Galactic Civilizations II v1.4 Change Log

Coming soon...

Published on October 19, 2006 By Brad Wardell In GalCiv Journals

Still testing but here are the changes:

+ Initial Colony buildings have less maintainence.

+ New colonies start out with a population cap of 6 instead of 5.

+ Farms provide less food.

+ Morale buildings have been increased in benefit but techs to get to them cost substantially more.

+ Stock market no longer gives morale bonus (wasn't supposed to in the first place)

+ Updated beam weapon model along with large hull models

+ Updated some of the planetary improvement icons to be prettier

+ Updated Achille's heel, Apocalypse, and Pathfinder missions in the campaign based on player feedback.

+ Tweaks to make money not too hard to get early on but not as easy to get ridiculous levels of money later on (though expert players will still be able to do this).

+ fixed bug where ships on auto-attack would try to attack ships they weren't at war with if the ship was in the way

+ fixed bug with auto attack where it was using the wrong function to check to see if a ship was hidden by the FOW.

+ fixed cheat key to force an AI player to surrender

+ added in code so that when using the CTRL+Z cheat to run the game in AI test mode, it will make the AI take over for the human player

+ fixed bug where ships that were being upgraded but were not selected tried to update the ShipContextWnd, resulting in a crash if the last ship to be selected was deleted

+ fixed a bug where a ship (under certain conditions) could fail to start moving even if it had a path calculated to its destination

+ added additional debug info for missing string in tradewnd, took precautions to avoid a crash

+ Tweaks to the AI code that handles planetary improvement so that they don't do stupid stuff by mistake

+ Fixed integer divide by zero crash

+ Fixed bug where if you upgrade a constructor and build a starbase while it is upgrading, the starbase will change into a ship when the upgrade is complete

+ If RAW file fails to load, a height field is generated randomly

+ Fixed crash in Quick Project Window

+ fixed a bug that could occur if you loaded a campaign save game and tried to continue after finishing that mission, instead of using the campaign screen.

New:
+ added option to save ship design to disk. If turned off, the ship design will not be saved to disk and will not show up the next time you start GalCiv2. Ship designs will still remain in memory until the data is reloaded (from a save game, from starting a metaverse game after having played a normal game, etc).

Comments (Page 4)

Lord Reaper

on Oct 23, 2006

MumbleFratz - given how much spleen was vented about taking out a 10% morale bonus in the stock exchange I can't see how at the same time a +10% increase in morale bonus to the morale buildings is now insignificant.
Basically, the 10% from the stock exchange got moved to the proper morale building.

Because nobody wants to have to build multiple morale buildings, they are considered a necessary evil. Taking away the morale bonus on stock exchanges, means you can build less of them because you will need more morale buildings to make up for those lost morale bonuses. So it is just one more thing to hurt the economy since we will not be able to build as many economy buildings, this after already making the economies worse with the previous changes by making it harder to develop large populations and making it harder to collect high taxes. It appears to me that most people enjoyed the game more when it was version 1.2. I did not see a lot of people complaining before that: "Our economies are too good, we want changes so we have to struggle more with less money."

46852

on Oct 23, 2006

I believe the changes since 1.2 stifle creativity of the players so that eventually there will be only one viable way to develop a planet. Saying in effect: "Develop your planets the way we think you should, or else we will change things so you have to."

But you're telling the game designer now that they should keep the game unchanged, so that you can "develop your planets the way YOU think you should"... Draginol is trying to make the buildings more sensible, Stock Markets boost economy, entertainment boosts morale, sounds reasonable to me. Stifle creativity... hmm... can't see how "Stock Market is the way to go! Forget Morale buildings!" is creative in any way? Or do you mean some other changes perhaps?

I've modded my non-metaverse games right from the start so that Stock Markets were more expensive, and had only 5% morale bonus, they just gave too much Bang For The Buck imo.

Are you really telling that your enjoyment of the game is affected so much if some building has a 10% value or not, Lord Reaper? I find it hard to believe, I doubt you had all those medals if GC2 wouldn't offer something else for you than buildings with numbers

Jasamcarl

on Oct 23, 2006

The 'viable' strategies were just ways to break the game. They were easy by definition give that they relied on a loose economy. The 1.4 balance gives both options+scarcity which rewards GOOD players, i.e. those who can maximize the benfits of random tiles, as opposed to the pre 1.3 "I think I'll win this way" approach.

