Hello,

We have released a fairly substantial update to Crusade and the base game that will vastly improve the AI, improve balance, and squash some really important bugs. Read below for info! 

Galactic Civilization III: Crusade v2.3 Changes 

AI

• Substantial AI improvement to how the AI builds planetary improvements
• New AI governors for smarter AI planetary building.
• Added support for AI specific events.
• AI transports are much more intelligent than before about targeting planets 
• AI much smarter about focusing its endeavors on its target primary opponent and its assets
• AI work on trying to get it to be smarter about when to make massive fleets and when to send out smaller fleets to finish someone much weaker.
• Lots of AI work to try to find a good balance between the AI using its military might to conquer versus when it should hunker down.  This will be an endless balance war for the AI.
• Removed code that was blocking the AI from even looking at units that were far away that it knew about. While this made sense when performance was tight, now that this has been moved to its own thread on its own core, we don't care.
• Damaged fleets that fall behind a certain threshold will be sent home to reinforce
• More improvements to the AI guessing algorithm for where good planets are (or as novices say "AI cheating" -- it's not cheating).
• Big one: For the human player, 3 survey ships sitting on the same tile will go to 3 different anomalies rather than all going to the same stupid one.  The AI players are very unhappy with this change.
• A LOT of AI work on getting the AI to sacrifice a fleet on a hardened position to soften it. The AI doesn't like to sacrifice units and marketing doesn't like it either because users will say the AI is dumb for sending weak fleets that can't possibly win.  But sometimes, you have to do this to soften up the player's defenses if you have the power to spare.  
• Eliminated the tech governor for the AI.  They don't need a script on what to research.
• AI ship design much better than previous for putting together more powerful ships by saving up resources more than they were before (fewer better ships rather than squandering them on lots of crap)
• AI is better about building transports when it should and not build them when it shouldn't.  
• What AI players build on planets is less scripted and more procedural.
• New code for the case when the AI can't find something to build on a planet. It switches to the new procedural system to figure out what to build.
• More AI differentiation based on player traits (moving away from races to support better modding)
• Eliminated last vestiges of AI scripting for trying to achieve a particular victory. You can't script a victory in a game like this.
• Ship tech research now weighs heavily what resources it has coming in rather than what it currently has in inventory.  The AI getting lucky and finding say 5 anti-matter shouldn't dictate its weapon research choices.
• Tech stealing by player or AI players made less frequent
• Warmonger penalty more intelligent. If you attack early game, you get it for awhile and if you are declaring war on a lot of players (where a lot depends on how many players are in the game) then it goes on.
• Pirates no longer look for danger when going to a destination because, again, quit being goddam babies.
• Pirate player will assign its ships to be on the warpath so that they're not such babies about attacking other ships
• Pirates will do suicidal attacks.
• Pirates are no longer considered dead if they still have a shipyard.  They are only mostly dead.  
• As if the pirates are going to maintain a freaking starbase. They're pirates!

Gameplay / Balance

• All Starbase rings now generate 1 influence per turn so that they at least, over time, will expand 
• Starbase modules now stack instead of upgrading
• New promotion type: Mogul.  Gives 5000bc upon promotion from Entrepreneur
• New missions: Gem Trader, Pilgrimage, Xylology, and Hyper Silicates.
• Sensors, which provide local navigational benefits, give a slight increase to a starbase's influence
• Most starbase modules now have a +1 maintenance cost.
• Colonizing events that gave "Planetary Defense" now give "Planetary Resistance."
• Colonizers ability now grants 1 administrator point.
• Unrelenting ability now provides +1 influence per turn for colonies
• Ancient ability provides 10 research for each anomaly that it picks up.
• Entrepreneur ability provides 5 additional trade routes in addition to existing abilities
• Devout ability now gives an influence to all planets boost every time they choose an ideological choice
• Bureaucrats start with 25 administrators in addition to existing abilities
• Conquerors receive a 2,500 bounty every time they conquer a planet
• Certain ability now provides 100 research every time they choose an ideological trait
• Made the Prolific and Devout abilities global. 
• Trade secrets bonus reduced to 25% instead of 100% for pragmatic choice.
• Trade Secrets ideology event nerfed from a 100% bonus to trade income to a 25% trade income bonus.
• Cultural Center now provides 1 influence per turn flat
• Elevation Foundation ideology reduced from 0.2 to 0.1 per turn
• Temple of Enlightenment ideology per turn reduced from 0.3 to 0.1
• Preparedness Center ideology per turn reduced from 0.2 to 0.1
• Arbitration Center ideology per turn reduced from 0.2 to 0.1
• Citadel of Revenue ideology reduced from 0.2 to 0.1
• Death Furnaces ideology reduced from 9.3 to 0.1 per turn
• Cultural Beacon now provides both a 20% influence bonus to the colony as well as a +1 per turn influence
• Cultural Forum influence per turn increased from 2 to 4
• Information Hub IpT increased from 4 to 6
• Interstellar Exchange IpT increased from 8 to 12
• Interstellar Embassy module IpT increased from 12 to 16
• Interstellar Ministry IpT increased from 16 to 32
• Changed planetary bonuses that helped just Social Manufacturing to help All Manufacturing.
• Nerfed Renaissance event's research bonus 
• Fixed bad Food Stats on Desert worlds and Precursor worlds
• Nerf some more of the base planet traits for Crusade.
• Altarian AI personality changed from Aggressive to Peaceful (they were too mean)
• Terran Resistance are no longer diplomatic (heh, they never were..) but instead are scientific
• Yor are now 'Expansionist" instead of "Aggressive".  The Yor aren't capable of being "Aggressive" by our standards. That would require them thinking of us as sentient.
• Arceans are now opportunistic removing the Chaotic trait (Which made them move between Neutral and Merciless).  
• Vigilant Level 2 on the ideological tree now provides the player 3 engineers upon choosing it.
• Trade route diplomacy bonus increased from 0.5 to 1 for the Traders 4 trait.
• When a player dies, their starbases and shipyards are destroyed instead of being given to pirates. 
• Durational projects will now re-queue themselves on completion (can still be canceled normally)
• Slight modification of blueprints to not require as many resource heavy weaponry.
• Slight increase in the amount of mining the mining modules produce per turn.
• Shipyard HP and defenses reduced so that players can eliminate pirates and break defenses more effectively.
• Adjusted ideology descriptions to reflect changes to ideology improvements
• Wild Grain planet feature now properly increases Population.
• Updated citizen descriptions to make the bonus calculations more understandable.
• Shipyards and Starbases are now destroyed only when a faction surrenders to the pirates
• The "Certain" abilities now correctly award research points when ideological traits are unlocked.
• Singularity Powerplant now actually charges for Elerium.
• Nerf and Re-enable the Arbitration Center, that was disabled, making the Arbiters ideology trait useless.
• Update Starbase modules so their bonuses to stack, instead of upgrade.

