Beta 1.1 Eve

A preview of what is in v1.1 beta

Published on March 24, 2006 By Draginol In GalCiv Journals

We plan to release 1.1 this week which means between tomorrow and Sunday.

Note to gamers: BETA means it's going to be buggy. I played a long game tonight and it was quite buggy. Hopefully we'll get them straightened out tomorrow. Most of the bugs revolve around the auto pilot line drawing so we may just take that out for the beta and keep working on it. It wasn't a hugely requested option anyway.

The New options:

People are going to like those. But realistically, I find the game lacking without tech trading. I've spent a week playing with it and without trading tech, you really lose something. I rewrote how the AI trades tech so that it's pickier with each other but at least people have the option. Don't get me wrong, it is a nice change of pace.

I actually MUCH more like the blind exploration feature. This is where you can't see the other players in the game with the influence mini-map option until you've explored the territory they're in.

The two new features here totally rock and I think if we added nothing else to 1.1, would be the most significant in terms of expanding the replayability. You now have the option to simply select N players and have it pick them out. The randomize intelligence lets you pick a overall difficulty and the game will randomize up the intelligence to fit that so that some civs are smarter than others.

But THIS BELOW will almost certainly be the most popular new feature:

Way m ore space to design your ships, rotateable parts, able to hide parts, it's just much better overall. You can even go back and rotate/resize after something's been placed.

This is the auto pilot line feature. It's pretty cool and very useful in large maps. It's a bit buggy right now though. I'm sure they'll get it fixed soon.

You can now tell what area of effect a starbase will have before you build it.

See how you only see their influence based on what you've explored. So you can't easily tell how vast someone's empire is. The fun factor of this is much higher than I thought it would be.

There's a ton of other features, we'll have a full log of it before we go up.

Comments (Page 1)

HEEGZ

on Mar 24, 2006

Wow.

I'm going to have to wrap up my current war quickly or abandon it altogether. To see these features implemented so quickly is just incredible. Hats off to you guys.

I may have missed this, but is there going to be a HP cap implemented in 1.1?

Kalin

on Mar 24, 2006

Whoa... the ship design screen improvement is nice. I like the change a lot. I was just waiting for the AI improvements, but this was a decent surpise.

One question in regards to blind exploration though:
Has there been any work done on the map generation routines? I mean, has the starting location/worlds been balanced out so that each race has a decent chance? I love the idea of blind exploration, but I find myself using ctrl-n alot to keep the AI spaced apart so that each for them have a decent chance. Me, I can usually get by, but a trap AI is often just a sitting duck waiting to die. Oh, and no precursor tech/manufacturing center bonuses on homeworlds too... those things gives crazy advantages.

gumgut2233

on Mar 24, 2006

Awsome Very Awsome , Very worth every penny i paid for this game that the game company actually cares about thier people. ( Ea sports could learn alot from you guys)

Capt Chaos

on Mar 24, 2006

See how you only see their influence based on what you've explored. So you can't easily tell how vast someone's empire is. The fun factor of this is much higher than I thought it would be.

How is the AI dealing with this, do the AI's know where the players influence is without exploring first?

How about starbase resources, does the AI need to explore first like human player?
I sometimes get the idea that like anomalies and auto explore the AI is able to find these resources without knowing where they are (no proof, just a feeling)

Auto pilot looks like a very usefull tool, even with the current buggy state i would love to see this in the Beta

Seeing where a starbase influence will be is also very very usefull, placed some starbases in the past and discovering i have 1 cm (on screen

) to short to get some planet to benefit. GRGR

Looks like a great job once again (we are getting used to it)

sam0t

on Mar 24, 2006

This is so cool and good for this game!

1.1 patch really puts in place everything that was missing from the original version. Constructor showing star base effect area, what a time and frustration saver!

The new auto pilot line feature is more important than you give credit Brad. I think it´s just something that people did not think about. When it´s implemented it will be huge time save. How many hours I have spent just going my ships one by one to check where they are exactly going. Now I won´t have to , thanks!

And your absolutely right about the randomizing giving the game more life. Too many times I have been "cherry picking" my opponents, now with new blind fold options the game will have more suprises.

ps. Could you Brad tell me what Interface options your using, those screen shots look so nice. I guess background star density at maximum 5000 , but background nebula number I cannot guess.

Empyrean

on Mar 24, 2006

Way m ore space to design your ships, rotateable parts, able to hide parts, it's just much better overall. You can even go back and rotate/resize after something's been placed.

Squeeeeee!!!!

e-stab

on Mar 24, 2006

Awesome, Brad (and team, of course!).

Thanks for all that'll be in the next version!
I hope a "randomize alignments" checkbox will join the new setup options in the near future, I found that to be much fun in GC1 (and finally people will see all the nice alternative texts as well!

Comstr

on Mar 24, 2006

Why be surprised by "exploring is cool"? It's one of the 4 X's, and unlike Civ which has terrian, galciv was lacking in itt. Anomlies have it somewhat, but they run out after the first year of gametime.

Idea: There should be ethics choices when exploring anolmies, not just planets. Along the line of "The captain of Survay Ship 1045 has been offered marragie to a green alterian slave. Does he accept the offer?" and other Star trekenin gags. You could tie it in to effecting the diplomacy of the majors or minors (or keep it to minors only). Mabye you raise the alterian diplomacy, but lose influence with the Torians. .

Cornfusion

on Mar 24, 2006

First, the blind exploration is the system I ma used to and I think that it'sa natural for a space exploration game. I hope that you have noted that using blind exploration could add a new and very exciting dimension to espionage where espionage outcomes could be learning about the extent of an empire as well as the location and extent of the empires that the espionage victim has contact with on a gradual basis, of course.

Haven't had a chance to read all the comments; so, maybe this has been mentioned.

Good hob you guys.

Jeda

on Mar 24, 2006

Anomlies have it somewhat, but they run out after the first year of gametime.

That's something I'd like to be changed. Turn anomalies into "come and go" things, randomly appearing on the map, dissapearing again if not farmed soon enough.

MegaVolt

on Mar 24, 2006

i'd like allied AIs to share their fog of war, same for AIs on which i got advanced espionage level (and maybe just see their planets without fog of war on high espionage)
are there any plans to do that?

Stanley Tarrant

on Mar 24, 2006

Who needs Autopilot lines anyway. I know where my ships are going. A good leader knows where his ships are going! However, having the starbase range highlighted before you use a constructor is a must. Anyway, thanks for the hard work

Visibledark

on Mar 24, 2006

Great news! You guys doing an awesome job there. I wish your game was reviewed once more after the final 1.1 is out. Eventually you'll get even 100.1 out 100 points

Avatar Draginol wrote: So you can't easily tell how vast someone's empire is.

Right now one can see in the Diplo screen how many planets / ships the AI has. Will you in blind exploration mode only see the planets and ships you encountered?
I mean if e.g. an AI scout comes near your planets and you get to the Diplo screen, you won't see all of his stuff listed then? I hope so

Thanks for the fast and major improvements on the game. Hopefully the final V1.1 will be out soon, so you and the team can go on a hard earned vacation

Capitaine Nicool

on Mar 24, 2006

OMG auto pilot lines will change my life, thanks !

About anomalies, it would be really COOL to let us choose how to use them: for example showing them to your people as a trophee to increase their morale (such discoveries make people dream) or using them as a scientific purpose to boost research, etc. Add to that the "come and go" feature of Jeda and you can have some really interesting gameplay.

Keep the good work guys

unreal_ed

on Mar 24, 2006

The new ship design does look awesome. I'm afraid of having overcrowded auto-pilot-path maps though.

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