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Galactic Civilizations III is out

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    DoctorArchDoctorArch Curmudgeon Registered User regular
    edited May 2015
    I saw this game was officially released today and took a look at it on its Steam page.

    The first thing that caught my eye on the page was that it was recommended by Gamer Gate which was the featured curator.

    If it caught my eye I won't be the only one.

    DoctorArch on
    Switch Friend Code: SW-6732-9515-9697
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    ErlkönigErlkönig Seattle, WARegistered User regular
    edited May 2015
    DoctorArch wrote: »
    I saw this game was officially released today and took a look at it on its Steam page.

    The first thing that caught my eye on the page was that it was recommended by Gamer Gate which was the featured curator.

    If it caught my eye I won't be the only one.

    Huh...that is pretty interesting. After reading their Curator recommendations, I'm left wondering if the curator is just trolling these games. I mean "Buy these games because some of the people associated with their creation were accused of sexist behavior!" or "Buy these games because they were viewed as sexist by some people!" doesn't exactly say much about why the games should be recommended.

    However, this just reinforces my insistence to never read or pay any attention to Curator recommendations.

    Erlkönig on
    | Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der Erlkönig (the umlaut is important) |
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    Space PickleSpace Pickle Registered User regular
    I'm looking forward to trying this sometime (it won't run on my current computer)...I'd like to see more interesting stuff to do on the galaxy map, and it looks like that's the direction they've gone. Between trade routes, exploring anomalies, and mining starbases, territory in Galciv 2 was interesting because it was more than just your colonies and the more of this, the better IMO.

    Not crazy about the removal of political parties, not sure why they went that route but it's a small complaint.

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    Phoenix-DPhoenix-D Registered User regular
    Erlkönig wrote: »
    DoctorArch wrote: »
    I saw this game was officially released today and took a look at it on its Steam page.

    The first thing that caught my eye on the page was that it was recommended by Gamer Gate which was the featured curator.

    If it caught my eye I won't be the only one.

    Huh...that is pretty interesting. After reading their Curator recommendations, I'm left wondering if the curator is just trolling these games. I mean "Buy these games because some of the people associated with their creation were accused of sexist behavior!" or "Buy these games because they were viewed as sexist by some people!" doesn't exactly say much about why the games should be recommended.

    However, this just reinforces my insistence to never read or pay any attention to Curator recommendations.

    Brad Wardell (sp?) is a bit of a dick unfortunately. And that curator page is completely sincere.

    The curator thing could work fine if you find someone whose tastes match your own. Not sure if there are any like that for me.

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    Rhan9Rhan9 Registered User regular
    I have a slight issue, in that the sound/music don't seem to work. The intro movie plays fine, but the game goes silent once I get to the main menu and onward from that.

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    KiasKias Registered User regular
    While the initial release had several game crashing bugs, the past two patches have cleared up pretty much everything for me and those I play online with.

    After we were burned and let down by Beyond Earth, Galactic Civilizations 3 has been a great surprise considering how much time we dump in to these types of games. The tech tree is massive and tuned to support specific play styles (not just grabbing every tech), the game has a lot more going on than just combat, and the basics interactions and mechanic are pretty straight forward to learn.

    Most importantly, the devs have been really active in the community and are constantly updating and tweaking balance issues that are popping up. The AI still needs some work, but the difficulty scaling is a lot less cheat-centric like the civ games (though higher level difficulties do get some bonuses) and the AI feels more like another player than a random obstacle. For example, in one of my earliest games (playing solo), two AI races were at war and one of them was my friend. So, I started helping my friend out, but it wasn't going great and my friend was getting pretty stomped. Instead of just waiting for the inevitable snowball of the enemy acquiring all his colonies, he surrendered and ceded control of all his planets and ships to me. Combining our fleets, production, and research made it pretty easy to turn things around.

    And you know those random demands the AI does in these sorts of games? The nice or not so nice, "we need some help over here..." sort of messages. Several times, those who I have helped, just randomly popped up later to pay me back with interest! Good times.

