Concepts for expansion,Galactic Civilizations 3,or a new game?:Ringworlds,Dyson Spheres,'Spore',Etc.

Any ideas? Let's inform Stardock.

from GalCiv2 Forums

(It's a long read but it's worth it.)

Galactic Civilizations 2: Dread Lords is a great Game. If the following concepts are included in Galactic Civilizations, without it being too complex for the player, then it would become a near perfect game... In my humble opinion.
I know that some of these concepts have been mentioned and debated. I'm trying to use "influence" on Stardock. Hence my subtitle: "Any Ideas? Let's inform Stardock."

-researching and constructing Ringworlds Link
and Dyson Spheres (or Dyson Shell, or Sphereworlds).
Link
(see the 'Ringworld' novels by Larry Niven) A Ringworld is an artifact constructed using a systems planets and asteroids to form a ring around the sun. The inner surface is used like a planet. "Shadow Squares" provide day and night cycles and solar power.
(see 'A Hole in Space': "Bigger Than Worlds" by Larry Niven) A Dyson Sphere (or Dyson Shell,or Sphereworld) is the final costruction phase of a Ringworld. It is the ultimate engineering project of a civilization. A total sphere around a sun. The inner surface (and in some variants the outer surface; maybe both) is used like a planet. An artifact to be feared and revered for its potential.

-researching and using terraforming. Planet atmosphere/environment to match different races. Terraforming would alter a planet to a specific type for races and improve planet class. There could be slowly decreasing pennalties as the terraforming progresses. The pennalties would be due to the different atmosphere/environment. The atmosphere/environment for your race would be chosen during race creation.

-researching the ability to destroy planets and use the resulting asteroid belt to contruct a new planet again...and again...(This would require technology close to being able to construct a Ringworld.) This should be a device of a certain size to fit onto hulls.

-researching the ability to destroy a star ,and thus its planets, and use the resulting gas and debris to construct a new solar system with a Ringword again...and again....(This would require technology close to the level of constructing a Sphereworld.)This should be a device of a certain size to fit onto hulls.

-more civilizations per game; larger maps/galaxies; more races that are less humanoid; higher maximum number of planets per solar sytem: ten is a decent number.

-endless research: in later tech tree each "breakthrough" would lead to pluses to various categories such as military, diplomacy, happiness, industry, etc. Science Victory could be reaching a chosen amount above top rival(such as 3,5,or 10 times more advanced).

-multiple paths of simultaneous research possibbly using funding sliders.

-ability to construct on/at a planet more than one ship, building, etc. simultaneously; possibly using funding sliders at each planet.

-a seperate tax rate for each planet using sliders at each planet. This would be like state tax while the overall tax slider is like federal tax.

-better proportions: solar systems "tucked" into one "square/space".You could then enlarge the "System View" where there are system "squares" for exploration, travel, ...and battle.

-expansion into multiple galaxies: via "regular " drives wich would take... a long time; and later something quicker like a gate or special warp/teleport.

-the in game,each battle,option of player control over battles...space and ground(though the ground part might need some redesigning).

-orbital bombardment of planets using any/all ships and weapons:beams,missiles,cannons,etc.There would be varrying degrees of dammage to the planets infrustructure,population,and morale based on the total ships attack value.

-planetary defenses such as missle bases, beam bases, fighter bases, orbital platforms, and planetary shields.

-an Evolution / Civilization / Galactic Civilizations hybrid like the upcoming early 2007 release of Spore.Link and Link but mostly, see these video clips Link and http://spore.simvision.net/


-Wade
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Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Any ideas? Let's inform Stardock.

-Wade
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
How about a Civilization and Galactic Civilizations hybrid? Instead of just starting with a scout and colony ship you will lead up to that point.

The early game could be a version of 'Civilization',maybe simplified. You would colonize and unite/conquer your homeworld and build your first colony ship.Then the game would continue into space. This would give you the fealing of pride and historical life, even more, of your homeworld and civilization.

You would'nt even have to unite/conquer your homeworld at the begining. Once you build that first colony ship then the planet is yours. There would be a degree of unhappiness depending on the population of the other civilizations that were on the homeworld at the time the colony ship was built.

Of course, if another civilization on the homeworld builds that first colony ship then it's game over for you.

-Wade
Start11 - Customize the Start Menu and Taskbar in Windows 10/11.
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Most of those ideas are awesome but look like they would take a hell of a long time to implement.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top

those ideas look like they would be soo much fun... except for the infinite research, which would soon be boring. 



the civ to gal civ idea is soo cool.. mabe with a period of solar colonization before the final leap to the stars?



