GC:EU Beta 2 is out on Drengin.net

from Stardock Forums
You Drengins' know what to do. Give us, the deprived ones, the lowdown on the new additions (ships and techs, etc)



Thursday, July 17, 2003 - Galactic Civilizations 1.09A on Drengin.net

Beta 2 of the Galactic Civilizations Expansion Pack is now available for those people who have a subscription to Drengin.net (Drengin.net users get all of Stardock's games already out plus whatever we make for an entire year afterwards such as the upcoming strategy game, The Political Machine).

Here's what's new in 1.09A over 1..9.

New Features:
+ New Ship: Death Knight. Temporarily it comes with battleship tech but will eventually require an evil tech when its 'good guy' equivalent becomes available
+ Weapon Enhancement series of techs. A series of technologies that enhance your existing ships weapons. Requires Corvette Tech.
+ Can left click on techs on the research tree to get into tech navigator
+ You can now search for stars and view all stars in galaxy.
+ New random event: Computer civilization's ethical philosophy can now change during the course of the game.

Tweaks:
+ Trade greatly decreases odds of AI asking for tribute or lowering relations.
+ Morality much more taken into account on tribute / lowering relations (no more "Altarian bastards always want tribute no matter how much trade and how nice I am!")
+ Network of friends taken into account by AI. AI looks at who you're at war with and who you're at peace with when deciding whether it should raise or lower relations.
+ Technology pace is significantly increased -- techs cost less to research now so you will go through the tech tree faster.

Bug Fixes:
-fixed crash if you destroyed a colony while going through news events
-refresh planet list while propaganda sliders going
-fixed crash in during end turn if no one was reasearching anything
-fixed crash on fp if you trade for all remaining planets from a minor civ
-starships found in anomalies now appear in the same spot as the survey vessel to avoid hit detection problems
-fixed info warfare bug
-fixed bug where turn button gets stuck after loading end game save
- Lots of other glitches and bugs fixed.

The expansion pack should be ready near the end of the summer (September). This beta should be at least as solid if not more stable than 1.05. A lot of our changes have been on play balancing.

If you already have Galactic Civilizations, you can upgrade to Drengin.net for only $30 by clicking on the purchase link on the left or go here: Link

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572 views 17 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Yeah, what is this Death Knight? Finally, a justification for the righteous path of evil! (JK)
[Message Edited]
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
I'm so giddy with anticipation since I'm downloading it at this moment.
Can't wait for that Pure Good ship to be released.
Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
I hope the new ship looks good and I hope it is another light assault ship.

Pheonixs are such a great idea, we need more of these and less capital ships.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
We also need a larger defense oriented ship than the Battlehammer.Something with similar def. to the larger capital ships but less maintenance (and attack!).
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
The last time SD posted the screenshot for the Death Knight, the ships stats were displayed.

I can't remember them but I do recall telling myself that they look weak. More like a fighter than a capital ship.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
I seem to remember thinking that it was rather capable, but fragile (decent attack/defense, very low HP).

I'll follow up with death knight stats as soon as I can get to the gaming computer (which is the machine that my GF uses to read email).
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
I think you are right, PT. My thought was another phoenix.
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
I played a game yesterday where I usd the new Death Knight a lot. I don't remember the exact stats, but compared to the battleship, it has:
- fewer HP (40 I think)
- but a slightly better attack/defense rating
- same speed, same maintance
- a bit cheaper to build (cost: 450 - battleship 500)
- 1 point higher range (!)

I found the DeathKnight highly effective - they may not be able to take as much damage as the battelships, but with their range and weapons, they are a perfect choice for launching an attack.

And: They really look cool. :HOT:
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
Yello Sign. Correct. One more Atk/Def, 10 less HP than a battleship. I don't think those are the same stats that were previously seen, but that would be understandable as we've had a major rebalancing of ships since those stats were posted.

So, if the evil death knight looks like a battleship pushed even farther towards offensive warfare usage, what's the good ship going to look like? A beefed up version of the 90HP battlehammer? :)

Then again, at the rate I'm going, the EU will be out of beta before I get the chance to play the beta EU. :(
Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
Any other Drengins would like to share with us their experience with the new features and tweaks?

