With more people coming back to the office work on the console version of Star Control: Origins has picked up.  The first part of this has been to do a pretty thorough revamp of the game’s underlying systems in order to optimize it for the XBOX One, PS4 and also next-generation consoles.

During this process we greatly improved the quality of the texture maps throughout the game which includes aliens and ships.

[click on thumbnail to enlarge]

The team was also able to substantially reduce the memory footprint during many rounds of optimization.

We’ll have a full change-log soon with the public update next month.

It has been awhile since we’ve visited the world of Elemental.  The last update to the expansion to Fallen Enchantress (AKA: Legendary Heroes) was in 2019. Hardware has continued to evolve, and with that comes the opportunity to further improve the game.

Our story so far…

Elemental: Fallen Enchantress – Legendary Heroes is a fantasy strategy game in which the player builds a civilization in the world of Elemental.  This world was nearly destroyed by the War of Magic, and it is up to you to rebuild it.

Unlike most civilization games, the Elemental games put you into the game directly as a character. 

 

The beginning

When the game begins, it’s just your character.  You are greeted with land tile information that displays the food, material and essence of that tile. Food determines how fast the city built there will grow, Material determines how fast it can build things, and Essence determines how many magical spells can be placed on the city. 

In version 2.6 we have added a new faction structure called the Tower of Knowledge. It generates 1 knowledge per essence and can help jump start research.

The Tower of Knowledge is above for reference.

To be honest, most of the work in this update has been in fixing bugs.  Players have graciously sent us saved games over the past year and we’ve used them to find lots of edge case crash situations or stuck turns.  Of course, when it happens to you while playing it doesn’t feel like an edge case, so it’s nice to get these found and fixed.

I have always loved how you can zoom in and see the people working on your cities.  It helps explain what’s going on and fleshes out the world.

 

We also made a number of unit AI improvements, which should make tactical battles even more interesting.

We also wrote some new code that should improve the turn times pretty substantially, especially on larger maps. 

 

The performance gains we had combined with the greater stability made us decide to increase the map sizes a bit as well.

Changelog

• Tile yield update on screen aborts immediately if the terrain is invalid for a city (perf)
• Fixed crash bug where garbage characters could get inserted into a scene node
• Increased the map tilt further so you can see more pretty stuff
• 0Calc Military Might now longer force updates the battle rank of units. (perf)
• AI city updating is now multithreaded (perf)
• CalcBattleRank changed to automatically cache the battlerank of the unit (major perf boost)
• Units now always get a battlerank of at least 1 to ensure caching of battlerank
• Sub-units of an army are no longer recalculated unless expressly ordered
• Thread safe city count method added
• Fixed a crash deadlock
• AI monsters less likely to attack a city on lower difficulties
• Monsters now use a cached combat rating to determine city strength (performance)
• Fixed multiple crash deadlocks
• Unit vector sized at 10 at start to reduce increments. (perf)
• Timer update increased from 1ms to 0.5ms
• Conclaves provide more research but less production and money
• Fortresses provide more production but less money and research
• Towns provide more money but less production and research
• New improvement: Tower of Knowledge. Provides +1 research per essence
• Tiny map size increased to 5x3
• Small map increased from 5x4 to 6x4 (20 to 24 sectors)
• Medium map size increased from 6x5 to 7x5 (30 to 35 sectors)
• Large map size increased from 7x6 to 9x6 (42 to 54 sectors)
• Huge map size increased from 8x7 to 12x8 (56 to 96 sectors)
• Wrote a replacement for toupper() that is much faster

 

Screenshots

 

Somewhere around here I have the original image of the Yor from 1992.  They don’t resemble the modern Yor very much.  When I wrote the Yor origin story back in 1987 (when I was in high school) the Yor followed the common trope of AI servants who rose up against their masters.  Their masters, in this case, were a race of beings known as the Iconians (who are also in the game).

The Yor of 1995

Yor of 2021

As time has gone by, I’ve thought about making the Yor be less Cylon like and more like a post-singularity hive mind.  The argument could be made that humans just 50 years ago might end up “Post-Humans” ala Ashes of the Singularity.

The reason I bring this up is that GalCiv IV has the concept of “achievements”.  These are essentially quests that when completed, allow the player to gain prestige which is one of the victory conditions.   According to the data we get, the Yor are the #2 (after humans) civilization that people play as.  And so in this thread we’d like to hear some things you’d like to see with the Yor (what sorts of quests would you like to see?).

________________________________________________________

Galactic Civilizations IV Dev Journals

• #1 - Welcome to GalCiv IV

• #2 - Humanizing AI

• #3 - Addressing Micromanagement

• #4 - A Guided ALPHA Tour

• #5 - The Ideology Compass

• #6 - Those First 20 Turns

• #7 - The Changing Face of Space Robots

• #8 - Rise of the Commanders

• #9 - Onboarding

• #10 - Do we need a battle viewer?

• #11 - Combat AAR

• #12 - AAR Drengin Human Wars I Part 1

• #13 - The Vault

• #14 – Pacing Comparisons

• #15 - Internal Factions

• #16 - The Battle Viewer

• #17 - Screenshot Time

• #18 - The Dawn of the 24th Century

• #19 - The Roadmap

• #20 - Deals of the Xeloxi + v1.04 Preview

• #21 - The Arcean War + 1.05 Preview

• #22 - Save Me

• #23 - Every Turn Counts

 

One of the challenges we have in setting up maps is the question of how quickly should players be meeting other civilizations in the game?  How quickly should things show up? How much should the game direct you?

I decided to take a hard look at GalCiv II and GalCiv III to see how different those first 20 turns worked out.

GalCiv II: First 20 turns

Turn 1:

• No on-screen direction but the UI is pretty clean and My ship is already selected to move.
• Selected ship has an automate button visible so I press that.

• There is an anomaly right away so I get to see what it does.

Ooh money.

• There is a second one nearby that gives me money.
• The Stellar Miner has an automate button too so I press that.
• I send the colony ship out to explore
• There is no guidance that I should do something on my planet.
• I click on the planet and press the view button.

• Because available projects is blank I am clued in to click on the green tiles.
• List of things to build are very clear:

vs.

• The build ship part is not easy to find.

• It has a very large colored bar telling me how long it will take to build. Because it’s 29 weeks it’s orange which makes it stick out. This makes me look for other buttons like Purchase.

 

Ship build list comparison:

Way less screen dirt and simple explanations.

There is a button that says purchase on the screen:

So I press that. I notice this versus the tiny buy button in the queue in GalCiv III which I didn’t notice because ther’es only a few buttons on this screen to notice.

The first turn also gave me a bunch of money which trained me to think that money must matter.

Survey ship has a lot of moves:

We are still on turn 1.

• Got a bunch of money
• Got a new ship
• Very obvious benefits

News announcement:

 

Turn 2:

Loading ship.

I send my ship to Mars.

I am asked to name it.

Text is pretty terrible but it’s pretty.

Mars sucks.

Got my third planet (on turn 2)

Ugly ugly text. But Good, Neutral and Evil are pretty clearly spelled out along with funny text.

I choose evil.

This bit of personality helps with engagement.

Survey ship finds more stuff.

This sort of text is engaging.

Research screen has the tree and the list on the same screen. The benefit of each one is pretty obvious.

 

Turn 3:

I meet an alien on turn 3.

Survey ship finds more neat little stuff.

 

Turn 4:

 

Turn 5:

 

Turn 6:

I definitely want Universal translators now

 

Turn 7:

Second alien:

I like that I can see how long it will take the ship to build from this screen.

 

Turn 8:

• This is cool because it means early game there are 1 per galaxy things that are another thing players might want to build instead of other things. GalCiv III has nothing like this.

• Survey ships get 5 moves
• Colony ships get 4 so things get around a lot faster

Turn 9:

 

Turn 10:

I choose warfare next.

Minor civ:

Strategic map is clean looking.

 

Turn 11:

I am feeling collective pressure.

Humans are diplomats so they start with the ability to get good techs.

I’m getting fun trades right out of the gate.

 

Turn 12:

Nothing

 

Turn 13:

Look how noticeable the mines on the asteroids are? I also like that there is a ship going around building these.

 

Turn 14:

Another colony:

 

Turn 15:

All this money helps me jump start my planets.

Espionage?

 

Turn 16:

 

Takes 20 weeks to build a ship unless you rush it. But I get a bunch of money from plentiful anomalies which I’m scooping up fast because so is everyone else.

Turn 17:

Yay us!

 

Turn 18:

 

Turn 19:

Turn 20:

Nothing.

 

Conclusions

There’s a reason this game is considered the best space 4X game of all time by many. Clean UI. Great pacing. Obvious gameplay (especially for the time).

My ratings for GalCiv II:

• Engagement: 5/5. Great flavor text. Stuff is making my civ improve quickly.
• Intuitiveness: 4/5. It’s usually obvious what to do because there isn’t a million things happening on the screen. But no Shafer button and no tooltips.
• Pacing: 5/5. Within a few turns there’s other civs, lots of interactions, and a feeling that things are building up.
• Desire to keep playing: 4/5. The game doesn’t fully hold up ove time. But I still want to play it.
• Overall: 4/5. Was easily the best 4X space game of its time. These days it would be in the top rung.

Now, let’s look at GalCiv III.

GalCiv III first 20 turns

I realize I’m pretty critical here, but this is so that we can make sure GalCiv IV is better.

Turn 1:

• No on-screen direction on what I should do.
• No on-screen explanation on how to move anything.
• No on-screen explanation on what the ships do.
• No anomalies or other things for my survey ship to interact with so I just move it.
• I order constructor to build a starbase. No hint on that it affects things in range.

• Starbase is off centered by default.
• No on-screen direction on what I should do.
• I construct an ascension ring and an economic lab.

• Research screen pretty decent.
• Choose artificial gravity.

• No direction on what I am supposed to do here.

• No direction on what I am supposed to do here.
• Pretty terrible UI.
• No guidance that I should rush building something so I don’t.

Turn 2:

Nothing

Turn 3:

Nothing

Turn 4:

Nothing

Turn 5:

• I next choose space elevators.
• By Survey ship has reached its destination so I send it to another star system.

Turn 6:

• Colony ship built. I load it up and send it to another star system.
• Earth has built the improvements.
• I really wish I could see how fast the ships being built in the shipyard were being built based on my choices here.
• I order another colony ship to be built. I wish he game gave me direction on what I might want to do.

Turn 7:

This is nice. But it would be cooler if this was presented as a cut-scene. Meanwhile..blah blah.

And then this came up. This UI is really ugly and hard to read.

I take the free ship.

Turn 8:

Nothing. Ships move.

Turn 9:

My survey ship is attacked.

Super ugly confirmation screen. I’d rather the game camera panned to the action and showed me the battle.

Turn 10:

More pirates attack.

I wish my survey ship leveled up and got goodies.