Best way would be pure spacefaring though, using the opening solar map. There would be small ships carrying maybe thousands rather than millions of people and colonizing asteroid bases etc. these bases would then translate to a bonus for your home system in the galactic game depending on the bases built..

this would possibly be the tutorial/opening mission phase? The opening solar system would have mabe the terrans, the lunarites and the martians (all human). these would then lead a conquer the solar system war until one side wins out or researches the hyperdrive. the vessels used in this phase would most likely be tiny hulls for the largest ships allowing the most powerful to be used as system defence as a last resort.

The intro could be something about how the terrans have colonized the three planets and are poised to move on to bigger things. Maybe with the mention of strange signals being picked up from deep space?


the player would then do the standard war for the quadrant until he researches 'wormhole' tech. this would then unlock a new map.. The galaxy. The player then would be able to war across multiple Quadrants and be able to do the whole 'starwars' thing, deathstars etc.. the final tech's would probably lead to the player then discovering how to move entire systems leading to the colonizing of other galaxies.


the victories would be something like:


tech:  discover how to colonize another galaxy (multiple ways? supergates, system hyperspace, etc..


Domination/conquest:  x% of all known territory + x% pop.


exploration: find x no. of special planets?


diplomatic: voted president, ally with everyone


economic: x% of all trade.


 

Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Most of those ideas are awesome but look like they would take a hell of a long time to implement.


Well most of these ideas are not totaly mine. They are parts of various games. It would take a while to implement some of them to Galactic Civilizations but it is possible. May be for Galactic Civilizations 3.

While I mentioned these concepts here they are not all my ideas. I believe that if all of these concepts were implemented into the game without it being too complex for the player then Galactic Civilizations would, for a long time to come, be the top selling game in the genre that others are compared to.

-Wade
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I would like to see the resource "jewels" replaced by mining colonies built on uninhabitable planets, gas giants, asteroids and moons. Usable sites would be very rare, say 2-5% of the zero rated planets along with moons and asteroids that would need to be added to the game. The resources could be exactly the same as what the jewels provide and some possible new resources. You would need to send a survey ship to any potential site to verify that it had minable resources

They would be originated by a special type of constructor and then they would have a modified planet screen for building the modules from base/empire profits. You might allow some population growth on a much reduced scale and perhaps some entertainment for the miners.

This would open up the possibility of many new random events like riots, industrial accidents etc. They could of course be fortified reinforced with ships and marines. They could also be captured, bought and traded and perhaps even influenced to flip. There would be many ways to add flavor to the game

The familiar constructor would still be an important part of the game for the regular planet benefiting bases. I would suggest that they be changed back to the GC1 version which could be equipped to provide all three benefits on one base. I like the starbase part of the game but servicing three times as many is too much of a good thing.

The wild card is as always the ability to program the AI to use the resources properly. I would hope that the similarity to planet development would make it a doable thing. Not easy but worth the effort.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Except for the mindbogglingly complicated ringworlds, planets+stars being destroyed+rebuilt.
I believe MoO3 has a lot of those "features." One important bit in making a game is to Keep it Simple..... a lot of people cant play overly complicated games.

More races probably wont happen since the "story" has been written already-- wont matter once the "attributes" of a civ are in xml form (so priority of "troop tech" can be set and so on..)
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I know galciv isnt a combat game, but one thing i would like to see is a more in-depth combat system. I dont know how, but id like to have a use for having both capital ships and fighters.
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I find most of these threads to be pretty silly. They're more about people saying, "Wouldn't it be cool if?" rather than something that is going to substantively improve upon the design of GC2.

What exactly do Dyson Spheres bring to the table in terms of GC2? Are they just taking all the planetary tiles in a system and moving them into one place? Do they provide some economic or production improvement? How much of one? And how will they be balanced.

Anyone can go, "Hey, let's make a game where you get to build Dyson spheres." It takes actual thought and decision making to come up with a truly substantive, important, and interesting change to the game.


-better proportions: solar systems "tucked" into one "square/space".You could then enlarge the "System View" where there are system "squares" for exploration, travel, ...and battle.


They did something like that for GalCiv1. It turned out to be kinda silly.
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
"Why build a Dyson Sphere? Energy and space."Link

This is a science fiction game with all sorts of stuff built.
Anyone can go, "Hey, let's make a game where you get to build Dyson spheres


Link
"an interior surface area equivalent to over 250 million Class-M planets."


