Tuesday, May 27, 2003 - Galactic Civilization 1.04 Available
Here's what is new over 1.035:
NEW FEATURES
- Windowed Mode! Put a -W after the command line (or as part of the shortcut) and the game will run in windowed mode. Desktop must be in 16bit (65,000
colors) to work. Otherwise it will immediately close.
- Galaxies have more stars.
- saves minimap settings
- if you trade for a tech that you were researching, it pops up the research completed screen for that tech
- display range now gets recalced if a new game is started or one is loaded from within a game
- select ships that manually leave orbit
- ship list now updates selected ship entry when jump to next ship
- tweaked listboxes to handle large lists more optimally - fixes a late game crash
- destroy star now re-assigns home colony
- mousewheel support for sbupgradewin
Bug Fixes
- fixed AI senate setup bug
- fixed major race logo for minor race error
- fixed volume not saving bug
- Fixed Cancel Ship destinations to check for star targets as well as ship targets
- fixed model typos in improvements
- clear tech completed queue when loading/starting new game
- fixed crash in upwindow
- fixed FindShip going through all ships in a fleet.
- made sure that senate would always have a valid poliitcal party
- fixed break alliance for minor races
- hide espionage/destablize sliders when fp screen in minor races mode
- fixed string not found
- functions to help embargo - embargo not allowed yet because AI needs to check for embargos before assigning trade ships
TWEAKS:
- AI Diplomacy behavior somewhat based on top players in Metaverse
- AI technology path now based on metaverse players
- Scoring system heavily modified.
- Tactical AI enhancements
- Battleship and Dreadnought technology costs more to research
- Battle Cruisers more powerful
- Battle Axes have fewer hitpoints
- Range ability costs more point to get at start
- Other abilities cost less to get at start
- AI gets more ticked off if you start a war with them after making peace.
- AI more sensitive to star bases being built in its territory (this may need to be tweaked further)
- "Incredible" AI pumped up more.
- Trade Goods cost more but are much more powerful.
If you are just buying Galactic Civilizations, here is a full list of changes we've made since release up to 1.035:
1.03A.57: May 1
General idea:
A few tweaks to take into consideration the AI changes and we really want the Battle Hammer to be used.
+ AI smarter about trading planets
+ AI cares about trade more when evaluating relations (i.e. you want to keep out of war, trade with them).
+ Battle Hammer tougher, more expensive
+ Defender has 25 hitpoints, costs 55.
1.03A: April 30
New Features:
+ Morale Tweaked to allow higher populations
+ AI players more likely to surrender when hopeless
+ Generally slightly more money to play around with
+ Easier to trade with the AI, particularly at lower difficulty levels
+ New +7% planet quality ability available
+ AI less likely to trade evil techs to good players and vice versa
+ Sector Influence Tweaked such that growing your civilization from your bases of influence will have more impact.
+ Lightning Shield for Starbase moved down to Dreadnaught tech.
+ AI tweaked to respond to starbase threats more at higher levels, less at lower levels.
+ underlined listbox text (for future hyperlinking features).
+ Ship values tweaked considerably. Significantly more fun we think.
Ship Changes:
* Star Fighter slightly more expensive but now has 3 attack instead of 2 and twice as many hit points.
* Scouts slightly more expensive, have 1 maint point now.
* Avatar MUCH tougher but also more expensive
* Dreadnought more expensive, more to maintain but will also therefore be relatively more powerful.
* Battle Hammer Nerfed
* Ranger much tougher, costs more.
General increased costs because populations will grow larger with this new version which in turn means more tax money.
Defect fixes:
-fixed crash opening submit screen because of techlist string
-fixed stack overflow in treaty screen
-fixed bug where you could start the screens loading from empty save game list
-fixed disappearing resource
-fixed fleet data not updating
-fixed ships not saving home colony (should fix missing bonuses problem)
-Trade Goods, Super Projects, and Wonders won't get overwritten with going to the Details window
-Fixed crash on End screen when clicking on SOCIETY tab
-Fixed crash on Stats Screen with the "Social" Misc. stats window
-Put "Discoveries" on the Research window in List Boxes (previously wouldnt display all the uncovered Techs and such if it ran out of room)
Data Fixes:
-fixed typos reported by SF
-fixed morale anomaly
-fixed sea dome event
-made sure that tech list is scrollable even with "new" listboxes
-fixed trade fed fees
-tech capital now doubles bonus as it says in the description.