• Colony ship built. I order it to another system.
• Space elevators researched
• Choose military tech since I’m dealing with pirates.
• I order a constructor to be built.

Turn 11:

• Would be cool if this allowed me to customize my Civilization in some random way giving me 3 choices.
• Also first new colony:

So ugly. There’s no tooltips to even explain what benevolent and such means. What does +10% influence mean?

I choose the malevolent one because +10% research sounds best.

• I order a space elevator to be built.

No direction on what I should do here.

I choose the one that gives me a ship.

No suggestions given. The thing on the right should be a tooltip. I choose the scientist.

Turn 12:

I choose weapons.

• Constructor built. I build another.

Turn 13:

Nothing

 

Turn 14:

• Constructors being built pretty fast. So I build a colony ship. Which will only take 2 turns. This feels unearned.

 

Turn 15:

Colonized another planet.

These bonuses mean nothing to me. I choose the benevolent one since it’s just plain better.

I choose the tech which gives me stuff.

There are 9 players on this map and I still haven’t met any.

Finally!

 

Turn 16:

Colony ship built. I send it to one of the good planets I’ve found. The strategic zoom UI is really good making it easy to manage my empire.

I don’t feel like I’ve earned being able to crank these ships out in 2 turns.

Now I choose universal translator.

I think faster moving scouts (and the AI making them aggressively) would really help. But a scout takes 2 turns just like a colony ship!

Turn 17:

Nothing

Turn 18:

Nothing

 

Turn 19:

Earth is fully built up in 19 turns!

Rex has a shipyard too. Planet is barely developed but can crank out a colony ship in 4 turns!

• Colonized another planet.

Pretty.

Got another culture point.

 

Turn 20:

I want to build military ships but they are hidden:

So I wouldn’t notice them.

Conclusions

It’s still a good game despite my complaints.  But the pacing and UX needs work.

My ratings:

• Engagement: 3/5: It’s OK but I’m not very invested in my civilization. It feels a lot like work. The UI is very sterile.
• Intuitiveness: 2/5: Pretty bad. No sort of guidance given.
• Pacing: 3/5: Stuff is happening but every ship costs 2 turns basically which reduces choices. Took way too long to meet anyone else. And I never had any interactions.
• Desire to keep playing: 4/5: Yes, it has that one more turn feeling which saves it.

Applying Lessons

The most recent GalCiv III update coming out (v4.2) includes some improvements in these areas.  But again, how quickly do people want to meet new players? IMO, this is where minor civilizations might be interesting as a middle step.

As a player, how would you like to see your setup screen improved (specific options) to help cater to your personal pacing preferences?

________________________________________________________

Galactic Civilizations IV Dev Journals

• #1 - Welcome to GalCiv IV

• #2 - Humanizing AI

• #3 - Addressing Micromanagement

• #4 - A Guided ALPHA Tour

• #5 - The Ideology Compass

• #6 - Those First 20 Turns

• #7 - The Changing Face of Space Robots

• #8 - Rise of the Commanders

• #9 - Onboarding

• #10 - Do we need a battle viewer?

• #11 - Combat AAR

• #12 - AAR Drengin Human Wars I Part 1

• #13 - The Vault

• #14 – Pacing Comparisons

• #15 - Internal Factions

• #16 - The Battle Viewer

• #17 - Screenshot Time

• #18 - The Dawn of the 24th Century

• #19 - The Roadmap

• #20 - Deals of the Xeloxi + v1.04 Preview

• #21 - The Arcean War + 1.05 Preview

• #22 - Save Me

• #23 - Every Turn Counts

During the development of a game, many ideas will look good on paper only to be found to not work out in practice.  Normally, these ideas get killed off before implementation and even fewer ever get seen by the public.

In the case of Galactic Civilizations IV, because we’re going out in ALPHA, you will get to see some ideas fully implemented that we have already decided didn’t work out. Today’s example for discussion: The Ideology compass.

Here’s how it works:

There are 4 axis’s:

1. Collectivist
2. Libertist
3. Authoritarian
4. Individualist

Through the course of the game, players will encounter situations that give them awareness points in a particular area.  You can’t spend these points they simply unlock the ideology perk.

Later, players can earn culture points through completing missions (quests) in the game.  THEN they can spend a point to unlock something where their options are based on what perks they have awareness of.

Unfortunately, this is proving to be quite limiting and begs for political compass memes.  So even though it’s fully implemented, it’s going to get scrapped.

In its place are going to be Cultural Spectrums.

 

Cultural Spectrums

With cultural spectrums, players will have several different spectrums to choose from such as:

• Individualism <---> Collectivism
• Traditionalism <---> Innovation
• Xenophobia <----> Xenophilia
• Harmony <----> Honesty
• Shame <----> Guilt

It also opens the door for us to keep adding more.

When a player makes a choice, they will increase their stance on the spectrum.  However, now, gaining +1 stance in individualism means losing a point in collectivism.  As a result, when people unlock culture points, they will generally only have access to the ones that are near the “middle” unless they are playing pretty extreme.

________________________________________________________

Galactic Civilizations IV Dev Journals

• #1 - Welcome to GalCiv IV

• #2 - Humanizing AI

• #3 - Addressing Micromanagement

• #4 - A Guided ALPHA Tour

• #5 - The Ideology Compass

• #6 - Those First 20 Turns

• #7 - The Changing Face of Space Robots

• #8 - Rise of the Commanders

• #9 - Onboarding

• #10 - Do we need a battle viewer?

• #11 - Combat AAR

• #12 - AAR Drengin Human Wars I Part 1

• #13 - The Vault

• #14 – Pacing Comparisons

• #15 - Internal Factions

• #16 - The Battle Viewer

• #17 - Screenshot Time

• #18 - The Dawn of the 24th Century

• #19 - The Roadmap

• #20 - Deals of the Xeloxi + v1.04 Preview

• #21 - The Arcean War + 1.05 Preview

• #22 - Save Me

• #23 - Every Turn Counts

For this entry, we are going to give you a tour of Galactic Civilizations IV as it exists, in alpha state, in June 2021.  We’re very excited.

There’s a lot in here but so very much more to do.

Note: I’m playing at 5K so I’m smushing my screenshots down so that they’re not quite so huge.

 

Choosing a Civilization

For the Alpha, you can only play as the humans.  This is because we intend to make the civilizations much more distinct than they were in GC3 which means we really need to master the humans and general mechanics before going through all the others.

We anticipate launching with around 22 civilizations.  The main civs from GC3 will return with one notable exception:  The Thalan.  I will miss them as they’ve been with us all the way back to the OS/2 days.

 

Customizing

While you will be able to create your own civilizations in the final version, we have taken this one step further by having some easy customization part of the base civilization as well.  One of the things we noticed in GC3 is that most players didn’t realize just how much you could change on a given civilization.

 

Galaxy Setup and Opponent Setup

These screens are very basic.  We plan to make these much more tweakable than they were in GC3.  One new AI feature (not in the Alpha) is the option for players to have dynamic intelligence.  You still set their intelligence like you would before but their intelligence will increase or decrease depending on how they’re doing (to certain limits).  The idea is to provide a better game experience.  This feature will be ON by default once it’s implemented.

 

Into the Game

This is what you will see at the start.

Your Survey ship is selected at the start and you now have advisors who will suggest what you should do.  We will also have VO for advisors as well eventually. 

Survey ships do what they have always done which is explore anomalies.  However, this time it takes a turn for them to do so:

This helps a bit with pacing and allows us to justify giving a little more meat to the anomalies.

 

Your First Colony

Pretty much every planet will have an event now.  Here is the one for Mars.

The options in this example include:

1. Get a leader
2. Get an extra mineral
3. Get an extra tech

This lets me segway into what colonies do.

 

Colonies vs. Core Worlds

This is a feature I wish we had come up with in GalCiv I let alone GalCiv IV.  Lots of planets are colonizable but most of them are pretty awful.  By default a colonized planet is a colony that feeds its core world.  In this case: Earth. 

So while Elon Musk is on Mars, what does it do for us?

These planets send out potentially 5 raw resources:

• Minerals
• Tech
• Wealth
• Food
• Culture

These then go to  their associated core world:

This isn’t done yet by any means (it’s missing culture for instance).   The planet then takes these inputs (including its own natural resources) and send them to the citizens:

That’s these guys:

This is your population.  Unlike in previous GalCiv games, population isn’t some number that we use head canon to make sense of.  Instead, it is represented by citizens.

Each citizen has its own stats:

Humans, being generic race basically, have fine stats. Perfectly fine.  Not bad. Not good.  Each stat corresponds with one of the outputs of the planet or some other planet stat.

Different species have different stats.  For example, the Drengin have super-high resolve.  The Torians have really high diligence.  And yes, you will have planets with mixed races on them whose morale might change based on what you’re doing with their home worlds (i.e. have Drengin on your planet but you’re at war with the Drengin? Bad things).

Now, enhancing these citizens are your planetary upgrades.

There are three different types of upgrades:

• Improvements
• Districts
• Projects

In previous games, we crammed all these into improvements which resulted in the game becoming pretty unwieldly later on.  It also became a little frustrating because we had to name every improvement so you would be like “So is a Manufacturing Center better than a Mega Factory??”.  Now, it’s simply a Manufacturing District that levels up based on techs and if there’s something special, that’s the improvement and those are one of a kind.

The tiles are color coded based on what gives a bonus.  Bonuses being things that level up a given type of district or improvement.

All of this then ends up with the planetary output:

Minerals become manufacturing.

Tech becomes research.

Wealth becomes revenue.

Culture becomes influence.

Food…well food stays food unless we can come up with a better name.

These outputs are what grow your civilization in various ways.

 

The Shipyard

A core planet can have a shipyard.  Colonies feed the core world and the core world feeds the Shipyard.  This means that a shipyard doesn’t have multiple sponsors. Just its core world.

Early on, the ship choices are pretty basic.  Colony ship or scout.  Immediately available technologies include Starbases, Survey Ships, Armed Shuttles, Asteroid miners and others that greatly increase this.

 

Researching

Researching is very different in GalCiv IV.  Now, the game will pull 4 random techs (5 if you have a research minister). You can “reshuffle” but it will make that tech cost 10% more for each reshuffle.

We have the tech tree button locked for now but it will be replaced with a research explorer.  That’s because the new “tech tree” is much more sophisticated and not easily displayed on the screen.

 

New Colonists

There are no “administration points” in GalCiv IV.  Your limiting factor will be people. For instance, when you build a colony ship you will need to move a citizen on to it:

So even though there area  ton of planets to colonize and nothing technically stops you from colonizing all of them, you will find your population not able to keep up with your ambitions.

 

Leaders

The game should prompt you (but it is not in this build) that you have some leader candidates waiting.  Leaders are citizens with leadership training.