    So yeah, definitely excited about Gal Civ 3. I can't blame anyone for waiting for a little more stability and balancing, I get the feeling there is going to be a lot of changes in the next month, but if you like Civ style games, this is pretty great.

    steam_sig.png

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    KiasKias Registered User regular
    Oh, and the game has custom races, which is tons of fun. My flagship race was dubbed "Infinite Hans and Frans", a civilization of Swedish clones waving a Canadian flag, but I am much more proud of my most recent creation:
    5A9690358AEEF1DA4BB472A93B3FB7BB9B0DD1A9

    Also, for any Arrow fans out there, my wife's race:

    4DAE2F46DF12A36DCA9E38C57D161E7F29EC44D0

    steam_sig.png

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    IslandDogIslandDog Registered User regular
    The 1.1 update was released not too long ago and it brought Steam Workshop support along with many fixes and improvements that have been reported by players. :)

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    Rhan9Rhan9 Registered User regular
    Sooo... does the sound work yet?

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    SceptreSceptre Registered User regular
    You know I've played a lot of 4X Games, dumped a ton of time into Gal Civ 2 for example, but I always end up coming back to Master of Orion 2. Will probably pick this up once it gets a decent sale.

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    KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    Rhan9 wrote: »
    Sooo... does the sound work yet?

    Yeh.

    I'm so glad Workshop finally came.

    All the 40k mods!

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    Dignified PauperDignified Pauper Registered User regular
    Has anyone run across the scroll bug, where the map continues to scroll left?

    PSN: DignifiedPauper
    3DSFF: 5026-4429-6577
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    TychoCelchuuuTychoCelchuuu PIGEON Registered User regular
    That's an ironic bug for a game by Brad Wardell's company to have.

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    Dignified PauperDignified Pauper Registered User regular
    Seems to be pretty common from googling, but cannot determine why it happens.

    PSN: DignifiedPauper
    3DSFF: 5026-4429-6577
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    HeirHeir Ausitn, TXRegistered User regular
    Just picked this up. Loving it so far. Has a similar feel to GalCiv2, but much deeper.

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    HappylilElfHappylilElf Registered User regular
    I wish diplomacy had a "No seriously bro get the fuck out of my space or I kill you" option

    I was on good terms with the Iconian Refuge and then they started moving fleets into my space and parking them next to all my planets and starbases.

    I would have happily let them do their thing but instead I designed some ships with 100+ moves/turn built a few and eviscerated every one of their fleets in my space

    And of course now I'm at war with them and I have these fleets of stupidly fast warships just sitting around so...

    The AI seems to have some serious issues with judging how out-tech'd they are though so I guess that option probably wouldn't have even helped now that I think about it.

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    HeirHeir Ausitn, TXRegistered User regular
    I wish diplomacy had a "No seriously bro get the fuck out of my space or I kill you" option

    I was on good terms with the Iconian Refuge and then they started moving fleets into my space and parking them next to all my planets and starbases.

    I would have happily let them do their thing but instead I designed some ships with 100+ moves/turn built a few and eviscerated every one of their fleets in my space

    And of course now I'm at war with them and I have these fleets of stupidly fast warships just sitting around so...

    The AI seems to have some serious issues with judging how out-tech'd they are though so I guess that option probably wouldn't have even helped now that I think about it.

    Totally agreed on the first point.


    So can you only research so deep into the tech tree early on? I noticed there are different "shades" that cover different sections of the tech tree, and I can't seem to select a tech to research in the next "section" at the moment.

    My current game, I just steamrolled two different civs using my custom species. I made them super fast with their ships, great researches, decent economy, but made them have bad culture flip resistance and semi-ok soldiering (I can make up a lot of that with my super fast research). Once you get medium ships when everyone else is still flying around in tiny/small ships it gets kind of funny.

    I'm glad they gave starbases and shipyards natural defenses.

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    HappylilElfHappylilElf Registered User regular
    Yeah you have to spread out your research enough to hit the next "Age" of technology

    I was annoyed by that at first but honestly it forces me to pay attention to the whole tree and not get tunnel vision and focus far too hard on certain techs

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    webguy20webguy20 I spend too much time on the Internet Registered User regular
    Just played through the tutorial. Seems real fun!

    Should I play the campaign or just stand alone games?

    Steam ID: Webguy20
    Origin ID: Discgolfer27
    Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
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    ElvenshaeElvenshae Registered User regular
    webguy20 wrote: »
    Just played through the tutorial. Seems real fun!

    Should I play the campaign or just stand alone games?

    Yes!

    I think, maybe, start the campaign to get a feel for some of the more advanced features / gameflow, and then just jump into standalone games.

    Or just jump into standalone games.

