Its worth it.

and what's up with the 3D again?

I know right. The decision to keep it 2d was made long ago and has never been up for debate(as far as i know). The idea has been beaten to death on these forums, and yet here it is again.

Absolutely this.  All I want is Galciv2+1.

But that is not what you are getting... They are changing things. It is not galciv 2 HD. 

Could someone who feels this way try to explain what is an okay amount of iteration, and when it becomes to much of a leap foward, rather then a step?

I personally feel it has much more to do with wether the innovation "fits" and "feels" galciv enough, rather then the actual amount of innovation. I feel that if they came up with some revolutionary new feature never before seen in a 4x game, and it fit in nicely without distorting the rest of the game noticably, nobody would bat a eye. But if that feature were clunky or got annoying after a while, everybody would be up in arms.

An example of innovation that I like very much is adjacency bonuses.  That's a great idea that adds to the gameplay.  A bad idea, would have been 3D maps or tactical battles.  That's too far away from core GC.

You only say that because the adjacency is done right. If it was even a bit more detailed or complex, it would become a chore and people would complain about it. Similarly, if this game was being made for the Occulus Rift, there is a good chance everybody would be begging for 3D maps and innovations in the UI, because it would be a lot more natural and immersive on such a device then 2d. 

Could you try to explain why you think adjacency is good? Why does it add to gameplay? And why wouldn't it be great anymore if it was for example (exaggerated) a sim city minigame? "too far away from core GC" is a feeling, try to explain that feeling.

EleventhStar, even though I love the concept of a "simcity" mini game on each planet, this is not GalCiv.  GalCiv is a galactic game on exploration and conflict in space, how races interact w/ one another, not how great you can make your planet, however, it is nice to do on the side.

With that being said, I wouldn't mind this concept being added at a later time.

Building adjacency is nice as it gives one a little more focus on where to place buildings and a reward for doing so.  You also have trade-able resources added to this point, black holes, nebula's, a movable shipyard, a shipyard not on the planet, and several others.

Yes, you can complain about terror stars and espionage, however, you are getting more, and if you're an elite founder, you will get all the expansions so don't sweat it. 

This is another person looking for a GalCiv 2.5 more than a brand new game.  I don't want something that "feels" significantly different.  The word "feels" is obviously subjective.  Some examples from my subjective point of view.   Tactical battles would make it a different game for me.  Different in a bad way since I do not like tactical space battles at all.  The adjacency bonus is a good example of something that looks intriguing yet simple and will add to my desired level of micromanagement.  That "desired" level is tricky for a widespread crowd like us.   Some folk would love micromanagement down to the level of creating a name list for each ship crew roster.  (to exaggerate a little)  Someone like me is happy to just throw neat looking ships at each other and see who wins.  To me, the first option would break the "feel" beyond my ability to accept.  I can see adding a little to the space battles, but I am very concerned that it will want me to acquire the twitch fingers reflexes I just do not have.

I don't have any definitive answers.  I don't think there are any.  It is a balancing act the devs and game publishers go through.  The fan base demands are very diverse, almost schizophrenic.  I have nothing but sympathy for the developers of any game, let alone my precious GalCiv, which they had better not mess up.    (Looking great so far!)

You misunderstand me, i don't mean to complain. (tho i will readily admit i have mixed feelings about cut features being all but announced for dlc/expansions. but that has nothing to do with innovation except on the long term.)

I just want people to try to put into words why some things are galciv, and why some are not. How great you can make your planet is definatly part of the game, more so with adjacency, but sim city on every planet would obvioulsy be overdoing it. Where it the line between it feels galciv and it is to much?

erischild

reply 24

This is another person looking for a GalCiv 2.5 more than a brand new game.  I don't want something that "feels" significantly different.  The word "feels" is obviously subjective.  Some examples from my subjective point of view.   Tactical battles would make it a different game for me.  Different in a bad way since I do not like tactical space battles at all.  The adjacency bonus is a good example of something that looks intriguing yet simple and will add to my desired level of micromanagement.  That "desired" level is tricky for a widespread crowd like us.   Some folk would love micromanagement down to the level of creating a name list for each ship crew roster.  (to exaggerate a little)  Someone like me is happy to just throw neat looking ships at each other and see who wins.  To me, the first option would break the "feel" beyond my ability to accept.  I can see adding a little to the space battles, but I am very concerned that it will want me to acquire the twitch fingers reflexes I just do not have.

I don't have any definitive answers.  I don't think there are any.  It is a balancing act the devs and game publishers go through.  The fan base demands are very diverse, almost schizophrenic.  I have nothing but sympathy for the developers of any game, let alone my precious GalCiv, which they had better not mess up.    (Looking great so far!)
 

I see you too are having a hard time putting "what is galciv?"  into clear language. 

The problem of putting what is galciv into language is because it is more of a feeling being portrayed vs. a set rule-book of what is and what isn't galciv.

To get an idea of this feeling of what is galciv, look at GalCiv 2 and 1. Take what is at the core of those games... GalCiv 1 had you wonder to each star and colonize particular systems and travel the entire map (think endless space without space lanes) for interaction with stars. Then we upped the game to Gal Civ 2, where most people have a well defined image of Galactic Civilizations.

A lot of Galactic Civilizations follows a general 4x rule book. Keep the players time more on the main map vs. any sub-window. The exception to this feature is the shipyard where designing ships can be crucial (but this is not necessary, and can be quick for more users).

The other feature that defines Galactic Civilizations is the fact the map is an abstract of time vs. distance. The number of hexes on the map does not indicate a distance it indicates a time. The space folding works strangely throughout the galaxy and the folding of space moves at varying distances through space. That is also why you have a limited galaxy that you cannot pass a certain point. The way the hyper drive works prevents infinite travel into deep space.