Leaders cost money to hire.  Eventually, players can train their own citizens to be leaders but early on, you can only get them from recruiting.  The red box you see here (unfortunately) is how loyal they are.  Shockingly, random humans I recruit for money are not extremely loyal for some reason.

Loyalty matters because it affects how likely they are to betray you.  For example, to make a given colony a core world, you have to assign a governor to that planet.  The governor provides perks and carries out your orders.  The more colonies they have, the more likely they are to rebel (thus, there it a temptation to have a single mega world but you will find that creates problems).

When I hire a leader, I can make them  a minister.  The bonus they provide is based on their stats.  For instance, Pranav here has an intelligence of 10.  So when I make him my Minister of Tech, he gives me a 10% boost to research.  If I had made him my minister of colonization, he’d have given me +1 moves but only +5 range because his diligence is only 5.

You can also assign leaders to govern planets.

Assigning leaders to marginal planets isn’t just a waste of a leader, it’s not very useful either because marginal worlds are never as effective as it would be as a colony having its resources greatly multiplied by its core world.

There are 3 other things to do with leaders as well:

1. Diplomats.  Assigning someone to be a diplomat allows you to spy on another civilization or improve your relations with them depending on your orders.  This hasn’t been fully fleshed out yet.  Intelligence = Spying ability and Social = Diplomatic improvement bonus.
2. Commanders. Leaders also have a starship that they come with. You can choose to put them on the board as ships. 
3. Think Tanks.  As precious as leaders are early game, late game you will have quite a few of them.  Think Tanks allow you to use leaders to bump up your civilization’s bonuses in various areas.

 

Backstories

You may have notice a little text blurb on the leaders.  That’s because each and every one has a backstory.  You may (but probably won’t) run into a mission that is triggered by a given leader’s backstory.  This matters because you will want to pay a little attention to the leaders to make sure they don’t have a backstory that’s going to come back to haunt you.  Similarly, a leader who has a lost treasure in the family might result in something great for you.

 

The Map

GalCiv is known for being able to zoom in and out with total fluidity.  This is being taken up a notch this time.  In GalCiv IV, the start of the game is going to feel a lot like previous GalCiv’s.

Zooming out:

Solar system.

 

Zooming out:

Sector. What? Sector.

 

Zooming out:

Galactic.

Think of a map in GalCiv III, the entire map, as being a single sector.  GalCiv IV can have many sectors depending on your map setup.  These sectors are connected through subspace streams.  You have to research techs to even see where the subspace streams and then another tech to travel through them.

Controlling a sector brings benefits, in particular, prestige.

 

Prestige

The most basic strategy game problem has been with us since the 4X genre was invented.  You know you’ve won but it’s going to take you another 2 hours to actually get the game to acknowledge that.  How do you solve that?  GalCiv IV has a new victory condition: Prestige.

Prestige is designed to have the player win (we haven’t decided if AI players can win through this mechanism or not) if it’s obvious they’re going to eventually win.  Each player collects prestige through their accomplishments.  When the human player has the majority of the galactic prestige they win.  Owning sectors is one obvious way to do that.  To own a sector, you just need to control the most parsecs in that sector.

Another way to earn prestige are through galactic achievements.

These are disabled in Alpha 1 but they are, in essence, a bunch of lore-centric “quests” that if you have certain pre-requisites in your game become enabled and reward you, amongst other things, with prestige.  So rather than having to grind through 2 more hours of cranking out ships or building influence or waiting to win via diplomacy you can alternatively win by triggering the Dread Lords return and fighting them off or uncovering the artifact that the Thalan are looking for (ahh see they’re not totally gone!) or numerous other really interesting situations.

Most achievements won’t be available in a given game because the conditions just won’t be right.  But this also means a lot of replayability rewards.  For instance, you can’t exactly exact revenge on the Drengin take over of Toria in 1543 if you aren’t playing as the Torians.

 

Executive Orders

The game should prompt you about executive orders but my build doesn’t have this yet.  Executive orders are another obvious feature that we should have had in GalCiv I but I was too dumb to think of it back then.

Here’s how they work:

The planet you directly control (the capital world) gives you 1 point of control per turn.  Your governed worlds can also give you a point of control per turn IF you place a special improvement on there.  However, doing so really makes the governor angry.

Different civilizations have different executive orders and more are unlocked as new technology and new events and missions occur.

You spend control to, for instance, get a free colony ship or get a bunch of money (with a bunch of crime) or call an election.

 

Policies

Another feature not in GalCiv IV Alpha but coming soon are policies.  These essentially let you pick and choose how you want your civilization to work.   Different civs have different policies available to them.

 

Ideology Compass

Next week I’ll be talking about this feature.  It’s actually going away so I won’t spend too much time on it.  It’s being replaced by Culture Spectrums.

 

Ship Upgrades

Fleets can get upgrades when their XP grows.  That upgrade only goes to 1 ship in the fleet.

Ship upgrades can boost moves, weapons or even give them other goodie that you’ve found.

 

Movements

Within your civilization are a number of movements.  In other games, you might think of these as religious sects.

Ironically, these only make sense when Policies are unlocked but gaining favor with these movements will give you a lot of power in the policy screen. 

 

Constructors and Starbases

This feature is in flux as we are developing this and the AI in tandem.  But here’s the short version:

Constructors build starbases.  You can upgrade them in lots of interesting ways.  These upgrades cost a new resource called Modules that are produced at your shipyard.

 

Asteroid Mining

You can mine the asteroids but rather than just conjuring them with money you have to build an Asteroid miner and and them here.

These asteroids are then mined for their minerals which are then sent to their nearest world as…(wait for it)….minerals.

 

Trading

This part of the game is still a work in progress.

New in GC4 is the ability to threaten and persuade.  You can attempt to get a better deal during negotiations by using these intangible “resources” to get a better deal.

Moreover, not shown here is that the size of the deal is governed by your diplomacy ability.  Thus, trading civs will be able to conduct much bigger trades than ones without it.

 

Space Monsters

The galaxy is much more dangerous in GC4. 

Space Monsters don’t just remove a ship from your service, they actually lay eggs in them and then the ship becomes another space monster.  This was enough of an issue that I had to write an emergency AI update for the alpha because the AI was feeding these things ships.

 

Good Planets

There aren’t very many good planets out there.  But when you do find one, you can add an governor to it in another way other than how I mentioned earlier.

Admittedly, we should add a button to take you to the recruit screen too. 

 

Optimizing Immigration

Over time, you will have a lot of different races on your planets.

Some species are better than others for certain worlds if you have one in mind.

In my head canon on most Sci-Fi shows that involve ancient races, I tend to think humanoids spread out because their “masters” picked them lazily because they’re average at all things.

 

Pirates

There are a lot more pirates and other baddies out there.  The thing to know here: Pirates can conquer planets.  In fact let’s get into that.

 

Conquering Planets

Core Worlds require invasion technology and a transport with a legion of soldiers on board.  But colonies? Not so much.  A colony can be invaded with any armed ship.  Pirates can’t colonize planets but they’ll happily use yours.

Similarly, we are working hard on the AI to make sure they understand the opportunities being presented when they see a bunch of undefended planets. 

 

Conclusions

So this is really just the start of the GalCiv IV journey.  We have so many more features and improvements to make.  The goal of Alpha 1 is mainly just to see what we broke.  Does it even run on your computer? What sort of ghastly problems did our new design not take into account of?

The rest of June will be spent just fixing terrible terrible bugs.  Then in July we’ll get into adding in the obvious missing features that we already have.  Then in August through November we’ll be implementing your ideas and suggestions as well as throwing out features that seemed like a good idea and replacing them with ones based on your feedback.

 

WHERE IS THE ALPHA?

We are running the Alpha here on galciv4.com (Early Access won’t be on Steam).  We love Steam (and in particular I like a lot of the store improvements this year).  But we really want a single forum for feedback and we want to discourage people from joining the Alpha unless they are super into being apart of the game design and development process.

I would love to hear your thoughts.

 

________________________________________________________

Galactic Civilizations IV Dev Journals

• #1 - Welcome to GalCiv IV

• #2 - Humanizing AI

• #3 - Addressing Micromanagement

• #4 - A Guided ALPHA Tour

• #5 - The Ideology Compass

• #6 - Those First 20 Turns

• #7 - The Changing Face of Space Robots

• #8 - Rise of the Commanders

• #9 - Onboarding

• #10 - Do we need a battle viewer?

• #11 - Combat AAR

• #12 - AAR Drengin Human Wars I Part 1

• #13 - The Vault

• #14 – Pacing Comparisons

• #15 - Internal Factions

• #16 - The Battle Viewer

• #17 - Screenshot Time

• #18 - The Dawn of the 24th Century

• #19 - The Roadmap

• #20 - Deals of the Xeloxi + v1.04 Preview

• #21 - The Arcean War + 1.05 Preview

• #22 - Save Me

• #23 - Every Turn Counts

 

With the benefit of hindsight…

Every 4X game I’ve played struggles with the late game.  This is because they tend to become a micromanagement slog where the outcome of the game was known long before.  So how do you address this?  Well, the wrong way to do it is with AI governors or other such “help” from the AI.

GalCiv IV flips the concept of governors on its head.

In previous GalCiv games, you had to manage every single planet you colonized. This is all fun…at first. But by the time you have your 33rd planet, it starts to be a lot of work.

In GalCiv IV you don’t manage worlds by default. They are simply little resource pips for their core world.

Inspired by reality

Let’s say we colonize a moon of Saturn someday.  Are we seriously going to treat that colony the same as we treat Earth in terms of focus?  Of course not. The same is true in GalCiv IV. When you first colonize a world, it’s just a colony.

So when a planet is first colonized, it’s just a colony, and it sends back 6 raw resources to its core world:

Minerals
Tech
Wealth
Culture
Food
Control

We’ll get into these other resources later. The point being is that core worlds take these resources and do stuff with them. It’s the ultimate min/maxer’s dream.

But before you get excited about having your one super mega world having 130 colonies feeding it, this is where those pesky characters come in.

As mentioned before, your core worlds are the ones you’ve assigned a leader to govern. You, the player, manage these worlds with the governor providing the world with perks based on their stats.  But technically, it’s the governor who is running the world even if you’re the one calling the shots. The governor’s stats determine what perks get applied to that world, but that character also has a loyalty stat.

I don’t need you

The more worlds under the control of a governor, the more a governor’s loyalty is tested.  After all, if your governor controls all your planets, it’s really his empire - not yours. Why should he keep taking orders from you? Why not just become an independent empire and take those colonies with him?

Thoughts of rebellion can come both from within and without.  It’s one of the ways the player can really screw with other civilizations as well by throwing money and resources at the governors of foreign civilizations to get them to rebel or even join you instead.  Of course, the same thing can be done to you as well.