-fixed bonus events with weights that are too high
-fixed pods event
1.03 Late night update April 25, 2003
Fixes:
+ Arceans were trying to hijack civilian trade ships to defend their colonies which resulted in eradic trade revenue. Trade ships are civilian controlled, governments (human or computer) are not allowed to control them. Fixed.
+ Crash bug with string parsing fixed (yearly update).
1.03 Update: April 25, 2003
Tweaks:
+ AI trading for money tweaked a bit
+ Arcean AI defends planets better
+ Trade Goods now more valuable for trade
Bug Fixes:
+ Fixed Range Ability Bonus at start
+ Fixed Luck to be +25%
+ Social/Military Production Abilities now work as designed (round off error addressed)
+ Torian AI constructor madness addressed
+ Economics tested (no bug found, trade income can vary from turn to turn. In 1.03, the AI is much better about building starbases that pump up their trade so players are seeing more variance).
1.03 Update: April 24, 2003
Tweaks:
+ Mouse wheel behavior on domestic policy screen changed to be like it was.
+ Political Party selection cleaned up a little bit.
1.03 April 23, 2003
New Features/Tweaks:
+ Universalists and Industrialists added with proper abilities
+ Additional AI enhancements
+ Efficiency Production Bonuses get penalized if they are > 3X the planet quality.
+ Sector Influence is now weighted between the distance of the nearest starbase and the distance of the nearest star.
+ Colonies on planets + Colonies on planets + AI will disband poor quality colonies.
+ AI more aggressive at trading techs for $$$ at higher levels
+ Military resource doesn't increase Hitpoints Ability (it wasn't supposed to in the first place). Just weapons/defense.
+ Arcean AI personality now enabled with the previously disabled "nasty AI" tactics at higher levels.
+ AI chooses political parties better now (will use mods now intelligently)
+ Some performance tweaks for more responsive UI on lower end machines
+ Trade Federation UP issue nerfed - always has a time stamp on it. No eternal federations.
+ New Underlying MP3 engine implemented. This should cure those who were having random crashes related to sound.
+ Some tweaks to ship values.
+ Senate handles more political parties
+ New MP3 player integrated in to work on systems where the MS MP3 codec has gotten creamed.
+ General AI updates
+ Planet Quality Ability nerfed
Bug Fixes:
-Generic governor no longer adds trade goods/wonders/achievements to queue
-fixed a potential crash in yearly planet dialog (wasn't checking for null alien civ pointer)
-Moved the autosave to happen before the AI begins calculating to resolve a crash issue (game crashing during the auto save on some systems).
1.02 April 15, 2003
-turns autolaunch off after invasion/defect/trade star
-fixed bug where game always opened planet data screen with sol, even if it had been invaded/traded
-fixed slider cras on trade screen introduced in 1.02.40.
-fixed a bug where fleets had flaky hit detection if they were moving off screen
-ships on auto attack get dest cancelled after peace treaty now
-sector sweep, etc, cancelled when you trade a ship
-minimap refreshes when ship moves even when zoomed now
- AI improved in trading
- AI Starbase tactics improved
- AI battle tactics improved
- AI at "Intelligent" level or higher harder
- AI at "sub-normal" or lower is now easier
- Fundamentally better AI overall (not harder, but more intelligent).
1.02.40 April 7, 2003
New Features:
+ Trade screen will update on the fly when you're using the money slider on trade deals.
1.02 Update April 7, 2003
New Features:
+ AI bargains more intelligently
+ AI tweaks to be less war happy in certain circumstances
+ Cannot attack allies, must break alliance first
+ Misc tweaks to gameplay
Fixes:
- Divide by zero bug fixed
1.02 April 4, 2003
New Features:
-Auto-Launch Completed Ships button in Planet Screen
-Minimap Toggable in Planet screen using Zoom Buttons
-sort planet list by governor
-AI much more intelligent in trading with one another
Fixes
-Fixed Welfare UP Issue
-Fixed ship HP abilities crash
-"Leaving UP and still affected by laws" bug fixed
-fixed another endless dialog problem
-fixed bug where cultural victory countdown was not saved
-moved calc abilities for humans to make sure that ships will get bonuses calculated in
-fleet invasion casualties bug fixed
-fixed crash when viewing info on political parties
-fixed star density not saving in prefs file
-fixed bug that was overwriting DisableEventMusic
-fixed backward tribute bug.
April 2, 2003: Cople of new tweaks, fixes
New Features:
+ Made AI better at negotiating in trade screen
+ Changed navigation bonus to be +moves rather than a percent
+ AI easier to trade techs back and forth with.
