What? Another update? It's only been like a few days since the last big update right?

The Ashes team is on fire. Not literally. Well, maybe. That's an issue for the courts to work out.

Anyway here's what we're looking at delivering EARLY this next week:

* A new HUGE map with lots of open spaces. Anthys.

* We got some big performance improvements going in thanks to some new memory compression techniques that have made it in.

* First pass at ground damage. The boom boom is going to start doing visual changes to the environment with this build.

* F2 key should do cycle through idle factories.

* When you hit the pause key, an overlay will show up displaying all the hot keys.

* The first nearly finalized unit: The Brute finally gets in.

* Lots of balance changes including:

a. The scout unit is now a lone unit, not a group of 3.
b. Brutes come out in a squad of 4.
c. Bigger difference in cost/damage between the tiers

* Updated empire tree

* New music added from composer Geoff Knorr (Civilization V) and Richard Gibbs (Battlestar Galactica)

* Lots of bug fixes.

What will become 0.63

Greetings!

We continue to make rapid progress on all fronts as we head towards BETA.  We hope to have the beta ready by November 19.  Before then, we’ll have an interim update called 0.63 which will update the balance a bit and allows players to zoom out to 25,000 feet (as seen here).

On the performance end, we continue to work towards more frames per second on lower end hardware.  We’re making a lot of progress there (enough that we can zoom out without having to turn things into icons). 

Zoom

Speaking of zooming out, throughout the development process we have looked at how far we should zoom out.  Some people want to zoom out to see the entire map. That won’t be happening.  If you hit the space-bar you can get a strategic view of the entire map but we are looking at ways to zoom further out while ensuring people can still identify friend/foe units.

In the longer view, we’d like to make it so that people with multiple monitors can have a situation map always visible on the second monitor that will be a wire frame version of the world that lets them see the hot spots.  But even minus that, we have seen some great mockups on the forums on how we might be able to make units more visible when zoomed out.

TIP:HIT THE SPACE BAR to bring up the situation map.

Unit Tiers

The units in Ashes are not designed to be replaced by higher tiers.  That said, we have begun to put more emphasis on making those purposes more self-evident to the player.  For example, in 0.63, the Scout will come out as a single, very fast unit that comes out of the factory in 4 seconds.  By contrast, the Archers will come out in groups of 3 that take 12 seconds and the Brute will come out in groups of 4.  This will make them a bit easier to identify and help us visually communicate their roles a little better when they’re in battle.

Tier 2s are getting some pretty big buffs both in terms of how powerful they are, relatively, and their cost.  In the balance area, we’re trying to make the stream economy now be full of “newbie traps”.  Hence, a T2 will require about 1.5X more metal per second than a T1 and a T3 will require about 3X more metal per second than a T1.  They’ll take a lot longer to build but that can be compensated by adding engineers which can aid in the construction.

Pacing

Right now, we feel like players get to all the “stuff” pretty quickly.  This is particularly true of defensive structures where repair bays and drone bays are quite rapidly acquired.  We plan to tie a number of units/buildings to having at least a Quantum Relay built.  This will also address another “newbie trap” where people don’t realize that need to upgrade their logistics or else they get stuck at a mere 100 units.

Power Amplifiers

Ashes currently has a two-tier economy:

Tier 1: Capture region, gain +1 from every resource in that region

Tier 2: Place an extractor on those resources to get another +1 from each resource

But we plan to add a third tier for late game:

Tie 3: Power amplifiers. Build a power amplifer to double the output of a region.

This will work by clicking on a power generator and upgrading it.  We want this to be in the Beta but we’re running very tight.

Orbitals

We plan to have a lot of orbitals in the game eventually.  But in the near-term we are focusing on these 4:

1. Engineering Drop Down
2. Incursion
3. Orbital Strike
4. Orbital Nullify

When players build the corresponding orbital, a global ability is enabled. Orbital Relays provide the generic resource, “quanta” which are moments in time of access to your off-world empire’s resources. You use this resource to upgrade your tech and to spend on these global abilities.

