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Things you would like to see in a Galactic Civilization expansion set

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Things you would like to see in a Galactic Civilization expansion set

from Stardock Forums
I know that there already is one suggestion thread up but I decided to start a second one anyhow. Post any and all ideas that are too outlandish or broad in scope to implement in a commercial patch. Let's see if we can give the developers some evil ideas and maybe, just maybe, improve the chances that there will be a GC expansion pack. I'll try to get this one started.

Things I'd like to see implemented in an expansion:

1) More good and evil technologies
2) Race specific units, technologies and events
3) More events of all types
4) Morality triggered events
5) A new (hard) victory condition only attainable by neutral civilizations
6) Larger than gigantic maps
7) More customization options for maps (more neutral races, better than abundant planets, extra star clusters, more/less anomolies, etc.)
8) A second scenario
9) Two-tiered maps
10) A simple fleet combat system
11) More permenant galactic features (astroid belts, gas giants, ancient junkyards and ruins, etc.)
12) Some additional empire building tools (cosmetic and meaningful)

More technologies and events:
Any expansion to Galactic Civilizations would have to include more of what has already made this game the true, spiritual sucsessor to the Orion series. The event library in particular could be easily expanded to make every game unpredictable and different. Granted, this is already one of the stated goals of the patching process, but what can be done in patches can be 'overdone' in a retail release. :) Adding more technologies for the good and evil civs would also be a likely addition, but would require some compensation for neutrals.

Race specific technologies, units and events:
A familiar idea to an RTS player. An ideal way to introduce race-specific items into GC would be to create 1-3 units and techs for each race, including the humans, and then allowing each player to chose one of each at the start of a campaign. Only techs and units that the player picked at the start could be eventially researched and built.

Not allowing the usage of every racial unit in every game would be a good way to ensure that one race is not automatically 'the best' at any one thing. If the Torians chose their heavy combat vessel they will be able to hold their own against the Drengins. The best part is that the human player will not know what choices the AI races made until later in the game. Did the Drengins decide to activate their Warlord-class battleships (for space superiority) or did they instead chose to use Mutagen bombs (for mutating other species into Drengin hybrids during planetary assaults)?

Neutral victory condition:
Create a United League of Planets and conquer or dominate the galaxy. The catch: The League of Planets cannot have any of the other major races in it -- only minor races (and Independant League) led by the human race. You need at least 4-6 minor races (depending on map size) on-board to win this victory condition. They all must be alive at the end of the game.

It could work like this: Once a minor race is convinced to join the League it becomes an ally of the lead race and every other member race. All member races get military access, shared exploration, trade and diplomatic bonuses with one another. All member races benefit from each others starbases. All minor races belonging to the League give a tribute to the founder but recieve a hefty scientic grant in exchange. League races cannot culture bomb one another.

This would be a very cool victory path. It would be murder build and protect a League of Planets, but it could be a very rewarding endevor. If neutral technologies were to be implemented, perhaps they could be intended to allow this style of victory? The first neutral tech could be League Alliance (allowing member states) and subsequent techs could improve economic and scientic ties between the member races. A full formed League would be an unstable but very wealthy ediface.

Under the right circuimstances, the Arcean Empire may even attempt this. Perhaps one or more of their racial units/techs could be designed with this victory path in mind?

More ahead...
24,359 views 529 replies
Reply #426 from Stardock Forums Top

It seems to me that cultural conquering via starbases could be made easier. Cultural conquest gets tedious, and managing all the constructors gets burdensome, so what I propose is that there be some option to opt to automatically have the game attract the closest constructors to a given starbase with orders to automatically do maximum upgrading in a certain category (say cultural in this instance). This would only be an option selected, let's say, when you bring up starbase info pop up.

