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lack of planets/ habitable planets v1.8

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lack of planets/ habitable planets v1.8

from GalCiv2 Forums
Hello all,

I know there was a planet cap put into the maps now, of which I disagree with because to those people who don't like the slow down with the whole galaxy covered could just play on smaller galaxies, however that's not my call and even though I'm not happy with it I somewhat can understand it. Now every game I've started or tried to start I've seen a lack of panets near my location or a lack of habitable planets near my starting location.

Even though I've loaded numerous games I've only actually played a turn on three all three have have only a few planets that were habitable near me even though in my settings I have aboundant habitable planets selected. (I hate to see what it would look like the opposite way)

In my current game within on sector in the galaxy of my home planet there are 11 other systems of which only 1 is a three planet, 5 are four planet, and 6 are 5 planet systems, which sound promising. 3 though have no habitable planets, 6 have one habitable planets, however 1 of those is an aquatic world. The remaining two systems have 2 habitable planets of which 1 in each are either aquatic or radioactive worlds.

In the past I normally have near double the number of habitable planets with a set up like that if not more and I've noticed this now in at least 3 games since the v1.8 update. I don't recall this issue as much in beta version 1.7 beta 4, but then again I haven't started a new game since beta 2 or 3.

Please help thank you.
45,111 views 152 replies
Reply #26 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
On a sort of related note, maybe the max stars should be customizable in the game's performance options. And guys this is stardock , I'm sure a fix the rare planets in 1.8 will be out in no time flat.
Reply #27 from GalCiv2 Forums Top


As far as rolling back, 1.7b4 had broken A.I., so if youre able to rollback, you'll want to go farther than that.


What was the last version with a decent A.I.?
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My AI is busted in 1.8 50% of the time. Will not build or research a single thing.
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Reply #28 from GalCiv2 Forums Top


As far as rolling back, 1.7b4 had broken A.I., so if youre able to rollback, you'll want to go farther than that.


What was the last version with a decent A.I.?
End of quote


At this point, I would advocate an official rollback to V1.6 so people can play in the metaverse, and I would push the 1.8 changes into TotA, so they can benefit from the further testing that will be happening shortly for that.

But what do I know.
Reply #29 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
While having a slider to control the max number of stars would of course be preferable, I'm not sure it is wise. As far as I understand it (feel free to correct me), scoring depends to some degree on the number of planets available (population, economy, research...). So given the same galaxy size (gigantic for example), players with better computers, able to handle more stars would be able to achieve higher MV scores just because of their better hardware.
Reply #30 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
This is a deal breaker for me. I'm glad I held off from updating this time.
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I agree with Shiva...I've held off on updating to 1.8 so that any bugs could be worked out, but now I'm definitely not going to do it until this particular issue is resolved. In my opinion number of normally habitable planets to extreme planets was too low to begin with anyway. I've always thought that a game setting where the player can adjust this ratio (with some limits) would be an excellent idea.

Sentient species taste better... Sentient species taste better...
Reply #31 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Got to go with the masses on this one. Whilst my repeatable CTD is really annoying (especially as it never happened in the betas) the lack of habitable stars is too big an issue to play with for now. Whilst i understand there were changes made to help those having memory issues i personally think this takes it too far and makes the game unplayable, something i know you guys at Stardock will not have wanted.

So for the time being its time to hang up the game and wait for the next patch which will hopefully rectify the CTD and planet issue.
Reply #32 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I could actually live with the new planet counts IF:

1) The starting zone was on par with the rest of the map/enemy homeworld locations. There definitely seems to be a "screw the player" mentality in map generation this is too painful to play with at the current levels.

2) The role/presence of specialized colony tech worlds was greatly reduced or removed altogether. But they've balanced a lot of other stuff against these stupid things, so I don't know how they'd do that.


The game is intolerable right now. I honestly don't know whether to go ape about it or not, because I remain uncertain whether it's intentional or not. On the one hand, 1.7b4 wasn't like this. On the other hand, Cari is over in the main 1.8 thread saying that planets were reduced, and while they were going to bump them back up a little in an upcoming patch, they won't be back to the previous levels.

