The Galactic Civilizations II Battle Plan

They say that no game can be all things to all people. But that doesn't mean one can't try.  When people see our change logs for the upcoming v1.1 they notice they're huge but what a change log can't tell is the overall goal of a particular version.  Taken on their own, a change log can look arbitrary, even casual in what's being changed. Why are we doing this? Is there a unified vision of what's being changed?

So the first question is, why are we doing these updates?  The answer to that has everything to do with word of mouth. Why is an little indie game like Galactic Civilizations amongst the top selling titles at the major retailers? Surely, it must be the awesome, intimidating Stardock marketing juggernaut. Maybe not. Maybe it has something to do with you -- strategy gamers. Strategy gamers who recommended the game to their friends and coworkers for a variety of reasons.  It's a win-win situation.  We do everything we can to make sure you're satisfied with your purchase and we benefit from good word of mouth because of the free user-input updates.

Typically, a person buys a game, plays it for a month, maybe two, and then it's gone.  If they like the game, they may recommend it to their friends. Our updates are about extending the game's lifespan.  The longer we can keep the game interesting to you, the player, the more value you received from your purchase and the better off we are since it extends the time that you're playing the game.  We also see it as our responsibility. It's a single player game. Therefore, we have a duty to keep enhancing it to make it fresh, this is particularly true of the computer AI.

We've been making Galactic Civilizations in one form or other for 12 years now (the original OS/2 version was released in 1994).  And yet it continues to evolve.  We're happy that the game has gotten such good reviews.  And we're very happy most people seem to like it.  But the favorable reception of the game was important for another reason: Doing updates after release, especially ones that add new features naturally beg the question: Didn't they finish the game?  Had the initial reaction to the game been negative, then that would be a very legitimate question. It's one of the reasons we self-published Galactic Civilizations II. We could wait until we were happy with the game to release it. And that way we could do updates without fear of people saying "Well look at all these updates, it must not have been done".

And that brings us back to v1.1. What are we trying to do with it?  There are 5 main goals for v1.1:

1. Better Computer Players. Nearly every review has focused on how good the computer AI is. We're very jazzed about that. But like all strategy games, there are a certain % of people who find it too hard and a certain % of people who find it too easy.  The goal of 1.1 is to make the game play easier at lower difficulty levels so that players can be gradually introduced to the game while making the AI much more challenging at higher levels by being smarter, more sophisticated.  For example, a lot of work has been put onto tech trading, handling of transports, ship tactics, planet improvement handling, etc. We read forums, not just here but all over the net. We lurk. We hear what strategies people employ.  If it's an exploit, we plug it. If it's just a really clever strategy, we extend the computer AI to deal with it.  The goal of 1.1 is to have computer AIs that blatantly play smarter.
2. Cleaner Game Mechanics. The economic system of GalCiv II is essentailly a hold-over from GalCiv I which was a hold over from the OS/2 version.  The goal with 1.1 is to make it clear where the numbers come from, make sure they're intuitive, and make balance tweaks based on player feedback.  We're adding in more tool tips so that players can see where things come from, how they're derived. We're tweaking costs, bonuses, etc.  There is no such thing as a perfect balance.  A good balance to a strategy game is derived by how people play that game. We listen to how people actually play the game and then adjust it based on that.  Nothing particularly dramatic (though social production no longer being wasted is a pretty big change but it's something we've had months to think about), mostly things that just make the game feel...better.
3. Better User Interface.  When you read how people in the real world are playing your game, it makes sense to try to cater to those playing styles. For example, the ship designer has become incredibly popular. We had no idea it would be such a big deal to design your own ships in a free form way.  So we've put in time to make it better. Other players wanted better ways of managing units, selecting units, keeping track of where units were going, so we have been working on that as well. More hot keys have been added, more buttons added, and so forth.  The overall goal is to improve the game so that you're focusing on having fun (it's a game after all) and the user interface stays out of the way.
4. Modding.  The long-term viability of many games is modding.  We see it as our job to make sure that modding isn't just something techies can do but rather something anyone can do to the game.  We have some experience in this given that we do run the world's largest Windows modding community. When the modding is done, players will be able to download a mod and then from the game point to that mod and make use of all its changes without having to mess around with editors and images.  To help in mod creation, 1.1 will include a pretty significant set of mods in itself to use as examples.
5. More Gameplay options. This is something that will be an on-going thing.  We don't want to have a crazy # of options, but we do want people to be able to have the game play the way they want. For instance, some people don't like tech trading. So we put in an option to eliminate it.  Other people didn't like that you could see where the other empires were from the first turn, so we put an option to not be able to see controlled territories until those areas were explored. Some people don't like minor races, so we put an option to not have them.

Our schedule right now is to have another beta this week which should introduce the modding.  We will continue to iron out bugs in the beta, tweak balance, and then after that we'll release it as a non-beta. Originally we wanted to get 1.1 "done" by the end of March. But we wanted to have some extra time to tweak and balance things, which in turn add bugs, which in turn have to be fixed.  But we're getting pretty close now. Hopefully users of v1.1 beta 2 like what they see. And soon it'll be done.

And then what? Then we'll start in v1.2 with features we haven't even thought of yet.

Update: The Modding UI may got into 1.2. Mod docs will go out with 1.1.