The Engineering drop down will instantly place an engineer anywhere on the map.  The Incursion will place a small but ever more powerful (the more you use it, the more powerful it gets) force in a target location for behind the lines work.  This small force won’t be enough to take out a serious force but it’ll be enough to punish players who have spread themselves too thin and not guarded their supply lines.

The orbital strike is Ashes’s nuke equivalent.  You spend quanta and target a location.  The mini-map will display the large area that is about to get nuked.  The opposing player, if they have built the Nuliffier orbital and have enough quanta held back can nullify the strike.

We have others in the works but these will be the 4 that will let us balance the give and take between players building units versus using special abilities.

Gaining Levels

The other area we have a lot of work to do is on Dreadnoughts gaining levels. The plan is for these units to gain special abilities that the player can choose.  These probably won’t be ready by the beta however.

We hope you’re having fun!

The Early Access program is doing well. We’re glad to see so many people liking the direction we’re going.  It’s a definite challenge to make a new RTS that will appeal to the very different tastes of the RTS market.

Let us know what you think.

-brad

Zoomed out to the edge of the lower atmosphere (about 100,000 feet in the air)

Realistically, the game just isn't meant to be played this far zoomed out.  And this isn't even covering the full map and isn't the largest map we even support.

We will be doing a lot more to make the strategic situation map provide more information for players to make good strategic decisions.  

Greetings!

Another month has come and gone and here is the monthly update -- just in a nick of time.

The Star Control team has continued to staff up as we've hired more animators and artists. 

Here are the topics to lead us into November:

Topic #1: The Founder's Program

Yes. The Founder's Program will get going within the next month or so.

If you are interested in joining, please fill out this survey: 

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/VCQQG7D

Topic #2: The Tech

The game will be using the same graphics engine as Ashes of the Singularity.  That means it'll be both state of the art but also (Because we're not having to deal with 30,000+ units at once) be able to run on relatively modest hardware (it'll still require a 64-bit OS, DirectX 11 or later but you should be able to run it fine on an Ultrabook). 

The visuals are already quite stunning. Remember,. Nitrous's claim to fame (the engine)_ is that it renders similar to how CGI in movies is done except in real-time.  You can see that already in Ashes despite it having relatively simple 3D models.  Wait till you see what we can do with the aliens. 

Topic #3: Lore Update

Since this is a reboot, the game will take place before the events of the original Star Control 1. Without giving too much away, something happens in 2085 leading the Humans to form Star Control to begin exploring space and making contact with alien worlds.  The story will unfold from there.

Topic #4: Core elements

The founders will get a lot more information on all of this but below are the essential elements in the new Star Control.

• Super Melee.  Without spoiling it, Super Melee will take place within a solar system, not around a single planet. It will support Internet multiplayer and will likely be the first component released to Founders (2016).
• Planet Exploration.  This part is actually pretty far along and one of the coolest looking things I've ever seen and, after you see, it, it's "duh, of course that's how it should be done".
• Encounters.  This is the most complex part of the game (or at least expensive).  Combining Nitrous with real-time emoting (not just lip syincing) is definitely proving worth it.  For the record, I was originally against this because I thought it would be cheesy. I've now seen it in action and it's really amazing.
• Ship Customizer.  You wlll have a flag ship which will also pick up fleets of ally ships.  However, this time around, you'll be able to visually customize the ship such that everyone's ship will look different (which should prove fun in multiplayer and when exploring the multiverses created by others).  Think GalCiv III level customization combined with Nitrous fidelity.  This part of the game is already working (though primitively).
• Exploration.  This part is working minus non-programmer art. 
• Music.  We scored a real win getting Riku back after 25 years to score the new Star Control music. It's part of the charm of the original series.
• Writing.  Chris Bucholz of cracked.com is in charge of the writing.  The aliens are, well, pretty awesomely insane and ridiculous already.  There are already some catchy memes that have spread across the office.  It'll be interesting whether they spread once others are exposed to them.

