GalCiv 1.03 changes

Draginol · April 24, 2003, 16:11

If you're using Stardock Central to get your updates of Galactic Civilizations, version 1.03 is now available.

New Features/Tweaks:
* Two New Political Parties added. Universalists and Industrialists. Mentioned in the user manual but now properly play balanced.

* Expansion for more political parties. We will be releasing additional political parties in the library soon.

* A host of computer AI enhancements that make it more intelligent in how it plays.

* Nerfed the unlimited efficiency bonuses. This was a quasi-bug actually. Essentially, you could build star bases and they would just keep stacking the free production you would get. They're not supposed to do that. When they reach 3 times the planet quality, production penalties are supposed to come in. They weren't and so what would happen is that he that built 20 star bases in their sectors would end up with massive free production.

* Sector Influence now takes the average of your closest star base and your closest star system into account for determining your sector influence. Previously, you could just build a star base out 20 sectors away from your nearest planet and your influence would skyrocket. That's just not realistic. So we now would take the average which in that case would be 10 sectors.

* Colonies on planets that are of very low quality will now require special life support. Basically, anything under class 13 will cost 5 to 15 per turn (depending on just how bad) to keep alive. Why did we do this? So that players (human and computer) won't just colonize lousy planets to spread their influence to coutneract the preceding starbase influence change.

* Computer players will not value low quality planets and if given a low quality planet will abandon it. Why? Because with the preceding change of low quality planets costing money, we didn't want human or computer players simply colonizing lousy planets that cost a bunch to mainain and then hand them off to a foe.

* Computer players much more intelligent about trading technologies. They also go into a lot of economic analysis on trading that they previously didn't do. This may create some unintuitive behavior though. If a player only has $100, they may not be willing to part with all their money even when you're offering them quite a bit of stuff. They will still trade but they value their liquid capital much more so than before.

* Military resource doesn't increase Hitpoints Ability (it wasn't supposed to in the first place). Just weapons/defense. This was, in our view, a quasi-bug. One of those miscommunications. It wasn't supposed to enhance the hitpoints of your ship, just the attack and defense. It's still a very valuable resource but it no longer is overpowering.

* Arcean AI personality now enabled with the previously disabled "nasty AI" tactics at higher levels. Basically, during the beta of GalCiv, the computer players had a set of algorithms they would use at higher levels to make them more challenging. You see, computer players are infinitely patient so they can do things like synchronize sending damaged ships home and replacing them with undamaged ones. Moving ships out of harm's way based on calculating how many moves the various potential opponents have, zip out of orbit and whack a near by transport and then zip back in, and dozens of other tactics. During the beta, some beta testers found this to be too aggressive so instead of using these tactics, we took them out and compensated it by making genius and incredible AI simply have more money. For 1.03, we have re-enabled some of this for the Arcean AI personality. They only come into play at genius or higher (though they will randomly be called at intelligent). Depending on feedback, we may allow the other AI players to make use of this, re-enable even more of these algorithms, or take them out. It's up to you guys basically.

* AI chooses political parties better now. This needed to be done so that it can effectively use mods made by third parties.

* Some performance tweaks for more responsive UI on lower end machines. Those of us running the game on a P2-400 type system were suffering a bit. Ahem. So we optimized the painting a bit so that it's a bit snappier 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. Essentially, some DIVX players replaced the Microsoft MP3 Codec with their own (a major no no). Previously GalCiv assumed that the MS MP3 codec was...well the MS MP3 codec. So if it got replaced, the user would run into crackling sound, lockups, crashes, etc. This new version is much more tolerent than previously so it should hopefully work no matter how much someone messes up their sound codecs.

* Some tweaks to ship values. Dreadnoughts cost a bit more, Constructors cost a bit more. Few other tweaks here and there.

* Senate handles more political parties

* Planet Quality Ability nerfed. The GalCiv BonusPak gave players the ability to change their planet quality ability. NOTE that the retail version of GalCiv, 1.0 did NOT have this feature. Anyway, it was far too powerful so we took out the ability to have a +15% and +10% planet quality bonus to start with making that option more in line with the other ability bonuses.

Bug Fixes:
* Generic governor no longer adds trade goods/wonders/achievements to queue. This should take care of the remaining duplicate wonders/trade goods issue.

* 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). We're not sure WHY this was causing a crash and wy it only happened on a select subset of systems or why it showed up in 1.02 but on behalf of weasels everywhere, we simply slinked in and moved it so that it is moved to where it's not competing with the AI thread for access to the ship objects. But that's unofficial. The OFFICIAL thing is that we did low level kernel debugging and found that on certain CPUs with a certain stepping that the Mutex semephore could cause problems with the clock frequency which in turn would affect the memory access to ship objects which could generate an exception. That's the ticket!