46852

on Oct 23, 2006

Because nobody wants to have to build multiple morale buildings, they are considered a necessary evil. Taking away the morale bonus on stock exchanges, means you can build less of them because you will need more morale buildings to make up for those lost morale bonuses. So it is just one more thing to hurt the economy since we will not be able to build as many economy buildings, this after already making the economies worse with the previous changes by making it harder to develop large populations and making it harder to collect high taxes. It appears to me that most people enjoyed the game more when it was version 1.2. I did not see a lot of people complaining before that: "Our economies are too good, we want changes so we have to struggle more with less money."

I think they are trying to make larger populations more viable in DA, so nerfing Stock Market might just be a prelude for that. Old Stock Markets with large populations = monster economy.

And btw, I think that in real life no government wants to build multiple "morale buildings" either, but they still do it

Lord Reaper

on Oct 23, 2006

But you're telling the game designer now that they should keep the game unchanged, so that you can "develop your planets the way YOU think you should"...

Yes, who is buying and playing the games, the developers or those who are customers? Logic would dictate that the wise business decision would be to please the game players not the developers.

Lord Reaper

on Oct 23, 2006

Are you really telling that your enjoyment of the game is affected so much if some building has a 10% value or not, Lord Reaper? I find it hard to believe, I doubt you had all those medals if GC2 wouldn't offer something else for you than buildings with numbers

I am saying that the combination of game changes since 1.2 have made the game less enjoyable, and it seems to get worse with each new version. Also I enjoy lots of different kinds of games, so I do not want to have to spend the time to have to relearn how to play the same game over and over because it keeps changing in ways I don't like. It makes me feel less like spending the time to relearn the game, when I could be enjoying myself more doing something else.

There are many things available to entertain us these days, if something changes to make one of them less entertaining for you, then you are encouraged to spend your time elsewhere.

Lord Reaper

on Oct 23, 2006

Being lucky enough to receive good randomtiles that you can maximize the benefits of does not make one a GOOD player, it makes them a lucky player for finding ones with bonuses on them. So instead of relying on what you call a loose economy it is better to rely on the luck of getting good bonus tiles and maximizing their benefit?

Mumblefratz

on Oct 23, 2006

As I said earlier.

I understand the feeling, but the way that I look at it, they're trying to evolve us all into uber players. In many ways I think it's working.

They can nerf anything they want, but the one thing they can't nerf is your mind. Consider it a challange.

Eliminating the morale bonus from the stock exchange makes a high income strategy more difficult, but by no means impossible. If anything, this gives the stronger player a greater advantage over the weaker player than he previously had.

In v1.2 the VRC gave a 60% bonus. This was sufficient to be able to pursue a high pop strategy. Once the 60% bonus was nerfed to 25%, that eliminated high pop and players compensated with high income. In retrospect, high income was more powerful than high pop. So now the VRC is increased to 35% at the expense of the 10% morale bonus of the stock exchange, which nerfs high income, but is the VRC increase sufficient to bring back high pop as a viable strategy? Probably not.

What people are saying is that gradually everyone is being forced to play the identical game. Though I don't totally agree with this, I do believe there is a large element of truth in it. I believe that there will always be the opportunity for folks to come up with something clever that gives them an advantage over other players. However, it does seem that the potential for dramatic differences in playing style have been reduced. JMHO.

JHaverkamp

on Oct 23, 2006

Yes, who is buying and playing the games, the developers or those who are customers? Logic would dictate that the wise business decision would be to please the game players not the developers.

It would serve you well to remember that you are not their only customer, either. Some of us like the changes they are making and think the older versions were less fun.

Lord Reaper

on Oct 23, 2006

It would serve you well to remember that you are not their only customer, either. Some of us like the changes they are making and think the older versions were less fun.

It would appear that from all the posts by veteran players who share my opinion, that the views I expressed do not represent only one customer. I am done with this debate. I have made my opinions known. I have better things to do with my time, then to argue with people who feel my opinions are not valid.

Evil Stormbringer

on Oct 23, 2006

How about making the game in such a way that you wouldn't or couldn't need more than one or two of any given building? I think this was the downfall from the start. Yes, there would obviously be call to add more than one building, such as a factory but you shouldn't "need" fifteen stock exchanges, twenty VR centers... etc. The devs should have built an improvement "cap". That in effect would eliminate the so called "cheese" and other tactics that the devs claim are the reasons for nerfing or pumping said improvements time and time again. What do you guys think? I know it would totally destroy strats all across the board but let's face it... you really shouldn't be able to have twenty stock exchanges or VR centers no matter how large the population is.

Lord Reaper

on Oct 23, 2006

I had to respond to this.

Let's see, you feel players have too much freedom to play the game they way they like, so they should be further limited to only developing their worlds the way you think they should. I see where you are going. If we do not want players to use different strategies, why don't we just make it so the computer automatically develops our worlds for us so that no one does it differently. That should make for an interesting game.