1. Founders Program begins (4Q2015). This will be access to our vault and a private forum where we can bounce ideas off those passionate, like us, about the Star Control reboot.
2. Founders Prototype (1Q2016): Founders under NDA will start to be able to give feedback and try out some of our tools and early prototypes of what we're working on to give feedback and suggestions.
3. Founders Alpha (2Q2016): Founders, under NDA, start getting Alpha builds.
4. Early Access (4Q2016).
5. 2017: 25th anniversary of Star Control 2.

With GalCiv III v1.4, we’ve removed the per planet production wheel.   You can read more about that here.

This has sparked a lively debate on just how much control a player should have on their economy. 

Planet Specialization

Planets in Galactic Civilizations III can be specialized much more than in previous versions.  An industrial world, through adjacencies, can result in massive bonus manufacturing.  However, on top of that, players can direct their citizens to work more in those factories via the global production wheel (and previously the local production wheel).

So let’s talk about what that actually means.

Command Economies

By default, your citizens work at whatever jobs are available on your planets. 

If you live in the West (USA, Europe, Japan, etc.) you are free to choose the job you want.

By default, your citizens work the jobs they want.

Earth in 2251. M:23, R:15, W:9: Total of 47

So in this model, Earth is producing 23.7 quadrillion tons of manufactured goods, 15.1 units of research, and is generating taxable income of 8.7T credits (for GalCiv III we’ve gotten rid of the units of measurement).

However, new to GalCiv III is the concept of being able to FORCE people to work certain jobs.   That is, I can draft people to go work in the factories or in the labs or raise their taxes:

Through the production wheel, I can make people to  work in the factories, raise their taxes or help out in the labs.

In every previous GalCiv, if you raised taxes, there was a corresponding morale penalty.  We don’t have that here because it was decided it was too convoluted to have it just for taxes.  However, what we really should have considered is that it’s not that people hate taxes per se, they had COERCION.  They don’t like their government controlling their activity.  If my taxes are 50%, for instance, that means 50% of the time I’m working FOR the government.

When I move my wheel to 100% manufacturing I’m conscripting my citizens to work in the factory and I get a corresponding boost to manufacturing:

Now, I get 70.8, 0, –3.6.  You’ll note that this number if much MUCH higher. Total: 67.

Note that in this example, my morale is still 78%.  In GalCiv II, if you raised your taxes to 100%, your morale would plummet unless you invested heavily into things to keep them happy.  But in GalCiv III, there’s no penalty at all for setting manufacturing to 100%. 

I understand why people like the production wheel

Imagine if in GalCIv II we let people set their taxes to 100% and there was no downside to this.  Now, imagine if we put out GalCiv II v1.4 and we made it so you couldn’t change taxes.  People would have been ticked off.  Understandably.  But I hope also that people would understand that such a system is broken.  There’s no such thing a a free lunch.

Ending the Free Lunch

I’ve had a lot of time to think about the production wheel.  By reading the forums, at length, I’ve gotten a much better idea of what the issue really is.  It’s the free lunch aspect of the production wheel I don’t like.  In the real world, command economies don’t do well against free markets in the long-run.  But in GalCiv III, they’re absolutely the way to go.  The problem ISN’T the wheel on its own (I don’t like the micro management but I have no issue with people voluntarily choosing to play that way).  The problem is that you get to coerce people without any downside.

How I’d like to solve this

First, the Terran Alliance won’t support the command economy.  That is, you won’t be able to set tax policy on a per planet basis as the Terran Alliance.  However, a new racial trait called “Command Economy” can be added that will be part of the Yor.  The Yor aren’t mindless robots but unlike humans, they can be micro-managed in ways that humans can’t.

Second, we will introduce the concept of COERCION into the system.

How Coercion would work

Let’s say your planet is producing 11 units of goods and services (as seen in the screenshot below). 

What coercion would do is that for every point above 33 your maximum focus is, you’d diminish those goods by a percent. 

Example: Let’s say I set Manufacturing to 100%.  That’s 67% above the 33% natural rate.  Your goods and services would then be multiplied by (1 – 0.67).  Thus, I would suddenly only get 4 goods and services and I would thus take an overall production penalty.  In this example, instead of getting 70.8 manufacturing I’d only get around 50 and my planet’s population would grow slower.  But it’s still massively above  the 23 that is the default.