+ AI puts more emphasis on how far away an empire is before deciding to go to war
+ planet/ship lists refresh if open at beginning of turn
+ optimized Listbox painting a bit
+ option to disable just event music in prefs.ini
+ code to make ship leave orbit if moved from ship list
Bug Fixes
+ random buttons hide when race disabled
+ fixed dead ship maint bug
+ fixed trade routes not clearing when load/start new game bug
+ fixed up message coming late bug
+ Fixed tribute bug
April 1, 2003: Couple of crash fixes
Bug fixes:
+ Divide by Zero crash (Thanks bunboy)
+ Terror Star destroying stars could cause data corruption to starship object (Thanks bunboy)
March 31, 2003: Tweaks, fixes, and events...
1.01A.30
New Features:
+ GalCiv AI tweaked so that it bargains more intelligently at lower levels
+ General difficulty level affects which random events will be used (i.e. no more getting clobbered by an advanced story arc when you're just learning the game)
+ New Cut scene: When a player dies, you get a cut scene of ships conquering them.
+ New random event - population boom.
+ Social programs cost slightly less to maintain
+ Details screen now displays how much maint. completed projects use "(X)" by their names.
Bug Fixes:
+ Metaverse submissions should work for all players
March 30, 2003: Tweaks, fixes, and events...
Changes:
+ Some random events come later in the game.
+ Technology Trade United Planets issue nerfed
+ AI considers technology trade values more at lower intelligence levels
+ Crash bug in diplomacy screen hopefully fixed
+ Terraformer can be built
+ SDNet.lib updated for those who have had trouble submitting scores. Make sure you register with the metaverse.
+ Duplicate building of wonders / trade goods fixed
+ Added 2 new random events
+ Anti-Cheat methods beefed up
+ Metaverse submits difficulty level
March 26, 2003: BonusPak!
The BonusPak is a collection of additional features, tweaks, and other goodies to thank people for purchasing Drengin.net or GalCiv. The BonusPak requires updating to the latest version of GalCiv. The BonusPak module contains:
+ New Events
+ New United Planets Resolutions
+ New Ships
+ New Technologies
+ New Starbase modules
The update to GalCiv's base portion includes:
+ *NEW* Enhanced Setup Screen!
+ *NEW* MP3 player built in that allows users to specify different background music.
+ A few cosmetic bug fixes we found while playing the game after gold.
+ Some tweaking to the economy so that it's easier to make money.
+ Populations grow larger
+ Nicer looking "good" ship panel
+ Implementation of some suggestions from message board as well as from Tom and Bruce (thanks guys!)
+ Smarter AI (in terms of intelligence, not difficulty)
+ AI penalized more to make it easier. As the AI becomes more intelligent, we'll be penalizing it more in resources to simulate human players (computers are much more efficient than humans so us penalizing the AI is more about simulating us imperfect humans).
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Yea! Thanks so much. This game is awesome. I can't wait for the add-on you announced at E3!
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| by Diplomat jpinard - 5/27/2003 5:05:20 PM |
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Here's a dumb question: What is "Nerfed"? As in "BattleHammers Nerfed".
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| by Veteran Qui-Gon Jinn - 5/27/2003 5:13:28 PM |
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Im not english myself, but I think it means that it has been modified "down", in other words made weaker..
Not sure though... 
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| by Diplomat Nidaros - 5/27/2003 6:54:10 PM |
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I've checked your site almost daily for a week now for 1.04. Thanks for the patch!
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| by Citizen Guineapig Stud - 5/27/2003 6:54:27 PM |
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Wow, this sounds like some real improvements, I can't wait to test it... hm, 7.16 PM, I think I can stop pretending to work and start playing
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| by Citizen Yellow Sign - 5/27/2003 7:16:25 PM |
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Nerfed means 'softened'.. made easier, yes.
Thanx for the update.. woot!! 
fleabitfox
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| by Diplomat fleabitfox - 5/27/2003 7:40:21 PM |
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Is 1.04 up? Becuase Stardock isnt seeing it. 
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| by Citizen Batbird - 5/27/2003 10:26:05 PM |
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I agree.
I cant seem to find a link for the new patch.
though it reads really good.
ps. I may be blind, but I cant seem to initiate an alliance with other races. Is it just me? 
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| by Citizen RemoraDFC - 5/27/2003 10:30:00 PM |
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Where's the file???  I can't find the link!