Finding a balance

So on the one hand, you will have some high quality planets that you want to be able to build improvements on, which means assigning one of your precious governors to it. And on the other hand, you’ll have dozens of low quality planets that you’ll want to have feeding those core worlds.  Finding the right balance of when to make a planet a core world and when to leave it as a colony is a big part of the challenge in GalCiv IV. 

Giving up a leader to turn a colony into a core world is a sacrifice, but the reward is being able to really magnify the production of that core world with resources coming in from its associated colonies.  Just don’t overdo it, or you’ll find your civilization filled with rebellion and crime.

________________________________________________________

Galactic Civilizations IV Dev Journals

• #1 - Welcome to GalCiv IV

• #2 - Humanizing AI

• #3 - Addressing Micromanagement

• #4 - A Guided ALPHA Tour

• #5 - The Ideology Compass

• #6 - Those First 20 Turns

• #7 - The Changing Face of Space Robots

• #8 - Rise of the Commanders

• #9 - Onboarding

• #10 - Do we need a battle viewer?

• #11 - Combat AAR

• #12 - AAR Drengin Human Wars I Part 1

• #13 - The Vault

• #14 – Pacing Comparisons

• #15 - Internal Factions

• #16 - The Battle Viewer

• #17 - Screenshot Time

• #18 - The Dawn of the 24th Century

• #19 - The Roadmap

• #20 - Deals of the Xeloxi + v1.04 Preview

• #21 - The Arcean War + 1.05 Preview

• #22 - Save Me

• #23 - Every Turn Counts

 

So I turn 50 this year. 

It's an arbitrary milestone but such milestones gives us an opportunity to take stock in our lives.

I wrote on my Facebook page that I get frustrated being a failure.  My friends and family were quite worried and I should have given more context to my feelings which is what I am going to do here.

We all have certain personality traits that can get in the way of accomplishing what we want.  Maybe you just want to lose some weight and you just can't stick to a diet. It makes you feel bad. You might feel like a failure. Maybe you have a great family. Lots of friends. But having goals that you fail to meet because of your own character shortcomings is extremely frustrating.  That's where my head lives a lot of the time.

People who know much about me know I have a lot of "haters".  That sort of thing doesn't bother me because they don't really hate me. They hate a caricature of me.  I always joke to my wife "There are so many legitimate reasons to hate me but these people focus on things made up by other people."

What makes me feel like a failure -- what has always made me feel like a failure (going back many years) is that I have 3 gaping personality flaws that prevent me from reaching my potential:

1. Cognitive Dissonance
2. Emotional investment in abstractions
3. Fear of change

I call it the Barrier of denial.

When you look at someone like Elon Musk, whether you like him or not, it can't be denied he has accomplished great things.  Amazing things. And from reading up on him, he clearly does not have the 3 flaws I listed above.  Sure, he has other flaws but I don't think people should define success or failure based on how they compare to other people.  People should try to be the best person they can be. And it is my failure to do that is what frustrates me.

Let me outline a few examples of what I mean of failure.

Galactic Civilizations for OS/2

I wrote this game while in college. And IBM recommended this guy and his "company" called "Advanced Idea Machines" to publish it at the stores. Now, under the covers, IBM did all the real work to get it at the store. But AIM was actually just this guy, a scammer. And I should have known he was a scammer.

He sent me a bunch of "marketing" shirts for the game with the tagline: "Have you met the nieghbors".  Yes, misspelled.  That was the moment I was pretty sure that I was being scammed.  But I did nothing.  

* Cognitive dissonance (IBM recommended him therefore I must be wrong)

* Fear of change (I've already gone this far, I'm sure it'll be OK)

Needless to say I didn't get paid.  The game made millions and I saw nothing.  Imagine how things might have gone if 1994 era Stardock had millions of dollars to build up rather than $15,000 (that's how much I got selling copies of the "Shipyards" expansion to people via floppy disks over Usenet).  

And in my bones, I knew this guy was a scammer.

OS/2 in general

Stardock stuck with the OS/2 market for a long time after it was doomed. For most Stardock customers, we began in 2000 or 2001 with Object Desktop, WindowBlinds, maybe The Corporate Machine game (or later with Sins of a Solar Empire and Fences).  But in the 1990s, Stardock was arguably the #1 ISV for OS/2 -- for both utilities and games.  

If you walked into a store carrying OS/2 software in 1996 it was mostly our software whether you wanted games or utilities.  And yet, I knew OS/2 was doomed in 1996.  How? Because I had a bunch of people at IBM calling me telling me that IBM had disbanded the OS/2 team and that I should migrate to Windows immediately.  These were colleagues from IBM in Boca Raton and Raleigh who were taking some risk telling me this.   And what did I do? Nothing.

* Emotional investment in abstraction (it's just a little bit dead! It's still good! It's still good!)

I was so "into" OS/2.  People get behind causes.  Look at the people who get emotionally invested in a platform (Steam, PlayStation, XBOX, Linux, Mac, etc.).  I get it.  I could not admit that the thing I was so into was going to die.

Imagine how things might have gone if I had ported Galactic Civilizations to Windows in 1996 instead of waiting until 2003 when it required a rewrite (because of technical changes).  It would have been easy to release GalCiv for Windows NT 4.0 and Object Desktop for Windows in 1996.  But I couldn't betray "the cause".

Instead, I waited until I was laying off friends and colleagues at Stardock to limp over to the Windows market in 1999. 

And even at that point, we had plenty of OS/2 customers screaming at me that I was greedy or selling out or "betraying" them or whatever.   Never become emotionally invested in a platform.

And on it goes

But these are the kinds of mistakes I have continued to make: Knowing a problem and not acting on it due to a flaw whether that be Elemental, MyColors, or canning the Star Control: Origins project in 2017 when its development had gone off the rails (imagine how different recent events would have gone if I had simply killed that project before the drama stuff came up a year later).

For me, feeling like a failure is an expression of frustration that I still can't overcome my personal failings.  I've gotten better about these failings but I still find myself not making "the hard decision" because of the flaws I mentioned above.

I thought you guys might find this very interesting:

Written by Mark Anderson (which is why you still will find stars named Anderson in the game)

The Galactic Civilizations Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)  Document.

By Mark Anderson
1994

Some editing by Brad Wardell (just an itty bitty tiny little bit).
(Actually, if there is something that sounds real authoritative and
 deals with some of the intricacies of OS/2 and GalCiv, it's Brad's
 fau... handiwork.)

This document can be freely distributed.

Please Feel free to contribute to this document!  
My internet address is:  wombats@nmrfam.wisc.edu
Send all your wishlists, cheats, questions, etc. to me!

This document is broken into the following areas:


[1]     The Game
            1.1 Description
            1.2 Hardware Requirements
[2]     Frequently Asked Questions (Strategies and other hot tips)
[3]     Cheats
[4]     How the AI is done
[5]     Data and Numbers (incomplete)
            5.1 Technology Tree
            5.2 Projects
            5.3 Galactic Achievements
            5.4 Technology and Ships
[6]     Wishlist

****************************************************************

THE GAME
Chapter 1.1

GalCiv is an interstellar strategy game that puts humanity in the
position of getting a fresh start with chance to re-direct the
path of humanity for good, evil or shades thereof.  The premise 
of the game has an interstellar colony ship from Earth jumping to
some other galaxy via a freak wormhole.  This forms the core of
humanity.  The new galaxy is already inhabited by one to five
(player selectable) other space-faring races.  The
"personalities" of the races can be determined randomly or they
can be chosen by the player, but the range of variation is less
if this is done. The human player (the actual "alien" in this
setting) directs the research paths of humanity, the planetary
construction and the ship building endeavors of the planets. 
More importantly, various "events" occur that require the player
to make distinct choices between good, evil or neutral.  These
choices can affect planetary production or budget levels, but
they also affect how the various alien races interact with the
human player.  The game is allows the player to win by either the
classic, total conquest mode or a more cooperative mode of
allying with all of the factions of the galaxy.

One of the greatest appeals that the game has over other strategy  
games is that the multi-threaded, multi-tasking architecture of 
OS2 permits the use of real (whatever that means  AI.  In play
terms, it means that your opponents actually use better strategy
at the harder play levels, rather than relying on various
"cheats" to give them enough advantages to make the game a
challenge.  The level of "smartness" is adjustable for each race
in the game and varies from "brain-dead" to "incredible" in 6 
steps.  The smartness levels less than "genius" are actually
handicapped.  Brad Wardell's discussion of this feature is
detailed below.



The game features economic and population growth models that take
into account the level of taxation and the level of happiness of
the people.  The level of happiness is related to the level of
social amenities on the planet as well as the degree of freedom
that is availible within the type of government.  The game
designers admit to being influenced by "supply side" economics,
so your strategies in the game should take this into account. 
The more democratic forms of government (Star Democracy and Star
Federation) have a senate that has elections every decade.  Your
level of popularity determines your level of support in the
senate.  The senate has the power to reject declarations of war
_or_ changes of governmental form.  They actually vote on these
decisions and are not a rubber stamp for or against your
decisions.

Hardware Requirements
Chapter 1.2
SDS recommends at least a .... (i will look this up), about 14 MB
hard disk free (plus the swap space requirement of about 12 MB, but
remember that this is a SYSTEM swap space, not just for GalCiv), 8 MB
of RAM and all the speed you can get.  (not that you need the speed 
to run GalCiv, it's just that it's more interesting to drive a Lotus
than a Yugo.)  This is, more or less, the full installation with 
..avi files and sound.

*****************************************************************
************ STRATEGIES and OTHER HOT TIPS **********************
*****************************************************************
Chapter 2

How do I ????
   The on-line help files actually make some of this faq a bit
   redundant.  Most of the button, menus, windows, etc. appear to
   be nicely arranged in a hypertext file.  Since this is an OS/2
   program, help is just another window you can consult during the
   the game.  Play with it, it's informative.  This is not to say
   that the help is complete.  It is missing some of the "Data
   and Numbers" stuff I've outlined below, and has two large sections
   wherein it explains that something goes in this spot.

How do I find the best planets?
   Scouts seem to be the best way of locating any planets of
   worth.  Sometimes, if the geometry of the situation is
   right, you might be able to predict where another race's 
   colony ship is headed and beat them to the spot.  

   John Martz suggests using 2 scouts to block another race from
   colonizing a choice planet before you do.  This strategy works
   until impulse when you need 3 scouts.  There are seldom any
   planets left to colonize once you get Warp Drive.

   Other than this, send your scouts out on an ever increasing 
   spiral and send out the colonists.  The scout can be sent on
   a diagonal sweep through a quadrant to pick up >50% of the
   area in one pass or send it on a U-shaped course to pick
   up 100%.  The path of the "U" can be adjusted to have the
   scout adjacent to the next target quadrant when it finishes.
   Two scouts could be used to map a quadrant in one pass.



How does the economic system function?
   There are three factors that affect the economy directly.