I really hope this isn't a hardline stance.
Reply #33 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Ya. If having so many planets is a problem, then they could just as well make gigantic / abundant / abundant an invalid choice.

Personally I'm with everyone else, I don't like the ratio / quality of good planets, and I'm not going to start playing again until it's fixed. If it was intentional, I guess I could get used to it.

I really didn't have a problem with the idea of any cap. I mean as long as the ratio / mix of planets is about what it's been, that's fine.

It's almost as if in the galaxy generation, the extreme worlds are sprinkled out first, and then the regular ones. And now, they've come in and just clipped off adding the bulk of the regular ones. Has anyone tried this? I mean play a :

rare/abundant/abundant and see how the balance is?

Anyway, with all the changes dropped into 1.8 over /above beta 4, why didn't they just do another beta?






Reply #34 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
They just releasead 1.8a with more planets supposedly. Checking it out now...
Reply #35 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Im more worried about the next main update! TotA will give us an even bigger map than at present! How the hell is that going to work if there is a cap on planets? Massive open spaces with a planet here and there?
Reply #36 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

They just releasead 1.8a with more planets supposedly. Checking it out now...

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You gotta love em even if they do worry you now and again LOL
Reply #37 from GalCiv2 Forums Top


They just releasead 1.8a with more planets supposedly. Checking it out now...



You gotta love em even if they do worry you now and again LOL
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Reply #38 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Yes, I have to agree, the lack of good planets really took away from the game. It was not that way in the betas, including beta 4. I tried one game on 1.8 and thought maybe it was just a quirk that one time, then I saw this thread and realized it wasn't just me. I'm downloading 1.80a now and we'll see how it works. It appears that good ol' Stardock has fixed it before I could even comment on it here! I'm off now to give it a try ...
Reply #39 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The maps I'm playing in 1.8a, as the thalans, abundant everything, scattered clusters, do show an improvement overall, however:

1) There is a demonstrable trend in poor player starting position relative to the other races. I dont know if it's intentional; I'm told it isnt...but this happens every time. For instance, in this map, the thalnas get a sector with their homeworld, and thats it. The sector every other race starts with has 3-5 worlds, some immediately inahbitable.

2)There Mix still favors specialized worlds requiring colony tech.

I don''t know if this is intentional, but with sparser planets overall, these become real factors in the playability of games.
Reply #40 from GalCiv2 Forums Top


While having a slider to control the max number of stars would of course be preferable, I'm not sure it is wise. As far as I understand it (feel free to correct me), scoring depends to some degree on the number of planets available (population, economy, research...). So given the same galaxy size (gigantic for example), players with better computers, able to handle more stars would be able to achieve higher MV scores just because of their better hardware.
End of quote


Yeah I never thought of that since I don't play MV. I guess they would have to add in the number of stars next to the scores to make it fair. ie: "Score:13144, Gigantic, 300 Stars"
Reply #41 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
And by the way, what was the average amount of stars in a gigantic/abundant galaxy before the cap? Like 500? I don't play abundant, I like having vast distances of space
Reply #42 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

On the other hand, Cari is over in the main 1.8 thread saying that planets were reduced, and while they were going to bump them back up a little in an upcoming patch, they won't be back to the previous levels.

I really hope this isn't a hardline stance.
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The change in habitable planets was a quick change made by Brad to try and reduce the out of memory issues, which get reported a lot, even by people on great systems.  We've really run out of easy ways to eliminate memory usage.  With Dark Avatar, you actually have a lot more habitable (although some requiring techs) planets than in DL because previously there were no class 1-4 planets. Now, those exist, but they are far more likely to be a world requiring a tech to colonize.

We will continue to look at the problme, but we needed to get an update up today to at least partially address the lack of habitable planets.

Reply #43 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Anyone else having trouble updating the 1.8a....?