-Wade

Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
To respond to your statement Alfonse, I thought the whole point of an 'Ideas' sub-topic is to speculate about 'possible' features. Not to put every thing writen down in right off the bat. Brain storm till you are blue in the face then pare it down to something more defined and balenced.
Well that's what I thought when I started surfing the forums to find people with lists and lists of Ideas to give a great game even more {viable} variation.
To be honest I find some ideas silly to. But I'd say post your thoughts none the less, just in case there is that one feature that would bring more richness to the experience.
The Stardock developers must have made the game very accessable to mods and total conversions for a reason. And what better place to grab mod ideas than a forum topic on the games oficial site.

As to your specific statement about the Dyson sphere concept; they can bring almost anything to the table a programmer wants. They aren't written in, so the decisions about how to execute the idea needs to be thought through. {sounds like a great place to do this muddling would be in an ideas forum.}

And you are right it does take actual thought and decision making to come up with a truly substantive, important, and interesting change. That is something I would leave up to both the people posting their solidly built ideas, and more importantly the developers themselves to sort though and find what they {with player feedback} think are the executable 'diamond in the rough' ideas that propel a game into legend.
So to wrap my thoughts up I'd say "Bring on the Ideas and bring on the Polls!"
Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Need neither energy or space. Limited space is by design so you have to choose what to build, and energy is infinite. Thus dyson speheres are useless. Same for ringworlds.

Terraforming would be another thing that makes planets infinite, and it wouldn't do anything other than slow the game down. All the species breath oxygen anyway.



-researching the ability to destroy planets and use the resulting asteroid belt to contruct a new planet again...and again...(This would require technology close to being able to construct a Ringworld.) This should be a device of a certain size to fit onto hulls.


You're joking right? A planet doesn't make an asteroid belt. The Oort cloud is much more massive than the solar system. A planet would implode and make debris or vapourise, but not an asteroid belt. Anyway, terror stars are in the expansion already.

Ten planets per system causes the game to CTD. Stardock explained this a while back as the reason we have a limit of 5.

Multiple paths at once just wouldn't be fun, the richest gets everything at once is a bad idea. You have to pick and choose what you need, that's the point. Same with multiple construction, it's designed the way it is for a reason. It just wouldn't be as good otherwise.



-endless research: in later tech tree each "breakthrough" would lead to pluses to various categories such as military, diplomacy, happiness, industry, etc. Science Victory could be reaching a chosen amount above top rival(such as 3,5,or 10 times more advanced).


Already happens, tech's give stat advances. If you want more, mod them in. I preffered galciv1's way of cross-referencing techs to unlock others (like once you had weapons and ion drive you could invade planets)

-better proportions: solar systems "tucked" into one "square/space".You could then enlarge the "System View" where there are system "squares" for exploration, travel, ...and battle.


This was galciv1. They got rid of it because it wasn't actually anywhere near as fun, looked weird, and didn't make much sense. Remember that since distance is affected by gravity, the parsecs in-between stars are more accurate than they look. It's good this way.

the in game,each battle,option of player control over battles...space and ground(though the ground part might need some redesigning).

-orbital bombardment of planets using any/all ships and weapons:beams,missiles,cannons,etc.There would be varrying degrees of dammage to the planets infrustructure,population,and morale based on the total ships attack value.


Hell no. Orbital bombard will NEVER be in this game as Frogboy has said. You have mass drivers, terror stars, and nothing else. Same for tactical combat, no way ever because it's so cheesy.

Out of all of them, the only one I remotely like is more civ's.
Reply #13 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
A lot of the discussion here has already been realised in an upcoming game by Will Wright called Spore:

Link

Link

Link

I don't think I'd give up a lot of my GC2 time for it though.

The real question, though, is "where do you stop?"

In any computer system, the designer has to set finite boundaries, otherwise the system (program, game, suite, utility) will never get finished.
Reply #14 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
You're joking right? A planet doesn't make an asteroid belt. The Oort cloud is much more massive than the solar system. A planet would implode and make debris or vapourise, but not an asteroid belt. Anyway, terror stars are in the expansion already.


Do some research. Our asteroid belt is between Mars and Saturn. Scientists speculate that it was an early planet or two that had massive collisions or the incomplete formation of a planet; possibly due to the gravity of the gas giants.

The ort cloud is much, much, much....much, farther out in the system. It's in the shape of a sphere.