   1) the tax-n-spend icon [$]: This icon gives you access to two
   sliders that control the taxation rate and the spending rate. 
   Each represents the percentage of the availible that you are
   tapping into, be it taxable income or spending capacity.  Set
   the % at 100 for taxes and you're taking all of the peoples'
   money.  They will not like this.  Set the % at 100 for
   spending, and you are spending at your maximum ability to
   spend.  If you take in more money than you spend, it builds up
   in a treasury.  Aside from overt taxation, your government
   sponsors inter-galactic traders that give you a cut.  This
   helps fund your ambitious goals of ....inter-species alliance
   or galactic conquest.  It should be noted that Dean Iverson first
   proposed a model similar to this one to Brad and company. 
   Continuing efforts on the part of Steve Lamb, one of the beta 
   testers, helped convince SDS to implement this model in the game.
   This is a compliment to Dean and Steve since the previous one was
   a bit...less flexible.
        
   2) the allocation icon [three horizontal sliders]: This icon
   gives you access to three slider that control the % of your
   spending that is going into military projects (star ships,
   including colony ships and freighters), social projects
   (entertainment centers, antimatter plants) and research
   (technology advancement).

   3) the planets [planets]: Each planet can handle building one
   project or one ship at a time.  If no planets are actually
   building something, then you are not actually spending any
   money and any reserve goes into your treasury.
 
How do I allocate my funds?
   Funding is divided between ships (military), research and
   social spending (planetary construction).  In the early game,
   I've tried pumping out the colony ships as fast as possible
   with a 60/30/10 split on resources, plus setting my spending
   level at 80% and keeping taxes at 28%.  Observations: it's not
   a sure-fire plan.  I seem to spend too much time playing
   "catch-up".  I need to catch-up in research, social spending
   and despite the high spending on colony ships, planets.  I'm
   now trying a more even split.  Any comments on this would be
   appreciated.

   A more successful approach that I have using lately was
   suggested by John Martz.  Set the the resource sliders to a
   25/50/25 split.  This game is driven by technology.  He with
   the best tech wins, or at least has a good shot at winning. 
   Getting to Impulse as fast as you can is paramount.  Now, pump 
   out the colony ships and use you're hopefully superior movement
   rate to compensate for your lack of omniscience.  On the 
   technology front, shoot for Universal Translator and then 
   Galactic Trade.

How do I increase the population of my planets?
   Make happy people.  Happy people do happy things, and one of
   those things is to increase the planet's population.  One main
   influence is taxation.  If the tax rate is too high, then the
   population does not grow, and in fact, even decreases.  It is
   not so much that you're taxing your people to death but that
   instead of staying in your little settlement, they've joined
   the Inter-stellar Posse Commitas.  A planet is a very big
   place, and a few hundred thousand, spread out, would be real
   hard to find.  However, be careful about lowering the tax rate
   since the population gets even more unhappy about raising
   taxes once they've been lowered than if you had kept them the
   same.

 

   Taxation aside, another method is to increase the moral of the  
   people through various social programs.  Planetary programs
   have primarily three functions: increase moral, increase
   production or other.  Most programs have mixed benefits but
   some target one aspect in particular.  Example: Entertainment
   Networks.  They do not help research or starship attacks, but
   your people are much happier.

   If your people are unhappy living where they are, ship them
   somewhere else; off to war, for example.  I've been known to
   stick them in orbit, waiting for the next war.  Reducing the
   population of a planet is one way to make the remaining people
   happy.  It's best not to speculate why.  

   Reduce pollution.  Polluted planets are unhappy planets. 
   Although Earth First! would not be a good name for unhappy
   people in this situation, the projects your planets are
   building may have to be put on hold to prevent widespread
   revolt.  Consider building pollution abatement projects.

   And lastly, reform your government.  The increased freedoms of
   the Star Democracy and the Star Federation can generate
   happier people.  However, if you already have low morale (40%
   or less), going to these forms of government may actually
   foster widespread revolt.  While I've not tested it
   personally, I am under the impression that Imperial
   Governments do not suffer revolts.  Or, at least, it has
   to get a _whole_ lot worse than under the other two forms.

A GENERAL NOTE!!!!
   DON'T FORGET THE RESOURCE ALLOCATION BUTTONS!!!
   The details window of the planet can let you fine tune the
   amount of resources you spend on various aspects of your
   planet.  You can vary the allocations between social projects
   (the cornucopia), military projects (the open-end wrench),
   research (the OS/2 terminal), and morale (the microphone).
   Consider allocating resources at the local level instead of
   doing it galactically with the sliders.  (thanks, John)

Which research path should I select?
   The beginning is easy.  Take General Cold Fusion, followed by
   Impulse Drive, then Universal Translator and Galactic Trade.
   Start your trading empire since money is the key!!!!!  Then,
   pick up Galactic Diplomacy and race for Warp Drive (via 
   Antimatter) and Shields (via Deflectors).  Then, grab
   Battle Tech I.  Above all, trade, trade, trade.  Tech and
   goods.  However, don't trade Battle Tech unless it's with
   an ally!  John Martz first articulated this strategy in
   several of his posts to comp.sys.os2.games. Of course, there
   are lots of ways to play the game, this is one that works for
   many.

What's the best way to conduct a war?
   Aggressively!  Given the design of the game, being the 
   attacker is _the_ bonus.  What I mean by this, is that you
   should _attack_ incoming, enemy vessels, rather than letting
   them attack your systems and using the planetary defense bonus
   as your protection.  Cover your home systems with one
   (maybe 2) ships and have a fleet nearby to attack incoming,
   enemy vessels.  It can also be handy to leave one planet
   unguarded to act as a trap for enemy transports.  Some of the
   personalities in the AI do not see ships sitting in space as a
   vicious threat, which they are.  They only occasionally
   attack them.  Beware of Draginol.  This military commander
   was tweaked to counter this strategy and makes extensive use
   of stealth cruisers.



How do I make friends and influence enemies?
   Trade.  Other routes of influence are the "secretly declare
   war" option and the "destablize" option under the GIA.

How do I select the best trade routes?
   Rich planet to rich planet, I think.  I must admit to not
   being very quantitative on this one, but that is what I think
   I've been seeing.  Do note, that as your planets improve,
   you will need to send out new freighters to take advantage
   of your increased planet wealth.  New technology begets new
   products for trade that in turn require new trade routes to
   be established.

How do I bargain with those dirtba.... the customers?
        hmmm????  
   In general, there are three basic characteristics for the race
   with whom you are attempting to bargain.  The first is their
   "greed" level.  I guess this affects how quickly they are
   satisfied with a deal.  The second characteristic is how
   ethical they are.  I suspect this governs whether the initial
   bid will be reasonable or not.  The last racial trait is
   guillibility, which is easily tied to how tough it is to just
   plain bargain with them.  As a note, your fifth bid is your
   last bid.  If that bid is not accepted, you have lost the
   deal.
   

Which planets should be doing what construction?
   Obvious suggestions: always opt to increase production on a
   planet, but other than that, chose military projects for the
   frontier planets and social/research projects for the interior
   planets.  Beyond this, any planet I've colonized has built
   "Soil Enhancement" followed by "Schools" and then
   Entertainment Network".  All three are cheap to build. Schools
   have no maintenance cost so that is why I include them.  The
   choice of the Entertainment Network may be dubious.  It is 
   expensive to maintain.
   
   John Martz suggested Schools then Soil Enhancement.  Since 
   a solid research program can be the key to this game, I concur
   with this strategy, unless your tax rate is too high.  If the
   the tax rate is high (40%+) then the morale of the inhabitants
   may be too low.  Schools do not add enough morale, but a Soil
   Enhancement project may.

Aside from an Excaliber, are there really any better ships than a
starfighter?
   Yes, there are.  From reading the net posts, the most 
   commonly used ships for offense are War Hammers, Interceptors,
   and Battle Ships.  Interceptors, with their superlative speed,
   are good for scouting out what, if any, enemy ships are
   approaching the area.  Use the interceptor as a lure to drag
   the enemy ships away from the vulnerable system.  Interceptors
   are just good enough to try and whomp the occasional
   transport.  However, they will often take damage from these
   attacks, so caution is advised.  War Hammers are
   a poor man's battle ship.  Yes, they can take out a Battle
   Ship now and then.  But, they will often take damage from such
   an encounter.  The AI will usually not attack a ship at full
   strength but seldom lets a wounded foe escape.  The Battle
   Ship (and its off-spring) is the queen of the battle field. 
   Keep one or more handy near the home worlds for defense and
   send the rest out on conquest.  Watch the damage they
   accumulate.  If one takes too much, send it home for repairs. 
   They cost too much to try and rebuild from scratch.  In
   addition, Battle Cruisers are a good ship when you can't build
   War Hammers.  They are cheaper than Battle Axes, with a better
   defense and higher speed.  

   For defense, the Defender, in orbit, is a good ship.  If you
   opt to be a good player (or you manage to trade for it), the
   Corvette is an excellent ship on defense.  In orbit, it can
   take the occasional Battle Ship.  This is definitely worth it!

   As for the other ships, one of the most important is the
   transport.  Although I have yet to use this strategy, it would
   seem that building some transports on a planet when it's not
   doing any other projects is a good idea.  You can blast the
   opposing star fleet to radioactive debris but you've done
   nothing unless you can invade!

   And for completeness, the colony ship is, of course, without
   peer for being important!  Next, try the freighter.  Without
   enough revenue from trade, your dreams of empire will most
   likely come to naught.  I would suggest holding a few
   freighters in reserve for the inevitable lose of a trade or
   two during a conflict.



I'm getting some crazy swapper growth. What did you guys do? Can't 
you write a simple video game? Where's my lawyer???
        Swapper growth was one of the most trying problems we had 
with GalCiv.  Because there are few large scale games (at the time 
of GalCiv, there are no others that we know of), many of OS/2's more 
obscure API calls were not well tested. As a result, tiny leaks in 
OS/2 never got caught.  Lucky for us, GalCiv uses those calls a lot 
and  those tiny leaks add up.  There are, however, some solutions to 
the problem (if you are getting it).
        #1      Make sure you have GalCiv v1.01c or later. It works
                around most of OS/2's leaks.
        #2      MOST IMPORTANT: Set your swapper file size to default 
                to at least 8 megabytes. This can be done by going to 
                the config.sys and changing the second number in the
                swapper path statment to 8092.  We do not know why 
                this works but in my experience, this completely 
                eliminates swapper growth. I theorize that once your 
                swapper starts to grow in OS/2 (particularly OS/2 3.0)
                it will just grow and grow and grow.  By the way, this 
                advice applies to every OS/2 app, not just GalCiv.
        #3      If you are still getting growth, try turning off the 
                sound and making sure Fastload (Windows) isn't activated.
        #4      If none of the above work, contact IBM or SDS or AIMS.



