Galactic Civilizations III trailer!!

[jomni]

A very playable alpha does mean it is beta. As they implement the additonal features, things might still break. Better to add all then do the Beta testing.

[FlickJax]

I am not sure why people are slating graphics look much better than 2 to me.

[Bison]

Hexagons, people, not squares but hexagons.

[tgb]

Yeah, I bought in. I'm weak.  GalCiv II  and expansions have never left my hard drive, and this would have been an October purchase anyway, so I went for it.  I've only played a few turns as a couple of races, but there are definitely changes over II.  Here's what I've seen so far, for good and bad, although I may still be missing some.

The good:

Race specific tech trees

Individual planetary budgets in addition to the macro-budget setting (although by default they correspond to each other)

Almost all colonizable planets have traits that add a bonus or malus to research, growth, etc., pretty much forcing your colonies to specialize.

Morality trees - similar to the culture trees in Civ V, there are a lot more of those multiple-choice decisions when colonizing planets, only this time you are awarded points that can be spent to gain bonuses.  A lot of them are specific like free ships or unlocking buildings.

Shipyards are now orbital structures that can be moved.  They are funded by the nearest colony, and in systems with multiple colonies can be positioned so that they get funding from all of them.

Specific elements to be mined, although I'm not sure what their purpose is.  I don't know if they replace the old culture/defense/etc. nodes, are in addition to them, or are needed for specific techs.

The not-so-good:

Planetary political parties and elections appear to be out

Likewise asteroid mining (although the element mining above may be the replacement)

Clicking on a star no longer tells you how many conolonizable planets it has.  I'm not sure how I feel about that.  I really disliked it at frist, what with it being so "gamey", but otoh I've come to rely on it.

No population sliders on colony ships.

In short, there are enough changes to II, and enough is the same, to justify a purchase if you like previous editions.

From what I've seen so far.

[tgb]

Someone (one of the developers, I think) posted this on the Steam forum, and since most of us spend as little time in that wretched hive of scum and villainy as possible, I thought it was worth reposting:

What's in
Ideology Tree - this replaces the alignment system from GCII. You have three ideology trees, Benevolent, Pragmatic and Malevolent, you can get points from colonization events and certain planetary improvements and spend them to unlock bonuses in a tree. You can purchase bonuses from any of the trees, you are not limited to just one. Also the colonization events have been balanced compared to GCII, as in the "good"option also gets you bonuses.

Hex Map - pretty self-explanatory, GCII used squares, GCIII uses hexes.

Multiplayer - it has online multiplayer, the maximum number of human players mentioned by the developers is 4.

Technology Specialization - certain technologies from the research trees will let you choose a specialization, usually from a number of 3, these will give you bonuses like +10% to manufacturing or research. You can research all of them if you want to.

Strategic Resources - on the map there are resources that can be mined with a mining starbase. These are needed for certain ship components.

Colony Adjacency Bonuses - planetary improvements give bonuses to other building that are next to them, ex. place two factories next to each other and they will both get a bonus.

New Map Elements - for example black holes that stop ships from traveling through them, or a nebula which can reduce sensor range.

Shipyards In GCII planets had a dual queue, one for building and one for ships, in GCIII you have space shipyards that build the ships, you can add multiple planets as sponsors to one shipyard.

There are also smaller changes, starbases now have a different look for each civilization, the research trees have been modified, improved graphics, more options to the ship designer, etc. If anyone thinks I missed something important tell me.

Things to be added
United Planet Proposals - the UP will be back, and this time you can make proposals on what to be voted on.

Fleet Combat Decisions - you will have a little more control on how combat will play out.
Originally posted by Frogboy:
Those who like the idea of designing carriers and seeing carriers in action in fleet battles I think will be happy.

Those who imagine fleet battles that play like MOO2 (i.e. where you're micro managing individual units) will be less happy.

Originally posted by Frogboy:
What you'll have here is if you have support ships in your fleet you'll be able to set up some battle options before the fleet battle begins. its hard to describe, it's a bit magic the gathering (select what you want to do at the start). but you won't be controlling the ships directly. The problem is that people would feel forced to micro manage their battles in order to get an optimal result.

100+ opponents in a game
Originally posted by Frogboy:
One of our objectives is for people to have the option to play new "Immense" sized maps where there might be hundreds of empires playing. We have a lot of different ideas on how to make this work (few people are going to want to have to select 130 opponents to play against). We might use Steamworks Workshop to allow players to share their custom made players and once approved have automatically added as additional AI players into games where a player wants to play a game with a truly insanely large galaxy.

Steam Workshop Integration - for easy distribution of mods. The game in general will be more modable, galaxy sizes, events, lots of things will be modable.

Regarding AI
Originally posted by Frogboy:
One of the biggest changes you'll see in the AI is data mining. Simply put, player ship designs and tactics are going to be stored on the cloud so that the AI can do data mining on it. I don't plan to actually design the ships this time around but instead look at the stats of the global player force and pick from that.

So the top Drengin player won't be the hard coded AI player I put in but more like the top rated human player.

Things that will not be in the base game
Espionage - the developers want to do it right and do not believe there is enough time to include it, maybe in an expansion

5 civilizations - Arceans, Torians, these two may return in DLC, Drath, Korath, Korx.

Terror Stars - not certain.

[Kushan]

Thanks for posting that tgb. I wasn't a huge fan of GalCiv 2 at launch and skipped on the expansions, so 3 wasn't even on my radar. But after reading what Stardock actually has planned, especially the 100+ opponents and the way they are handling fleet combat, I think I'll give it a go when it releases.

[RooksBailey]

I am disappointed by the lack of elections and asteroid mining.  I could live without the mining, but the elections and parties gave some depth to the universe that I will miss.  But, again, this is Stardock: I am sure we will see it return in and expansion with bells and whistles on.

[FlickJax]

Any more updates from those that have taken the plunge.

[Jarhead0331]

Any more updates from those that have taken the plunge.

RPS recently did an impressions piece. As I suspected, this is an alpha. A polished one, but an alpha nevertheless.

[bbmike]

I took the plunge on this Alpha but it'll be a while before I can get to it.

[tgb]

It's clear that terms like "Alpha" and "Beta" have been coopted and largely have no meaning any more. What matters is that it's stable, playable (mostly), and pretty enjoyable, limited as it is.  I put enough time into it to get a feel for it, and wil go back when diplomacy and the other races are in in October.

[Grim.Reaper]

Looks like you can pick this up for 50% off from the star dock store using code stardock50.  Sounds like you get a steam code and only costs $22.  Wonder if worth it now?

http://www.galciv3.com/store

[mikeck]

Along those lines, can anyone advise I'm whether the game is featured complete. I'm not going to pick it up early if it is still missing diplomacy... for example

[bbmike]

I read somewhere that combat wouldn't be added until December. Not sure about diplomacy. I do know it's not feature complete.

[Wolfe1759]

Looks like you can pick this up for 50% off from the star dock store using code stardock50.  Sounds like you get a steam code and only costs $22.  Wonder if worth it now?

http://www.galciv3.com/store

Thanks Grim, just picked it up with this. The normal 10% pre-order discount just didn't tempt me but this did.

Only problem now is I've just got Endless Legends and it is rather fun, Endless Space is getting a new patch next week, I've just started a new Civ V game as Arabia, Horizon has just got an update, recently bought Warlock 2 on a discount, I really should be playing Distant Worlds having bought every expansion from the start, bought Civ Beyond Earth just after release with a 50% discount, have Pandora and its expansion and last but by no means least rather like Armada 2526 and should play it more.

Oh and by the way I've got to work for a living as well  :)