I understand that solution may be difficult to program into the game, but it's only one way of making it easier and I'm sure I'm overlooking some more obivious ways of making it less tedious. ;)

BTW, I know you guys (and gals) get hundreds of ideas, but I think this was worth posting, and I hope it gets implemented :d else I not do cultural conquest any more.

thanks for reading this :)
Reply #427 from Stardock Forums Top
I have a request for the ai:
I feel that the ai always researches the same things, so it gets boring after a while. I'd like it better if there were several ai research paths that could be selected or randomized:
You'd have for example standard arcean (use the current tech list), randomized or customized (one of several tech paths available). Non standard ai's would probably be easier so you'd have to metaverse them out, but new ai tech paths would allow modders to add new techs to decide when their tecsh will be researched by the ai. Currently, they can do so with the ai value tag, but if I understand correctly, it doesn't work for all races before they have finished their preset list of techs.
This is basically an ai editor, and players could contribute new ai tech paths to the library.

This thread growing huge, I cross-post it to another thread, hope you don't mind.
Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #428 from Stardock Forums Top
Better detail for some of the random events. Some of the change of turn random events have so short and obscure descriptions that there is no way of telling what they really do. Little more detail on actul effects or outcome would be great! Or even better a history panel where you could check what just happened.
Reply #429 from Stardock Forums Top
I think that there needs to be a quick way to check to see which planets you have properganda set on..

eg: if planetry properganda is set on a planet then put an * in the planets section on the planet panel.

Also move the planet and ship panel icons closer to the panel (eg: on the other side of thehint panel

in the hint panel (the little man that appears looks like the graphic is missing the bottom of his broardcast.. as there is a blank section below



~SDC~
Reply #430 from Stardock Forums Top
About Miles Naismith's idea. The AI could use that feature to combat cultural conquest or culturally conquer another AI.
Reply #431 from Stardock Forums Top
I know this is really minor but its been kinda bugging me i think that in the screen were it shows the colors of the senate seats the universalists need their own color the fact that they aren't represented just bugs me.
Reply #432 from Stardock Forums Top
The biggest think I want is hyperlinking, but that's already in! Woohoo! :CONGRAT:

Some small, hopefully easy, things I'd like:

1) Being able to choose to play one of the other Colors (plus ships). I dunno about you, but the Terran ships just aint got any style to them :HOT:

2) Research time displayed on the Econ sliders page

3) Trade goods & mined resources listing & wonders/achievments built. I want to keep track of who my trade goods are with so I don't lose them, who has goods I don't have yet, who I am trading my goods to -- I assume those count like an active trade route for improving relations? If someone else has built a wonder, who are they, and what planet do I have to capture to get it?

4) I build a wonder, but there isn't any popup notice, like when someone else does it. Well, there should be, darn it!

5) Leave resources and starbases marked on the map until they turn into Terror Stars. Heck, might as well leave those marked to, Darth and co. never really succeeded to keep 'em secret, despite the Emp's claims he let the 2nd one get found out deliberately.

More complex issues:
1) A scenario editor! Something that can either create games with a normal random start, or fixed start, with specified events happening when conditions are met. Of course, alternate scenarios won't be Metaverse scorable w/o official notice.

2) I'd like to see some events that totally alter the nature of the game, like a super duper Shark, some Pirates with real cloaking who hunt freighters, massive invasions from intergalactic invaders, the Minors League becomes an active member on the council... I've seen a shark show up with 50/300 hps, so the poor thing tried to run, but got squished. :sniff!:

3) I want a pet shark that I can train with... Oh yeah, well, a pet would be nice.

4) Have the various add ons reviewed by a panel of users, and if they work ok and don't upset balance, have them appear in large bundles so lots can be easily added for use with Metaverse scored games.

5) Time travelling assassins from the future arrive in bad (donkey) ships and try to kill everyone! :SURPRISED:

6) An event log keeping track of all major events, in text form. Of the form: "May 2197 -- Terran Alliance declares war on Drengin Empire."

7) A replay feature like good old Civ had, ha ha. I laugh because it would prolly be a fairly annoying project.

8) A much larger tech tree (get help from the modders!). Throw in a random chance for certein key branches to not be available.

9) Some useless but amusing items. I really want that Star Creation kit, so I can spell my name in Stars, even if they are sucky stars. There's plenty of useless stars out there for material, after all!
LOL

Ok, that's all the silliness I can think of for the moment!
Reply #433 from Stardock Forums Top
I knew there was something I forgot...