Magnumaniac

on Oct 23, 2006

It does seem as if some idiots in this thread don't remember their earlier complaints that there was no reason to build morale buildings because stock exchanges were too good, and that, post 1.31, stock exchanges were the essential building.

OK - you, and various others here are missing the point entirely.

v1.2 - my (and many other people's) planet builds were based around maintaining a tax rate of 39-49% (a perfectly realistic figure when compared to actual tax burdens in real life), and adjusting farms / stock markets / morale buildings per planet to achieve maximum populations that can sustain a good approval rate at the empire wide tax level. This resulted in many different looking planets that utilised farm and morale bonus tiles to maximum effect.

v1.31 - anyone tried getting a population beyond 25 billion, even at only 39% tax in 1.31. Forget it, you need at least 7 VRCs (depending on how many morale resources you control). Planet build now is 1 farm on a non-bonus tile, fill rest of planet with stock markets, set tax to 79%, repeat until you die of boredom. Remove the morale bonus from stock markets - adjust the tax rate down to 69% (tested and proven in the current game I'm playing).

The diversity has gone. All planets are like carbon copies of each other - every game. Any other planet build strategy is at a disadvantage to this one, which at the higher difficulty levels means you lose. In actuality, this makes the supposedly harder economic hump even easier to overcome, as your research path is naturally directed down the economic branch to furnish the planet build strategy.

In a nutshell, the game has become very uni-dimensional, and less fun because of that.

MBM1215

on Oct 23, 2006

Let's see, you feel players have too much freedom to play the game they way they like, so they should be further limited to only developing their worlds the way you think they should. I see where you are going. If we do not want players to use different strategies, why don't we just make it so the computer automatically develops our worlds for us so that no one does it differently. That should make for an interesting game.

I agree with you to an extent. Sure wwe should be able to diversify our planets the way we like but we have to be realistic about it. With the current system we can only diversify so much. We can only build research/manfac/econ based worlds, and later in the game research based worlds are useless any way. Late game all your worlds will either be set to bring in the bucks or churn out the war machines or some combination of the two depending on PQ. Being able to build up rediculous ammounts of money should be hard imo, as once you have all the money you can want you can pretty much steamroll the galaxy with relative ease depending on how strong all the other AIs are at the time and chances are by that time you could easily wipe them out. There do have to be some limits though. You can't just let the player do whatever they want whenever they want. Then they will dominate all the time, and where is the fun in playing a game you know you can't lose? I do see where you are coming from though. You want to be able to develop your planets the way you want. I like to do planets in my own way to, but the whole point of the game is to use different strategies to win and conquer your enemy imo. using the same one size fits all strategy all the time is boring to me what can I say. Just my two cents on the matter.

Brad Wardell

on Oct 23, 2006

Yes, who is buying and playing the games, the developers or those who are customers? Logic would dictate that the wise business decision would be to please the game players not the developers.

That's a nonsensical argument given that you have the ability to make the values whatever you want.

And let's nip this in the bud: I don't make games based on committee. I make the games I want to make. If people don't want to play the games that I make, then the economic forces will push me into a different market. But there is no scenario in which I'm going to change the game in ways that I think are wrong based on forum posts.

I think time has amply demonstrated that we are very open to ideas and incorporate suggestions. But we are the ones who make the call. The Stock Markets should not also give you a morale boost. That should be in the morale buildings. I took the bonus from the stock market and put it into the morale buildings.

Players have the freedom to play the game any way they want. A considerable amount of effort went into making it easy for people to adjust the values on planetary improvements to whatever they want. Same for technologies, ship parts, etc. If someone disagrees with a change, they're free to change it to whatever they wish. If the argument is that they can't play on the Metaverse, then my answer is, yea, when you play on the Metaverse against other players, we, not you, set up the way people are going to play.

v1.31 - anyone tried getting a population beyond 25 billion, even at only 39% tax in 1.31. Forget it, you need at least 7 VRCs (depending on how many morale resources you control). Planet build now is 1 farm on a non-bonus tile, fill rest of planet with stock markets, set tax to 79%, repeat until you die of boredom. Remove the morale bonus from stock markets - adjust the tax rate down to 69% (tested and proven in the current game I'm playing).

The diversity has gone. All planets are like carbon copies of each other - every game. Any other planet build strategy is at a disadvantage to this one, which at the higher difficulty levels means you lose. In actuality, this makes the supposedly harder economic hump even easier to overcome, as your research path is naturally directed down the economic branch to furnish the planet build strategy.

In a nutshell, the game has become very uni-dimensional, and less fun because of that.

And we listened to this and adjusted it so that the morale buildings are much more powerful in order to solve that in 1.4.

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