Right now, your approval is based on the goods you provide per citizen.

Random example explaining coercion.

How the UI would communicate this

Similarly, civilizations with a command economy could set it on a per planet basis but it would work the same, you could just micro it on a per planet basis if you wanted.

NOW, let’s talk about the future

Eventually, GalCiv III is going to have a bunch of different types of governments to choose from.  The reason the Economy tab is done the way it is is because it’s been designed with the idea that eventually the type of government you have will determine what shows up in that tab.   So one type of government might have a bunch of sliders, another might have almost no controls, another might have players choosing a series of subsidy policies and so on.  For now, we just have the production wheel. But it’s never been intended to be the end-all be all.  

So when?

I’d like to see this change put into 1.5 or sooner.   It’ll take a little balancing to make sure pacing isn’t hosed. But ultimately, it will result in a much more balanced, less…arbitrary economy and allow us to justify more types of planetary improvements, super projects and other goodies that offset this.

Oh, and we can get rid of the large empire penalty too since it won’t be needed under this system.

I'll write a fancier version of this soon but here is our near-term schedule:

• GalCiv 1.2: Random Events added (August)
• GalCiv 1.3: The UI update (September)
• GalCiv 1.4: The big AI update (October)
• GalCiv 1.5: Diplomacy update (December)
• GalCiv 1.6: House keeping (February)
• GalCiv 1.7: New starbase system (March)
• GalCiv 1.71: House keeping (May)
• GalCiv 1.8: Asteroid Mining, (June)
• GalCiv 1.9: Large Empire UI update, Small Empire Bonus  (Fall)
• GalCiv 2.0: GalCiv III Crusade! (Spring 2017)
• GalCiv 2.2: Ludicrous map size!
• GalCiv 2.3: Balance pass, diplomacy update  (Summer 2017)
• GalCiv 2.5: Massive UI overhaul, AI fleet manager, economic overhaul, Crusade/Basegame compatibility (Fall 2017)
• GalCiv 2.6: Multiplayer update (Fall 2017)
• GalCiv 2.7: Multi-core loading system, new AI exploration system, Fan feature requests added (December 2017)
• GalCiv 2.8: The big AI update (January 2018)
• GalCiv 3.0: Intriguing... (Spring 2018)

Late update: December 2017

Yesterday was the long-waited big update to Galactic Civilizations III.  Version 1.4 added many many AI and UI updates to the game based on months of player feedback.

You can see the news here: https://forums.galciv3.com/472349/

!! UPDATE !! READ THIS: https://forums.galciv3.com/472865/ 

We’re pretty happy with the response overall.  But there is one change I’d like to discuss with you guys: THE WHEEL.

Who am I?

I’m Brad Wardell. I wrote the original GalCiv for OS/2 and much of GalCiv I and GalCiv II.  I also designed those games and wrote their AIs.  On GalCiv III I’ve been more of an executive consultant thus far as I’ve been focusing on Ashes of the Singularity for the past couple of years.  But GalCiv remains my baby. I’ve spent over 20 years with it. So it matters a lot to me.

Background

In GalCiv III 1.0 through 1.3 players could go to the planetary governor and override the global spending priorities on a planetary basis.  This made micro-managers very happy and people who don’t like to micro manage very sad.

Planetary Wheel: Love & Hate

I am in the camp of hating it. HATING it.  Not because of the micromanagement because it completely violates what GalCiv has always been about: You are running a galactic civilization.  It’s supposed to be half simulation, half strategy game.  The wheel is totally gamey.  No civilization functions where last being can be assigned a job by the government. 

I have tried to stay reasonably hands off on GalCiv III but the planetary wheel had to go.  I wanted it out for 1.1, then 1.2, then 1.3 but other things took priority and it was finally killed in 1.4.

