So I got the Beta a little while ago but didn't get around to playing it because I was distracted by several other games including Civilization: Beyond Earth (a decision I am regretting somewhat by now). I just finished a Beta 3 game playing as the Altarians and figured I should do my job as a Beta tester and provide some feedback.
First, let me say that I love the GalCiv series and think it's one of the best games of its type around. I truly appreciate the amount of work the designers had to put into making an AI that's actually clever rather than just a cheating bastard. The Universe is generally well crafted, if a bit Babylon 5 like, and the characters are always interesting. Plus, ship design?! F**king awesome.
Regarding GalCiv 3 itself, I, on the whole, enjoyed the game. It's a worthy addition to the series and introduces some interesting innovations like resources that do specific things rather than just being general "this is a Research resource. Yay!" The graphics are excellent and the sound is great too, though, I'd appreciate some level of background music with some variety playing on the main map screen. Just a personal preference. That said, being a Beta tester, it's my job to criticize so here goes...
UI
- I don't know if it's just my computer but I've found that in a lot of the menus, when I mouse over an object, a small data box pops up with some text. 90% of the time, the text doesn't fit properly in the box and I lose out on information. If that could be fixed, it'd be great. If I've just missed some obvious fix for this, please let me know.
Culture Mechanic
- I love just taking over other cultures with mine and watching whole empires rebel but this needs to be tempered somewhat. There is no reason in the world why I should be able to steal five planets in a six planet empire and take *no* diplomatic penalty whatsoever. That's silly. I can understand them not declaring war because it would look really bad for them and maybe cause planet-wide demonstrations, but I don't think they should be quite so eager to hand over techs or make good trades with me. Furthermore, I would expect them to be working behind the scenes to screw me over in whatever ways they can. Instead, I completely overwhelmed the Yor and Iridian cultures while they were foaming at the mouth enamored with me until their respective demises. I - a goody two shoes organic - got the organic hating, evil, eat your babies and turn them into robots Yor government to love me while I was stealing planets from them.
- Second, the cascading manner in which this can occur is frightening when left unchecked. After overwhelming the Iridian capital, within twenty turns, I had pushed through the Yor and almost demolished the Terran cultural influence (on the largest size map available!) were it not for the fact that I switched to pursuing a Tech victory mid-game. I might suggest making it so that another civilization's capital in your empire actually subtracts somewhat from your total influence rather than adding to it. The in game thought being that the last holdouts for the old culture are likely to gather on the capital planet and whine as loud as they can about the old days. That should introduce some problems due to multiculturalism. Or, on that thread, perhaps civilization capitals should introduce an empire wide approval hit to help blunt the inexorable advance of super-religious blue skinned alien babe culture due to the inherent tension multiculturalism introduces.
Technology
- The age system seems a bit contrived. I like the basic idea that it makes no sense for a civilization to be able to barge straight towards a tech victory without having figured out how to so much as run an interplanetary empire but the execution bothers me. It seems somewhat arbitrary. Perhaps some level of interdependencies between techs or resource requirement would help? Unfortunately, I have no solid suggestions on this - just a vague sense of unease about the tech age system. I know it's been used in other games but I've never cared for it, myself.
- On a positive note, I love the specialization idea. My only complaint is that there aren't *more* of them! It's really nice to be able to fine tune your empire on the fly through specializing in one variant of tech over another.
Tech Victory
- It really would be nice if the Ascension Gate (?) final building necessary for the Tech victory were a separate structure that needed to be built rather than just an extension of the research building tree.
Resources
- Can we please make the resources more critical earlier in the game? I feel like there ought to be a serious resource rush almost as much as there is a colony rush so that a lack of nearby planets can be off-set by an overabundance of resources. Again, unique trade goods or tech advancement being dependent on resources makes empires a bit more ornery about the whole thing and leads to more interesting diplomatic situations.
I think that's all for now. If I think of anything else, I'll be sure to post. All in all, though, awesome game and I look forward to the next round of Beta.