-Wade
Reply #15 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Do some research. Our asteroid belt is between Mars and Saturn. Scientists speculate that it was an early planet or two that had massive collisions or the incomplete formation of a planet; possibly due to the gravity of the gas giants.

The ort cloud is much, much, much....much, farther out in the system. It's in the shape of a sphere.

-Wade


I know what I'm talking about. The oort cloud is an asteroid belt. Yes I know of the smaller one, but thats when two (possible more) planets slammed into each other. What you're talking of, blasting the planet with weapons, is different. Besides, it would add pretty much nothing to the game.
Reply #16 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
What you're talking of, blasting the planet with weapons, is different. Besides, it would add pretty much nothing to the game.


I not trying to be mean spirited.

I didn't want to compare to another game but...I liked in Master of Orion 2 how you could destroy a planet and it would become an asteroid belt. You could then use the belt to form a new planet. You could also use the same technology to terraform gas giants.
I, and many others, thought that brought some thing to that game. Yes, I know that Galactic Civilizations 2 is a different game.

-Wade
Reply #17 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Destorying the planet is the thing. Terror stars will come in, but once you do blow up a system, it'll be no-holds-barred. a) I don't think you would have time to rebuild a planet when there's every nation in the game desperately trying to stop you, and b) Terror Stars make stars go supernova. That would probably evaporate the debris.
Reply #18 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Terror Stars make stars go supernova.


Some where at this site I read that The Terror Stars in the expansion will be altered to destroy only planets, not a star.

I just think that for every major destructive technology there should be an equivilant creative technology.

Examples: Fire (a discovery, not a technology): cooking,warmth...weapon; vehicles:transportation...weapons platforms;Nuclear fission: abundant electricity...nuclear destruction

For any destruction in life there needs to be a means of equivilant creation or the universe would become devoid of interest. Stars "die" in many ways but others are created. Planets were created by nature. Thus both planets ...and stars should be able to be created with appropriate technology.

Now I know this all may be off in a tangent when comparing it to how it would make the game better but games start and continue to evolve with cool ideas.

-Wade

Reply #19 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
For any destruction in life there needs to be a means of equivilant creation or the universe would become devoid of interest. Stars "die" in many ways but others are created. Planets were created by nature. Thus both planets ...and stars should be able to be created with appropriate technology.


Sorry, but we aren't talking about nature. We're talking about mass-xenocide. Tell me one case in history where killing huge numbers of people had a "creative" counterpoint.
Reply #20 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Tell me one case in history where killing huge numbers of people had a "creative" counterpoint.


Thats not the counterpoint I trying to get at. I already stated :"Nuclear fission: abundant electricity...nuclear destruction"

I don't feel like getting into a debate . I'm going to play the game now.

-Wade
Reply #22 from Stardock Forums Top
allows to huge ship a carrier module to keep 10 fighters by module.
For example, to have the posibility to create some battlestar like the universe of Galactica.
Reply #23 from Stardock Forums Top

About civ+galactic civ Why whould you make a whole new game mode??? Just combine Civ 4 and Galactic Civ into one game... if you finish civ 4 with a space race victory you get the option to continue with galactic civ...

You would have to make some modifications for Civ 4 so you have different species, but that wouldn't be too hard. Also you might have to combine the tech trees. And for ground battles: A planet can be habbeted by two nations. A war on that planet can take very long. Also if two nations colonize a planet and then become ally's they just have both half the planet. They both have the influance, since they are ally's this isn't a problem. And for neutral nations the influance get's seperated by where the nations interests are: easy trade routes, close to other influance...

After the space race victory the planet is only marked with population, recources, importent structures and income. So the micro manegement of the planet is gone. But the military of the planet and it's city's are still there.

This isn't worked out 100% but it might give you an idee for improvement.

Reply #24 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

i'm not sure i like this one, because it makes the game a little more complicated then it needs to be.

-better proportions: solar systems "tucked" into one "square/space".You could then enlarge the "System View" where there are system "squares" for exploration, travel, ...and battle.

I like how the system is now (roughly). I would say that the "squares" or parsecs could be made larger to include larger star systems. Plus, if a ship can travel faster then the speed of light, why would you want them to putz around in a star system screen? BUT, that could be explained how they do in star trek, where warp drive shouldn't be used star systems.

btw, wasn't the system view in galciv1?

Reply #25 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

mass xenocide (ie. war) has created many things that create. Many techs that were used for war (example: nuclear bomb) become domestic in use in different forms (energy) theres an example of war making good things along with bad