Custom Factions

• Custom Starbases can be uploaded to the Steam Workshop 
• Fleet's now show the original author's name of custom ship designs
• Original author's name shows when creating a blueprint in the Ship Designer

Perf

• Minor change to FOW with big performance improvements. Removing a redundant stat update.
• AI players no longer recalculate every turn whether they know about an asteroid.  Asteroids don't move
• Player objects processing has been moved to the AI for faster performance

UI

• Govern->Stats screen now shows the number of tiles (parsecs) owned, as well as number of tiles contiguous to the player's homeworld
• Promotion options list now fills correctly
• Fixed issue where promotion option costs were not showing the tooltip for the resource entries
• Fixed display issue where weapon components in the ship designer landing would not show any stats in the tooltip
• Large UI: Resources in the top bar no longer overlap in 
• Added alert for when another faction has destroyed a faction

Campaigns

• Updated campaign maps
• Reduced starting pop on some of the campaign factions.
• Retiring in campaign no longer causes some buttons to stack on each other

Bugs

• Asteriod Mining bases should no longer change ownership.
• Fixed bad bonus text on several "Lost Worlds" colonizing events.
• Fix resource cost triggers for Singularity Power Plant.
• Fix incorrect descriptions on several colonizing events.
• Mining base assignments no longer get reset if one of your planets has changed ownership or was destroyed 
• Fixed missing adjacency bonuses on the Silicon based life cities.
• Fixed Power on the Manufacturing Focus specialization.
• Fixed crashes
• Fixed MP desyncs
• Battles in nebulas are no longer missing their backgrounds
• Fix preclusion bug that allowed some one-per-planet improvements to be built multiple times.
• Changed Adjacency text to say Adjacency Bonus.
• Changed short name for Torian to Torians.
• Fix for bad grid lines on some Nvidia cards.  Doesn't fix all cases, yet.  But hey, we got some perf as well. 
• Administrator points granted from the Colonizers ability are now properly displayed.  
• Fixed some cases where Legion count wasn't being updated correctly.
• Don't refund legions after invasions for whole ships that weren't destroyed. 
• You can no longer view non-selectable ships in the fleet details window by going next/prev.
• Fixed a logistics problem that prevented the ships from not always merging to a commander's fleet
• "Destroying Galaxy" loading shows up when exiting to the main menu. 
• Tech victory alerts will no longer show up before the age of ascension.
• Removed duplicate resource window in the ship designer window
• Ship missions now show the proper completion time in the queue
• Metaverse: Tutorial Factions and New Factions now show their proper names
• Mercenary entries with large resource costs no longer get split into two lines
• MP: Players are no longer double-charged for mercenary resources.
• Fixed typos.
• Updated privateer promotion description to be more accurate.
• Adjusted ideology improvement descriptions to better reflect their bonuses.
• Fixed bad descriptions of several ideology improvements.
• Asking someone to declare an embargo or to declare war now longer destroys the universe.  
• Removed a ghost ship from shipping crate

Galactic Civilization III "Base Game" v2.3 Changes 

AI

• Player objects calculations moved into the AI thread (performance)
• Fixed bug that caused AI to potentially get "free credits" due to messaging being disabled
• Pirate AI is more aggressive.
• AI better at defending planets (Crusade tech)
• AI targeting system updated to near Crusade level
• AI keeps track of its fleet inventory, this is used to make better decisions on what to Build
• AI more aggressive in using transports
• Lots and lots of improvements to the AI's ability to target enemies intelligently
• Smarter AI behavior when it comes to asking for money and such
• AI smarter about what ships it wants to build and when
• Much better AI trading system for putting together deals 
• AI trading changed to be a vector so that it can offer multiple trade offers (Crusade feature)
• AI evaluates its money much better
• AI much stingier on ship Trading
• AI much smarter about declaring war on players when someone tries to bribe them to
• AI much better about going to war against those who are at war with its ally
• AI more reactive to parking fleets near its territory
• AI war mongering set up
• Smart auto credit bidder added to the trade window to make trading easier. 
• Greater variance in flavor text in conversations

Gameplay

• Increased the amount of stars, planets and habitable planets when common is chosen
• Planetary Improvement cost generally made higher.
• Production points on colonies and capital planet default to a higher value
• Reduced manufacturing cost but increased mass of special components so that the ramp up time isn't so severe.
• Added new "Complete Tech" event.

Bugs 

• Various crash issues fixed that were due to custom ship designs / ship mods
• Lots and lots of potential crash issues resolved due to better checking of custom/mod data
• Crash fixes from Crusade.
• Brought over Crusade optimization for stat updating while unit moving.