It has NOTHING to do with the AI

I read the forums and I see people talking about the change being made to make the AI easier.  That’s a ridiculous argument. Not to be mean but only a non-programmer would say that.  Micro-managing is what AIs do best.  I could write up an AI that could tweak planetary wheels every turn to a level that would make most micro managers weep. 

Put another way: computers are faster and better at math than humans and the planetary wheel was all about math. 

The reason the AI didn’t use the planetary wheel in previous versions is because it was supposed to be eliminated long ago.  So there was no point writing AI for this if the feature was going to go away.

It is my game but it is also YOUR game

Now, that said, I write games for you guys. That’s what motivates me.  I see people who really liked the planetary wheel.  So we need some sort of solution that will make both groups happy.

What I’m going to ask is that a prefs.ini setting called planetarywheel=on be added.  If that’s on, you’ll get your wheel.  However, that won’t be the official version of the game. There will be no in-game UI option to turn it on.  People who are passionate about this feature can still turn it on without everyone else feeling like they have to use this feature in order to micro-manage their empire to the nth degree.

I know that solution won’t make everyone happy. No solution will.  But hopefully this will be a reasonable compromise for most people.

New version of GalCiv makes the AI more fiendish, bigger galaxies easier to manage and much more!

For those of you not familiar with Galactic Civilizations III a quick recap.  GalCiv III is a game where you choose an interstellar civilization to lead in the 23rd century. One of these includes Earth in the year 2250.  What sets it apart is the scale and modability of it.  You can literally build up your own galaxy to play in.  When people say it’s the ultimate sand box game, they mean it. 

The game supports over a hundred different civilizations playing simultaneously on a vast scale all while starting out with just a home world. And there are already thousands of custom made civilizations and ships available to download right from within the game.

Solving the AI challenge in v1.4

As others have pointed out, space is big. It’s really…really big. It’s so big it’s as if it has some sort of inferiority complex about itself and it’s just screaming “Hey! You! Look how BIG I am!”  So when writing a game that is part strategy game and part simulation, you have some unique challenges.

For example, how do you write a computer AI that provides a challenge to players without making it cheat like crazy? When GalCiv III shipped, the AI was “pretty good” but it didn’t take long for expert players to find ways to crush it.

So how did we solve it? Data mining.

We started looking at how these experts were playing the game.  Sure, stalking YouTube players may seem wrong but then again, people openly posting their strategies are fair game right? And with GalCiv III being a 64-bit multi-core game, we can toss a lot of computing power at the problem. So we did.

No DLC for 1.4.

For those looking for a new DLC to go along with 1.4, I’m afraid there isn’t any this time.  All our budget went into this free update.  We hope you like it!

Lots of other stuff

The AI wasn’t the only thing we worked on of course.  The multiplayer community of GalCiv III continues to grow and we’ve put in a lot of work to make that a much better experience since the game does lend itself to multi-day sessions of MP (though I wish  more people would play the Arena maps but I digress).

Screenshots:

Nothing exciting, I just love the idea of starting in our home solar system.

Much better chicks to get information on your world.

Emphasize the production of a planet or turn it over to the AI to manage (with an all-new, written from scratch planetary governor AI)

The Ship designer remains one of the coolest features of GalCiv III.  Remember: The AI will use your ship designs when you play against them. Also, these cool ship designs are available via Steam Workshop so you can import them into your game (or print them to your 3D printer).

Player designed ships leads to some interesting battles..(yes, that’s a space hair dryer)

Players can share their designs online for epic…Lonestar fun…

You can also zoom out to see your custom made galaxy fighting it out

Import alien races created by the community into your game for massive galaxy wide diplomacy, trade and warfare

The Full Change Log

Summary
The AI Strikes Back! The AI now does a much better job of building its planets and managing its economy. Player Governors are likewise better at building planets and the new Spending Foci allow you to manage planetary production.

AI
+ The AI does a much better job at building worlds
+ Added AI governors to better manage starbase construction
+ Improved budget management
+ Improved constructor movement logic

Governors
+ Player governors do a much better job of building planets
+ Added spending foci to the planetary screen. This allows players to shift their planetary production between manufacturing, research, or wealth.
+ Added a Balanced Governor type that builds worlds that are balanced between manufacturing, research, and wealth spending.