How to I invade other colonies?
   You need to build Transports.  You obviously can't take over an 
   entire planet with a star fighter so you need troops.  When you build 
   a transport, you can put troops onto the ship and then take it to an 
   UNDEFENDED planet.


I haven't bought GalCiv yet. What other games is it like?
   It is most like Civilization with respect to the fact that you are trying 
   to create a civilization.  It is like Empire in terms of how you work 
   you strategy. Each ship is its own unit.  It also combines some elements of
   Masters of Orion since you can win the game by forming a united galaxy 
   and diplomacy is a much more important aspect of the game than in 
   Civilization or Empire.


I really like GalCiv but I miss the feature in Masters of Orion where I 
could design my own ships.  Is there any way to make GalCiv more like 
Masters of Orion?
   On January 1, 1995, SDS will be releasing Shipyards for GalCiv which 
   will be an add on that lets you do just that. When Shipyards is 
   installed, a new button will appear on the icon bar that will let you 
   create new ships. Your opponents will also be able to build their own 
   ships. You can even choose how your ship will look like.  One added 
   feature is that you can "steal" ship designs from your opponents.


Is it easier to win by being good or evil? Where's the payoff for being 
a good guy?
   Being a nice guy has never meant that you get rewarded. It works 
   like this though, good guys are treated better by other nice 
   civilizations.  Being a bad guy offers a lot of short term benefits 
   but good civilizations will likely come after you while other evil 
   civilizations won't lift a finger to help you. There are about a 
   dozen technologies available only to good guys (there are also about 
   10 technologies only available to evil players too).

I've been hearing a lot about GalCiv but where I live there are no stores 
that carry OS/2 software. How can I get GalCiv?
   The best thing you can do is to try to get your store to carry it. 
   However, if that doesn't work, you can order it from numerous sources 
   including SDS.  SDS's number is (313)782-2248 (FAX: 313-782-9868). All 
   you need is a credit card (or you can order it COD). They'll need your 
   name, address, city, zip, credit card number and expiration date.  A 
   distributor called Micro Central will be the place to tell stores that 
   they can get it from.

I don't have OS/2, just Windows 3.1.  Will there be a Windows 3.1 version 
of GalCiv?
        No.



How do I repair my ships?
   Take them home.  A ship can only be repaired by placing it in
   orbit about its home-WORLD, not system.  Also note that if a
   ship is in orbit about it's homeworld and it takes damage, it
   is not automatically repaired.  Take it out of orbit and back
   in to repair the damage.  Shakedown cruise?  ((This may not be
   true for the GA.  Let me know about this.))
   
What does it mean that this game has a configurable set-up?
   For me, it means that I can move the quadrant map to the left
   hand side of the screen, move the button bar to the middle and
   over-draw the graphs and button bar with my star map.  If I
   need the other two, I use the RMB to pop them up.


*****************************************************************
************ CHEATS and OTHER BLACK HOLES ***********************
*****************************************************************
Chapter 3

There are at least two little "holes" in the game for
unscrupulous players to exploit.  Or frustrated players....
Or those days you just wanna trash the galaxy and you don't care
how you do it....Or....

1) "REAL" Warp Drive
    If you move your ship out the corner of a border quadrant at
the border, your ship will appear in the next quadrant in the
same square you attempted to "leave".  This is obviously a way of
moving REAL FAST  (done in a Dave Barry voice).

2) Population Growth via "Shore Leave"
   If you remove all the troops from a transport, leave and then
return that ship to its homeworld, it will instantly gain another
20,000 troops (20 legions).  Repeat as needed.  As a note, this
is also a bug.  In the bug state, your transport full of legions
gets "repaired" to the 20 level.

3) Prescience
   You can always save the game after it starts and then map out
the universe.  It would probably be easiest to do a <print
screen> and then annotate the print-out.  Then, restart.
Since the AI doesn't cheat, you can be a true prophet and
know exactly what is going to happen.

*****************************************************************
*****************************************************************
The following is courtesy Brad Wardell of Stardock Systems,  Designer
of GalCiv.  Brad hides at 22wardel@cs.wmich.edu.  I did some editing.

The AI:

The AI is split into two modules: SDSAI.DLL which is a general
artificial intelligence engine that we'll be using in other
products and GCAI.DLL which is specific to GalCiv.

The key thing to remember about the AI in GalCiv is that it does
not make a distinction between you and the computer players.  It
uses the same code as the human players does for moving ships,
building projects, etc.  It plays by the same rules except for a
couple of important differences: 

#1  The Computer players are NOT currently allowed to purchase
ships. We felt that it would make the game too difficult if the
computer players were allowed to (like you can) just use their
treasury and buy a ship every turn.  If people are able to beat
the AI regularly on the higher levels then we may reconsider this
but for now, this human advantage is in the GA.

#2 Human players cannot send the AI nasty messages like the AI
can to you.  This is obviously for entertainment value.  Human
players also can't ask for help from friendly players in the form
of "give us ships".  This may be  added in a v1.1 or something.

#3 The computer players start out with a planet whereas you start
out in a space ship.  This is for plot reasons.  Unlike the
betas, in the GA you will have the possibility of having type 16
planets in your starting quadrant (in the betas, you only got
class 12 planets guaranteed).

#4 The Aliens already know what color all the stars are in surrounding
quadrants.. This is a huge advantage since yellow stars almost always have
a nice planet in them.  This was put in for plot reasons (beta 1 testers
complained that it didnt' make any sense for the AI not to have mapped
out most of the galaxy (afterall, we earthlings have in our native galaxy
over the milenium).


Other than that, the AI follows the same rules.  If you find that
the AI is doing something you deem unfair, email me with a bug
report because that is what it would be, a bug.  The AI doesn't
distinguish between you and other players for among other things,
the possibility of adding modem/network play in later versions
(should the game do well in the market).

GC/AI:
        The GCAI is what we could call the politicians.  IT
decides when to go to war, how to talk to you, how to approach
you in dealing with things.  It takes into account when dealing
other playres (including you):
        Their good/evil alignment.
        Their relative military strength.
        Trade agreements and how nice things went.
        Their aggression level.
        Their cooperation level
        Their ethical level
        Their greed level
        Their insanity level* (the computer looks only at its
                               own. It doesn't know the other
                               players' insanity level)
        
        (all of these they look at their own level and the other
players).
        
        * note, the AI may not KNOW all of these about a player,
they go with what information they have available.

        All of the above information is available to the human
player either directly or from spying.  In fact, none of the
above things require you to even spy on them, since you can find
this information in the GIA window and under the
espionage/military window under the GIA.


Good guys tend to bond with other good guys.  They don't worry
about how tough or powerful the other good guy is (in general). 
Keep in mind, only REALLY good guys will totally neglect your
military or trade with them when deciding to be nice to you or
someone else.  There are 20 shades of Good.....EVIL (You can
select 5 differenet level of Good or evil for them but if you let
it randomly choose, it will have a finer granularity).

Really bad guys will look a bit more favorably on other really,
really bad guys but they don't tend to bond as well as good guys
do.  Bad guys may not declare war on each other but they will
also not ally together quite as often.  Still though, the end
result can be a game with Good vs. Evil if you select extremists.

The down-right neutrals (shade 10 out of 20) only care about
trade.  You want a Ferengi-type race, choose a neutral.  The
EXACT neutral type has extra logic to make it a fence sitter.

There's, of course, a lot more detail in this but I don't want to
spoil the game too much !


SDS/AI:

        The GCAI are the politicians, the SDSAI are the generals.  
The GA version of GalCiv has 5 different release level
Personalities or Advisors.  You can imagine each personality
being a separately programmed entity.  They share some common
code for things such as dodging obstacles and finding undefended
star systems that they know of, but most of what they do is
unique.  This is important because if people say, "The AI was
dumb, it chased my scout all over the place while I trashed the
rest of them, heh heh", they really should say "Advisor N is
dumb, they did ..." because the others may not (and do not) do
things the same way..  Some Personalities go for having a large
trading fleet, others will play vulture and will quit colonizing
quickly and then build trasnports (gee, I bet none of you guys
did something as low as that, eh?).

     The Advisors Code names can be found by looking in the
Espionage Window under "Military".  
The names are:
              Sauronir
              Denethor
              Draginol
              Mascrinthus
              Calor

        Not all of the personalities will use Terror Stars, for
example, because of their destructive value.  People who die as a
result of being killed on a transport (when you destroy a
transport) or on a planet due to a terror star are now counted as
part of the overall casaulty list. So if you get Terror Stars (or
the AI uses them), you'll know how many troops (in legions: 1
legion = 1k troops) have been destroyed.

End submission by Mr. Wardell

****************************************************************
*****************  WHERE IS THE xxxx?  *************************
****************************************************************

- autopilot on/off?
  Under the floppy disk icon is the setup button.  This button
pops up that function and other useful functions such as sound,
avi, etc.

- background process control?
  Under the floppy disk icon is the setup button.  This button
pops up that function and other useful functions such as sound,
avi, etc.

- place to reform my government?
  Under the icon up from the floppy disk icon is the reform gov't
button.  It's the "Reports" icon that looks like a sheet of
paper.

- the reports of how I am doing?
  There are four types of "how am I doing" information.  All of
this information resides under the "Reports Icon" (the sheet of
paper).  The first option is the "Top Five Planets" listing.  One
should strive at all times to keep this free of alien riff-raff. 
A second option is the "Demographics" listing.  This is a screen
of statistics such as % of galactic population, absolute and %
production values, etc.  A third option is the button that
compares humanity to all of the other races in the game.  It's a
relative scoring that shows how much you're pumping into R&D
relative to your competitors.  The fourth option is the score
button which also gives you a good/neutral/bad ranking.

- listing of my ships?
  The icon with the Earth over a triangle is the fleet icon. 
From here, you can click on a ship and then either pull up the
ship display window (if it's in orbit) or it will plop you into
the quadrant that the ship occuppies and highlight that ship.

- place to find out how much damage my ship has taken?
  There are 3 ways to find this out.  One, use the RMB to pull up
the ship control menu.  Two, look at the strength number at the
bottom of the screen.  Three, look at how many black smudges are
smeared across the ship menu at the bottom of the screen.  The
more smudges, the worse off the ship is.

- that planet that was preparing to rebel?
  Click on that planet in the GNN window when it appears.  You
will then be flipped over to the planet menu to deal with the
problem.  For getting to a planet in a more general way, use the
icon with the planets on it to pull up an alphabetical listing of
all of your planets.





