–RELEASED 05/1/2015–
Galactic Civilizations III Beta 6 is now available! Read the huge patch notes list below for all the shiny details on massive AI and performance improvements, new resource-fueled colony buildings, the high dynamic range lighting update, and much more:
Features
Added a new lighting system (high dynamic ranges, bloom, strobe lights in Drengin discos, tone mapping).
Added the ability to Retire
Added new Improvements that require strategic resources (Durantium Refinery, Elerium Defense Shield, Promethion Pleasure Park, Thulium Data Archive, and a new Antimatter Power Plant)
Added engine support for engine effects fade in and out
Fixes
Fixed crashes
FIXED TEXT CLIPPING! (what a pain this was, so glad to have it fixed)
Fixes crashes and issues that were keeping the game from shutting down correctly
Fixed a crash when voting on a UP measure
Fixed a stuck turn issue when a survey ship visits a ship graveyard on auto-explore
Fixed the Explorers and Beacon ideology traits (they noe give the specified plant class instead of a random one)
Fixed an issue where planet rings weren't showing up in the battle viewer
Fixed an issue where Antimatter missiles weren't requires their resource
Fixed an issue where the population on shipyards was incorrect
Fixed an issue that kept mods from working if you have a space in your windows user name
Fixed lots of typos specifically in the Colonization and Galactic Events
Fixed bug that caused United Planets to look low res
Fixed an issue where an enemies ships can get stuck on a planet after that planet is captured
Fixed an issue where planet thumbnails would be lost after loading a game
Fixed the Farmers -2 ability so it now correctly applies a penalty instead of a bonus (shame on you for exploiting this!)
Fixed an issue where the Altarian Inherent Magic tech gave +1000% to Accuracy and Evasion instead of +10%
Fixed a big bug that would cause sounds to stop playing, especially on large maps
Fixed a problem where invasions were calculated incorrectly
Fixed an issue where planet icons would be lost when loading a game
Fixed an issue where ship icons would be lost when loading a game
Fixed the Slowdown Galactic Event to correctly impact the moves of ships
Fixed an issue keeping the accuracy bonus from the Ruthless Vision Ideological event from being applied
Fixed an issue keeping the sensor bonus from the Scout Ideological event form being applied
Fixed an issue where a single player had over 1,000 (yes that's one thousand!) separate fleets moving in one turn
Fixed an issue causing Goto and Details on your ships to become disabled if you ever selected an enemy ship
Fixed an issue where Opposing Ideologies was using the base ideology of that ai personality, not the active ideology
Fixed an issue keeping lines from not being destroyed when a starbase was destroyed
Fixed an issue with the Handy trait not correctly applying its ship maintenance modifer
Fixed an issue that could cause 2 icons to show up in some text strings
Fixed an issue where you could research into other tech ages even if you didn't have enough techs for that age
Fixed an issue where you could assign more than 5 sponsors to a shipyard
Fixed the crash in the diplomacy screen if you are playing with more than 40 players
Fixed an issue where treaty duration was broken when reloading a game
Fixed an issue where you might not see the sample ship on the custom faction screen if a game has already been played
Balance
Tech Specializations are now mutually exclusive (when you pick one specialization you can't pick the others) techs are rebalanced to support this
Rebalanced anomaly pirates (they are intended to be beatable by an undamaged Survey ship)
News now unlock more advanced UP resolutions
Rabalanced the Iconian tech tree
Added 4 new Iconian improvements
Added a new Precursor Defense System Component
Added/enabled Government techs for all factions
Updated balance to the game setups defs (number of minors)
Slightly fewer habitable planets on various map sedttings
Rebalanced planetary invasions, they were way to easy before
Rebalanced tech costs
Reduced the minimum requirement to win the up headquarters resolution to 0% (so the player with the most votes wins no matter what that percentage is)
Galaxy United resolution reduced from 10% taxes to 3% and the Approval boost reduced from +25 to +10
Reduced Trade Route income
Reduced Tourism base income
Ideology improvements now all grant points per turn instead of a flat amount when built (which created some exploit issues)
Weapons all significantly rebalanced
Pirates now spawn in unoccupied star systems instead of in nebula
Tweaked the falloff of influence
Invasions now grant some influence to keep the planet form flipping back to the original owners control
AI
AI will discuss diplomatic issues with players
Series of relation based conversations added
Gifted difficulty provides fewer AI bonuses
AI discussion system adjusts how often the player can be contacted based on the number of opponents (1 on 1 the player can esxpect to be contacted once every dozen turns, but with 8 opponents that changes to once every 3 turns for example)
AI less cranky about military ships being in its ZOC -- still cares about transports
Lots of changes to the AIStrategyDefs
All tech trees now have the tags for weapon and defense categories
AI tweaks to AIdefs
AI cares more about the expense of a tech now than before
AI balancing to make it more likely to surrender
Battle Rating modifier for determining power increased from 0.1% to 0.2%
Economic income power now uses the production modifier instead of the treasury modifier
Added AI tags for bigger hulls to the tech tree (some some players may pursue big ships while others prefer large fleets)
New AI modifier called "HumanPlayerhasInvasiontech" added
AI will focus a bit more on targets that are near and in his territory
Planets cry out for defense if they are undefended and nearby opponents have invasion tech
AI determines if targets in its influence area are more worthy to attack than others.