Change Log
AI Changes
+ AI creates specialized planets instead of generic worlds.
+ AI prioritizes building starbases around planets instead of strictly claiming resources.
+ If the AI determines that it is overspending and cannot support the fleet size, it will aggressively decommission ships. Older ships are decommissioned first.
+ Improved AI and Governor planetary project (e.g. Economic Stimulus, Cultural Festival, etc.) selection
+ After conquering a planet, AI will pick Governors based on the existing improvements.
+ AI now picks Governors based on planet bonuses.
+ AI now uses spending foci.
+ AI tech Governor now has a better tech order provided.
+ AI will no longer overbuild starbases and it only builds what it wants to build.
+ Add Governors for the AI to manage Starbases.
+Tweaked the AI War strategy to focus a bit more on Research.
+ Improved Constructor movement logic:
- Constructors will no longer get stuck in a logic loop when entering dangerous areas.
- Fixed weird edge cases regarding constructor building rings and resource capturing.

+ 10/27 Made the AI research weapons better by increasing the priority of all weapons types slightly to work better with tech governors.
+ 10/27 Added multiple new AI prototype blueprints and designs such that the AI is now much better at using Resources to kill you.
+ 10/27 AI ships now patrol their territory if they do not have a specific target.
+ 10/27 AI now use shipyards and planets as rally points.
+ 10/27 Adjusted levels at which the AI will start decommissioning ships
+ 10/27 Fixed a bug where the AI was being notified that a ship has stationed in a fleet when it wasn't.
+ 10/27 Weak ships will fall back to starbases.
+ 10/27 The AI will now prefer to build up transport fleets before building attack fleets. This will make AI invasion fleets stronger and invasions easier for the AI.

Governors
+ Added spending percentages to the manufacturing, research, and wealth tooltips. For the manufacturing tooltip, also added social and military percentage information. This help clarifies the effects of the new spending foci
+ Added spending focus to the planetary screen. This allows players shift their planetary production to manufacturing, research, or wealth. Choosing a focus diverts 25% of the planetary production to that area.
+ Added a "Direct Control" governor that allows players to manually place planetary improvements (similar to the old "remove governor" button)
+ Added a Balanced Governor that builds worlds that are balanced between manufacturing, research, and wealth spending.

Gameplay
+ Added new Military Subsidies Planetary project that funnels excess social manufacturing production into a sponsored shipyard.
+ Created new Moral Allowance planetary project that funnels social manufacturing production into boasting the planet's morale.
+ 10/27 Lowered tech weights on some defense techs.
+ 10/27 Drengin are now able to build Approval starbase modules.
+ 10/27 Tweaked the common medium habitable planet from 25 to 22
+ 10/27 Increased the priority of life support on most blueprints.
+ 10/27 Lowered mass of several components slightly

Diplomacy Polish
+ In the trade window, added the relations slider underneath the Leader's name
+ Diplomacy Trade screen: added confirmation before declaring war
+ Added mouse tooltip to the "speak to" button if the opponent wasn't available for trade
+ Add an "available to talk" icon to faction power list on the main screen
+ Trade screen: collapsed ships stay collapsed each time between screen transitions
+ Trade offers should properly consider the credit value of a stack of items.
+ The cancel button in the "Home Star System Window" now works properly