Error: Attempt: 1 | Module Request Failed: The module you have requested is no longer available. (ref: 201)
Error: Attempt: 2 | Module Request Failed: The module you have requested is no longer available. (ref: 201)
Error: Attempt: 3 | Module Request Failed: The module you have requested is no longer available. (ref: 201)
Server: Using other server http://sdc2.stardock.com
Error: Attempt: 1 | Module Request Failed: The module you have requested is no longer available. (ref: 201)
Error: Attempt: 2 | Module Request Failed: The module you have requested is no longer available. (ref: 201)
Error: Attempt: 3 | Module Request Failed: The module you have requested is no longer available. (ref: 201)
Result: Installation failed (9)
Reply #44 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I started up a new 1.8a game and did 10 CTRL+Ns. I ended up with the following number of systems under my Medium/everything Abundant galaxy: 41, 32, 34, 52, 43, 36, 37, 44, 47, 30. That gives me an average of 39 systems with a maximum of 52, minimum of 30, and standard deviation of 7. A Medium galaxy is 5x5, so that works out to a system/square (quadrant?) of about 1.5 (3:2). I've got to figure out how the cheats work so I can reveal the whole map and do some counts of planets. But, stellar-wise, 1.8a doesn't look to have increased things by much (if anything) over 1.8. Hopefully, the mix of Extreme to non-Extreme will be better. But, unless they've increased the average number of habitable planets per system, this is still looking like about half the number of planets as before.
Reply #45 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Map reveal is ctrl-u in a GC cheat-boot.
Reply #46 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Anyone else having trouble updating the 1.8a....?

Error: Attempt: 1 | Module Request Failed: The module you have requested is no longer available. (ref: 201)
Error: Attempt: 2 | Module Request Failed: The module you have requested is no longer available. (ref: 201)
Error: Attempt: 3 | Module Request Failed: The module you have requested is no longer available. (ref: 201)
Server: Using other server http://sdc2.stardock.com
Error: Attempt: 1 | Module Request Failed: The module you have requested is no longer available. (ref: 201)
Error: Attempt: 2 | Module Request Failed: The module you have requested is no longer available. (ref: 201)
Error: Attempt: 3 | Module Request Failed: The module you have requested is no longer available. (ref: 201)
Result: Installation failed (9)

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restart SC then apply updates
Reply #47 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I started up a new 1.8a game and did 10 CTRL+Ns. I ended up with the following number of systems under my Medium/everything Abundant galaxy: 41, 32, 34, 52, 43, 36, 37, 44, 47, 30. That gives me an average of 39 systems with a maximum of 52, minimum of 30, and standard deviation of 7. A Medium galaxy is 5x5, so that works out to a system/square (quadrant?) of about 1.5 (3:2). I've got to figure out how the cheats work so I can reveal the whole map and do some counts of planets. But, stellar-wise, 1.8a doesn't look to have increased things by much (if anything) over 1.8. Hopefully, the mix of Extreme to non-Extreme will be better. But, unless they've increased the average number of habitable planets per system, this is still looking like about half the number of planets as before.
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Is there a cheat that gives you this number?
It would be nice to have a cheat that gives the number of habitable planets of decent size so that we know what we are dealing with. I hate starting a game and then finding out that the ai is goofy or the number of usable planets is way down. Hunting them out is most of the fun.
Reply #48 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I don't know of a cheat to give such numbers. I'm just counting them up by hand. I brought up a cheat version of a Medium/Abundant galaxy and CTRL-Ued to see all the systems. Since I can't get the tables to display properly here, I'll just summarize the planetary data. In this case, there were 37 systems. Total Habitable planets were 79. Of those 79, 34 (or 43%) were Extreme environments. There were an additional 105 uninhabitable planets. Of the Habitable planets, depending on your definition, about half of them are "decent." The remaining Habitables are "less than decent" . Since the table is simple enough, here's the initial distribution of planets by Class:

Class Number of Planets
26 1
20 1
17 1
16 1
15 1
14 1
13 3
12 2
11 5
10 8
9 7
8 6
7 4
6 3
5 7
4 9
3 9
2 4
1 5
0 105
Reply #49 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Do you have to add something to the command line to get the cheat mode (like Ctrl-U) to work?
Reply #50 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Do you have to add something to the command line to get the cheat mode (like Ctrl-U) to work?
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