Galactic Civilizations Galactic Civilizations is a space based strategy game in which you are in
control of humanity's destiny.
The year is 2178, the Terran Alliance has invented a new technology --
Hyperdrive. But the secret has leaked to the other civilizations
starting a race for all the inhabitable worlds in the galaxy! As leader
of United Earth, you must research new technologies, build an economy,
create a powerful military force, all the while carefully balancing your
political, diplomatic and trade skills.
Galactic Civilizations I: Ultimate Edition The original, award-winning space strategy game.
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Galactic Civilizations II: Ultimate
Get the complete GalCiv II saga including the acclaimed PC strategy game of the year Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords, the award winning expansion pack Dark Avatar, and the newest expansion pack Twilight of the Arnor!
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Galactic Civilizations III
The latest installment of one of the highest-rated strategy series of all time, Galactic Civilizations III challenges players to build an empire that dominates the galaxy through conquest, diplomacy, cultural hegemony, or scientific research.
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Galactic News Network (GNN)
Friday, November 8, 2002 - Galactic Civilizations: BETA 3 arrives
There are a lot of changes in beta 3. Too many to do our usual specific list (and you know how long those usually are). So I'll talk briefly about the areas we concentrated in.
First, we focused a lot on performance. We felt beta 2 was too sluggish and frankly too much of a hog. So quite a bit of effort was made to make sure the game remained peppy.
This was quite a challenge given how much more content there is in the game. For instance, the weapons module in beta 3 is 27 megabytes all by itself. This wasn't in beta 2. Beta testers downloading it will find there there is just a lot of "stuff" now. So our goal was to make sure the game felt faster than beta 2 (significantly faster) while having a ton more stuff.
Much of this was done with profiling, a pretty standard technique which allowed us to tune our code. But other big gains were made through multithreading. For instance, beta 2 took about 30 seconds on a typical system just to see the intro screen. Beta 3 takes less than 3 seconds on the same machine. That's because beta 3 has a background thread that loads up all the libraries. But multithreading isn't magic. If you wiz through the start-up screens you'll still see a progress bar going across (and there will always be some progress bar because now some parts are not loaded until you actually begin the game).
Another area of significant gain has to do with how ships are moved. One benefit of being a single player game is that we can have ships do strange things when they're not actually on the map. (they just are moved by tile rather than pixel when they're not on screen). In beta 2, ships not on screen moved just like ships on screen. This makes a considerable improvement in large galaxies.
That said, not everything is great in sunshine land. More code needs to be put into the background thread. For instance, path finding is still in the main thread and some AI decision making is in the main thread. This is noticeable because on larger galaxies the game becomes unresponsive for a second or two between turns. (yea, we know, this is how every strategy game is and they usually put a "please wait" dialog in your face but we don't consider this acceptable behavior in a 2002 game, the UI should ALWAYS remain responsive. Let people look at their planets and set their budgets and what not while ships move and such -- we're working on this).
But all that is nothing compared to the features. The game is a fundamentally different and better game than beta 2. We are very pleased with the general gameplay of this new beta. To the point where if you don't like beta 3 and the reason isn't due to some sort of tuning (i.e. AI problem or play balance) then you probably won't like the final version. That said, we really do think you'll like this build.
For instance, there are now galactic resources. These are extremely cool and fun (in our opinion of course). There are several of these scattered throughout the galaxy. You claim them by building a constructor unit, flying it to there and building a star base on it. Constructors are expensive and you have to make a touch choice - build the constructor to get a resource, or build star ships to defend your empire, or build freighters to help your economy and improve your relations with other civilizations? It really highlights the different paths to victory.
The best part about star bases is this: You guys came up with this. Our design document did not include resources or star bases. These came from the beta testers and they really have made a huge positive difference in the fun factor. So you build constructors and these contructors can then upgrade your starbases in many different ways (and you can build star bases anywhere you want, not just on resources though you can only do real mining on actual resources).
For example, you can magnify your cultural influence in a given area by having your constructors build Interstellar Consortiums on your star bases.
Or you can have your star base increase the amount of trade nearby friendly freighters bring to your civilization. So what you could do then is build an entire set of star bases that follow the path of your trade routes that could, over time, effectively double your trade income.
Or you can have your star base enhance the attack value of friendly units in the area. Or the productivity of near by star systems.
And of course, you can improve the starbases defense value so that when/if war comes, your star bases don't get wiped out immediately.
Since constructors are fairly expensive, these are difficult choices to make (which to have them build on a particular star base). And you can keep upgrading your starbases (and they visually change as you upgrade them) so that they get better and better in those areas. So you could add +5 to your economic ability by mining the $ resource. Then you can upgrade it to +10 with another constructor. And so on. What modules you can build on a star base depends on what technologies your civilization has along with what modules you've already built.
Obviously, the star bases are a pretty big addition along with resources.
Another big change is influence. We're still tweaking this quite a bit. Basically, sector ownership is determined by influence. Each star has a base influence attached to it. This is then enhanced through population. It can be further enhanced by building embassies and other planetary improvements and wonders. And you can increase your overall influence ability by mining influence related resources (if you can get ahold of one anyway).
As your influence grows, it bleeds into other sectors. Different civilizations have different levels of influence in each sector which is dependent on local influence sources (like planets), distance from the given civilization, what star bases are near by magnifiying their influence, and the general background influence that is the result of the overall influence of that civilization.
You can see the actual numbers (this will be made to look nicer and be easier to understand in beta 3B) by clicking on the little button by the sector readout (upper right part of the map). If a foreign civilization has more than say 200 to 300 influence points than you do in a given sector and you have star systems in that sector then you better do something because it may defect. It will warn you before it does so. You can build star bases and improvements on your planets there or in a pinch put ships in orbit to keep the people from rebelling (though if it gets too bad, no number of battle cruisers will save you).
The political system has finally been partially implemented. The AI does not yet make use of this so you'll ahve quite an advantage over the computer players. Enjoy it while it lasts. You can now upgrade your form of government but that now comes with elections to the senate. If you control the senate you get ability bonsues dependent on what political party you chose. Lose control and you take the penalties of whoever gets control. Each political party has a nemesis party. The federalists have to worry about the populists. The war party has to worry about the pacifists. They're the ones most likely to take control if you don't keep people happy.
There is also just a ton of visual improvements, music, and lots of content not available in the beta that we've done behind the scenes (cut scenes and such).
There are also a lot more random events in the game to help mold your civilization towards good or evil. Good and evil now really matter a lot as what techs you can get are dependent on it and the AI will react to you depending on your alignment. Moreover, the actual game interface and music changes based on your choices. So there are actually 3 different game UI's depending on which path you take.
If you don't have the beta and want to get it, you can pre-order Galactic Civilizations by purchasing above. It's quite a download though so if you don't have a fast connection you're probably better off waiting until it's at the store.
We really hope you like this build. As always, there are no non-disclosures, let us know what you think and what you think we should change. We have to wrap things up at the end of this month (after that it's pure bug fixing and gameplay tweaking).
Augh. Okay, so I preordered GalCiv through the website, and now I'd like to download the beta -- but how do I get it? I tried using the Drengin Game Manager, but I can't figure out what the "serial number" is supposed to be. My order number doesn't seem to work.
You should have recieved two e-mails shortly after your order. One of them has your order confirmation, the other should have your serial number. Both are plainly labelled in their respective e-mails.
