, this would really make the game easier to handle. For example, it doesn't help to hear than project Y was completed on planet X, since I usually don't even know the planet names...

d) Trade display: cool seeing the trade routes! Would be even cooler if we were shown how many trade routes we can build (something like "3 out of 5 trade routes in use"). It's kinda sad to fly a trader all the way across the galaxy only to be told that we're not allowed to create another trade route.

e) Planets/Details screen: please show us where the bonuses (boni?) come from?

f) Optionally show known anomalies on the map (just little white dots would do).

g) Show Fog of War on the mini-map, too, so I can tell where I need to explore instead of scrollingscrollingscrolling all the time.
Coupled with this: (optionally?) use the cursor keys to scroll the map. Would be much simpler.

h) Research completed! Nice screen, fun text. But please repeat the new abilities again!

i) The military gouvenor is Most Useful! A tiny but usefu change would be to (optionally?) sort the "Planets building" list by the number of ships currently being built.
Thus, if I am mainly building Constructors, they'd appear at the very top.

Whew. I have some minor bugs, too, which I'll post in the Bug Thread.

Gentlemen, I am very impressed indeed! The game is keeping me from sleep, rest, playing with my cats, enjoying the sunshine... just one more turn, just make sure I crush the Drengin first...

Ciao,
Klaus

PS: I agree with Scott Jensen. A simple little HTML page with suggestions would be great feedback to us!

When offering diplomatic deals, it would be really nice to have some indication of whether an offer has a "reasonable" chance of being accepted before you actually offer it. This way you have some guidance on what are fair/reasonable deals without having to make a ton of seperate offers (starting high and working down until they finally accept it which wastes a lot of time). Civ3 had a feature like this that really added a lot to the game...especially when you are new and don't really know what things are really worth.

It would also be fantastic to be able to pull up information on each of these items/techs by right clicking on them or something so you can get some idea what the items you are trading for actually DO. Actually, I think you should be able to hypertext-link to ANY item/ship/tech/improvement/etc. from anywhere you see that word listed in the game to access the information about what it does exactly.

--Soulfire

Still haven't played much, but two simple things I would like to see (unless I am overlooking them):

- More variety to planets (i.e. planets not always starting with x/x/x production/social/research, but instead with x/y/z. And kinda keeping those ratios with planetary improvements (A world with great minerals but poor habitability will never turn into a ferming world and vice versa).

- Let us rename individual planets, not just the Systems.

Lata
Krait

Soulfire777, I may be wrong on this, but it *seems* to me, when offering diplomatic deals, that the color of the text is the indicator as to whether or not the civilization you're dealing with will or will not accept the deal. From what I've noticed during gameplay, if the text that reads along the lines of "We're offering you X for Y" that appears at the bottom between the two separate "offer" windows is green in color, the civilization you're dealing with is willing to accept the offer. If that "We're offering you X for Y" appears yellow in color, then the civilization you're dealing with will not accept the offer. This is just an observation I've made while playing through several games (and losing regularly.) I may be wrong on this, but at least that's how it appears to work to me. Hope this helps with your future diplomatic deals.

-GeorgeT

I will add my voice to the chorus asking for a hyperlinked Tech tree so I can figure out what I want to build without having to ALT-TAB to Netscape to look at the JavaScout's page.

Second, I think it would be good if once you got a high level of Espionage on a race you could do some damage. The screen said I had people everywhere and knew more about thier government than they did. So it would be sense that I could use that power to order ships to wrong places, change build queues, order a ships disbanded, etc... Of course the more I did this the higher the chance that I am found out with the corresponding diplomatic incident.

Wray

Ships that are in orbit around planets should be shown up by the "find" command unless they are set to sentry or something. I find myself building new ships and forgetting to ever move them because they do not show up when I hit tab. :notsure:

If there is some other way around this problem, I'd be equally happy.

--Soulfire

Hyperlinks in the research screen that describe the items available after you research a particular tech.

For instance, the research screen tells me i can build this improvement if i research this tech, but i have no idea why i would want to build it, hence, why research said tech?

And of course, not knowing what you need to research in order to build certain ships...well....stinks. You end up just researching what your best guess is...and hoping it gets you better ships.

A fully laid out tech tree with descriptions on prereq's and such (ala civ3) would be nice.

Although with such an expansive tech tree, I realize how much work this would be.



~SDC~