GalCiv II: v1.1 BETA 4A Change Log

Published on April 19, 2006 By Draginol In GalCiv Journals

Galactic Civilizations II: 1.1 BETA 4A

This is what is new over beta 4 of 1.1. This, in theory, will be the last public beta of 1.1.

+ Optimized fleet manager screen for faster response times Implemented

+ New Option: "Hide Nebulae and Stars in Ship Preview Windows". This option fixed some compatibility/crash issues some users ran into (video card related).

+ Only thumbnails for ships your civ can use are pre-loaded Fixed bug where UP would vote to change to Democracy, but would changeto Federation instead

+ AI now factors "Fear" into relations. If someone is going around conquering others, they'll begin to get nervous about them.

+ AI will tend to band together to try to stop someone who is going around conquering them (whether that be human or another AI player who is mopping everyone up).

+ AI players will evaluate threats and put together coalitions against aggressive players or at the very least take a more active role in thwarting aggression from the sidelines. (LOTS involved in implementing this).

+ Computer players weigh risk of being ganged up on if they start a war of aggression before starting said war of aggression.

+ AI Much more effective at evaluating threats and discarding false positives.

+ Some AI players will be more aggressive at secretly paying someone else off to go to war with another player.

+ Many new messages to human player to let them know if someone has gone to war with them because they've been paid off or some other reason.

+ Some new AI upgrading code to ships to prevent it from trying to upgrade Precursor light cruisers (aka Rangers).

+ Torian and related AIs now adjust what they are building/researching based on the status of the galaxy. If the galaxy is on fire with war, it begins to rearm.

+ Lots of tweaks on which ships are built.

+ AI much better at focusing on tech researched based on its own strategy. Previously it tended to over focus on how much a tech cost so it would tend to research techs that weren't central to its strategy simply because they were "Cheap". Such distractions really add up.

+ A LOT of work on the tactical AI, picking out which ships to go after, how to focus power and project it in a focused way.

+ AI will move offensive ships into defensive positions in orbit of a planet if it feels threatened.

+ If the galactic atmosphere gets dangerous (i.e. lots of wars) AI will start fortifying its planets more to prevent sneak attacks.

+ Starting spend rate changed to 67. "New" users will hence see the game pace improved (i.e. the "I just keep having to hit the turn button over and over" issue where people who don't increase their spend rate end up waiting a long time should be helped a bit).

+ Game now keeps track of how many civilizations a given race has conquered. pCiv->ulCivsConquered.

+ New API: FindBestFriend. Returns a player's best friend that they can reasonably trust. Takes into account if said friend is going around conquering everyone and is not allied.

+ Saved game and load game format changed to support new features.

+ Saved game makes use of new weapon and defense focus features.

+ Planets under alien influence defect faster.

+ Tweaked planet seeding so that there's a bit more difference between rare and uncommon.

+ Fixed rare crash where a ship has been destroyed but the bad pointer is left in the orbit list. Now it will NULL it out if the ship's been destroyed.

+ Cleaned up the way influence ability affects the map. Much better.

+ AI will tend to use space on a ship design more optimally.

+ AI: If you're playing on Impossible (or whatever the most difficult level) the AI gets a free miniaturization ability. At this difficulty level, our focus is to provide god-like players with a challenge. (besides, if you're beating it at genius or higher, you're probably doing something similarly cheesy <g>).

+ Report screen on foreign relations screen tweaked to show fear as a negative (or positive) effect on relations.

+ Influence on the map tends to spread further into empty areas.

+ AI somewhat more shrewed in negotiations.

+ AI takes into account how many wars the player has started before making peace.

+ Iconian home world nerfed to 14.

+ Lots of new alien dialog.

+ Various tweaks to costs and benefits to planetary improvements based on player feedback.

+ Iconians are now good (were neutral).

+ Torians made slightly nicer ("more gooder" <g>).

+ Influence modules made more powerful at the high end.

+ AIs consider hulls more important.

Comments (Page 3)

jpinard

on Apr 20, 2006

Woohoo! I am so excited to have more alien diaogue and all the AI features listed above. This should really liven the game up! I must admit the game was getting a bit dry with so few interactions between the aliens, and best of all... getting to find out someone is paying someone esle to go to war with you. WOW! What a cool dimension that will add to the game.

Frogboy - I'd still like your group to add something very important oo the shipyard. When you go to upgrade a ship and choose to have all the wapon mounts stay. When you click on a weapon, or a shield/aromr etc that's already - you have no idea what it is because the preview box in the lower left corner of the screen stays blank. Please make it so we can indentify already placed opjects with its name and full stats. Thank you!

Dano13

on Apr 20, 2006

Its cool that you know who paid off your enemy to war with you. Is this automatic or is it an espionage thing?

If you pay off X to fight Y do your relations with Y suffer?

Dano

jpinard

on Apr 20, 2006

HELP!!! I've almost never crashed before. But this new beta... when I get my settings all ready to go and to launch the 3d renderer for the game - it crashes. And exception window pops up, and amnother box that say illegal call.

Stardock please fix this today! I had all afternooon setaside fr the game - and I can't play AT ALL right now. - and there's a bunch of other people with the exact same problem!

pedxing

on Apr 20, 2006

the list looks fantastic! going to download now...

one thing i don't see, though, is "Start of a War is now announced, in addition to the End of a War."

any chance of that getting in before the final 1.1?

pdesrivieres@yahoo.com

on Apr 20, 2006

Starting spend rate changed to 67. "New" users will hence see the game pace improved (i.e. the "I just keep having to hit the turn button over and over" issue where people who don't increase their spend rate end up waiting a long time should be helped a bit).