*****************************************************************
TECHNOLOGY TREE  (or "Can I get Artificial Life if I can't Phase
                      properly?")
*****************************************************************
Chapter 5.1
**** under construction ****
**** please bear with us ***

Nano-Electronics 
     -> Nano-Frequencies -> Brainwave Mapping
           -> Instant          -> Cure for Depression
              Communications
                 -> Star Federation
     -> Nano-Metal Composition -> High Density Metals (destroyer)
                                     -> Tri-Strontium Alloys
                                          -> Large Scale Building (warhammer)

Brainwave Mapping
Large Scale Building
     -> Terra Computers
           -> Advanced AI's
           -> Hyper-Computers
                -> Interspecies Philosophy

General Cold Fusion (small fighter)
     -> Impulse (transport)
           -> Anti-matter
                 -> Warp Drive
                       -> Hyperspace
                             -> Hyperwarp (if a good race)

Phasor (interceptor)
     -> Turbo-phasor (battlecruiser)
           -> Advanced Phasor (if a good race) (corvette)
           -> Mega-phasor
                 -> Antimatter Weapons

Photon Weapons (star fighter)
     -> Sensors (battle ax)

Organic Manipulation
     -> Genetic Mapping
           -> Transporters

Universal Translator
     -> Galactic Trade (freighter)
     -> Galactic Diplomacy
           -> Alliances
           -> Star Democracy

and there's more...
BIG NOTE!  missing the evil technologies!  there are lots of
them, such as Galactic Collusion, Distruptors, Master Race,
Thought Control, Clever Chip, and more!

*****************************************************************
PROJECTS - (or "Gee, we need 0-G porta-potties. 
                What does it do and how do we do it?)
*****************************************************************
Chapter 5.2


The following is an alphabetized listing of the various projects
that can be built on a planet if the technology is available. 
The project names were, in some cases, abbreviated to near
obscurity.  I was attempting to get enough room on the right-hand
side to put in the technology necessary to achieve the project. 
They didn't fit, so I duplicated the list and used full names.
The various abbreviations for effects (first list) are as
follows:  TI = Trade Increase;  Mor = Morale;  Ship A = Ship
          Attack; Ship D = Ship Defense; Gnd Def = Ground
          Defense;  Res = Research;  Env = Anti-pollution Effect;
          Maint = Maintenance;  Cost = Cost in bc.

It should be noted that since I usually play the good-guy role,  the
projects here include many of the projects that only "nice guys"  can
get to such as Advanced Hospitals.  In GalCiv, what technologies
are available to you depends on whether you are good or evil.


               Production  Ship  Gnd
Project Name  |    TI Mor| A  D |Def|Res|Env|Maint|Cost|
--------------|-----------------|---|---|---|-----|----|
Adv Hospital  | 15 05 10 | -- --|-- | 05|   |  4  | 900|        
Adv Mil Trn   | 15 -- 10 | 35 --|60 | --|   |  0  |1100|
Adv Poll Ctrl | 30 10 20 | -- --|-- | 01| 10|  3  |1500|
Antimtr Plant | 83 33 50 | 02 --|-- | 02|   |  4  |1000|
Cont Environ  | 30 30 -- | -- --|-- | --|   |  0  |2000|
Currency Sys  | 25 15 10 | -- 01|-- | 01|   |  3  | 500|
Defense Sys   | 06 01 05 | 10 15|45 | 01|   |  5  |1100|
Entertain Net | 37 02 35 | -- --|-- | --|   |  4  | 100|
Environ Ctrl  | 05 -- 05 | -- --|-- | --|  3|  2  | 500|
Fusion PP     | 35 25 10 | 10 --|-- | 05|   |  3  | 500|
Gal Curr Exc  | 72 20 52 | -- --|-- | --|   |  5  |1000|
Gal Ent Ntwk  | 35 -- 35 | -- --|-- | --|   |  4  | 500|
Gal Info Net  | 22 10 12 | -- --|-- | 30|   |  4  |1000|
Gnd Defense   | 04 -- 04 | 03 03|50 | --|   |  3  | 200|
Hydroponics   | 30 10 20 | -- --|-- | 10|   |  3  |1100|
Im Poll Ctrl  | 15 05 10 | -- --|-- | --|  5|  5  |1000|
Info Net      | 10 02 08 | -- --|-- | 10|   |  2  | 100|
Int Security  | 06 01 05 | 02 08|-- | --|   |  1  | 300|
Mil Academy   | 10 -- 10 | 15 05|50 | --|   |  2  | 380|
Mutat Ctrl    | 40 10 30 | 01 01|-- | 02|   |  1  | 900|
Multimedia    | 20 05 15 | -- --|-- | --|   |  4  | 800|
Phasing PP    | 40 20 20 | -- --|-- | 20|   | 10  |1000|
Planet Poll   | 10 -- 10 | -- --|-- | --|  3|  1  | 500|
Schools       | 06 02 04 | -- --|-- | 15|   |  0  |  50|
Soil Enhan    | 32 02 30 | -- --|-- | --|   |  2  |  50|
Treat Ctr     | 17 05 12 | -- --|-- | --|   |  3  | 600|
University    | 10 05 05 | 02 --|-- | 20|   |  2  | 200|
Virt R Ctr    | 60 10 50 | -- --|-- | --|   |  5  | 900|

Evil Projects - I have yet to map out evilness.
Gal Collusion
etc.
..
..

Advanced Hospitals - Viral Elimination
Advanced Military Training - Terror Star
Advanced Pollution Control - Planetary Destruction
Antimatter Plant - Antimatter Weapons 
Controlled Environment - Replication
Currency System - Star Democracy  
Defense System - Planetary Defense
Entertainment Network - (given)
Environmental Controls - Nano Electronics
Fusion Power Plant - General Cold Fusion
Galactic Currency Exchange - 4D Phasing
Galactic Entertainment Network - Star Democracy
Galactic Info Net - Terra Computers  
Ground Defense - (given)
Hydroponics - Organic Manipulation
Improved Pollution Control - Planetary Destruction
Info Net - Terra Computers
Internal Security - Sensors
Military Academy - Shields
Mutation Control - Evolution Control
Multimedia Center - 1D Phasing
Phasing Power Plant - 3D Phasing
Planetary Pollution Control - Artificial Planets
Schools - (given)
Soil Enhancement - (given)
Treatment Center - Advanced Pain Treatment
University - (given)
Virtual Reality Center - 3D Phasing   


*****************************************************************
GALACTIC ACHIEVEMENTS (or "Inter-stellar Merit Badges Made
                           Easy!!)
*****************************************************************
Chapter 5.3

  Cloaking Device - need: Cloaking
                    cost: 2000 bc
         expiration date: NONE!
                   bonus: 30% ship attack, 1% defense
            worth it????: yes, plus the big bonus of all ships  
                          that are built are now equiped with
                          cloaking tech so they can't be tracked!
    what if my neighbors 
              build one?: don't worry, every one has secrets.

Controlled Wormhole - need: Spatial Rifts
                      cost: 1400 bc
           expiration date: ...forgot...
                     bonus: +50% trade! and 10% research
              worth it????: maybe...depends upon if you're racing
                            for the tech that ends its useful
                            life.
      what if my neighbors 
                build one?: I don't know.              

        Crystalai - need: Advanced AI's
                    cost: 4000 bc
         expiration date: none
                   bonus: adds +1 to all inhabitated planet class
            worth it????: it's a LONG project!  But it is 
                          worth the increased population growth.
    what if my neighbors 
              build one?: anyone can improve their homes through
                          their local Planets-R-Us dealer!

    Dinosaur Park Wonder: Replication
                    cost: 2000 bc
         expiration date: Artificial Planets
                   bonus: +50% production
            worth it????: if you're racing for Artificial
                          Planets, then this is not the project
                          for you.
    what if my neighbors 
              build one?: sorry, only one per galaxy.  Copyright.

     Deep Thought - need: Terra Computers
                    cost: 2200 bc
         expiration date: Omni Computers
                   bonus: +40% research for _ALL_ planets.
            worth it????: Definitely one of the Wonders for which
                          to strive.  The 40% research boost is
                          wonderful. (what? me? pun? nyah.)
    what if my neighbors 
              build one?: The galaxy can only have one Deep
                          Thought.

    Eyes of the Universe: Sensors
                    cost: 1000 bc
         expiration date: none
                   bonus: none
            worth it????: in a huge universe, probably so,
                          especially if you push straight for
                          it and gain its use for colonization.
                          Otherwise, it's of limited use
    what if my neighbors 
              build one?: you're blind.

 Galactic Stock Exchange: Star Democracy
                    cost: 920 bc
         expiration date: NONE!
                   bonus: +50% trade
            worth it????: Without a doubt!  The only drawback
                          is the pollution it can create on a
                          very productive planet.  Poor baby.
    what if my neighbors 
              build one?: too late.  you lose.  start over.

HyperSpace Project- need: Hyperspace      
                    cost: 1000 bc
         expiration date: none
                   bonus: none
            worth it????: if you're at war, the +2 move can be
                          a real nice advantage.  If you're foes
                          have it, you are at a real
                          disadvantage, so you'd better get
                          building!
    what if my neighbors 
              build one?: read the above carefully.


    Life Creation - need: Artificial Life
                    cost: 2600 bc
         expiration date: oops!
                   bonus: +25% morale, +30% research
            worth it????: the morale and research bonuses are
                          nice.  The project is a bit expensive
                          but if you want to stay ahead...?
    what if my neighbors 
              build one?: don't know that one either.

 Nano Robot Wonder- need: Nano Electronics
                    cost: 500 bc
         expiration date: Terra Computers
                   bonus: none
            worth it????: sure, why not? not much more expensive
                          than a fusion plant and gives more
                          output.  But, if you're after those
                          info nets in a big hurry, don't bother.
    what if my neighbors 
              build one?: no problem, build your own!

  Peace for a time- need: Interspecies Philosophy
                    cost: ????
         expiration date: ????
                   bonus: ????
            worth it????: no clue.  I've never had a chance to  
                          build this project.  Wild speculation?
                          It can only be built by alien races.
                          That would be cool....in a way.
    what if my neighbors 
              build one?: You're assuming you can.

      Trison Ring - need: Large Scale Building (I'll say!)
                    cost: 1200 bc
         expiration date: none! ha, ha, ha, ha
                   bonus: +40% trade, +1% defense, +10% research
            worth it????: YES!  Just like the Galactic Stock
                          Exchange, build it!
    what if my neighbors 
              build one?: too late.


  Tur-Ahn Training- need: Planetary Defense
                    cost: 1100 bc
         expiration date: Replication
                   bonus: +40% attack, defense, +100% ground def.
            worth it????: if you are at war, want to go to war,
                          or fear being at war, don't hesitate.
    what if my neighbors 
              build one?: hope they are your friends.

    Utopia Colony - need: Utopia 
                    cost: 6000 bc (ouch!)
         expiration date: there is one.... I think.
                   bonus: +20% trade and morale
                          +5% attack, defense and ground def.
                          +20% research.
            worth it????: it gives a lot of bonuses.  It costs
                          a lot!  It comes very late in the game.
                          More experience is definitely needed.
    what if my neighbors 
              build one?: I hope everyone can have a utopia!