I've got a pretty consistant build plan for my Governor, so I'd like to make a complete list which carries over and gets loaded, and picks up the new buildings in their place when they get discovered. Even a text file I have to create myself would be wonderful!

Also, I don't need to stop for every ship built, especially if it get's launched into space, I'll be back to the planet anyways.

An auto-scouting mission so I can crank out those sensor drones, and have them go explore (putt putt putt) the Unknown. Similarly, I want to a mission to tell them drones to go clean out the fog of war.
Reply #434 from Stardock Forums Top
Here is some of my ideas:

1. When contructing Colony ships, if you check the Auto-Launch button a slider comes up allowing you to select the percent of popluation to automatically load and launch. Allow colony ships to modify the population carried when in orbit of the building planet (or perhaps before they move out of orbit).

2. A planet Propaganda listing where you can easily tweak the slider much like you can change military and social production.

3. Espionage/Destabiliation against a particular Ship/Starbase/Planet in order to sabotage/convert/steal it. Espionage that lets you target and steal a particular Tech from a AI Opponent.

4. Diplomacy option to allow the AI to make a offer for a item or item(s) placed on the table. The option to trade communications with undiscovered races at the beginning of the game (and minor races later). Diplomactic option to have the AI perform Espionage or use destablization against another AI race.

5. A tech or tech line that allows a Constructor or new type of ship to improve the PQ of a planet below 15 quality (would have to be a middle to late tech) by one PQ level. You could have maybe 3 techs that allow 3 1 level PQ advances.

6. A log that saves all the news updates throughout the game so that you can review them (not ship or social builds - just events and alien news).

7. News alerts when a planet's morale drops by more than 10% in one turn so that you can investigate it.

8. Not so Random news events that effect your Civilization (morale, production, economy). For example, if you choose a evil selection during colonization of a planet, the next 1-3 turns might have a percentage chance that demostrators will show up and effect morale (for that or a fixed number of turns) on a selected planet(s). Being surprised attacked by a AI civilization might cause Military production across the civilization to increase by 5% for 10 turns in a effort to 'support the war'.

9. I'll also echo this suggestion (post #433 above) I've got a pretty consistant build plan for my Governor, so I'd like to make a complete list which carries over and gets loaded, and picks up the new buildings in their place when they get discovered. Even a text file I have to create myself would be wonderful!

10. Anomolies that grant a tech advance rather than a tech bonus to the current research.
Reply #435 from Stardock Forums Top
One thing i would like is a ship designer so we could build our own ships.
More planets, bigger galaxy, more tech, more races etc.
So far i love GC but with the expansion set coming in Sept. I hope some of what everyone has asked for is in it especially the ship designer :D :HOT:
Reply #436 from Stardock Forums Top
:) I think I has been suggested before but I would like to see:

Improvements on the map:

-large asteroid fields: Small ships can paas through but large ships get damaged or destroyed

- Black holes: impassable sectors if you haven´t researched for example antigravity or they could work like random chance of destruction for a passing vessel.

- Intergalactic gas cloud: ships can hide within => very limited sensor range

-Ability to plant mine fields

etc.

-more non miltary units: Terraform ships which slowly improve quality of starsystems planets, spy-ships or terrorists for direct actions against enemy, pirate ships like the privateer (but stronger ) from Civ3 etc.

- more options to influence the game setup: Slow tech, fast tech research, many/few /Hard and soft random events etc.

- more and different space monsters

- more eye candy: Cut scenes

-Certain morale dilemans should stick to planets: If I enslave a planets population: The next player should face again the dilemma to free them or enslave them.

-No more alignemant boosting with fake colonys (building and destroying colonys) I know its up to the player but I can simply not resist.

- No more genocid if invading planet

-Civil war if a planet tries to switch to another empire through culture.

-Introduction of illegal trade goods... Building certain trade goods will be regarded as evil / special trade roads could be estabished => drug route to the drengin ... Negative impact/or no benefit for the trade parnter

- Randomize the elections or slower morale changes due to tax changes => next month elections lower the taxes for one month and everybody is happy => if it works this way I will form a political party....

