Hostile Planet Enviroments

Here are some improvements I think would be great

from GalCiv2 Forums
I wanted to put a post up and see if I can get a feeling on how other people like the new special enviroment that some planets have. Talking about the planets that you need to research techs in order to colonize.

These were added to slow down the colony rush that happened at the beginning of games, but right now I am at a toss up as to if this has really made much of a difference.

In most of the DA games I have played there still seems to be rush to grab the generally habitable planets early on and then as the tech are researched the rest of the galaxy gets sucked up pretty quickly.

I have a couple suggestions/adjustsments I think would make things more interesting and nake the choosing of planets something more than a land grab.

First, I think in the start-up screen there needs to be option for the number of 'hostile' planets. Like the choices for planets in general and habitable planets. With several of my games it seems that the number of habitable vs hostile varies greatly, even though I have not changed my settings.

Second, I would like to see some of the hostile enviroment techs require different levels of research. Some techs, like for aquatic planets should be easier to get that toxic or radiated. Right now, they are all at the same level of research needed and that just doesn't feel right to me.

Third, I think some bonuses for the hostile planets would help make things more interesing. Maybe aquatic planets have a higher chance for food or approval bonus tiles, think fish farms and tropical beaches. Radiated planets have a natural energy source equilvant to a fusion reactor, so you don't have to build one on the planet. High-grav planets might have a high concentration of mineral, so production bonuses.

A few changes like that would go a long way to increasing the fun of the game in my opinion.
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Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
First, I think in the start-up screen there needs to be option for the number of 'hostile' planets. Like the choices for planets in general and habitable planets. With several of my games it seems that the number of habitable vs hostile varies greatly, even though I have not changed my settings.


Agreed, the more options we have to customize our sandbox games the better. The slider for choosing the number of Minor Civs made me really happy when I saw it

Third, I think some bonuses for the hostile planets would help make things more interesing. Maybe aquatic planets have a higher chance for food or approval bonus tiles, think fish farms and tropical beaches. Radiated planets have a natural energy source equilvant to a fusion reactor, so you don't have to build one on the planet. High-grav planets might have a high concentration of mineral, so production bonuses.


Again, it would be awesome for there to be more differences between the planet types beyond habitable and non habitable and how much production you get on it.

It would also be nice to be able to mod how much production you can get on the special worlds from the techs. Currently, it's just 0 (none), 1(50%), or 2(100%).

Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I was kind of hoping it would allow me to mod in more than the ones that exist. Alas...
CursorFX - Customize your Windows cursor
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
the problem i think is.. rushing is the players main ability.. its a good idea to slow it down with techs.. but changing the research rate should help SOME..

but i think that there should be multiple options.. like..



/ Toxic atmpsphere - Dome - Toxic cleanup - Oxygen generators
Colinization - - Normal planet (just normal deals here like 1.4's setup)
\ Water plant - Floating Cities - Underwater domes - Deep Sea Domes

Dome (all colony progejects are domed to prevent the toxic Gas or unbreathable gas from reaching the colony citizens)

Toxic Cleanup (Toxic materials are removed from the air and people can go out with only needing oxygen supliments (tanks and such) Certain plants will be normal, but most will still need some work to have all tiles usefull)

Oxygen Generators ( Helps convert stores waste to planetary oxygen. so that all available tiles are usefull)

Floating Cities ( Cities and Places are Built on water with the idea of floating them . But not all tiles are avalable due to the fact they can't get down to the bottom of the ocean to secure the cities/area to the seafloor)

Underwater domes ( Entire planet avalable on some planets and more space avalable since it can be built underwater but some areas still can't be used)

Deep Sea Domes (Deeper domes and underwater attachments all the planets avalable
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
you may be able to add these as a mod to what is already there.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
wouldn't civilization that researched "underwater domes" be able to create those same domes on toxic planet (even easier, no high pressure, so structure wouldn't have to be so strong), it would be poison around the dome instead of water, but citizens would be protected... maybe oxygen creation from water is different than toxin purifiers... oh well...
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I like thes tropical fish farms!
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I haven't seen any gas planets techs...I WANT JUPITER IN MY COLLECTION!  
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Making the enviro techs more varied somehow does seem interesting, but I've played a few 1A games and have pretty much finished the rush on a 2 game, huge map.

I've kept my play style pretty consistent with my recent non-beta games, and the new environment stuff has meant that I no longer have the solid majority of worlds on the periphery of my territory. I see more neighbors in "my" space and I've ended up taking worlds in neighboring turf, which I used to avoid out of respect for the AIs.

If there's any chance of a major tweak to the environment system other than the tech tree part, I'd really like to see different original environments for different species, possibly with unique cost structures for enviro research that reflect different roots. For example, a species that evolved on a radioactive world might find colonizing a toxic world much easier than an aquatic one.
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I haven't seen any gas planets techs


I was hoping for this, too. Something like the Bespin colony in Star Wars, though if Lando Calrissian was in charge, it would probably culture flip every time a new warship approached.

