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 2)

Daemon Jax

on Mar 24, 2006

Great job. Some thoughts:

1) More points on metaverse for "blind exploration" I'm not a big metaverse player, but I know others are, so this option greatly increases difficulty of play (as ctrl-n becomes nearly pointless). I'm all for it, but throw in some more points.

2) I agree with Kalin that starting positions need to be more balanced, and that homeworlds shouldn't have bonus tiles (this way, spamming ctrl-n becomes totally strategically worthless, which is a good thing).

unreal_ed

on Mar 24, 2006

I noticed that the picture with the new Shipyard has a toolbar on top. How do you play in a window mode like that? (I already know about the " w-inside-the-properties" way of doing it)

Magistrate_Magnus

on Mar 24, 2006

Awesome. Cant wait to try this out.

The no tech trading was one of my most wanted features. I will say though that I would like to have a middle thing between free tech trading. I am all for options.

2 Options mentioned here in the forum that I think are good and relativly easy to implement

1. Instead of tech trading have blueprint trading that gives a 50% cost rebate on a tech.
- Will stop the trade tech, sell tech, trade tech...
- Slow down the tech race
- You still can get diversification as all still wont research the same.
- Create small icon on tech tree that shows you have the blueprint

This option would work like the existing tech trading so no change in AI trading algorithms, instead of getting the tech
the system sets a flag on the traded tech that it has blueprint and reduces the cost of the tech. The AI can still value the tech the same or an adjutsment to of the AI value thats up to balancing.

When spies get techs, the same thing you just get blueprint.

Blueprints are not tradeable.

Other option.

2. Only Tech Trade with Alliances, Simply you can only trade when in Alliance.

Dr Fugue

on Mar 24, 2006

"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."

I would just like to lobby for the autopilot line drawing as for me it would be a big help...I didn't request it before and then when I saw it was going into 1.1 I never felt like I needed to say anything but I don't want Stardock to get the impression that it isn't a hugley requested option

Supreme Shogun

on Mar 24, 2006

Wow. just wow. Can't believe you can really add all that in and can't wait to get my hands on it.

Featauril

on Mar 24, 2006

Suggestion for 1.2 : minimap that follows the main screen.

BinnisterGC2

on Mar 24, 2006

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.

Yeah, you lose a crutch....one that basically insures that you are never poor during the game

There have been COUNTLESS suggestions on the forums (some even in post #18 of this thread) on ways to keep tech trading in the game, without having the 'Free Money' situation that now exists in the Tech Trade game.

I am confident that the Stardock crew will be able to come up with a 'middle ground' to satisfy everyone

Veinless

on Mar 24, 2006

Query regarding:
"
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.
"

Does this only randomize the intelligence (that is, the AI routines available), or does it also randomize the bonus/penalty to economy that you get with the different intelligence levels?

Thanks!

Simplicity2

on Mar 24, 2006

For those of you who don't like the starting positions, you REALLY need to not use "Tight Clusters". Huge and Gigantic galaxies on Tight clusters rarely start off with good starting positions. Set it to "Loose Clusters", and you'll be much happier, I guarantee. The Tight Clusters option is like playing Archipelago maps in the Civ series.

I wonder whether the clustering algorithm takes into account the size of the galaxy enough. The amount of empty space you can have with Tight clusters in a Huge/Gigantic galaxy is pretty mind boggling.

Voqar

on Mar 24, 2006

Everything in 1.1 looks like it'll rock and I'm excited about all of it, but no matter how cool ship design is enhancements to the ship design feature are at the bottom of my list. I'm far more concerned with things that affect the AI and gameplay, like AI improvements/changes, starbase changes, other changes to gameplay like economic changes and logistics changes, and the ability to randomize opponents at launch (simple but highly desired).

Telefrog

on Mar 24, 2006

This is absolutely awesome. Stardock is now officially my favorite PC game developer. Period.

Kalin

on Mar 24, 2006

Actually I always play on "scattered", this way all sectors end up with one or two systems. You're definitely right about the clustered galaxies, however, the fact remains that even in this spread out universe, the majority of the players can start in the same corner, while the other half of the galaxy is empty, or worse, with one player who's prime for taking over the rest of the galaxy. This is one of the situations where I definitely will ctrl-n, especially if I'm the closest one to the empty cluster of stars.

Another situation that I ctrl-n is when two homeworlds are right next to one another. If I wanted to have races die that fast, I might as well have selected 9 races and rush, but I don't really find that to be enjoyable past 2 games. What I would really like to see is an "equal distance" calculation as an option to the current randomized placement. It would also help, as I mentioned before to not put special tiles on homeworlds, at least none of the 300% and 700% bonuses anyways. 100% bonuses I can live with, and the slight effect it has might make games interesting. The large bonuses tend to throw the game out of whack really fast.

Tanthus

on Mar 24, 2006

Ahhh game programmer weeks.... take the latest possible time from when promised and that is when it will get release. Takes me back.

But seriously, Fantastic job - looks like you guys hit your programming stride now that you got that evil box deadline out of the way. No rush, I rather have it later with less bugs than have an unplayable beta. Oh and try to get some sleep. Too many hot-pockets can kill ya.

Oh and if you want to add one more option, how about making the graph bars only show up when you get a certain level of espionoge. This way you will be blind on what the computer is doing until you can afford to send some spys in. Just a tought.

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