Galactic Civilizations III Hex-all

I didn't buy Elemental, though I was very hopeful about it. I'm keeping an eye on this. If it turns out like GalCiv2, I'll be getting it.

Strategy Informer interviewed Brad. These are my two favorite bits:

Strategy Informer: Galactic Civilization II wasn’t without its oddities. An example I like to use is that you have to research the ability to invade planets, when you can already colonise planets from the beginning, and it’s a very ‘late-game’ tech as well. Are you going to be addressing some of these in GalCiv III?

Brad Wardell: There’s a long list of things... I mean you go back and you play GalCiv II and you go ‘ooo’... I’d disagree with you on the Planetary Invasion thing, as that’s just the game not conveying to you properly what that tech does... players don’t have to research individual elements like air superiority, ground troop weapons, logistics... you know, all those things you’d need to actually conquer a planet. It’s just that...

The tech tree in GalCiv II just comes across as so arbitrary and boring... I was talking to Derek about this, he’s our VP of Stardock Entertainment... GalCiv II is probably the last game Stardock made where I realistically should have been handing things to other people to work on. You can really tell... and it really shows in the tech tree where, I kind of phoned it in. I was starting to get too busy working on the rest of Stardock, at that point, that I really didn’t have the time or energy to put into the tech tree. I go back and I look at it now and I’m like “really? There’s a tech here that does nothing. It’s just a tech! It’s a tech that only allows you to get to the next tech” How did this get past... what was I thinking!?

Tech descriptions in GalCiv II, you can I didn’t have enough time to do it properly. Lasers II is better than Lasers I. Really? Is that it? Why even HAVE Lasers II? Why call it that? It’s just so lazy. That’s one of the areas that’s been dramatically improved on. I mean... The tech tree does its job tactically, it just does it so soullessly and lazily. And so I think you can have your cake and eat it too, you can have a game where these things don’t seem like they’re arbitrary or anything. Today people are a little more discerning.

Strategy Informer: What do you think about Combat in Galactic Civilization? It was very hands off in the second game – are you planning on doing anything special with it for GalCiv III?

Brad Wardell: We don’t want to turn it into something like Masters of Orion, where you have like fleets of thousands of ships and you have to command every ship in the fleet and tell them what to do every turn because that would be... I know there are plenty of gamers who want that, but at some point that’s what your game becomes about. When it comes to games like this it’s always about what percentage of your time are you spending on what? In Galactic Civilizations, it is about your civilization. You are building fleets, designing ships, running planets, you are not telling which ship to fire at. That’s not what the game’s about.

At the same time, I always found it, in hindsight, the fleet battles in GalCiv II felt a little hollow. You design these ships, and you do all this cool stuff, and then you don’t really have any control over the battle. I don’t know about you but it always struck me as a bit of a missed opportunity, and that’s something we hope to make use of this time.

LarryC wrote:

I didn't buy Elemental, though I was very hopeful about it. I'm keeping an eye on this. If it turns out like GalCiv2, I'll be getting it.

Good thing you didn't. That's $50 I'll never get back.

ZaneRockfist wrote:

Good thing you didn't. That's $50 I'll never get back.

Well you can probably go into your stardock account and get a Steam key for Fallen Enchantress if you haven't already. But I've got 37 people on my friends list who own it and not a single one has played more than 0 hours... Not sure if that's a bug or a sign of things.

MoO2 had an Auto button though. And it did have a max number of ships per fight, no matter the size of the fleet.

The artificial fleet sizes in GalCiv2 drove me absolutely batty.

Tamren wrote:
ZaneRockfist wrote:

Good thing you didn't. That's $50 I'll never get back.

Well you can probably go into your stardock account and get a Steam key for Fallen Enchantress if you haven't already. But I've got 37 people on my friends list who own it and not a single one has played more than 0 hours... Not sure if that's a bug or a sign of things.

Elemental killed any interest I have in that franchise.

Tamren wrote:
ZaneRockfist wrote:

Good thing you didn't. That's $50 I'll never get back.

Well you can probably go into your stardock account and get a Steam key for Fallen Enchantress if you haven't already. But I've got 37 people on my friends list who own it and not a single one has played more than 0 hours... Not sure if that's a bug or a sign of things.

I believe Fallen Enchantress came out before they gave out Steam keys for it. I know that's when I played it at least. Still haven't checked out Legendary Heroes yet though.

There's a new interactive timeline for the Gal Civ universe up on the site today. You can click through the dates and learn about the Gal Civ history a bit.

http://galciv3.com/databanks/timeline

PC Gamer has a preview of GCIII up, and screenshots.

http://www.pcgamer.com/previews/gala...

Island Dog wrote:

PC Gamer has a preview of GCIII up, and screenshots.

http://www.pcgamer.com/previews/gala...