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| by Citizen Unknown - 5/27/2003 10:42:30 PM |
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Thanks muchly guys. A great improvement over 1.03. The AI tweaks seem to be working well for me.
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| by Citizen CynSwash - 5/27/2003 11:20:21 PM |
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Sounds great... where's the 'secret' site for the file??
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| by Citizen JeffreyLee - 5/27/2003 11:28:12 PM |
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Its is currently only availble through Stardock Central. The single file download is not usually released until later.
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| by Ambassador JavaScout - 5/27/2003 11:45:19 PM |
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I can update the others stuff but am never given the updates for the game itself so just dl them from GalCiv and install that way.
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| by Citizen ForesterGC - 5/28/2003 1:51:47 AM |
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Im playing 1.04 and I swear that in my current game I can't save a game past June 2184. i.e. If I save in July and reload, I find myself in my june savegame. This even happens when I restart the program...
Also, my flat-panel screen is flickering periodically now when it didnt with 1.03.
As much good as 1.04 did, I think the patch needs a patch.
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| by Citizen Guineapig Stud - 5/28/2003 2:30:18 AM |
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Trade goods more powerful!? I thought they were already overpowered. If this makes it harder to sell them to the ai, then I think it's OK, but if you get more incentive to build them even if you don't sell them... Well, we'll see.
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| by Citizen LDiCesare - 5/28/2003 2:48:13 AM |
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I am having trouble with the windowed mode. Is the
-W flag for galciv.exe? Even with that it still runs full screen for me. I have galcivw.exe also but it crashes soon after loading the game.
Another little problem is that selecting Exit right away on the first screen freezes the program.
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| by Citizen Andreas Finn - 5/28/2003 3:32:51 AM |
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neither -w or -W works, game still runs in full screen mode 
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| by Citizen kaliyuga - 5/28/2003 7:42:10 AM |
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to what size have you set your desktop size in windows?
It must be to more than 1024*768 for galciv to run in a window, because that's the size of the window.
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| by Ambassador Fredrik Jacobsson - 5/28/2003 9:01:23 AM |
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Try "w" instead of "-w"
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| by Citizen SaberSnail - 5/28/2003 9:35:06 AM |
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Save bug???
Since I upgraded to 1.04, I can't overwrite any save games. I get the prompt to overwright, and tell it yes, but it doesn't actually overwright the file. I can save new save games just fine. Anyone else have this problem?
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| by Citizen WasabeXX - 5/28/2003 10:03:45 AM |
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My Stardock Central doesn't see the new patch!?!?!?
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| by Citizen Batbird - 5/28/2003 12:49:55 PM |
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If possible I'd suggest not upgrading to 1.04 now. 
I've had quite a few random crashes since I started with 1.04 including a saved game where I can't progress past 2194 July
I really hope this is patched soon 
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| by Citizen Shaun Tan - 5/28/2003 2:49:01 PM |
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Thanks so much for putting the little scroll arrows on the trade screens, Its much less painful to negotiate with the AIs now.
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| by Citizen smok-n-joe - 5/28/2003 3:02:11 PM |
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Ditto on Stardock not seeing 1.04 for me.
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| by Citizen Zero5715 - 5/28/2003 5:17:58 PM |
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My guess is the reason we can not see the update is that we did not buy the game directly from Stardock and have not done some sort of registering.
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| by Citizen ForesterGC - 5/28/2003 6:02:19 PM |
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found it
I went to tools/registar/Dregin Net and now it shows up.
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| by Citizen ForesterGC - 5/28/2003 6:10:10 PM |
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WHat the heck do you put in for serial #? The Cd-Key? It won't take anything I give it
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| by Citizen WhizWart - 5/28/2003 11:47:25 PM |
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HA!!!! Now I see.....NO CAPS......but.....thats so dumb!!!
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| by Citizen WhizWart - 5/28/2003 11:48:41 PM |
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HOW TO GET AROUND THE SAVE GAME BUG:
You have to physically type in your save game name, not just click on an old save. For example, go to the save and type "save1" to save it as that even though it already exists.
It's a temporary solution and not hard to get used to. But what made it happen in the first place?
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| by Citizen Guineapig Stud - 5/29/2003 5:47:18 AM |
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I take it only Dregen.net subscribers get this one and not the GalCiv ones ? Since I can't download it from the StarDock
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| by Citizen MordreadCP - 5/29/2003 4:49:05 PM |
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Does this patch include the bonus pack?
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| by Citizen Rigsthula - 6/2/2003 9:12:26 PM |
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