- Introduce risky techs.... Certain techs could be researched but a benefit is not guraranteered. for example research "eternal life" you could research it for 50 turns but chances on success are slim 10% but if you are succesful you will get a huge bonus...

- Teach the AI to sidestep roadblocks => heavily defended starsystems with lot of starbases / teach it to do coordinate surprise attacks....

Reply #437 from Stardock Forums Top
A option to negotiate peace between two different AI's. You can take each sides complaints to the other provide suggestions yourself. Drawing up peace proposal.

Like each side would have a list of things they want.
You would check the box of each request on either side. Plus there could be a few miscellaneous options that you could throw in there. This would be your peace proposal. You would take it to each side in an attempt to get them to accept it. If they turn it down they will most likely tell you why. You then would have the option to negotiate with them to accept the specific terms they turned it down on.. By extracting a additional offering from the other side(only an option if you have had one side agree to the terms already)or by offering them personal trades of money techs etc or threatening them.

Some of the offerings from each side or you yourself might be an area. Either the giving up of an area or the promise to not enter an area(even if the area is not populated/controlled at the moment).

Another option would be to use spies to find information. The spies might find information about how the one AI helped or hurt another which can assist in negotiations.(you would leak the information that best serves you)

This could work in reverse too.
Through your spies you can find out the terms of any peace agreement and leak information or disinformation. To destroy a sides ability to meet the terms of an agreement or plant lies that they betrayed the terms of the agreement.

This way you can win through peace.

Points would be gained by...
Good amount: getting two signs to sign a peace agreement.
After so many turns of a peace agreement where the peace holds you gain a few peace points for every turn.
You gain some peace points every turn for each turn your not at war with any enemies. You gain extra points for every opponent also not at war.

You lose points
a few if :
A arranged peace agreement you got falls apart after so many turns or less of being signed.
A good amount if: you cause a fight by any means.(spys. direct attack etc)
A very small amount: overtime a side turns down a peace proposal in a peace negotiation.
Some every turn for every enemy your currently at war with.

Gain enough peace points and noone in the galaxy has fought for X amount of turns and you win through peace.

Peace points can also benefit you by increasing trade benefits,causing more trust from other AI's and decreasing aggression of other AI's towards you(not a bunch though)Also more votes on top of the bonus provided by influence.

War points(which would be peace points in the minus zone)
Could provide a moral boost to troops or something relative to how many war points you have.(nothing dramatic)
Reply #438 from Stardock Forums Top
Re: Wasted production.

I agree. Let the wasted production go to Morale (cash, ala Civilization) As you conquer the galaxy, most planets are already built up. You're only building on those systems you've taken over.

The rest of the production, military, social, goes to waste.
Reply #439 from Stardock Forums Top
Like in the Master of Orion series, a Fleet List that is user-friendly would help a lot. Yes, the fleet list now shows every ship but it's not easy at all to manage a large fleet. When you double click on a ship, you should instantly be taken to the activated (with a blue circle around it) ship.

An auto "redeploy" feature would be useful to. The production and deployment of ships is cumbersome in Huge galaxies.

Also, sometimes when you colonize a system, you only hit one planet, just to grab it, say early on. Unless you remember this, you have to click on every system to find those with free planets. There needs to be a System List too and a way to access this and bring up each system easily.
Reply #440 from Stardock Forums Top
Starbase Governor

I'd like to see a starbases governor to streamline starbase upgrades. Even with the 'build' and 'add to' prompts turned off, you still have to choose what upgrades to construct. This gets cumbersome if you're upgrading a lot of bases.

Even though starbases are starbases, not planets, they're essentially the same in an upgrading perspective, just the Projects are instead called Modules. When the number of possible modules can equal the number of social projects, a governor is a bit of an oversight.

In the starbase governor panel you could set up your build queues for several different governors. You could set the base defense you want for your bases. A lower-defense gov could be used for your empire's interior bases where defense is less important.

