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Looked all over for a thread on this game but couldn't find one. If I missed it somehow link me to it and I'll close this. Galactic Civilizations III is a 4x game by Stardock set in space in the year 2242. It is the third installment of an apparently well regarded series although I hadn't played one until now. At its core it is very similar to Sid Meier's Civilization series. You'll claim planets, build improvements on them, construct military, work and exploration ships, research technologies, fight wars and conduct diplomacy. There are several victory conditions you can work toward, such as building a universal alliance, taking over the entire map or other more esoteric ones I haven't gotten around to figuring out yet. Apparently one of the big draws of the game is the customization. You can make your own faction and design your own ships. I haven't gotten too into the tools yet but they seem pretty good. Additionally there is a campaign mode that apparently follows the story of the previous installments, but the main draw is the 'sandbox' mode where you get a randomly generated galaxy to populate and fight over. You have your choice of 8 factions, each with their own back story and perks:  The Terran Alliance, led by DL Bradly. These are the humans of Earth that figured out how to do interstellar travel without clunky star gates and unwisely shared the secret with the rest of the universe. Humans use a good mix of diplomacy and force to get the job done.  The Drengin Empire loves getting their way and equally loves using force to get it. They aren't malicious in the way that a boulder crashing toward your house is not malicious; the difference is academic. They also like to eat people.  The Altarian Resistance are humanoid in their appearance and apparently we share some genetic material somehow. They're somewhat self righteous but prefer diplomacy to war.  The Iridium Corporation is a hyper-capitalistic group that is fairly new to the scene. The corporation and actual government of the civilization are indistinguishable.  The Krynn Syndicate are a dark group of religious zealots, and nobody is quite sure what they are up to.  The Yor Singularity is a race of robots with a mission to destroy all organic life everywhere, and the war ability to potentially do it.  The Iconian Refuge were one of the first intelligent species and still have a love of technology. They created the Yor and are still fighting them.  The Thalan Contingency claims to be from the future and is trying to head off some catastrophe the Terrans are destined to cause. Finally here's a screen shot of a late stage game so you can see what you're getting yourself in to. I've only done one playthrough now but it really scratched the 4x itch that Civ:BNW didn't for me. It had a bit of a learning curve and the tutorial only sort of helped, but anyone familiar with the genre should be able to figure most of it out in a game or two. 
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May 21, 2015 03:56
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 03:14 |
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AwkwardKnob posted:Thanks for posting this! I recently downloaded this but haven't installed it or tried the series before. I've been working insane hours all week, but I intend to try it out and post my opinions here this weekend. Thanks for making a thread! I was surprised there wasn't already one; I guess I assumed this was a higher profile launch than it is. It's a very well done game and deserves to be checked out by 4x fans looking for something a little different than Civ. It does have one crippling bug right now where if a factions power goes over 5000 it rolls back over to 0, creating cascades of large empires surrendering to smaller ones which in turn surrender to someone else since they have now rolled back over as well. It's getting fixed shortly in the 1.01 patch and is probably something that will only come up on larger maps though.
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May 21, 2015 16:21
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I didn't play 2 so I can't compare, but it feels somewhat shallow. You can trade just about anything, including starbases, resources, techs, colonies, etc. You can also bring allies into wars. There doesn't seem to be a ton else though unless I just have missed it; it seems like the 'lets talk about something' option between 'declare war' and 'trade' is usually greyed out.
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May 21, 2015 16:28
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drat Dirty Ape posted:I always love the idea behind these games but I'm terrible at them. Is this game more intuitive to play than Gal Civ 2? Can you effectively automate a larger empire? Large empire management is one of the complaints on the official forums but that's mainly an issue if you are interested in min/maxing everything. Buildings upgrade automatically which helps a lot, and as soon as you take over a colony you can go and set the production queue for all of the building slots. The game badly needs a fleet management panel instead of just a ship management panel. I don't really think it's that bad but if you're trying to play with the production/science/commerce sliders for 100 individual colonies yeah it's going to be tedious.
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May 21, 2015 16:44
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Maybe it's because I love the genre and haven't played one in space before, but despite the flaws I'm having a really good time 10 hours in to the game. I'm in the middle of a game right now where the Krynn ballooned out into a massive death empire early. They're at war with everyone and holding it together on all fronts. They crossed Iconian territory to try and invade me but I got my fleet built up just in time to push them back. I'm nowhere near strong enough to counterattack but my shipyards are pumping out large hulled warships pretty quickly and as they lose ships in other wars the gap is closing. The game definitely needs better fleet management and to streamline colony management a little bit (templates would be best,) but with not having GC2 to compare it to since I never played I think it's overall a good 4X game.
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May 27, 2015 16:25
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Treemeister posted:I think its a good game, too. It's just too similar right now for me to forget all the hours I've put into the past game. I sort of agree, but I also like being able to specialize with those percentage bonuses.
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May 27, 2015 17:03
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Segmentation Fault posted:I loved GalCiv 2 as well and honestly I like all the improvements in 3. My favorite part of the game is making my own race, and 3 is really great about that. I'm mostly hoping Workshop support adds some nice custom pictures and videos and stuff for that. The game badly needs Workshop and probably shouldn't have shipped without it. It'll be great being able to download different ships and races directly, although it's fun making your own ships too. That introduces balance issues though; the AI has no idea how to handle my super-fast invasion ships.
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May 29, 2015 16:38
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wit posted:I would LOVE if AI could custom build its own ships to counter mine. Unfortunately the 'best' answer is probably locking down just how extreme you can make a ship, either with hard caps or diminishing returns for stacked modules.
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May 30, 2015 04:37
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Yeah, it's very easy to break the game with custom factions and ships. I guess the answer is the play on higher difficulties where you're having to game the system to compete with the AI but I wish the ridiculous options for ship building were toned down a bit and the AI was capable of doing the same things as the player.
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Jun 2, 2015 17:40
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They don't auto-upgrade though, so anything you've already built or are building won't get the upgrades.
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Jun 18, 2015 05:25
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 03:14 |
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No, although they do auto-upgrade when everything else in your queue is finished.
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Jun 18, 2015 06:27
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