Galactic Civilizations III - Stardocks Next 4X Game

Yeah... I think I'll buy MORE in the normal manner after reading some reviews, thanks. I'm not trusting anything that starts out basically saying that everything since MoO 2 has been weak.

Zloth said:

Yeah… I think I'll buy MORE in the normal manner after reading some reviews, thanks. I'm not trusting anything that starts out basically saying that everything since MoO 2 has been weak.

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If they're talking about space 4X games, then that's largely correct. Well, except Sins of the Solar Empire - which is rather great

MMORE is a game which will be impressive without any doubt. Question is, whether or not it will also be fun. I'd certainly not recommend to buy it right now. It's one of the projects you'd need to see to mature first.

For those interested: There is a stardock stream right now, last one before release. It runs smooth and the CEO is present. So for those who want to join in:
http://www.twitch.tv/stardock

Archangel said:

Only one game will match and surpass MoO2: http://www.morethegame.com/
(in about 2 years )

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Diplomacy and spying?

There is now a one hour Beginner Tutorial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiMTibbm8lE

Quill streamed the game last Saturday and posted it in youtube if you're interested:

I played it for a bit and I think it's decent enough, but I'm not seeing what's so special about it. It's still a bit dry and sterile - and it seems to lack a lot of features that I enjoy about this kind of game.

Where´s my MOO4

Im entitled to it, give me now!

On topic
tried som of the earlier incarnations of galactic civilizations but never got into them, to sterile. Is this better?

C

still no space elves? aka elerians?

Crilloan said:

Where´s my MOO4

Im entitled to it, give me now!

On topic
tried som of the earlier incarnations of galactic civilizations but never got into them, to sterile. Is this better?

C

still no space elves? aka elerians?

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Better, yeah, but nothing too amazing, really. Opinions will differ, though. Like most Stardock games, it doesn't have much personality.

Dry and Sterile? Fine. Go fix it. I've got the Cyborg Babes race developed already using KOS-MOS for the leader. If you want something of your own (and almost certainly more classy) then just make it. This game is HUGELY mod'able.

I mostly dislike parts of the interface, like the clunky fleet design and that you basically have to go back to the ship designer after each and every research as the parts are too different to just be replaced (weight and whatnot).

In addition some imbalances annoy me quite heavily. Made a little vid about that.
And this time even in english
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY5i6CurT88

Zloth said:

Dry and Sterile? Fine. Go fix it. I've got the Cyborg Babes race developed already using KOS-MOS for the leader. If you want something of your own (and almost certainly more classy) then just make it. This game is HUGELY mod'able.

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I'm not really into making games for developers

I'd rather wait until something that tickles my fancy comes out, but thanks!

DArtagnan said:

I played it for a bit and I think it's decent enough, but I'm not seeing what's so special about it. It's still a bit dry and sterile - and it seems to lack a lot of features that I enjoy about this kind of game.

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What features are you talking about?

SirJames said:

What features are you talking about?

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Primarily RPG features like ship captains, planetary leaders, unit advancement/XP, and so on.

Also, I hate the look of the tech tree - which is just text and a small floating wireframe image.

I love personal touches like fully rendered images of each and every tech, like they did in MoO2 and X-Com.

It makes the whole thing more tangible - and I'm huge fan of the tangible.

I also prefer manipulating units like you do in MoO2 - by actually dragging representations of "beings" - instead of adjusting sliders.

I'm missing more control in combat, like predesignated orders and a more tactical approach.

I dislike how ground combat is just a calculation without any kind of visual feedback.

GalCiv was always dry and sterile, though.

This is better - but it's still not very exciting to me.

DArtagnan said:

Primarily RPG features like ship captains, planetary leaders, unit advancement/XP, and so on.

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XP for units won't come, but they stated that they will implement Leaders later on in a DLC or Expansion.

Also, I hate the look of the tech tree - which is just text and a small floating wireframe image. I love personal touches like fully rendered images of each and every tech, like they did in MoO2 and X-Com.

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I guess I would have liked some pictures as well. But as every race has it's own technologies and the amount of total technologies is insane, this would be TONS of work. And most 4X games actually don't have these.
In fact I find the symbols you have in GalCiv3 quite good, as it's easy to see what is what. Compared to CivBE for example.

I also prefer manipulating units like you do in MoO2 - by actually dragging representations of "beings" - instead of adjusting sliders.

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I guess you are talking about the planetary control? Normally I am completely with you there. This is something I also don't like about the Paradox games. However in GalCiv3 it works actually pretty good, and once you understood the mechanics, it doesn't really feel very different anymore.
The Mechanics are: Your population generates raw workpower. The more population, the more work power. The formular is 2+Pop^0.7. This means that 1 Pop has 3 work power, 2 pop have 3,62 work power, 3 pop have 4,16 work power and it becomes less for each additional population. This workpower is then modified by morale.
Then the work power is devided via the sliders you have on the planet where you can chose how much workpower should go into production, science, or economics. And at last, these values are then multiplied by something like factory bonuses and so on.
This also means, that it's best to completely specialize in planets. If you have 50% factories and 50% laboratories, and tell your population to work 50% for production and 50% in factories, both halves of your pop would only profit from 50% of the buildings.

I'm missing more control in combat, like predesignated orders and a more tactical approach.

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They will add exactly that with a Expansion

I dislike how ground combat is just a calculation without any kind of visual feedback.

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They will also add that with a DLC or expansion. But right now even the numbers don't make any sense to me. If my power is 5 and theirs is 10, why do I have a 100% win chance?

@Kordanor

Thank you for your insight

Yeah, maybe I'll check it out again after a few expansions - but I'm not too happy with my purchase as of right now.

Opinions will differ, naturally.

I also absolutely LOVE espionage - as I'm big into multiplayer, and this game doesn't seem to have any either.

So I played through the Tutorial, through the campaign, and put several hours into the Sandbox mode. All in all I played 50h total. Which isn't that much yet for a 4X game, but enough to be able to judge it I guess.

The main problem I have with the game is that "what is cool, is not efficient" / "something extremely efficient is really uncool".
There are some mechanics which can be exploted like sensor or movement stacking, which don't really seem to be intended that way. At least the AI isn't using them like that (except for their Constructor scouts which have tons of survival modules).
On the other hand the game tries to eliminate micromanagement, but fails in doing so, as it makes manual settings so much more powerful.
For those who are interested in the details, and maybe want to learn the one or another trick, can check my feedback post in the steam forums:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/226860/discussions/5/617336568081179821/

It's ridiculous that it doesn't have tactical ship combat. What's the point of having cool ships if you have to watch them fight? Even the first MOO had tactical combat.

Well, the first Civilization game didn't have tactical combat.

And I am glad they don't have tactical combat. It would be really annoying if you had to do them to get the maximum out of every battle if you have to do several battles per turn.
Instead you have to make sure that your setup works. In addition you can assign roles to your ships when you design them. These determine which types of ships get attacked first by this ship. That behaviour can then be seen in the battle-viewer.

In addition tactical combat is a no-go for every game which wants to include multiplayer.