1.6 Release Change Log 2/18

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1.6 Release Change Log 2/18

Hello! In conjunction with the release of the Mercenaries expansion, we have taken some steps to improve the base game for everyone. In particular, we have improved the AI and the galaxy generation systems.

Gameplay

  • AI players will now focus on researching Invasion before going to war.

  • AI Survey Ships will no longer ignore Anomalies with Pirate or Precursor guardians.

  • In the trade window, AI players will only trade military techs with you only if you are friendly or allied with them. You can still trade tech to them or trade techs to another human player.

  • Fixed the AI hugging/crowding bug in which the AI will try to "attack" your ships and planets even if they're not at war with you but only if you are a human player. Resulting in ships just sitting in front of your stuff never moving.

  • Re-balanced strategic resource placement values.

  • Re-balanced star systems to allow for more gas giants and look better overall.

  • Adjusted planet and resource frequencies

  • Balance pass on the likelihood of encountering minor races.

  • Changed the default minor race likelihood to occasional in the game options screen.

  • Removed the "Weekly Payments" Diplomacy option as it was unbalanced.

  • Changed Coercion to have a max effect of 50% (was 25%)

  • Changed the "Unforgiving" Trait bonus from +25% manufacturing to +15% Raw Production to make it more useful in late game.

  • Reducing the value of trading resources.

  • Reduced starbase placement spacing from 5 from 4 hexes

  • Precursor Worlds DLC: Slightly lowered the frequency of Precursor Worlds on all map sizes.

  • Note: We've temporarily disabled players from playing multiplayer matches who have mismatched DLC to improve the experience for everyone. This will addressed in our next patch.


Metaverse Update!

GalCiv 3 now stores your end of game report information in the Metaverse. You can review your past victories, learn from your defeats... or study your rivals to see how they play! You can view past matches either through the in-game metaverse or by going to http://galciv3.com/metaverse


Graphics

  • Overall refinements to the lighting.

  • Added approach animations for the Newsbots.

  • Adjusted gradient colors for Drengin and Altarians.

  • Fixing "flickering" bink movie in conversation window in campaigns

  • Updated all faction ship thumbnails with improved graphics

  • Updated many faction's homeworld appearances.

  • Improved Battle Viewer camera shake.

  • The unified the tactical map stars colors so they are more visible for all factions.


Interface

  • Added Coercion to tooltips.

  • Changed Conquest goal and diplomacy modifiers from "We love war" to "We will conquer the galaxy!"

  • The default UI Size is now chosen depending on the user's resolution, instead of always defaulting to Small.

  • The Arena improvement no longer uses the Arena Map preview image.

  • If no ship is being built in a shipyard, the game will automatically highlight the first available ship for building.

  • Fixed issue where the ship name would end up on two lines if it's too long.

  • Starbases will now correctly report how many module points are left even if there are no modules to build.

  • Adjusted the "Cancel Planetary Focus" button on the Govern Screen to make it easier to find and use.

  • Clarified Diplomacy Window tooltips

  • In Medium UI scale, the first resource counter will no longer have an extra zero overlapping the the actual value.

  • [Strategic resource tooltips no longer overlap in Medium UI

  • The influence graph now displays the player's total influence.

  • Selected Ship Details window now properly shows all abilities for special components

  • In the Govern Screen, if you had trade income, the trade income line was displaying the treasury total and the treasury total was missing.

  • In the Planetary screen, the Raw Production now displays the correct number. The effect of coercion was being incorrectly added to the display value.

  • Improvements are disabled if they cannot be placed if no tiles are available. Terraforming tiles are never disabled.

  • Players now can to cancel an upgrade after it has been started. The cost of the upgrade is returned to the player

 

Bugs

  • Fixed an issue with the "Merciless" option of the Design Revolution Galactic Event. It was giving its bonus to the faction instead of the faction's ships.

  • Fixed an issue in "Unnerving Ideology" trait that was causing it to reduce player's hit points instead of their enemies.

  • Removed "Culling Project" from the description of "Unforgiving" trait as it had been previously removed from the game.

  • Decreased the loading time for starting the game for the first time or installing DLC.

  • For Modders: the game no longer rebuilds the campaign bins unless the startup command /CAMPAIGNBIN is used.

  • In some rare cases, the diplomacy system was not properly releasing the graphics. This was causing game-within-game crashes.

  • Fixing issue where shipyards and starbases incorrectly displayed zero hit points after loading a save game. even though they had full hit points.

  • Fixed a crash in the Yor "The Return" tech tree. The lossless life support tech had itself as a prerequisite causing an infinite loop

  • Adding checks to prevent crash after attacking an enemy Shipyard

  • The Steam achievement "There is a Crusade" no longer unlocks with after completing "The Revenge of the Snathi" campaign

  • Govern Planet Window: auto-upgrades will now properly apply after every turn.

  • Fixing a stuck turn in which a fleet was following a target that leads them outside of the fleet's range.

  • Fleets now remember who they are following after loading a save game.

  • Fixing problem in the conversation trees with personality types referencing custom types causing the wrong text to be displayed.

  • Multiplayer: We are now clearing the state of the game for the host when a player disconnects during a "handshake" state, such as while waiting for a turn to end and the "game menu" is open to prevent a potential crash.

  • Fixed a conversation tag issue that sometimes caused the wrong listener flavor text to be shown.