The adjacency bonus fit into Galactic Civilizations as it is a seemless addition to the planet screen. We already had a planet screen where we may place buildlings down, and so in Gal Civ 2, it was a matter of room for the building vs. placement, but there were bonuses that kept the player thinking I want this particular building there. Now, take that to another level if there is a building that provides the same bonuses to adjacent tiles, then it is like there was a resource to take advantage of in that spot. Hence, it was the same idea that was already in Gal Civ 2, but moved to an advanced form. Doing a sim city version of the game moves the game away from 4x standard rulebook of keep these subscreens short. Recall you may have 100+ planets and playing sim city for a short while on 100+ planets would take a long time.

Adding resources to the main map to harvest. That is a new feature and follows more the Civilization idea. It is not a far fetched idea as we were able to mine asteroids and so this is just a simple modification of let us mine for a special resource instead of adding production. The foundation was there it was just improved.

The dual que system of Galactic Civilization. The initial removal of this led to a large uproar here on the forums. Many ideas were thrown out to re instate the dual que. Eventually the idea of the starport was realized to be placed on the map. It fit into lore and provides interesting gameplay role to this game. I would call this a NEW feature entirely and not an improvement on old features so much. The idea of moving the ship building to another much more vunerable structure opens up a lot more strategies and may provide a easy mop-up stage at the end of the game. We'll see when the AI and more play testing are done.

Why is 3D not Gal Civ? For one all known galaxies live on a plane. Although that plane is skewed one direction or the other, they are on the plane. The nature of the Gal Civ is to have a fixed distance points abstracted in large squares / hexes (now) This system would be done in a large 3 Dimensional lattice. One it is Difficult to select an individual cube from a large 3D lattice. Secondly, each system you encounter would be on the plane and so we would have 3 different types of solar systems indicating the directions we have cubes stack in the lattice. Hence, from each solar system i would have to re-orient my camera to look at the system in the easiest way to get a sense of where things are located. Recall that Gal Civ is a game that keeps the map simple at its core. The move to 3D will just unnecessarily complicate matters, especially since solar systems live on planes anyway.

All Gal Civ 3 is doing is not showing the 3d variation or orientation to make things easier to read and see. Without this, I would always spend my time looking at a horizontal plane of the solar system no matter the orientation. I look at the exercise of benefits of 3d map vs. difficulty of use on the 3d maps. If our computers were designed to handle a 3d map, then movement and such would be soo much easier. But I suspect that technology is a long way off. 

I think that's always a problem

For example in Civ5 a lot of people were complaining that "I want Civ4 but in 3D"

Sort of the irony in that is, all the recent 'HD' versions of older games (Age of Empires 2, etc) has been met with "This should have been a patch to the original and not a new game"

So a lot of times people 'say' one thing but then don't actually want what they say

Also from a game dev standpoint, no one wants to 'make the exact same game' again. People want to move on. Also like in any game dev cycle, you likely had TONS of ideas. Some aren't fun at all. But some might have been constrained by the engine, by the way the game was designed at a certain point, etc.

Also 'making GalCi2 in 3D' somewhat implies that GalCiv2 was 'perfect in every way'. Sure GalCiv2 is tons of fun. Just like Civ4 was. But they were not 'perfect'. Improvements are always to be had. new game concepts to be integrated. Game designers are always improving old systems, throwing out obsolete system, and making entirely new systems. To say we want GalCiv2 in 3D means that we would be throwing away all the knowledge from what did and didn't work in GalCiv2 in the intervening 8 years.

I think ultimately the phrasing should not e

"I want GalCiv2 in 3D"

it is

"I want an awesome GalCiv3 game"

Which is a struggle between understanding what really core concepts define GalCiv as a series of games, and seeing what new and exciting gameplay concepts could be integrated to make that experience different, yet familiar.

Galaxies are only a plane on distances in the order of 10k+ lightyears. The plane of the milky way is still 1000 lightyears thick, so unless traveling 1000+ light years is easy for you (which it is not for any galciv level civ), it really is by no means a plane. I just wanted to point that out it't not a argument for or against 3d.

I think most people here are more or less in agreement in any case: innovation is a sliding scale, to little and your game is to stale, to much and it's not the same game anymore. 

"I see you too are having a hard time putting "what is galciv?"  into clear language."

GalCiv is a fun Space 4X with a minmal but intriguing empire management and a map that focuses on distance as a strategic factor.  Ships are designed according to researched technologies and displayed in entertaining cinematic battles.   The AI has been polished to provide a consistently engaging long term game. 

Technical game features include

Distance as strategic factor.

Dual production queue.

Highly streamlined celestial navigation.

Highly streamlined empire and planet management.

Combat based on three weapons/defense types and hull capacity.

Separate tech trees for separate races.

Jokes galore.

A good deal of the fun feel of the game is an artful balance of mechanisms mixed with a lovingly implemented AI and several narrative "events" that look to keep any one game from stagnating.  The balance and imbalance of the different races adds to the overall replayibilty of the game.

As clear as I could do it.  I'm sure I missed several points others would consider key.

(Did I mention the jokes?  The jokes are important.) 

What galciv is to me...a void. A void where ideas and creativity fall into and new things emerge. So when someone says "this isn't galciv" I hear, "its not apart of galciv yet" for everything changes.

Everyone has a different ideology on this it seems, but I hope we all know that there is no one apart from yourself that will ever see this game the same way you do. Unless you believe in the first paragraph.

DARCA.