Brad Wardell's views about technology, politics, religion, world affairs, and all sorts of politically incorrect topics.
Draginol's Articles In GalCiv III Dev Journals
December 20, 2017 by Draginol
Just in time for Christmas we released version 2.71 which is almost strictly about AI tweaks based on player feedback and saved games.  Now, someone might ask "Why do you need save games to make the AI do [obvious thing]?".  The answer is that with so many different ways of playing the game (both in terms of game setup and in-game strategies) it turns out people play the game very differently from one another.  It's one of the reasons why you have most people who think the...
November 28, 2017 by Draginol
Winter is coming.  And so is Galactic Civilizations III v2.7.  This version has been in the works for a long time as a general, all around, polish pass on everything in the game.   New Data Manager This is a boring feature that most people won't care about, but for those of you who have a lot of custom civilizations, you will find game load times to be much faster.  This is because the data management used to be handled by an external proce...
September 15, 2017 by Draginol
[..] You may not have noticed this before but in the Ship Designer of Galactic Civilizations III you can take the ships you have designed (or downloaded) and export them as a .OBJ file.  This can be used by 3D printers but also on a cool site called Sketchfab .  It's super easy to set up. Here are a couple I've already uploaded: GalCiv Hyperion by draginol on Sketchfab Ares GalCiv by draginol on Sketchfab  Have fun! p.s. Bonus one: https://skf...
August 16, 2017 by Draginol
Summer continues.  Unless you're in Australia or New Zealand. But they're not people. Not really.  I mean, they can't feel heat and cold.  So what's been up? The boring job of architecture update.  We've been spending the past month fixing architectural issues that have slowly built up. This shines through in the form of bug fixes.  It's slow, time consuming but important work.  We are also working on merging the GalCiv III base game and Crusade core together...
April 26, 2017 by Draginol
Galactic Civilizations III: Crusade is an expansion pack for Stardock's popular 4X space strategy game, Galactic Civilizations III.  Crusade is a top-to-bottom update of the entire game.  This article will walk you through what's new, what's changed and try to explain it for those who may not be familiar with the series. The Specs Title : Galactic Civilizations III: Crusade Platform : Windows PC, 64-bit Price : $19.99 if you already have Galactic Civilizations...
April 24, 2017 by Draginol
  Crusade is the space strategy game made by 4X nuts for 4X nuts.   Let's do this. What is Galactic Civilizations III: Crusade? In 2015, Stardock released the latest entry in its popular 4X space strategy game series, Galactic Civilizations III. 4X means eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate and is turn-based.  GalCiv III was well received (81 metacritic) and has a recent Steam review score of 82.  However, coming from Galactic Civilizations II (94...
April 23, 2017 by Draginol
Galactic Civilizations has the distinction of being the longest running strategy game developed by the same company. Let's take a look at how it has changed. Galactic Civilizations OS/2 The game that started it all.  I wrote this game from my dorm room in college.    Galactic Civilizations for OS/2 (1993)   First commercial multithreaded game First commercial game to use more than 256 colors First commercial 32-bit game It was written for I...
April 17, 2017 by Draginol
In our previous entries, we've discussed specific major new features of Crusade.  For this entry, we're going to go through a guided tour of what's new in Crusade over GalCiv III in terms of features and gameplay.  Strap in! Let me preface that this is long and probably a bit full of typos.  I wanted to get this out to you as soon as possible. It's long, but I hope you like it! -brad   Prior to the age of digital distribution, Crusade would be a sequel...
March 16, 2017 by Draginol
What kind of people are you? I think the biggest reason the Galactic Civilizations series has been so popular over the years has been because each game is your own epic story. In fact, the biggest request we get is to make the galaxy feel move alive.  With this Spring's mega expansion to Galactic Civilizations III, we hope to do just that. With Galactic Civilizations III: Crusade, we've been able to use the new, 64-bit, multicore game engine to create a much more lively...
March 8, 2017 by Draginol
Spying on Aliens Galactic Civilizations is a game that asks the question: What happens after we start colonizing other planets? For our purposes, we are going to assume that we will come into contact with alien civilizations. Alien civilizations will have their own histories, cultures and ideals that we can only fathom.  In Galactic Civilizations III: Crusade, you will be able to train your citizens to learn more about these other civilizations and, if necessary, do very bad th...
February 23, 2017 by Draginol
4X strategy. You may have heard of the term. It stands for: eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate.  They are a specific genre of strategy game.  Today we are going to talk about them and how Galactic Civilizations III: Crusade, aims to innovate the genre. Besides 4X, there are other genres:  Real-Time Strategy games (RTS), such as Ashes of the Singularity and StarCraft, focus on harvesting resources to build units in order to destroy the enemy with it all happening...
February 15, 2017 by Draginol
Sliders. Knobs. Checkboxes. Such is the spread-sheet roots of strategy games. Let's fix that. Going back 15 years to Galactic Civilizations I for Windows, players managed their economy like this: GalCiv I: Sliders.   In Galactic Civilizations I, you would set your tax rate. Your tax rate affected the approval rate on your planets.  You could then decide how much of your GDP the government would take control of with the spending slider.  From ther...
February 9, 2017 by Draginol
Galactic Civilizations games have had ship building in them for almost 20 years.  And ever since, people have used it to create all kinds of amazing designs from robots to their favorite Sci-Fi ships. Ship designer from Galactic Civilizations II With Galactic Civilizations III, players were able to share their designs with millions of other players via Steam Workshop.  Suddenly, players could download and play with almost any type of ship imaginable. As much as players loved...
February 3, 2017 by Draginol
Ship design has been part of Galactic Civilizations games for many years.  However, with Galactic Civilizations III, the designer has reached the point where user creations are starting to rival what you would see in movies. The ship designs we included are wholly original creations based on the lore that's been developed over the past 25 years. The ship designer itself lets people put together thousands of parts to create whatever they want. A new design For the serio...
February 2, 2017 by Draginol
Explore. Expand. Exploit. Exterminate.  This is where the term "4X" originates.  The granddaddy of our genre is, of course, Sid Meier's Civilization. Where Sid Meier's Civilization leverages our common history from the dawn of agriculture to the moment we leave the Earth, Galactic Civilizations begins at the moment we leave our home world. In Galactic Civilizations, players create their own histories.  Each game is a different possibility.  When we relea...