Wow. I usually suffer from "careful what you wish for" problems. It's nice to see a wish granted with no obvious negative consequences.

I'm on record here griping about the initial beta schedule b/c I thought there'd be little chance for many of us to give feedback about the middle and late phases of Gigantic and Immense maps. Brad's schedule decision sounds like it should give the mighty-map crowd a chance to help do some serious polishing before the official RTM. I hope I can neglect my productive work enough to finish an Immense map as the new Thalans before the beta finally closes.

Only to learn that a few mega events occurred and someone else wins by another victory condition.

This expansion is looking really good, haven't tried the betas yet, because I want the full surprise when the game is released.

Yup, happy to hear the schedule is longer. The thing some might not realize is that the longer the beta, the more time those of us who pre-ordered get to play a very evolving game. That's a huge plus to me. After this thing's released, SD will need to focus on the fantasy game, which means fewer updates.

I sincerely am hoping that in the final release .you will have adressed the following minor problems that detract from my "fun factor"

#1 anomolies : by this i mean respawning anomolies are good. but at least make the A.I
want to build survey ships throught the game and not just in beginning
,,anomolies part 2 ..... the +25% to a tech bonus must be replaced by A pre set tech point bonus .. this prevents you from getting a huge tech advantage. because simply put 25% of universal translator is not equivilent to 25% of black hole guns
there have been games that i played where I build fast surveyors with like 20 speed and actually get the +25% bonus 2-3 times in same turn for a tech . I feel that it is cheesy to go all the way from beginning a long tech like a long time 70 turns to complete to being a few turns from finished in same turn just because i am only one surveying .

#2 race emergence .. races MUST spawn with planetary defenses and ships in orbit.
otherwise the simple tactics of having a few transports scattered about the galaxy is enough to wipe out any new race regardless of tech . the method i use now is pure cheese but is essential due to the way the game spawns races .. if a race appears with end game techs, then trade for it all . no matter what it takes , because it does not matter what he gets if he dies in the same turn . right now the game basically gives me about 12 end game techs .all the time for free due to this event .

#3 invasion tactics. right now there is an exploit where if you use mass drivers or some other detrimental attack but fail in the invasion .then planet quality does not drop and improvments are not destroyed. this should happen regardless of success or failure. and here is why.knowing that i can attack a planet with 16,000 troops ,and use only a invasion fleet of 1000 but use mass drivers ,i gain all the benefits of this tactic and cause massive enemy casualties yet I dont intend on succeding ,because the success means that this planets quality and improvments will lower,no... what i want is to weaken the defending army to a low number like 3000 troops ,then just send in another ship with a less destructive invasion tactic like mini soldiers(my Favorite).it seems to me a bit unrealistic. at least make a invasion tactic ,s detriment always happen regardless of sucess or failure.

#4 i beleive that space miners colony ships,and survey ships should have to be researched before recieving one . i think games would evolve in different directions if you only started with 3 colony ships and had to research to build anything else.then you would see almost instantly each races different approach to winning (I.E korath,drengin might go straight for military/invading and not go a mad colonizing from the start)trading,mining,colonizing,military,construction/resource gatherer,could all be a start strategy It does not have to be expensive to research any of these start techs

number 4 sounds a bit radical but please consider this kind of startup as maybe a option that i could enable at game setup(I.E i could check and uncheck "enable colony,miner,survey ship{s} at startup" )
well i hope these dont sound too difficult to change.thanks for reading .

That would be a setup for even cheesier tactics. What your suggesting would mean that I could send a send in a bunch of cheap invasion ships with 1 soldier each on them and constantly lower my opponents world quality without actually having to fight him. Better yet, I could do this for free if I choose evil as my alignment and built a 'No Mercy Center'. Besides which, information warfare is usually the best tactic when attacking such large population centers due to morale penalties, albeit it is more expensive.

Seriously, I wouldn't mind if you added a LOT more time to the development as long as it comes out polished. I'm really loving the beta. It breathes a lot of new life into an already amazing product.


Thanks!

This is an important point you're at.

One one hand, you could have put out the expansion and called it a day, with there being lots of new features.

But on the other hand, you could go a lot further and do what you say you are planning to do now, which is making the different races actually *be* unique. Which would be awesome, considering the last (and actually only) strategy game I felt something like this was Alpha Cantauri with all its unique personalities and behaviors. And it was awesome.

So I am very glad that you saw that potential and are going to try to realize it. To be honest, I have my doubts. Considering how every TBS 4x game since AC (including yours) all featured the same, bland AI civs that all behaved more or less the same (yes, I know you had different AIs but that didn't amount to much), I don't think you can actually pull it off and breathe some real life into GalCiv. But hey, I may be wrong and I'm more than willing to give you the chance in the form of these extra months. So go and give them some real personality!

Hint: An expanded United Planets feature would make this even better. Again, see Alpha Centauri. I never understood how the TBS devs seemed to have learned nothing at all from this game. Not that it didn't have its flaws but some of its features were extraordinary. I can understand, to a point, that they couldn't implement such a Planetary Council in Civ due to the timeline involved but you shouldn't have any problems in this regard. So stop treating the UP like some tacked-on afterthought, it deserves way more than that.

In DA, my best moment ever was beating the dread lords the same turn they emerged, I was thinking "OMG DA DREAD LORDZ IZ HERE" and then I noticed I had a troop t. or two on the way nearby. So I killed them all. LoL.

It will be open till the release I believe !!

The beta for this new add-on has played better then most
game releases lately IMHO ...

Not many companies would delay a release, to improve it
for the customer base. I'm looking forward to the March
release.

Looking to future products Stardock ...

How did you order it? An actual CD from some game shop? If you ordered it via Stardocks' site, then you could download it and start playing it now (in it's beta stage, but still). I've been playing TA ever since Beta1 came out a few months ago.

As for gherardo, the features he says he's missing are the ones that will be released around the 17th. It'll be yet another beta release that he, I, and plenty of others will download and then keep on trucking with the new features in place. Being a pre-order beta player, you get the game right away...albeit sometimes a bit buggier than the final release in March.

In March, the game will be in it's acceptable state when TA actually goes live, bug-free and worth far more than you paid for.

Well, When the vote was for "January or December" i Voted February. (Well, i actually voted January, but I Replied saying February or Later, When its done)

This Time, I support March, and Vote for April!