Hey guys. Just found out about GalCiv 3, and it got me thinking. I have quite a few things from GalCiv 2 that I think should be improved, expanded, or changed for GalCiv 3.
I would like to hear your feedback and input on those thoughts of mine once you read through them. Here goes...
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1. ESD. Enemy Starbase Diarrhea. They keep spamming influence starbases all over in my territory as defined by my influence. It would be nice if they couldn't build starbases inside my territory except mining starbases.
2. Some races always end up really sucking. I've tried quite a few games to buff up specific races so they don't get steamrolled. Arceans, Drath, Altarians, and Korx are the ones that always get steamrolled. I usually end up having to cheat using the "Control + M" for 10,000 BC cheat and give these 4 races 100k's of BC's to keep them alive. I also even went as far as raising their AI 2 levels above the other civ's in game set-up, and they are barely managing to hold on despite that, except Altarians.
3. Inability to really terraform planets outside of "Control + Shift + N" cheat to raise planet quality. Take Mars for example, We could concievably terraform it into an Earth-like planet with GalCiv tech's in the 23rd / 24th century. Plus Mars has so much buildable space compared to Earth. Ditto for Venus, Jupiter's moons, Saturn's moons, etc. Plus Earth is only PQ 12 or so, when it should be like PQ 50+ (especially since we have almost all usable land filled with humans right now except Antarctica, Himalays, Sahara, and parts of Siberia). There should be a way or tech or something to add +1 PQ until the planet is maxed out. Maybe make it really expensive or long-term to raise +1. So a PQ 10 planet can be terraformed until PQ 30 or so. This should also help the weakest AI civ's (Arceans, Altarians, Korx, and Drath) get better planets to stay competitive.
4. Build stuff or colonize moons. I'm sure by the 23rd century in RL< we will have bases or even domed cities on our RL moon. Many sci-fi movies, shows, books, and universes like Star Trek, Star Wars, Babylon 5, Firefly, Warhammer 40k, etc. have moon bases and moon colonies. Some moons can even be Earth-like like Endor or the moon of Yavin.
5. A tech or feature that allows us to colonize or seed PQ 0 planets to PQ 2 or 3, then use my idea #3 above to turn them into Earth-like or Mars-like planets. To balance it out, it should be pretty expensive and time intensive to do so.
6. Don't generate stars with both 0 planets AND 0 asteroids.
7. Some sort of "development" graphic similar to the GalCiv 2 "City Lights on planet" graphic. This was a pretty awesome graphical indication of how developed a planet was, but could use some more work. Earth barely shows any city lights even at 20+ billion population. That is why I suggest an improved city light mod that scales better with population and automatically places these lights on land (so Earth will have more lights for example). Also, add in "urbanization" effect to actually show urban areas expand and grow on heavily populated planets. So a 50 billion population planet would transform into a planet that looks like Coruscant from Star Wars, while a 1 billion population planet would look like a farm planet with barely any cities on it.
8. In GalCiv 2, sometimes I'd get declared war on by races I have never met yet. For example, in my current game, I'm in the SE corner of the galaxy, and got DOW'ed by Iconians who are on the other side of the galaxy and no chance of actual contact at that point cuz our ships don't have ranges to reach each other or initate First Contact.
9. Remove hard caps on planet populations (100b hard cap in GalCiv 2). I've gotten a few planets with 2x +300% food squares on them.
10. Change the morale mechanic for dense population planets. In GalCiv 2, I had to mod my race to have +3000% morale and mod the morale buildings to give +500% morale per building just to have morale stay decent for heavily populated planets over 30+ billion.
11. There is only one United Planets Council in GalCiv 2. That doesn't make sense to me. If for example, 4 races in the SE corner of a galaxy meet each other, they form the United Planets Council. At the same time, 4 other races in the NW corner of the galaxy (and no First Contact with the SE galaxy races) meets and can't create their own United Planets Council? It would be very interesting to have several "Blocs" of races, or several different United Planets Councils vying for dominance. Think NATO VS Warsaw Pact.