UI / Graphics
+ Minimap no longers shows ZOC influence under fog of war
+ Added gel background to the Load Map screen and fixed some text overlap issues
+Search results in Research Technologies are are now flushed between games
+ Added new tooltips for faction power list
+ Fixed an issue where the production wheel does not always update the values on the screen when previewing new values on the wheel.
+ Revised the Collect Gameplay Data tooltip text to make it clearer what it's doing.
+ Removed the "Quick Move" game options screen as it didn't do anything.
+ The rename object dialog did not have a message or icon. Fixed it so it looks a little better.
+ Fix line artifacts on the Research screens
+ Fix Medium UI sizing issues in the Relic list.
+ Fix issue where Approval stat on planet list entries was popping out of grid in Medium UI.
+ Fixed lines on medium UI in the battle report entry.
+ 10/19: Clicking on sorting icons in the main UI again will reverse the sorting order
+ 10/27 Cleaned up the Relationship `sliders on the Interaction and Diplomacy windows.
+ 10/27 Added new diplomacy icons for war and ally
+ 10/27 Cleaned up unused assets
+ 10/27 Re-work icons on for Planetary Governors.
+ 10/27 Added "Low Res Textures" option to improve performance.
+ 10/27 Setting up lean textures for dread lords texture set to improve their appearance

Balance
+ Reduced decommission idle time from 30 to 10.
+ Lower Manufacturing planet requirement to class 7
+ Updated planetary projects. Boost birthing subsidies to 10% from 5%
+ New Military Subsidies project, (Requires feedback work)
+ Adjusted Life Support modules to be cheaper in general and scale better with advancement.
+ Nerfed Factories slightly.
+ Balance Drengin, and Yor manufacturing and Research improvements, to better balance against Terran improvements
+ Lowered Tech inflation exponent slightly
+ Rebalanced Starbase modules, primarily boosting bonuses
+ Increased the influence generated by starbase modules
+ Techs will now increase in cost in late game

MP
+ Fixed several desync issues
+ Addressed issues that made the Host seem unresponsive.
+ New Lobby messages will appear on new lines. Messages were sometimes bunching up.
+ Added a Cancel button to the loading screen for multiplayer games.
+ If either player has the universal translator, then they can now speak to one another and trade.
+ Fixed a bug where the middle "For" section on the trade screen would appear when a trade is canceled.
+ Fixed a case where the "start button" was appeared disable when it was not.
+ In some circumstances, the game was incorrectly sending multiple match reports for the same game.
+ If a peer exited the game or lobby, the host was not always getting the disconnection request.
+ Restored game: Fixed a problem where a player's faction was changed to Terran.
+ Restored game: Joining the lobby will no longer occasion create an extra slot.
+ Fixed a case where starting a multiplayer game would have visual gaps in the player list
+ The game can now load player created Gigantic maps in multiplayer.
+ Added support for private multiplayer games
+ Host can now set the number of human players in the lobby.
+ 10/19: Fixed a multiplayer crash when attempting to de-select a spending focus
+ 10/27 The fixed a bug introduced in the previous opt-in that prevented players from choosing different factions in multiplayer.