Another factor could be how populated the sector is (sector-wide production bonuses). Relative culture values and domestic/foreign unrest (culture). Trade through the sector (trade centers). Another thing is of course the resource, if any.

All this multiple starbase governor stuff could get really hard to manage by itself with all the sub-catagories, introducing complexity which I know you (wisely) have sought to avoid. Maybe sliders to set relative importance of each module type for each base would be a simple way to implement something similar without the complexity. Or the sliders would auto-generate an evenly-distributed upgrade queue which you could further modify. In any case, at least a basic, one-size-fits-all setup is needed.

So, as a recap since I went on so long:

-Starbase queues and/or governor(s)

-Show trade passing through the sector in the Economic module tab (I could find it out with more work, so you might as well tell me here)

-Show culture values or a graph of them for the sector when making culture upgrade decisions.

-And please, shift the Military upgrades tab off default. Those upgrades are the least useful to me. I hardly use any of them and never all.

Reply #441 from Stardock Forums Top
1) A scroll bar that you can hold down the arrow on in the research screen, instead of having to click multiple times.

2) Antimatter weapons reclassified as a military tech.

3) Fix the bug on the archive summary screen so you can read the entire summary, since the long ones are usually cut off and there is no way to scroll.

4) Be able to have survey ships scan the map in order to update the view instead of just pursuing anomolies.
Reply #442 from Stardock Forums Top
A button so the "automatically launch ships" could be applied to every planet one owns at once..and perhaps a setting for what percentage of the population to autolaunch on transports. Or some way to set what type of ships to autolaunch. Or perhaps to autolaunch after there are so many ships in the city.
Reply #443 from Stardock Forums Top
SHIP DESTINY
To make the game more deterministic, and to avoid the issues with Save/Load roll the dice again, introduce a concept of Ship Destiny. One possible approach I was thinking about would be to generate and store away a sequence of random numbers for each ship. These numbers would then be used as seeds and in sequence for that ship, for invasion, battle, colonization and possible other random events where that ship is involved. As a result, you would get the same outcome from that particular event, no matter if you reload or not. Each event would still be different and unique for that game and player.

This would not completely block all possible Save/Load exploits, but perhaps it would make it much more tedious to bother about anymore. Maybe the idea could be further extended such that your next ship would always get the same next sequence in turn, making it irrelevant to reload just before the ship is ready.

"Your Destiny is Written in the Stars"
Reply #444 from Stardock Forums Top
Regarding propaganda automation, a simple slider from 0-100 whose semantics were "spend on propaganda to bring morale up to at least this amount or as high as you can if you can't reach that threshold on this planet" would save some time, although there'd need to be a per-colony checkbox for "don't automate this propaganda slider" (defaults to "go ahead and automate") for those times when one really wants a 100% morale or so on a certain world, or when one's supposed to be unhappy for whatever reason.
Reply #445 from Stardock Forums Top
It seems to me that cultural conquering via starbases could be made easier. Cultural conquest gets tedious, and managing all the constructors gets burdensome,
End of quote


Having just finished a Culture game I totally agree. You seem to absolutely require CultMax to be succesful, and it takes a long time to build those +250% bases. I was just doing a Tiny map as well...the bigger maps must be really hard work for this type of conquest.

My suggestion for improving this is to introduce some earlier, reasonably powerful form of influence. For instance, how about a second generation trade vessel? This would not just establish trade but also boost your influence over that trading partner (and planet). A little how the Western influence has been working its way for the last couple years, actually.

To combat this, the partner could optionally cut off that trade route, but obviously same time paying the price of loosing all that good money coming in. It would perhaps make an interesting additional consideration for the game.
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Reply #446 from Stardock Forums Top
I'd like some interface changes.

The ability to enter a number (rather than using the sliders) when distributing resources. For example, if I want to spend 500bc on military this turn, I'd like to be able to type in 500 and have the sliders adjust, rahte than having to tweak things up and down to get "close" to 500bc for military. In fact I'd like this for all sliders (like loading transports and colony ships), so if I want to load 3000M colonists I can just type it, rather than messing with the slider.