  • Fixed: Selecting some large hull designs in the ship designer crashed the game.

  • Improved font loading process to improve stability.

  • Fixed a timing issue-related crash where the graphics are trying to redraw a brand new ships before the HP has recalculated yet.

  • AI freighters can now have drive systems.

  • Fixing a crash that assumed all objects destroyed in battles were ships

  • Fixed a crash related to defeating Pirates.

  • Fixed typos

  • Fix missing tech in the Iconian tech tree.

  • Fixed invalid techs that got inserted into some of the minor race tech trees.
26,108 views 11 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Thanks for Coersion in tooltips. Also, thanks for the 50% Coersion penalty (was 25%). Next step: remove the wheel altogether. You've made focusing less viable and probably more micro intensive. Amazing!

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Increasing the coercion penalty to 50% just lost me to Galactic Civ forever. It's now a game of moving ships around lots without any real strategic input into running an empire. My wife and I were willing to play with the .ini file patched to keep the wheel. We didn't like, but stayed with the 25% coercion penalty, but 50% breaks it. Galactic Civ is done for us now. It's quite literally the only game I've played where the majority of patches have made the game successively worse and given the player fewer options to manage their empire, and seemingly all because the designers don't like people who think useful micromanagement is a gameplay strength, not weakness. Ah well, back to infinitely better strategy games such as Civ 4 for us, I guess. I don't harbor any illusions that anyone will miss us, or even our money, because there are always people willing to pay for shallow but graphically nice pseudo-strategy games. I don't even blame them - if that's their taste, then cool for them. I just don't like being sold a fairly good empire-management game, then being forced to apply patches that increasingly remove my ability to manage my empire in any meaningful way.

 

And yes, goodbye cruel world (though the rant did make me feel better)!

 

Edited to add: Also the first game I've played where i could confidently state that the patches made the game worse than any of the bugs they fixed did.

Groupy 2 - Organize multiple applications into grouped tabs on your Windows desktop
Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I think forcing your population to work in one form of production is kind of like communizm in a way and should be penalized.  I like that you get an approval hit as well.   It would make people unhappy and less willing to work at full pace if they are forced to do something they don't really want to.   Increasing coercion makes the game more strategic if you ask me.   Nice job guys!  Keep up the good work!

Reply #4 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

I don't think most people have a problem with the mechanic. But 50% is a little much.

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

SD: GC3 v1.6

1. I'm having ship color problems when creating a race. Many choices only show all-white ships-- particularly with the reverse palettes.

I tried removing the xxxGradient.png files in the GFX folder, then let Steam replace them, but, no joy-- still many white ships. Not pretty...

2. I sincerely hope when you corrected the typos that 'infidels' is finally spelled correctly. Boy, that nagged me...  :-)

 

Thanks for all the hard work SD. GC3 is a great game. I've already spent way too many hours with it,

Richard

 

Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Decreased the loading time for starting the game for the first time or installing DLC.

Hmmm, not really seeing it, still takes 3-4min. for my initial load time.

 

Really like the hug fix though!

Reply #7 from GalCiv3 Forums Top
  • Improvements are disabled if they cannot be placed if no tiles are available. Terraforming tiles are never disabled.

 

This is nice. It might be even better if unbuildable improvements were pushed down the list (or simply removed), to force the available ones to the top. Scrolling down to find the goods is never fun.

 

However, I have noticed that the Yor now need a free hex in order to reproduce, as Assembly in all its versions requires a space.

What's up with that? Is that recognized as a bug and potentially subject to a future patch fix, or is that just another penalty for being artificial life?

If it is an intentional penalty, it should be documented somewhere.

 

 

Reply #8 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

So, pardon my ignorance, but if I have an ongoing MP game with mismatched DLC, will I be able to continue that? Or do I need to avoid getting the latest update until after that's finished (is that even possible)?

Thanks! 

Reply #9 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting inthedock, reply 7

 

    • Improvements are disabled if they cannot be placed if no tiles are available. Terraforming tiles are never disabled.

 


 

This is nice. It might be even better if unbuildable improvements were pushed down the list (or simply removed), to force the available ones to the top. Scrolling down to find the goods is never fun.

 

However, I have noticed that the Yor now need a free hex in order to reproduce, as Assembly in all its versions requires a space.

What's up with that? Is that recognized as a bug and potentially subject to a future patch fix, or is that just another penalty for being artificial life?

If it is an intentional penalty, it should be documented somewhere.

 

 

 

The Yor Assembly improvement was a bug and has been fixed.  Should be part of our next patch. 

Reply #10 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting rap33042, reply 5

SD: GC3 v1.6

1. I'm having ship color problems when creating a race. Many choices only show all-white ships-- particularly with the reverse palettes.

I tried removing the xxxGradient.png files in the GFX folder, then let Steam replace them, but, no joy-- still many white ships. Not pretty...

2. I sincerely hope when you corrected the typos that 'infidels' is finally spelled correctly. Boy, that nagged me...  :)

 

Thanks for all the hard work SD. GC3 is a great game. I've already spent way too many hours with it,

Richard

 

 


Can you submit a ticket (https://esupport.stardock.com/index.php?/Tickets/Submit) so we can collect some information and help you with the ship colors?  Thank you.  

Reply #11 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Hi pshaw,

I submitted a ticket.

 

Thanks for the link,

Richard