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    IslandDogIslandDog Registered User regular
    The 1.3 update and Revenge of the Snathi DLC is out today. :)

    Some of the 1.3 features:
    • Planetary Governors - Choose Governors to rule planets in your place, freeing you focus on grander strategic goals. Governors decide what Planetary Improvements to build.
    • Improved Ship and Fleet Management - We've introduced numerous UI enhancements to help manage large numbers of ships and fleets in your empire.
    • Improved Ship Destination Window - A newly redesigned Ship Destination Interface will help you organize the movement of large fleets across the galaxy.
    Full changelog here.

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    ElvenshaeElvenshae Registered User regular
    SNATHIII!!!!!

    My favorite thing to do in GalCiv2 was to throw all kinds of military and production tech at Snathi who found themselves living in my enemy's backyards.

    It was of questionable efficacy, but I always imagined myself playing Uplift with these cutesy-wootsey deathballs.

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    IslandDogIslandDog Registered User regular
    Didn't see a GalCiv II thread, so I'll just post this here. A new update for GalCiv II is out today. :)

    Changelog: http://forums.galciv2.com/473900/
    Even when a title is "finished" and put out to market, there are always little things we find that could use a tweak or a change here and there. We also know what it's like to enjoy an old game so much that you keep going back to it, even when there are newer and "better" versions of it out there.

    With help of some awesome community members, the Dev Team has taken all of the suggestions and implemented them into this update. You can find he entire change log (spoiler alert: it's long!) at the bottom of this post.

    A few words from our CEO and President, Brad Wardell:

    "It was awesome being able to work with the fans to integrate years of their own mods and tweaks into the base game. They also gave me a long list of areas where they thought I could improve the AI, which I used to dig into the now 10 year old AI source code base to implement."

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    Inquisitor77Inquisitor77 2 x Penny Arcade Fight Club Champion A fixed point in space and timeRegistered User regular
    I picked this game up on sale a few months ago, and have started trying to get into it recently. Does anyone else feel like this thing is half-finished? The lack of any meaningful documentation is also kind of getting to me.

    I really want to love this game because I loved the first two, but this game has been out for over half a year now and it feels 50% done at best. It's almost like you are better off playing GalCiv2 because at least there you know how to actually play the game.

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    IslandDogIslandDog Registered User regular
    GalCiv III: Mercenaries was announced today! The first expansion for Galactic Civilizations III with New Factions, New Ships, Mercenary Bazaar and more. :)
    Visit the Galactic Bazaar and hire dozens of Mercenaries
    Discover Galactic Bazaars and choose from dozens of mercenaries for hire! Is that anomaly a little too dangerous to risk your own life and limb over? Pick a mercenary suited for the job and order them to do your bidding. Your bones are fragile, after all.

    New Campaign! Lead the Torians to freedom from their Drengin oppressors
    Hire mercenaries and use them to help lead the Torians to freedom from their Drengin oppressors in an exciting new campaign. Rebuild your shattered empire from the ground up and thrive in the face of adversity.

    Tons of New Ship Designs
    Every mercenary has their own unique ship for traveling across the galaxy in style. Speaking of style, there are lots of new ship parts to enhance your own customizations and styles!

    Play as an Ancient Race of Warriors
    The Arceans, an ancient and honorable civilization of warriors and long-time enemy of the Drengin Empire, make their debut in Mercenaries! The Arceans have new racial traits and abilities and a unique tech tree to boot!

    Play as an Old Familiar Race from Galactic Civilizations II
    The aquatic Torians are back and ready to fight! ...Well, sort of. They're ready to hire a bunch of mercenaries to help them escape their enslavement from the cruel Drengin Empire. The Torians are at the center of the Mercenaries campaign and also have new racial traits, abilities, and tech trees for you to explore.

    More info: http://forums.galciv3.com/474543/

    Bazaar_02.png

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    IslandDogIslandDog Registered User regular
    Lead Designer Paul Boyer has written a dev journal on what's new in the upcoming 1.7 update.

    http://forums.galciv3.com/477007

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    ElvenshaeElvenshae Registered User regular
    Looks like an awesome update!

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    IslandDogIslandDog Registered User regular
    edited April 2016
    The big 1.7 starbase update for Galactic Civilizations III is out today!

    Full changelog: http://forums.galciv3.com/475888/
    Queue Upgrades Directly from Shipyards
    Constructors are ordered from the Shipyard that can deliver the upgrade in the shortest amount of time and will now automatically travel to the Starbase.

    Plan Your Battles...and Your Retreats
    The new "Battle Assessment" feature allows you to hover your mouse over an enemy fleet to see an estimation of your fleet's victory against them.