I'm interested in the tweaks to tributes and relations.
Reply #12 from Stardock Forums Top
Grrr.... I really like the new expansion pack, except that I finally got time to play it, and the game has reached the point (at about 2200 in a Huge galaxy) that almost everything I do sends the game into a death spiral where it stops responding and does nothing but eat memory. At first it only happened when my corvettes autopiloted into a ranger and wound up with a very negative number of HP. I finally got around that by taking all the corvettes off of autopilot, and now it's doing the same whenever I expand my starbases.

Ray, I can't give you much of an impression other than that, because I got an odd starting position, and haven't done much trading yet. (totally unlike me, by now I'm usually funding at least a third of my budget with trade).

The Arceans got a really sucky starting position and gave up early (you would too if you started in a corner with 4 stars, only two of them with inhabitable planets on a Huge map), and the Torians (who got the alignment change event) fell next. Then, for some reason, the game decides that more chaos is needed, and grants the Drengin (1st in military, and 2nd or 3rd in everything else) the "+14PQ for all uninhabitted planets within 2 sectors" event. Fortunately, I just happened to have a convoy of constructors passing through the area, and was able to wall off the uninhabited systems that benefitted (for a total of 3 class 28 planets and 2 class 24 planets). Of course, since this wasn't exactly in my territory, I had serious culture problems, and since I hadn't been focusing on a cultural victory, I didn't have culture palace tech yet. I still managed to hold on to the planets, though all of them are flying the skull and crossbones now, but the culture bomb necessary to keep them from flipping annoyed the Drengin into declaring war. And then the Yor decided to join in since they thought I was on the ropes since the Drengin had me outclassed. This left me with only the Altarians to trade with, and I had to go through both Drengin and Yor territory to get there.

I really want to finish this game. I'm the only player with Overlord tech (but no overlords yet), I've got a strong industrial base (and growing stronger as those class 28s build up). I can win this one if I can just keep the thing from crashing :-)
Reply #13 from Stardock Forums Top
Oh, forgot to mention that rally points are great, but I'm sure that I'm still missing a few features of them. The tech tree browser is nice when I forget how to get where I want to go. Can't tell you how many times I had to hit JavaScout's site before I got this. I still do, once in a while, because unless I'm missing it, there's no way to search for the prerequisites of a project, only a tech. Hyperlinks in most places are also quite helpful to those of us who's minds are already exploring outer space. :)
Reply #14 from Stardock Forums Top
I still wouldn't mind having hyperlinked social projects on the Guv's screen.

Another gripe I have with the new beta is akin to what Popup Target said. Relatively early past 2200 (in that area), I get massive gameplay slowdown even on small maps...something I have not seen in previous versions. This continues until I reboot.

I've found myself using Death Knights quite a bit in the early-mid game, to great success. Quite useful IMO for certain situations.

Supposedly the AIs are supposed to be able to change their morality - I can neither confirm nor deny this. Will this only work if the AI is set to neutral?
Reply #15 from Stardock Forums Top
No slowdowns for me, but I'm playing a radically different style (for me) for my latest game.

Tiny map, War-mongering.

So far I love the beta. I can't imagine playing without Rally Points (even on a Tiny map).

~SDC~
Reply #16 from Stardock Forums Top
Hmmm...BoundsChecker isn't reporting any memory leaks...so if it is a memory leak, it gets taken care of when Gal Civ is shut down. 
Reply #17 from Stardock Forums Top
CariElf, when it happens to me, Galciv just sits there (no UI response, though I can Alt-Tab out of the game) and eats memory (I can watch the available Ram drop in Task Manager) until either I kill GalCiv with Task Manager or it runs out of RAM and dies. Oh, forgot to mention, this was under Win2K. Other than that, I haven't seen any more of a slowdown than usual (I like playing Huge maps and taking my time, so endgame wars can involve hundreds of ships and some slowdown is expected).