12. Why is it that in GalCiv 2, the United Planets is always created with the human player meeting an alien race? Why can't it be formed by other alien races, THEN the human player joins it at first contact like how other alien races aren't part of the council until they get First Contacted? At that, only by the player, not by the other aliens currently on the council?
13. Planets should be able to transfer excess resources to each other. For example, a planet that has a lot of +% farm icons produces more food than it needs, so it should be able to export that food to other planets that may need the food. Likewise, those low food planets might have high industrial capacity so they can export factories or construction stuff to the farm planets. The import / exports can use freighters, and those can be pirated, intercepted, or blockaded.
14. Random events should not stop once you pick an ethical alignment. You should keep getting the 3 choice random events, or planet colonization events. Setting alignment in stone with the Xeno Ethics tech is kind of silly. Even Good civilizations can turn evil later on (Old Republic --> Empire) or evil civ's turn Good (Klingons). It shouldn't require a mega event to happen, and should be allowed to happen even after Xeno Ethics forced choice is made.
15. Sometimes I think Tech research is too fast even on Very Slow tech research option. In my Immense Galaxy game, I have about 100 colonies, and I'm getting tech's every 3 - 5 turns on Very Slow research AND with the basic science building (haven't upgraded past 1st research building). If I mod the tech files to add another 0 to each tech to make research 10x longer, the enemy civ's will suffer quite a bit compared to me.
16. There should be a way to rebuild shattered star systems after a Terror Star attack. The star sends out a shockwave which turns all planets into asteroid belts. I think it should be allowed to rebuild these asteroid belts back into planets of PQ 0, then use my point #3 and #5 above afterwards. The asteroid-to-planet concept should be pretty expensive, and losing all your population, ships, and planets + infrastructure in that star system should be penalty enough.
17. A better breakdown and description of "Colony Maintainence" in expenses tab. What exactly does Colony Maintainence mean? I have 100 colonies, and 100 colonies X 12 upkeep for "Initial Colony" structure. That's 1200 BC, yet somehow my "Colony Maintainence" is over 10k BC's. What are the other 9k+ BC's paying for after the initial 1200 BC's?
18. Better map building / customizing system. You should be able to use default races and systems in custom built maps with default system configurations. In GalCiv 2 map building, the Sol system is randomized, and it could have 0 planets or all 5, and if I picked Human, it sometimes won't place me in the Sol system, whereas in sandbox games, I have 100% chance of being put in Sol as humans, and Sol has like 95% chance of having all 5 planets instead of 4. Also we should be able to modify the planets themselves in the map creator, like giving or tweaking the terrain box % bonuses (food, manufacturing, research, morale, influence). Also we should be able to determine whether a planet is colonized or not, allowing us to, say, have Mars colonized in 2100, Venus in 2150, and game starts for Humans in 2250 with 3 planets (Earth, Venus, Mars).
19. We should be able to have a better ship naming system. For example, in my current game after about 10 game years, I'm seeing ships like "Constructor 145782". Are you telling me the game already has 145,781 ships built before that constructor ship? Very difficult to believe. We should have a better layout for finding specific ships at which spot.
20. Better epsionage system. In GalCiv 2, it was only limited to civ intel gathering (4 slots and go to "advanced intel") placing agents on planet buildings, and you gained agents pretty slowly for the amount you would need to really do something in epsionage. What I think wouyld be nice would be more epsionage stuff. Poison planet food supply, steal techs, sabotage production, stealing enemy ships, blowing up enemy starbases, assasinate their scientists to slow research, incite rebellions or revolutions, lower the planet's influence, and so on.
21. We should be able to change and modify starting game date, turn length (week, month, year, or decade), and whether civs have extra colonies at game start like humans having Mars and Venus colonized.
22. There should be more planets in each star system. Sol has 9 planets, and I'm sure other RL star systems might have 1 planet or 20 planets per star system. However for game simplicity, perhaps a max of 10 planets per star system.
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I'd like to hear your thoughts on this and please share your feedback.