    Sort and Group your Ships with Ease
    New options make it easier to find the ships you want when you want them. Mark your "favorite" ships so that you can snap right to them in a hurry!

    Make Friends, Not Enemies
    The update to diplomacy has made it so that your allies are more likely to give you a good deal on trades! Trade value will now scale based on the game's difficulty setting and your relationship with other factions.

    Easily Access Starbase Modules and Effects Info
    The "Starbase Window" displays more detailed statistics and will aid you in managing the Starbase and the rest of your empire.

    Maximize a Colony's Potential
    The new "Planetary Alert System" will warn you when your influence, population, or approval are holding your colony back.

    IslandDog on
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    IslandDogIslandDog Registered User regular
    The v1.71 update is out today that addresses bugs, optimize performance (esp. on larger maps/longer games), and introduce a few improvements to the gameplay and lobby.

    Full changelog: http://forums.galciv3.com/477459

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    UncleSporkyUncleSporky Registered User regular
    I just got this game the other day on a Steam sale. Having a problem that I was hoping others might be able to help with.

    So far I've done the tutorial, first and second campaign missions on normal difficulty. Every time I run into the same problem: I get to the end of the mission and the last enemy planet is completely full of ships that I can't make a dent in without being utterly destroyed. They aren't growing at all or getting any worse, but I can do hardly anything to beat them.

    So far my solution has been click next turn 300 times while accumulating wealth and research, designing a killer ship, waiting another 100 turns for them to be produced and mass next to the enemy, and then I still probably lose one fleet and have to do it again.

    What I think must be happening is that I'm playing too slowly and giving the enemy the chance to research and acquire resources, and they're set to being pretty passive in the tutorial and early campaign, so they just sit there turtling up as I take over the galaxy, which leaves me with a big constipated planet that I have to Metamucil.

    But I dunno. Is this par for the course, just how the game works? Or am I doing something massively wrong to not be progressing as quickly as I should? What are your thoughts on a solution?

    Switch Friend Code: SW - 5443 - 2358 - 9118 || 3DS Friend Code: 0989 - 1731 - 9504 || NNID: unclesporky
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    The Big LevinskyThe Big Levinsky Registered User regular
    I just got this game the other day on a Steam sale. Having a problem that I was hoping others might be able to help with.

    So far I've done the tutorial, first and second campaign missions on normal difficulty. Every time I run into the same problem: I get to the end of the mission and the last enemy planet is completely full of ships that I can't make a dent in without being utterly destroyed. They aren't growing at all or getting any worse, but I can do hardly anything to beat them.

    So far my solution has been click next turn 300 times while accumulating wealth and research, designing a killer ship, waiting another 100 turns for them to be produced and mass next to the enemy, and then I still probably lose one fleet and have to do it again.

    What I think must be happening is that I'm playing too slowly and giving the enemy the chance to research and acquire resources, and they're set to being pretty passive in the tutorial and early campaign, so they just sit there turtling up as I take over the galaxy, which leaves me with a big constipated planet that I have to Metamucil.

    But I dunno. Is this par for the course, just how the game works? Or am I doing something massively wrong to not be progressing as quickly as I should? What are your thoughts on a solution?

    Do your defenses counter their weapon types? When I played the campaign the enemy heavily favored cannons which means you need lots of armor plating to counter. Defenses don't help at all against damage types they don't specifically counter, so if you're bringing shields to a gun fight, you're going to get wrecked as shields don't defend against projectiles at all. Conversely, you want to make sure you bring weapons that they don't have defenses for.

    I'd also be sure to research all the Logistics technologies to make sure you're fleet size is as big as possible. There's also a one-per-player achievement building that reduces the Logistics requirements of your ships by 1 (it's one of the Hyperion buildings). Make sure you build that and to build all your military ships out of the shipyard that that world is sponsoring. That should let you bring a fleet that's as big as the garrison of a world.

    There might be some ways to speed up how fast you produce ships. Up to five worlds can contribute to a shipyard (you can change which ones by clicking "Edit Sponsors" for that shipyard). Worlds that are producing military subsidies contribute 100% of their industrial output to the shipyard. Ideally you want five worlds that are dedicated to industrial output, set to Military Subsidies, that are all close together, and that all sponsor a single shipyard.

    I like to design my own ships as the pre-made ones are often jam packed with useless life support and sensor modules. All you need are maybe two engines and the rest guns and defenses and weapon augments. Starbases extend the range of your ships just fine. I also favor technologies that expand the size of my hulls while shrinking the size of components to get the most bang per logistics point.