Brazuca · April 24, 2003, 22:10

were i downloaded it? Patch, bonuspack?

bonscott · April 24, 2003, 22:43

Star Dock Central only as are most of the patches. 1.03 should be available as a stand alone patch on their web site in 2-3 weeks probably.

Dominae · April 28, 2003, 13:08

Quote:

Originally posted by Draginol
* Nerfed the unlimited efficiency bonuses. This was a quasi-bug actually. Essentially, you could build star bases and they would just keep stacking the free production you would get. They're not supposed to do that. When they reach 3 times the planet quality, production penalties are supposed to come in. They weren't and so what would happen is that he that built 20 star bases in their sectors would end up with massive free production.

I've not played much myself, but this was a big complaint among people I know who have.

I'm impressed at how constant the support is for GalCiv. Keep it up!

Dominae

Felch · April 28, 2003, 13:30

Awesome job, the patches have been making the game better and better.

Ray K · April 28, 2003, 22:23

Quote:

Originally posted by Draginol
* Arcean AI personality now enabled with the previously disabled "nasty AI" tactics at higher levels. Basically, during the beta of GalCiv, the computer players had a set of algorithms they would use at higher levels to make them more challenging. You see, computer players are infinitely patient so they can do things like synchronize sending damaged ships home and replacing them with undamaged ones. Moving ships out of harm's way based on calculating how many moves the various potential opponents have, zip out of orbit and whack a near by transport and then zip back in, and dozens of other tactics. During the beta, some beta testers found this to be too aggressive so instead of using these tactics, we took them out and compensated it by making genius and incredible AI simply have more money. For 1.03, we have re-enabled some of this for the Arcean AI personality. They only come into play at genius or higher (though they will randomly be called at intelligent). Depending on feedback, we may allow the other AI players to make use of this, re-enable even more of these algorithms, or take them out. It's up to you guys basically.

Brad, please unleash the full AI on "Intelligent" level and leave the production bonuses, et al for the higher levels.

If you must know, those kinds of tactics are exactly the kind I use when playing against the AI.

For example, I often wait just outside of an enemy ship's range so that my ships can be the attacker rather than the defender when they do move into combat range. It's a tactic that goes all the way back to Civ1 (mmm... chariots), and it's been a little disappointing that the AI doesn't do what is basically second nature to experienced gamers.

Attacking and then retreating just out of harm's way is another tactic I use against the slower AI ships.

If you need to "nerf" the AI, do that on the sub-Intelligent difficulties.

On a related note, I've noticed that the AI doesn't always dock its ships for repair after a war is over.

Oh yeah, awesome game!

Ray K (aka thongor)

Garth Vader · April 29, 2003, 10:46

I too would like to see an AI with all the routines, but no cheats.

The Templar · April 29, 2003, 17:54

Quote:

Originally posted by Draginol
If you're using Stardock Central to get your updates of Galactic Civilizations, version 1.03 is now available.

* Nerfed the unlimited efficiency bonuses. This was a quasi-bug actually. Essentially, you could build star bases and they would just keep stacking the free production you would get. They're not supposed to do that. When they reach 3 times the planet quality, production penalties are supposed to come in. They weren't and so what would happen is that he that built 20 star bases in their sectors would end up with massive free production.

What does "when they reach 3 times the planet quality" mean? Does this mean when the %-bonus of the starbase exceeds 3x the quality of Planet X, the bonus at Planet X shows diminishing returns? Or does it mean that once a production category (social or military) on Planet X exceed 3x the quality of Planet X (including base and bonus production) increases in production show diminishing returns?

Help.

Garth Vader · April 29, 2003, 18:47

I assume it means the production category.

Zanman · April 30, 2003, 05:46

I can't find this patch anywhere. I've registered on Stardock but the patch is nowhere to be seen ....

Harry Seldon · April 30, 2003, 08:41

You have to download Stardock Central to get the 1.03 patch for now I think. The standalone won't be ready for a few weeks. Go to the Downloads page at galciv.com, download SDC, then download the 1.03 patch.

Rusty Nail · April 30, 2003, 15:22

Definitely put in all the nasty smart tactics you can develop at intelligent or higher. That is what will make this game last. And get on to that AI attack problem of useless hit and run tactics instead of stacking dreads with transports and taking over planets in one fell swoop. Nice work!

Felch · May 1, 2003, 19:38

Hit and runs are pretty painful if they sneak attack you and start knocking out your poorly defended resource starbases.

I'm speaking from very painful experience.