New AI evaluation to determine whether planets are under threat
AI will not determine a victory objective until after 100 turns have been played
If the number of defenders is less than the number of colonies, the AI is more likely to build defenders
Shipyards now have a separate queue threshold (1 instead of 3) than colonies so that they can react quicker.
AI reevaluates its weapon and defense preferences after it gets a new tech
AI does a better job calculationg intelligent weapons and defense techs based on who their primary enemy is
Updated the surrender eval to modify based on the number of major players in the game
AI makes a distinction between potential military might and actual military might
AI no longer uses starbases and shipyards as part of the military might calculation
Military power diplomatic evaluations now uses military power instead of faction power
Gifted difficulty nerfed slightly
Fixed AI bug where it was looking at ships instead of fleets
Fixed bug where AI would not attack defenseless ships if they had a stronger military
AI cares more about map distance now than previous when determining targets
AI will tend to prefer ships that it can hit that turn
The AI won't declare peace with you for 20 turns after war is declared (to keep people from exploiting the AI by declaring war, attacking and then paying for peace)
Military and culture starbases are more offensive to the AI
AI is better about managing its money
AI much better at forming attack fleets (it won't be so defensive)
Peace Treaty value to AI increased by 10X
AIs that don't like you are less inclined to make peace
Planet threat distance reduced from 20 to 10 to prevent AI from being overly concerned with ships
Added new flavor text for peace treaty negotiations
Various modifications to the AI spending strategies
AI will no longer consider a player "Weak" if they have relatively little military
Effect of diplomacy ability is reduced at the start of the game
AI makes a distinction between survey ships and actual assault ships when determining whether to be annoyed
Minor races no longer evaluate freighters and constructors and transports of its own (As it no longer will build them)
AI boosts freighter priority if it has no licenses in use and is at peace
AI now looks at a given tech's intrinsic value to that player based on that particular player's preferences (military vs. culture vs. trade techs for example)
AI just generally smarter at trading in the diplomacy screen
AI makes a distinction when making peace if that player is NOT their primary opponent
AI evaluates both the player's potential military power AND their actual military power for determining courses of action
The AI will no longer produce its biggest, best ships for planetary defense, those are for going out and fighting wars
Checkin from Brad reads "ai stuff" (I'm sure all sorts of evilness was done here)
UI
Added end game screens
Added a search feature on the tech screen
Added filters to the shipyard and ship designer so that you can filter on the base designs, or on your own ship designs
Added lots of new race logos
Added lots of new icons
Shipyard tooltip now shows total manufacturing per turn
Placing a component in the ship designer doesn't deselect that component anymore (making it easier if you want to place multiple copies of it)
Added a conversation popup from your science advisor when an AI player is defeated (so you are notified)
Delete key now removes the selected ship from the queue on the shipyard screen
Tech screen mode now remembers your last setting
Added Military Power to graphs
Now showing the number of turns you have been at war with a player on the diplomacy report window
We continue to play with the relic and Strategic Resource icons
Adjusted all the starting battle distance so that the ships are little specks (you would be amazed at the tech going into the detail of those little specks) so it looks better now
Added descriptions for all of the ship roles to better to describe how that sort of ship will act in battle
Minimap overhaul to be more clear and functional
Added the strategic resources to the top of the shipyard screen (so you can see how many you have available when you are picking what ships to build)
Added the strategic resource bar to the ship designer
Added hit points to the shipyard tooltip
Removed "Beam Weapon 1" and "Missile Weapon 1", etc stats on all the tooltips (they are internal stats used for tracking what modifiers apply to what)
Added Military Power to graphs
Additional info added to the ship, ship design and fleet tooltips
Fleet context window now has a tooltip for fleet size control
Faction tooltip added when you mouse over the faction logo
Planet class tooltip added if you mouseover the planet class
New minor faction color (the dark brown was really hard to read against the darkness of space)
Added a tooltip showing a players influence on any tile
Added an entry to planet tooltip stating if they are immune to culture flipping
Battle viewer doesn't reset you playback speed or camera selection if you replay anymore
Added scroll bars to the ship designer and desginer landing page inventory listboxes, so you have better mouse scroll behavior and you know when the list is full
Added a date display when your turn starts
Performance
Performance optimizations to eliminate evaluations if the player does not have relations with target player
Improved performance when scanning across the map, previously you could experience stuttering
Significant memory optimizations