Bugs
+ Fixed a startup crash caused by system variables.
+ Medium UI: In the Tech Tree screen, the player was in the "Age of Expansion" but is seeing a yellow bar as if they were in the "Age of War".
+ "Wish upon a Relic" Mega Event no longer spawns hordes of pirates.
+ Fix an issue that was stopping the Drengin from getting Tech and Manufacturing Capitals.
+ Fixing crash when removing a custom part from ship design if the custom part does not exist on the local machine. The most cost
+ The Dread Lords were unable to build fighters for the orbital defenses. However, the game thought there should be fighters and prevented players from invading.
+ Some Dread Lord controlled planets could not be invaded if the Dread Lords built an Orbital Defines Platform. That defense would try to generate fighters that the Dread Lords could not build so the battle would never start. The Dread Lords can now build the fighters and their planets can be invaded.
+ Fix missing Icon on Hull Mastery Specialization.
+ If the logo for a custom faction is not found, use the "random faction" logo is used as a fallback inside of entire texture atlas.
+ Fixed a bad prerequisite for Yor Lossless life support technology that was causing an infinite loop.
+ Added a check for "Windows\system32" in the environmental path variables at the start of the game. Some users are missing this in their path and the game would crash on start.
+ The "Wish upon a Relic" Mega Event was incorrectly spawning pirates in addition to the Relic.
+ Fix issue that was stopping Drengin from getting the Tech and Manufacturing Capitals.
+ Fixing crash when removing custom part from ship design if the custom part does not exist on the local machine
+ Fix missing Icon on Hull Mastery Specialization.
+ Fixed bug when loading a game with custom factions and the faction logo image was not found locally on the machine that loaded the saved game. It would not display the strategic icon properly and render the entire icon atlas. If a cust logo is not found, the "random faction" logo is used as a fallback.
+ Ship movement debuffs are no longer clipped in tooltip
+ Fixed the number suffixes for the End Game ranking.
+ The first planet in custom made maps are now the player's homeworld.
+ Planetary screen wasn't displaying the proper number of Manufacturing, Research, and Income icons.
+ The Register and Free DLC buttons now become disabled (with a tooltip) the same way the Multiplayer button does, so if the internet or Steam cut out while the game is running there won't be any confusion about the state of those buttons.
+ Added missing component icons
+ Prevented a crash with wonders and players with custom data.
+ Fix bad thumbnails on some Drengin Ships
+ Removed the spending wheel from the Govern Planet screen. Use the focus buttons to adjust spending levels instead.
+ Fixed several stuck turn problems
+ Added next and previous arrows to the shipyards window.
+ Adjusted the height of the Map Editor description box to allow more room
+ Shipyard: Improved "required resources" tooltip Buy button to be more informative and friendly to the player
+ Starbase list now only displays filters that are needed. That is, don't show a "mining" filter unless you have a mining starbase.
+ Planet lists will now properly sort at the beginning of each turn
+ Fixed a problem that made the game unstable if you had hundreds of ships.
+ Typos
+ Pressing T while the input box does not have focus will now hide the chat window.
+ Rally point and Fleet numbers will no longer appear on top of the UI.
+ When choose a Civilization, the the factions appear in the following order: default factions, DLC factions next, and custom factions last.
+ The game now verifies if the user is logged on to Steam when attempting to show/hide the DLC Available button.
+ Fixed a crash when a dead AI is the last player in the turn list
+ 10/19: Renamed the improvement "Moral Allowance" to "Morale Allowance"
+ 10/19: Human player can longer initiate trade before other player has universal translator
+ 10/19: Getting or setting player stats will now not work if the user isn't logged in to Steam
+ 10/19: Updated registration UI and text.
+ 10/19: Fixed startup crash with generation of the texture atlas. As a result of this fix:
- Atlas files are now in the steam game folder
- Modders: Atlas files can be generated by adding /atlasgen to startup command line. This puts the atlas files in the "my games/galciv3" folder. The game will now check the "my games/galciv3" folder first, and fall back to game dir if not found.
+ 10/19: Updated batch files to prevent a crash with systems with specific path variable settings.

+ 10/27 Starbases no longer give +100% to beam weapons.
+ 10/27 On the Planetary Governors screen, the auto-terraform is no longer disabled the first time the screen is opened.

Known issues

• There are some cosmetic text issues on the Hebrew version of Windows in some of the tooltips.
• If you haven’t run the game since upgrading to Windows 10 and the last time you played was earlier than 1.1 the screens directory might not work right resulting in launch issues.  If this happens, delete the GalCiv3 directory in documents\my games.

The Links

•  
• To see more screenshots of GalCiv III taken by players visit here: http://steamcommunity.com/app/226860/screenshots/
• To go to the Steam page for the game go here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/226860
• And of course, the home page: www.galciv3.com

While it's been awhile since we've been able to focus on WinCustomize's front-end, I wanted to give you a head's up that WinCustomize just got a major hardware upgrade on the backend.

Hopefully the site, the galleries and elsewhere feel snappier. Let us know.

NOT RELEASED

(expected early this week)

• Engineer speed increased
• Lower tier units move somewhat faster
• Cosmetic improvements to the Cronus dreadnought
• Map fixes
• New Map: Grison
• Fixed bug that caused teammates to take attrition damage when in a teammate's territory
• Game setup settings are now remembered
• Game setup bug fixes
• Various UI fixes
• Air units move much faster
• Creeps now span in groups of 4 instead of 1 to slow down easy rapid expansion.
• DirectX 12 related fixes
• Double-clicking on units selects multiples in area.