The ability to "lock" 1 or 2 of the resource sliders, Master of Magic had this feature long ago, if I want to "fix" my Social spending while fiddling with Military/Research, I should be able to.

A button that resets the resource sliders to 33/33/34 (for when I've twiddled them a lot and they are all really far down the columns).

Take ship maintenance out of the Military spending slider, it's a fixed cost (like Maintenance for social projects), the ship maintenance should just come out of total bc before the sliders get to mess with it.

Star finder, the most obvious example is when an event occurs that changes a system, right now, unless that event occurs in a system in which you have a colony, the only way to find it is to scan the star map looking for it (and if the system is uncolonized, you have to click on each star on the star map to find out what its name is. At least add star system names to uncolonized stars.

Keep a scrollable log of recent (past 5 turns?) GNN reports so you can check back on past events. Right now, once you click on a report, it's gone forever.

Divert unused Military/Social spending on a planet to the treasury, instead of limbo, use it or lose it is very annoying. Maybe a percentage based on how evil you are (evil civs lose it to graft/corruption, good civs are more honest and most of it gets back into the treasury).

The statistics graphs are pretty much unreadable (especially for civs that are close to each other), how about a statistics page (like the unusable one for your own civ), that would let you see those graphs fullscreen (instead of the little squished up on below the minimap). Seriously, the statistics graphs need some serious work, they are pretty much useless now.

Variable zoom on the main starmap (like you can do with the minimap now).

I'd also like to be able to maybe vector ships or check on colonies from the tactical map (that would be extremely useful).

Instant update of ship vectors on the minimap would help too.

Maybe draw ship courses on the main map? Right now there just the ship and an unlabeled circle on the main map, you have to go to the minimap or the tactical (strategic?) map to see where that ship is heading.

Clearer indication of where unexplored space is, once you've been to each sector, there's no way to tell where you've missed, other than scrolling around the main map looking for darker than usual sections. This is really a problem on huge and gigantic maps. Maybe grey blobs on the strategic map to show unexplored space?

Filters to remove garrisoned/sentry/guarding/other ships and starbases from the ship list, so you can see only your moving ships, or only your starbases, or etc. In the later stages of the game when you have 100s of ship, scrolling up and down to see if you've missed moving a ship is a real pain.

Just a few of my pet peeves.

Reply #447 from Stardock Forums Top
The ability to "lock" 1 or 2 of the resource sliders, Master of Magic had this feature long ago, if I want to "fix" my Social spending while fiddling with Military/Research, I should be able to.
End of quote


This is already in the expansion. Get the beta and you can do this. Or wait until final release comes out in September.

~SDC~
Reply #448 from Stardock Forums Top
How about the enter button closing pop up message windows such as the technology screen and the round summary popup.

~SDC~
Reply #449 from Stardock Forums Top
How about the enter button closing pop up message windows such as the technology screen and the round summary popup
End of quote


Escape key does this. And in other threads Frogboy said it would take to much time to change and isn't a priority

~SDC~
Reply #450 from Stardock Forums Top
I don't know if this has been mentioned but I'll go ahead and type it now rather than reading through all 449 posts.

I was playing the other day, I set up an alliance with the Arcean Empire, that's not important. They kept dragging me into wars that I wasn't neccessarily prepared to fight. I didn't want to back out of the agreement.

I propose that when talking to an ally you can tell them to stop getting you involved in nonsense wars.

Next, also when the Torian finally destroyed the Arcean, the Arcean relinquished their remaining star system to their oppessor.

I prospose that when allies are forced to surrender that in a final act of defience that they give their allies (divided evenly of course) anything they have left. For instance the last star system, any remaining ships, any techs that they have that I don't, and any money left over. That way they can do something for me.

As I was writing this I got any other idea. What are the chances that we could choose what message to send back to those who talk to us. For instance, if the Alexians ask for help because their puny civilization is slowly being destroyed instead of saying "I'll talk to my advisors" can't their be options like "Oh you're screwed" or "I will give you..." something like that. And to tell your allies to stop getting mixed up in things that they can't withstand.

Thanks,

-Dark

P.S. This is one helluva game. I thank you always.
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