inafishant

Join Date 04/2013

a few teething issues with colonies and commonwealths

hi everyone

i am having a few issues with colonies and commonwealths and id like a bit of help understanding how to make it fun.

firstly i am finding the number of colonies for all governments just too low for me causing me to be crippled by approval, i am thinking the current number x4 to be right. before this dlc i would rush 20ish planets and gear up for war, now i am hitting walls stopping growth and just waiting for a new government to come along.

i am finding it very hard to wage war now, not because i have a smaller production base but all the useless planets that tank my approval bringing everything to a halt. i now have to just blockade planets and wait so i dont get destoryed in elections. also turn off allowing civs to surrender, someone giving you 15 planets is worse then declaring war lol

maybe they colony limit needs to be scaled for the map size? i only play on immense or bigger with tons of other civs there is just so many planets out there.

the planets i deem lesser i am making commonwealths but they seem worthless and an overall negative for me. i have tried making them strong with some good planets (even entire civs i have defeated) giving them all my best tech but they just do nothing like basic cakewalk ai. are they set to the same ai level as the opponents? i think they are set like minor civs.

because these commonwealths are just so weak other races declare war on them constantly forcing me into wars to prevent hostile civs coming into my space and setting up shop. we are allied but i dont think that is the correct relationship for me and my commonwealths because alliances aren't a binding defensive pact. i would like to see commonwealths treated like vassels in eu4 that declaring war on them is the same as declaring war on me, this would also have them give me money and/or research per turn for that protection.

i'd love to see commonwealths be as good as the major civ ai, even if we aren't locked into fighting each others wars i think funneling them resources while they weaken my enemies would be great.

what does everyone think?

cheers

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What is your galaxy settings? This is one of the most issue a lot of playes are having. Mine set Stars as either rare or uncommon depended on the size of galaxy. Both Habitable and Extreme Planet are abundant, so there will be a tons of habitable planets but majority of them will be lock behind tech

I have no problem with colony limit itself since you can grab a tech that allow 12-16 colony pretty easily, then you get a third tier tech that remove any limit away. If you're having problem with approval then lower your tax rate. There is no point doing cutthroat tax rate at the start of the game.

You don't need Commonwealth if you don't mind macro management every colony you own, but if that bore you then give some backwater planet to Commonwealth. They will be a new race that permanently ally to you but they are pretty weak and rely on you to protect them. They are basically your vassal.

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I agree with you thought's. Same here. The idea is very good but in game it becomes useless and complicate.

And yes the number of planets in governments should oriented at sice of the map. And another thought is that good types of governments are just very short time useful because you have to change the government with a higher number of planets.

By the way it is a little strange that you can jump from government to government without any consequences for the whole empire. For example if you want you can jump from an government with elections to a dictator based government and back. So in fact the elections are more or less a joke... Etc...

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Taslios

Join Date 11/2002

+74

It shouldn't matter the map size... the game should be able to do simple math and have each level of the governments give a % of total habitable planets... or up it to number of planets that a civ has the technological ability to settle on.

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Yes that's the same we saw with other words I think. The planet cap of government should be created in references to size of your game or the number of habitable planets.

The problem that the first governments perhaps are good but are in use for only a couple of turns will be still there.

Also that you can switch between the governments without consequences

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Are colony limits and change time moddable?

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Quoting popsursocks,

reply 5

Are colony limits and change time moddable?

Government cooldown time is in GalCiv3GlobalDefs.xml and Colony limit on each government is in GovernmentDefs.xml

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How to get the tech that allows the government with unlimited colonies? Quantum understanding is what it is called but I can't find it.

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This is an old thread but I'd rather necro than start a new identical thread.

I took a long break from this game, mostly due to hating the colony limit thing, and have been playing again after the Retro update.

But the problem remains for me - I despise the colony limit thing.

It wouldn't be so bad if it was intelligently implemented instead of some blanket thing that doesn't work most of the time. The limit should scale according to game setup - galaxy size, number of AIs, planet quality, etc.

I personally, since GC1, have always setup to play larger sized maps while removing some of the AIs to give more room to expand. But with GC3 and colony limits, it's a constant fight against colony limits. Yes, you can tech around it and eat the morale penalty but it forces you to play a certain way and to pursue the same techs and suffer the same penalties every time you play.

One of the GOOD parts about any good 4X is having flexibility in how you play - something you used to get with GC 1 - 3. And while we still have a plethora of options to setup a game in GC3, the colony limit dramatically impacts whether or not you can fully enjoy some of those options.

In addition to that - no, I don't want commonwealth(s). I wouldn't be playing a game where I could develop a huge empire if I didn't want to manage a huge empire. This is one of the reasons I don't like Stellaris, which constricts you even more. Commonwealth as purely an option would be fine, but commonwealth or suffer penalties is not fully optional.

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Find <steam path>\Galactic Civilizations III\DLC\EXP3_Intrigue\Game\GovernmentDefs.xml. Copy the file. In the file find <ColonyLimit>x</ColonyLimit> for every government. Change x to your liking. Make a mod out of it, or, if you don't want to be bothered with how that works, copy the edited GovernmentDefs.xml to Documents\My Games\GC3Crusade\Mods\ExampleMod\Game and enable Mods in game options. Start a new game.

Still I agree that colony limit should be at least tied to galaxy size.

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Negative thread necro is worse than commonwealth. Ugh.

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I always use abundant settings for stars and habitable planets. I also hate loosing control of some of my planets. Therefore I never use commonwealths in there current state. I rush research government techs, but I hate the ceiling.

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