I am a longtime fan of the Galactic Civilization series.  I was ranked in the metaverse, #48 in the original Galciv and #111 in Galciv II.  I just started playing Gal Civ III this month and frankly I am wowed.  Lots of attention to detail coupled with numerous systemic improvements make it the best one yet.  I am playing in small universes with 3 opponents (genius level) so I can get a feel for the game.  Many compliments are in order for the comp prompting for idle ships, starbases, colonies etc., the graphics, new missions,  removal of the slider, new tech trees and on and on.  Brad and crew, you've done a great job!

I believe that one for one pop/raw prod is a tad high.  In the endgame when you have taken all the planets and the opponents have transports/colony ships I think there should be a reasonable time limit for using same or else they go extinct.  Having to survey the whole universe for the stray ships is tedious at best.

I've been playing Crusade for about a month and I like the changes made by Crusade; but I still think there's room for improvement.  So here are a few suggestions.

1: More Planets should be locked behind colonizing tech in order to slow expansion.

I feel like colonization spamming is still an issue that screws with the pacing of the game.  Has any consideration been given to expanding the concept of extreme worlds to slow expansion? Like initially all you could colonize would be planets that are a lot like your race's homeworld (Normal planets and breadbasket for carbon based, Aquatic planets for aquatic races, etc) and there are more tiers of colonization techs to unlock planets that at present can be colonized from the start (desert, thin atmosphere, etc).   This would slow the need for colony spamming early on and make you feel less cheated by the AI beating you to a world you wanted.

2:  Extending your ships range should be tied into building shipyards, starports, and starbase modules in order to slow expansion .

As it is I think that the limitations on ship range don't do enough to slow expansion.  Colonizing a planet or building a starbase on its own should only expand your ships range slightly, whereas building a shipyard and a starport on planets or resupply modules on starbases would be necessary to significantly extend a ships range.  This would likewise serve to slow the player and the AI's rate of expansion.

3: The ideology system still stinks and is WAY too dependent on colonization events.  Ideology points should be tied into the influence system.

I'm amazed that after two major expansions the ideology system is still as primitive as it is.  It really needs to be tied into an existing system like influence generating buildings in the same way that the CIV series social policies are tied into culture generation.   I don't object to colonization events and other events as a means to augment your ideology points; but it shouldn't be the driving factor behind their creation.   I think influence point generation should be the main way that you earn ideology points where influence gives you neutral ideology points that add onto the ones made by your choices in colonization events with the neutral points being able to be spent on any branch (benevolent, pragmatic, malevolent) of the ideology system.

4:  Give the player more control over generation of citizens by tying their generation into morale.

I like the citizens; but I feel that just throwing one at the player every 10 turns is a pretty arbitrary way to dole them out.  I'd like to see their generation be tied into the morale system so that a high morale increases their generation while a low morale slows it.  Likewise I'd like to see more ways for the player to increase their rate of generation by building improvements.  I really like the buildings that let me train citizens later on in the game and I'd like to see that concept expanded.   This would also make the morale system more significant.

5:  Espionage could use some work.

I'm not really thrilled with the way spies are deployed to planets.   Disabling an enemy building seems like a weak way to spend a citizen and having to use spies to remove enemy spies from your buildings is an annoyance to the player.   I'd prefer some sort of mission based system where I can send my spies to steal credits or tech, lower morale, or blow things up (buildings, ships, maybe even starbases) which takes time and has a variable risk of the spy being caught depending on the difficulty of the mission and the spy's skill; but doesn't expend the spy unless they get caught.

6:  Minor Races (city states) should be expanded not removed.

I was disappointed to see minor races being pushed to the sidelines with the recent updates.  I realize they weren't working very well in their current form; but I like the concept behind them and was hoping they'd be fixed and expanded not removed.   For an example of what I had in mind, I'd point at Star Trek:  Birth of the Federation a game that had a different system for interacting with minor races as opposed to major powers.   This system allowed you to form trading relationships, alliances and even convince the minor race to join your empire (if you don't choose to conquer them) and if you could get them on board it would allow you to build special improvements that only that minor race could build.

7:  The Tech Tree needs pruning.

The tech tree is just too big with too many branches.   Combining more techs under a single path would encourage me to explore techs that I normally ignore because they branch off and go nowhere (jamming, carriers, fleet boosting modules).

Hi,

A vast amount of work is obviously being done by Brad personally and his team and this is very much to be applauded. Rather than going through all the points, I do feel that  the "population tweak" of going from square root  to 1-1 should be addressed because this would not be a "tweak" at all but a total game changer.

In the base game, population was key, then in the initial version of Crusades it was made almost irrelevant and now it's proposed that  it be made central again.  I agree that the square root (ie to the power of 1/2) was Draconian but would suggest to the 2/3 which gives pop 1 prod 1; 8,4; 27,9; 64,16 and 125, 25 to take the integer cases. To balance this, you could nerf the asteroid effect by adding up all those helping a particular planet and then also taking a power say 3/4 ("because of duplication") which would give: 1, 1; 2, 1.7; 3, 2.3; 4, 2.8; 5, 3.3; 6, 3.8; 7, 4.3 and 8, 4.8  rounding to one decimal place. 

This would still leave the second level malevolent bonus of +10 raw production on the home planet very powerful and arguably overpowered but would make it less necessary to start by going for this bonus. Perhaps a new raw power tech building could also be added near the  start of the tech tree. Not as powerful as a Durantium Refinery  which when rushed totally transformed a planet but say a +2 or +3. And if that were the case the discarded Hives could be reinstated for the Thalans, maybe as +3 rather than +4 which I believe was what it was.

This would all obviously speed up the opening and perhaps if it's desired not to make it too quick, require some balancing effect on the cost of colony ships? As presently constituted, research would also be expedited  and that also needs thinking about.

Cheers,

Jon

I'm against tech tree pruning, but have no time to comment on the other points of imploadinggoat right now.

I'd rather the tech tree be more branched (again) 

If synthetics had a low population then this would be have to be balanced out in other ways.

I can see the benefits of simple models, but what about just a bit more complex:

production (social and ships): affected by square root pop + asteroid mines (but lesser rate as it is now)

research: base research square root of population, not affected by asteroid mines, some research buildings would benefit from full population.

wealth income and influence tied to pop 1:1.

So high pop planets give much more money and influence, potentially higher reseach, less effect on actual production.

If you look at the recent Crusade builds and go to the Stats tab, you may notice that we are now tracking how many tiles you own and how many tiles are congruent with your capital world.

The direction we want to take is that one of the paths to victory is economic power through ownership of tiles (a type of trade).  

So in essence, you'd control tiles and get $$$ from vessels that need to travel through your tiles and tie tourism and many other economic elements to it.

This would allow players to have an active (as opposed to abstract) strategy of trying to expand their influence for other reasons than influence victories.

Will all tiles be of equal value or tiles that are near or connect habitable worlds be more valuable?

We just need Influence to mean much.