There are other evil Wonders (Super Projects/Galactic  Achievements) you 
can build too but those are not mapped out here.

*********************************************************************
TECHNOLOGY AND SHIPS  (or "something clever goes here")
*********************************************************************
Chapter 5.4

-i think i'm going to re-do this in the style of the project table above.
 that would be more useful.


Battleships <- Battle Tech I  <- Warp Drive  <- Antimatter
                              <- Shields     <- Deflectors

Battlecruisers <- Turbophasors  <- Phasors

Battle Ax <- Sensors <- Photon Torpedoes

Corvette <- 
Defender
Destroyer <- High Density Metals  
                  <- Nano-metal Composition  
                           <- Nano Electronics

Interceptor <- Phasors

Small Fighter <- General Cold Fusion

Star Fighter <- Photon Torpedoes

War Hammer <- Large Scale Building


*****************************************************************

********************* Future Wishes *****************************



*****************************************************************
Chapter 6.0

Player Options (those changes affecting the player only)

- let the player ask for aid from the other races (net)

- the windows for fleet display and the planet display should be
sortable on any of the columns in the display.  (i.e.- ship name,
planet name, production, location, ship class, etc.) (net)

- let the player choose the military advisors of the alien races.
Go for the ultimate punishment of chosing the nasty AI for all
the opponent races (or the opposite). (John Martz. The
masochist!)

- the naming of the star ships should allow for the place of
origin to be displayed _without_ having to pop-up a window.  This
is vital information!  (John Martz)

- or, put a "Return to Base" button in the ship display window.
  (John Martz)

- there should be an increased number of options availible for
the player under the GIA button.  These should include, but not
be limited to, requests by the player for aid; requests for
territory and/or money as a settlement for stopping a war (this
should include lump sum and "leases"); mutual treaties (ie - in a
2-on-1 war, you _and_ your ally would negotiate an end to the
fighting); "giving" technology to another race; foreign aid to
another race; treaties such as non-aggression pacts, warship size
limitations, planetary colonization agreements, etc.; and any
other options we can imagine!  (net)

Alien Options (those changes affecting the other races only)

- each race should have its own grammer.  It should not
necessarily be tied to any given race all the time. (me)

- more races for opponents with pretty pictures.  Obviously, this
is a CD-ROM option given all the various resolutions that this
game supports.  Maybe have the format for the pictures and their
number known, so that anyone can edit a race. (me)

Both (ah, obvious)

- multi-ship movement such as escort, fleet movement, and have
this reflect in the combat in some way.  A fleet of ten
starfighters should be more of a force than ten individual
starfighters.  Escorting ships should be attacked first, or maybe
even get first attack?  (net)

- projects should have variable affects on the different planet
classes, possibly at different times in the planet's history.
Examples: Entertainment Networks should be more effective on poor
planets than better planets.  As the pollution level increases,
the effectiveness of an Entertainment Network should get better,
but not enough to offset the pollution losses.  (me)

- mining outposts, or resource allocation outposts should be
availible as either projects or military ventures.  These should
be used to exploit other systems that don't have "habitable"
planets.  They should increase production without pollution but
should create more unhappiness at the home system.   (net)

- espionage should give the alien trade route table as one of the
possible outcomes.  From here, the player could use "destabilize"
money to indirectly disrupt trade (a steady decline in income or
maybe an abrupt ending of the route) or assign ships to play pirate
on one or more trade routes.  Conversely, a player should be able
to pull ships off the "line" to guard trade routes, either directly
or maybe in a "Q"-ship role.  (me)

Game Characteristics (changes that affect game play and
environment more than any particular race characteristics.)

- the planets list should be unique for each race and possibly
modifiable by the player.  This would permit the player to
customize his "own" race and pass it around for the delight of
all. (me)

- reduce the amount of "vacuum-effects".  What I mean by a
vacuum-effect is the Trison Ring description.  In this
description, it claims that the three planets were consumed in
making the Ring.  If this is a real effect, then the Trison Ring
should only be built in systems that have three or more planets
of the type that can be used to build the Ring and the system
display should remove those planets once the Ring is complete. 

In the best of all possible worlds, the system display should
include a separate graphic for a Trison Ring.



- the rebel planets need more personality.  It should be possible
to negotiate with the rebels.  Possible results would be trade,
non-aggression, chance to join the player's government.  (net)

- related to the rebel planet personality is the idea that if
enough planets go into rebellion in a particular race, than those
planets can form a new, independent government with its own
personality with a possible minor shift in the race personality. 
(me)

- GIA espionage information needs to be expanded.  The current
information, while interesting, is not all that useful.  If the
above treaty suggestions are added, then better intelligence is
necessary to check those treaties.
  Examples of needed additions would be production/project/
population read-outs on individual planets; number of ships in 
the fleet and a listing of types of ships with maybe the addition 
of rough estimates of numbers (%s +/- 10?); estimates of planetary 
defense fleets; etc.  It should be possible to target a given 
planet to discover specific information about that planet.  
  It would also be good to tie the reports of racial standing with
the other other races to only those races of which you have
intelligence data. (net)

- wars should have more effect on the population than just a draw
on the economy.  There are two main paths this idea takes, one
for democracies and one for totalitarian governments. However, in
both governments, the longer the war, the stronger the needs and
desires for peace. First, the democracy: if the democracy is at
war with a neutral or good race, then the rising tide to stop the
war should be much stronger.  Only evil governments should be the
targets of sustained conflicts, and then only if the race has
engaged in genocide should there exist strong enough support for
a really sustained and nasty war to the bitter end.  This assumes
the democracy is winning.  If it is losing, then the population
should have some sort of siege mentality and be able to "tough it
out".
  If the government is totalitarian, then the population's will
is much more ignorable, but there should be some chance for the
creation of "rebels".  Recall that a planet in rebellion does not
necessarily mean that the population of that planet has had a
change of heart.  It most likely means that the local government
has declared its independence from the central authority for its
own needs.  (me)

- to stay on the topic of war, I find it a bit disconcerting that
it is so painless to go to war with a former ally.  Maybe it's just
my altruistic viewpoint.  Consider that after making an alliance,
fighting other races for decades (if not a century or so!), you just
tell them, "You're not doing you're part" and then the alliance ends
and you go about declaring war on them and then trashing them (that 
was the goal of that, wasn't it?).  Somehow, this seems akin to me of
the US deciding to invade Canada or Great Britain in this day and age.
Even ignoring the general moral/support hit the government would take
for this action, the economic devastation alone would raise a hue and
cry that would sink the leader attempting such a plan.  Remember, 
such an action would most likely come from someone playing the "good"
path of the game.  I think that there should be some mechanism to
make alliance breaking reflect more the _type_ of government the
person is attempting to play.  (me, obviously)
  
- not all technologies are equally good for all races.  Again,
this follows the idea that good and evil races have different
needs.  For a good race,  the building of Government Collusion
should have a negative effect on citizen happiness.  The same
should be true for evil race but for different technologies.  The
Info Net is one example of a technology that should increase the
chance that a planet goes into rebellion if the race is evil
since this Net would allow the local cronies to be more able to
band together, ignore the far-off central government and exploit
the local resources.  (me)


- there need to be some technologies that are present for the
"neutral" races that would benefit their particular needs.  (net)  

- there need to be more options for government types. Suggestions 
  would be the space equivalent of a merchantile government 
  (obviously one for a neutral race). (net)
 
(attributions: if the item was plucked off of the net and I
cannot recall the source, I appended "net" to it.  Otherwise,
the suggestion will have one or more names associated with it. 
Why all the bother?  I believe in giving credit where credit
is due.  This game was programmed by real people (Brad, too) and
has had lots of input from us, the beta group.  I think this
tradition should continue!  I would also like to point out that
all of the (me) attributions are due mainly to A LACK OF INPUT.
....that's not too subtle, is it?)

So how do you make your galactic civilization feel like it’s a living, breathing thing? Put (simulated) living, breathing things in it: characters.

We have moved everything that makes sense from being an abstract number to being a character.  Population? Instead of it being 3.2 billion, it's just 3 characters. Every character has stats and background.

Every character has a set of skills with numerical values to them.  They also have a backstory and can be interacted with in various ways.  These characters do everything, from acting as your representatives on planets (governors – not AI governors – they don’t make decisions for you, they carry out your will), to managing your technology policies (and again, they don’t make decisions for you, they carry out your will).

When a character is put in charge of a planet, their stats provide perks to the planet. But like real people, they have needs and ambitions, and if those needs and ambitions aren’t satisfied bad things can happen, including them going independent and taking their planets with them. We’ll be talking about core worlds vs. colonies in the next journal. Suffice to say, these characters are pretty powerful.

On planets, population now grows in whole numbers since each population is now represented by a citizen character with their own intelligence, social stats, etc.

Jobs

Characters are given jobs in the game. All jobs make use of one of the character’s skills. Make someone a scientist, and their bonus to your colony is based on their intelligence. Make them an entertainer, and it’s based on their social skill. Make them a farmer, and their bonus is based on their diligence skill. Make them a soldier, and their resolve stat comes into play.

Similarly, characters that you make into ministers provide global bonuses based on their stats:

And of course, every species has pros and cons on these stats.  Humans are, naturally, decent overall but not great in any of them.  Drengin are very high in resolve but very low in social, for instance.

You, as the Emperor/President for Life of your civilization, must herd these cats while simultaneously dealing with guys like this:

But fear not - while there are thousands of characters out there, you only need to really care about a handful. Which handful you should care about depends on who you give what power to. Put someone in charge of 37 colony worlds and now you should probably care about them. But, some colonist on Backwater world 53 is probably not someone you need to think about…until it turns out that they contracted a parasite that takes over everyone minds and that it has since spread to nearby worlds. Or maybe that scientist on Urara IV whose wife is being held captive by the Drengin Empire and has been supplying them secrets in the hopes of getting her back.  But you know, otherwise - nothing to worry about.

________________________________________________________

Galactic Civilizations IV Dev Journals

• #1 - Welcome to GalCiv IV

• #2 - Humanizing AI

• #3 - Addressing Micromanagement

• #4 - A Guided ALPHA Tour

• #5 - The Ideology Compass

• #6 - Those First 20 Turns

• #7 - The Changing Face of Space Robots

• #8 - Rise of the Commanders

• #9 - Onboarding

• #10 - Do we need a battle viewer?

• #11 - Combat AAR

• #12 - AAR Drengin Human Wars I Part 1

• #13 - The Vault

• #14 – Pacing Comparisons

• #15 - Internal Factions

• #16 - The Battle Viewer

• #17 - Screenshot Time

• #18 - The Dawn of the 24th Century

• #19 - The Roadmap

• #20 - Deals of the Xeloxi + v1.04 Preview

• #21 - The Arcean War + 1.05 Preview

• #22 - Save Me

• #23 - Every Turn Counts