    Finally, you can build a military starbase whose influence encompasses the world you're targeting. You get significant military bonuses that way.

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    NightslyrNightslyr Registered User regular
    I also bought this when it was on sale on Steam, and I keep running into the same problem:

    I keep losing a fair amount of money per turn, and can't build ships fast enough. And this is on beginner difficulty.

    Is it because it defaults to auto-upgrading planetary buildings? Or is there something else? I put several planets to commerce focus and set them to economic stimulus. I tweak the manufacturing/research/economy tri-slider to where I feel comfortable in the 'Govern' tab. Nothing seems to help, and I can't find a breakdown of where my money is going. In the meantime, all the other empires around me have more 'land' under their control and a far larger fleet of ships. So, I always get to the point where I have this little corner of the galaxy carved out for myself, but virtually no military, and I get curbstomped.

    Are starbases really expensive or something? I try to mine what I can in order to get the resources necessary for decent ships.

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    hippofanthippofant ティンク Registered User regular
    edited May 2016
    Nightslyr wrote: »
    I also bought this when it was on sale on Steam, and I keep running into the same problem:

    I keep losing a fair amount of money per turn, and can't build ships fast enough. And this is on beginner difficulty.

    Is it because it defaults to auto-upgrading planetary buildings? Or is there something else? I put several planets to commerce focus and set them to economic stimulus. I tweak the manufacturing/research/economy tri-slider to where I feel comfortable in the 'Govern' tab. Nothing seems to help, and I can't find a breakdown of where my money is going. In the meantime, all the other empires around me have more 'land' under their control and a far larger fleet of ships. So, I always get to the point where I have this little corner of the galaxy carved out for myself, but virtually no military, and I get curbstomped.

    Are starbases really expensive or something? I try to mine what I can in order to get the resources necessary for decent ships.

    Edit: Never mind.

    hippofant on
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    NightslyrNightslyr Registered User regular
    Which one is the energy indicator? Also, how do I tax 'sectors'? What is a sector? The tutorial was basically "Here's how you build stuff, here's how you research stuff, here's the diplomacy screen, now go build ships and invade the bad guy planet." It was woefully incomplete, it seems.

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    hippofanthippofant ティンク Registered User regular
    I am an idiot and was in the wrong thread. Sorry. I don't even have GalCiv 3 yet. I was just a fan of GalCiv 2 and wanted to keep tabs on the game. :(

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    NightslyrNightslyr Registered User regular
    D'oh. Well, thanks for trying :)

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    ElvenshaeElvenshae Registered User regular
    @Nightslyr

    Okay, so, first off, make sure your shipyards have their sponsors set correctly. This is new for this game.

    The one you start with has your home planet feeding it production. You need to manually set that up for future shipyards and future colonies. So, make sure your second colony is feeding your first shipyard until it gets its own (if it ever does). You lose manufacturing with distance, so make sure you check every so often to make sure colonies are feeding the closest shipyards.

    An industry-focused starbase covering your starting planet can be critical for the "free" production and money. Try to position it so that it covers multiple planets, if possible.

    Keep an eye out for the mercenary explorer ship who gives you 100 credits every time you scan an anomaly with it.

    Specialize your planets and regions. Two economy building right next to each other are much better than the same building spread out, because of the adjacency effects. Then stack the hell out of the regional and planet wide boosters on it.

    Make sure you focus on grabbing good planets - anything with 10 or more habitability really increases the chances of having contiguous regions for adjacency effects and specials.

    That's some basic advice; hope it helps!

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    NightslyrNightslyr Registered User regular
    edited May 2016
    Yeah, I think I was setting up my planets badly. The tutorial really didn't say much about adjacency. I started a new game with a custom race and it's gone a lot smoother because I've placed manufacturing with manufacturing, commerce with commerce, etc., and have made a point to put the right buildings on the right bonus hexes.

    Still need to be smarter with my shipyards, but I think I'm finally getting the hang of it. I was able to conquer a minor race, and I'm more or less equal in power with the 2nd place elf people in my game right now.

    Nightslyr on
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    AkilaeAkilae Registered User regular
    Have they fixed this? I remember when GalCiv3 first came out there was an uproar of... something?

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    HappylilElfHappylilElf Registered User regular
    Akilae wrote: »
    Have they fixed this? I remember when GalCiv3 first came out there was an uproar of... something?

    I don't recall it ever really being broken I guess?

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