I also think that planetary improvements should be more expensive on these planets (because they would have to be domed or otherwise sheltered), and that they should have a lower population cap. I can't imagine building enough domes/artificial islands/tunnel warrens for 20 billion people, even if the game scale was in years.
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Some of the ideas floated in this thread are great.

The ability to customise aspects of the hostile worlds when creating your game is definitely high on the list of things I'd like to see...How many are they? Are the randomly placed or in fairly tight clusters (would make for some interesting tactical scenarios if entire solar systems were made up of hostile environment planets that could not initially be colonised in the inevitable 'rush'...

Spacing the hostile environment techs out amongst the tech tree is also a good idea...It would also help make it harder for civs to easily research them all rapidly...

Having bonuses for the planets is defiantly something I'd like to see...You've expended a lot of effort to be able to get to those planets...There should definably be a big juicy carrot dangling their enticing you to grab it before anyone else does...Nothing silly, but as has been noted, the natural environments of these planets would lead to all sorts of exploitable traits in theory...

Personally I dislike the idea of Gas Giants being colonised...For one, it would create to many colonisable worlds...There's gotta be SOME empty ones guys...And secondly, the gravitational forces, wind speeds etc make it almost completely un-viable from a realism point of view. I know, I know, it's scifi...But you've gotta draw a line somewhere...Maybe they can be used for some other purpose, (in the Saga of the Seven Suns books they were used to get fuel for starships...) but I'm not liking the idea of making them habitable...

It would be great to see the devs take a look at this...
Keep up the great work guys.
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Personally, I think in addition to hampering production on the planet until you get advanced we can now live here environment tech, PQ should be halved. Then it can be restored once you get advance tech.
Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Half the PQ? I played a lot with the Super Hive ability lately and even with that (3-4 factories instantly ) it takes a long time get some buildings up in the colonization phase - it's easier in late game tho.

What I'd really like to see is half the Pop Cap before you researched the 100% habitable tech.
Reply #13 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I haven't seen any gas planets techs...I WANT JUPITER IN MY COLLECTION!



What are you going to build in a gas giant? Perhaps a giant dome that is light enough not to sink in and get crushed? Still, it's just a gigantic flying machine, may as well be a spaceship. Definately not a colony, colonisation not possible.
Reply #14 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Maybe adding a Terraformer module for starships (available with the Terraforming tech, or creating a new one like Environment Manipulation), so that you could create terraforming ships like you do colony ships. The terraforming process would occur automatically upon arrival of the ship, and would last for a number of turns depending on the initial planet type. Once the terraforming was completed, colonization could be started (with a standard colonization process). The terraformer would still occupy one slot in the planet though, a drawback is always a nice thing
Some planet types could only need a different "approach", like an adapted Initial Colony - Aquatic Colony, Desert Colony, etc. These would be available after researching the adequate tech path, and could have lower stats than the standard Initial Colony. Max population would be reduced too, and morale penalties would be higher.

Slightly OT, but planetary tile types could have specialised roles. Like desert tiles for Starports; ocean, mountain and jungle tiles for some extreme sports or other morale boosting projects. That would "increase" the PQ of planets, maybe only for late game projects. Also, always assigning for example swamp tiles for those slots that are eligible for Soil Enrichment, and maybe Foothills for Terraforming. Just a thought.
Reply #15 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
That should of course replace the current Orbital Terraformer tech, which is somewhat strange, a terraformer in one planet terraforming *all* planets    Besides being *orbital* but requiring a slot on the planet   
Which reminds me of the *Orbital* Construction part of the UI, where you have to actually *launch* ships from...    (there's just so many details you can pick on in this game)

For the tile types idea I meant standard projects would always be built on Prairie tiles, and the others would have fixed "transformations" or special uses. Just for some consistency.
Reply #16 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Maybe adding a Terraformer module for starships


You know what? I really like the sound of this idea. Being able to make a PQ 0 planet into a habitable one.

Way back in the day I played a space strategy game on the Nintendo called Overlord. I also believe it was PC based as well. It was a pretty good game. You had to terraform your planets before you could colonize them. You launched a "Terraformer" from your home planet and waited until the process was completed. Each planet was made from different types of material which allowed them to be terraformed into 3 specific types of worlds built around, Industry, Vegetation, and population. In order to have certain worlds maintain population for instance, you had to transport food to population based planets... so on and so forth.

It would be, in my opinion of course, rather interesting if the PQ 0 planets had a base type which allowed the possibility for certain types of bonus tiles after being terraformed, as well as having a system in place to generate a random PQ number for terraformed planets. This number of course should not be very high. Once Terraformed, the planet would be considered neutral and become a viable planet for colonization by any Civ.
Reply #17 from Stardock Forums Top
my 2 cents:

I dont know about anyone else but I would like it added so that your homeworld is habitable. I have created a few games where my home world was toxic to start and it made it completely useless (except for the spaceport worked fine), that REALLY should be a bug. My pop did not grown, I could buy whatever I wanted on the planit however no MIL or SOC was produced, however INF was producted as well as Research. It has happened to me 3 times now, once I research the approperate tech the planit was fine and producted what it should have.

~Loriean
PS: any support people wanting saves or more details message me.