I'm glad you guys moved on to hexes as it just makes more sense imho.

Gunner wrote:
Tamren wrote:
ZaneRockfist wrote:

Good thing you didn't. That's $50 I'll never get back.

Well you can probably go into your stardock account and get a Steam key for Fallen Enchantress if you haven't already. But I've got 37 people on my friends list who own it and not a single one has played more than 0 hours... Not sure if that's a bug or a sign of things.

I believe Fallen Enchantress came out before they gave out Steam keys for it. I know that's when I played it at least. Still haven't checked out Legendary Heroes yet though.

I played a decent amount of both Fallen Enchantress and Legendary Heroes, for the total amount of time I have spent with working balanced gameplay out of what I ended up getting from the preorder of Elemental I am satisfied. And it was better than what I got of the money I paid for Moo3 so ...

Zaque wrote:

I played a decent amount of both Fallen Enchantress and Legendary Heroes, for the total amount of time I have spent with working balanced gameplay out of what I ended up getting from the preorder of Elemental I am satisfied. And it was better than what I got of the money I paid for Moo3 so ...

Well glad to hear that worked out for you. Now Demigod on the other hand...

Hexes for a space game looks pretty neat because you don't have to deal with that weird ratio for diagonal moves. 1-1.25? something like that.

I personally like the hexes, but hey, what do I know.

Just a couple of updates I wanted to share for those following along. New journal is up which gives more detail about the Altarian leader, and the GC Lead Designer was on the Space Game Junkie podcast talking about.......Galactic Civilizations!

The first gameplay video was put up yesterday.

Ooh. Thanks, Island Dog.

It, ah, sure looks a lot like GalCiv2.

Honestly though, I'll still be pretty happy even if it ends up being GalCiv2++.

My thoughts exactly.

It's up on Steam for $100. Somebody should buy it and tell us how it is.

I vote Veloxi.

I spent some time with it tonight. It really is an alpha; there's not much there. I'd like to spend some more time with it before making any grand declarations but it plays a lot like GalCiv2. It sure was nice to hear the theme again, though.

tboon wrote:

I vote Veloxi.

:)

Already got a code, just need to find time to play it.

Veloxi wrote:
tboon wrote:

I vote Veloxi.

:)

Already got a code, just need to find time to play it. :)

I think Saturday would be good. At least that's my plan.

Wow, you don't get much for $100, do ya?

■ A lifetime subscription to all GalCiv III DLC and expansion packs

■ Create your legacy* – Suggest a star name and get special thanks credit

■ Founders' Vault* – Access exclusive art, music and more from the development team

■ Forum badge* – Display with your account on the official Stardock forums

Oh! You also get to help de-bug it for them!

I'll be interested to hear impressions, but I think I'll wait to for the actual release and a more reasonable price.

Island Dog wrote:
Veloxi wrote:
tboon wrote:

I vote Veloxi.

:)

Already got a code, just need to find time to play it. :)

I think Saturday would be good. At least that's my plan. ;)

I'm having people over for a movie day on Saturday, so Sunday is way more likely.

Nevin73 wrote:

Wow, you don't get much for $100, do ya?

■ A lifetime subscription to all GalCiv III DLC and expansion packs

■ Create your legacy* – Suggest a star name and get special thanks credit

■ Founders' Vault* – Access exclusive art, music and more from the development team

■ Forum badge* – Display with your account on the official Stardock forums

Oh! You also get to help de-bug it for them!

I'll be interested to hear impressions, but I think I'll wait to for the actual release and a more reasonable price.

Regular version is $40, but it doesn't have alpha access (or the DLC), which is why they have the $100 version.

Michael wrote:

Honestly though, I'll still be pretty happy even if it ends up being GalCiv2++.

I'm actually hoping for a GalCiv2++, myself. Throw some new content, tweak some things, maybe overhaul the economy, tech, and combat mechanics a bit, but overall I was very happy with GalCiv2.

Farscry wrote:
Michael wrote:

Honestly though, I'll still be pretty happy even if it ends up being GalCiv2++.

I'm actually hoping for a GalCiv2++, myself. Throw some new content, tweak some things, maybe overhaul the economy, tech, and combat mechanics a bit, but overall I was very happy with GalCiv2.

The core game is there, and many members of the GC2 team are working on this, so I think fans are going to be very pleased. It's still a year out, so there's lots to do.

The expansions and DLC together could end up costing $40 or $50 anyway, so it's a gamble on parity if everything turns out well. Stardock hasn't always delivered the goods on release, but their support of even badly received games is close to ideal.

I'll never pre-order a Stardock game again after Elemental. That game burned me hard.

I never got into GalCiv 2. Don't really know why. I think I found ship design needlessly fiddly.