Why not set it to 100!? I rarely drop mine below 100. Between the cash reserve at the start of the game and money from tech trading, I can run my empire in the red long enough for my income (taxes, trade, and tourism) to catch up to my spending.

I'm currently playing the Dread Lords campain mission Salvation (which I hope is the last). So I should be ready to play my first sandbox game, post 2005/12 Beta build, just as v1.1 comes out.

Mysterial

on Apr 20, 2006

The social project time estimates are still completely broken when social points are or recently were being converted to military. I either get "Never" or extremely long inaccurate times (a couple hundred weeks when it really takes 10, etc).

Exiting and re-entering the colony screen for that planet fixes the estimates, but I think this is going to be a huge newbie confusion issue if it makes it into the final version.

Agent_X20

on Apr 20, 2006

Frogboy - I'd still like your group to add something very important oo the shipyard. When you go to upgrade a ship and choose to have all the wapon mounts stay. When you click on a weapon, or a shield/aromr etc that's already - you have no idea what it is because the preview box in the lower left corner of the screen stays blank. Please make it so we can indentify already placed opjects with its name and full stats. Thank you!

I too have been wondering why there's no feedback on what component on the ship I've just selected. While i can tell different engine types apart other components aren't so easy to differentiate e.g. sensors. I don't recall having this problem with 1.0X.

Kidrik

on Apr 20, 2006

Hah, you may not be seeing the results of your labor in your last journal, but I am. After the inital colony rush, the Altarians and Drath found some planets, including a pq26, inside my territory that I had missed. I went to war with both of them and quickly conquered all of the planets. The Altarians are stronger than me militarily, and the Drath are far weaker. The Drath wouldn't go to peace when I offered it to them, and I realized it was because the Altarians were also fighting me.

The Drath had pinned their hopes to the Altarians, who were quickly distracted by the fact that the Drengin attacked their rear when they moved their war ships towards me. The Drath begged me for peace now that the Altarians made a truce with me, but I continued my assault and they surrendured to the Yor.

Supreme Shogun

on Apr 20, 2006

I was "pondering" the whole thing about galactic conquerors and the WWII analogy. Allies band together to fight the Axis. Why did the "original axis of evil" form ? Surely Italy could have chosen not to join up with Hitler and didn't. Same could be said for Japan.

There could be another personality, warmongerish. Who would say ally with the Axis hoping to get thrown a bone or two of table scraps, say some lower defense worlds while the main Fleets are battling the 'front lines'. There was Africa, There was Italy and the Med. There was even SS sent to Tibet. Soviet Union on eastern front, Belgium and France on the East. Japan in the Pacific. WWII was a world war, and war was all over the place. Back to the AI, I'd call this more of an 'opportunist' type. Supposing it did take advantage of war and ally, taking planets makes it stronger as well which is a good thing.

I dunno if WWII is a good analogy here, sorry if it skews the relationship. I think its a plausible idea, a nation wanting to consider self-interest over doing the right thing. Also would make for an interesting game too. Also in the analogy,
I see the changes as waking up the AI. Y'all can't all be Switzerland (be neutral to it all). Some has to join the Allies and others the Axis.

Zippyriver

on Apr 21, 2006

What I do in the ship builder to get around that is size compare. For instance I locate the life support component on the list and click on it. I can then easily find the component on the ship. Since it retaints size and orientation I just (select move item) yank it off the ship and count down the new free space. If it's a current item, replace it. If an upgrade it there, just click it on the list and replace.

I DO agree there should be a tool tip come up over the weighted items listed.
***********

I know it's getting close to release time. Could you pretty please look into adding a de-select check box in the treaties screen. I can hardly differentiate between the colors and it all looks the same. I would like to be able to limit the lines to only races at war, for example. But in the meantime, it might help if you could just fatten those lines up a little bit (3x thicker might do it). With sugar on top?

Zippyriver

on Apr 21, 2006

An example of what I had in mind.

Alien Duck

on Apr 21, 2006

Hmm, I SERIOUSLY hope that you need high-level espionage to know the "X paid Y to attack us" factor. Otherwise, this would become REALLY, REALLY silly.... like the bribing race DIDN'T do this to keep its hands clean in the first place.

"Hey, we are now going to kill your army and invade your homeworlds. Oh, by the way: we do this because the Torians paid us some money to do it. Just so you know. They didn't pay us extra to NOT tell you this, hehehe....."

Righhhhhhht.....

Darth Evanesce

on Apr 22, 2006

OK, I played a full game and I like the changes.

Played huge galaxy, 9 random races, Common everything. And my custom race on tough.

Not getting over detailed. These are a few things I was surprised at.

1. The AI beat me in tech.
2. The AI had better attack ships.
3. The AI had stuck with weapon specialization.
4. The AI planets had much better production planets and specialized Tech planets.
5. The AI defended its planets better.
6. The AI beat me in building galactic wonders.

Why was I surprised? Because in the games I played before on the same level the AI did none of these things.

The only thing that saved me was I made an alliance with 3 races one turn before the Drengin, Iconians, and the yor (Whom I supplied ships to in order to keep them alive). All declared war one me. I knew they were coming I watched our relations die over a few turns.

All this was great, but I still think the AI has no clue on invading a human player’s planet. Even though I was beat in so many ways, I still never lost one planet, even the undefended ones. Though they did get one transport through that I missed, The invasion failed.

I will say it was much harder then earlier betas. And the diplomacy was much better. It was harder to get the AI’s to do what you wanted including paying them off to attack and trading tech. I also lost many more ships then in past games, including entire fleets of earlier generation ships.

Over all, I say great job. The game just keeps getting better.

albion00

on Apr 23, 2006

So there's a [b4].018 out. I don't see any list of changes. Anyone know what changed in beta 4b?

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