1. The option to build soil enhancement + useful building together...

Rather then building up soil enhancement by itself and then later then the planet finishes all construction (or when you notice the soil enhancement is done) go and manually queue a new building, have the option to build a factory or some such on bad land, and have it cost more to account for the fact it is also building soil enhancement.

2. Key 'A' should also automate miners, not just surveyors

3. A way to turn off notifications for survey ship going into sleep mode.

4. The Iconian economy structures do not upgrade/obsolete older economy structures.

5. A button you can press to have all structures on all planets who have NOT been upgraded auto upgrade (ie, if you build lower tech structures and later you want to upgrade them all, have one button to do it).

6. One button option to build soil enhancement and higher tech version of it on all planets. Could be combined with the button from #5.

Hi, just a few thoughts from playing ToA beta 3b.

1. Is there a bug where the AI can skip to the end of the tech tree for a particular branch? In many games, I'm seeing tech like hyperwarp, invulnerbility fields, adamanite(sp) armor floating around. And its only like 20 turns into the game.

2. I like the new ability to right click on tech to see details, especially during tech trading. What would be nice also is to be able to consult the tech tree in order to see where it fits in, ala Sid Meyer's Alpha Centuari 'consult datalinks'

3. It would be nice to know if the bonuses from a wonder/building is civilisation wide or only applies to that planet.

4. Some Racial Tech (like Precursor Archives) should be harder to trade for.

5. Espionage - Is it going to be overhauled? Like the ability to just gather info about the civilisation without having to set a spy to disable a building? How about specific tasks, like a % chance to steal tech if the spy is set on a research building. Or inciting riots to lower morale. Or sipponing off BCs.

6. Super abilities - Iconians should start out with extreme colonisation, or just be able to colonise more environments. Aquatic and Toxic are pretty lame.

Anyhow, I'm having a blast playing the betas.
Thanks for the great game.

I'm going to "me too" some stuff I saw in this thread, but first I've got my own idea.

- I'd REALLY REALLY like to be able to set my own values for the abundant/common/rare startup options, and the tech speed. In one of the beta versions of the original galciv2 patchs, they greatly increased the number of habitable planets in the abundant setting, like average 3-4 per star. It may seem cheap to some, but I kind of liked it, and I'd like to be able to try it again. Even if it would have to be modded, that would be cool, but the only way to change it as of now would be to modify the exe which I have no idea how to do. This would also solve the make tech slower requests I'm seeing, as you could set it as slow as you want. For those of you who do want slower techs now, you can backup your techtrees and make them slower manually.

To second some points:

- Make good more powerful, evil is just plain better.

- Zoom to cursor, PLEASE!

- An option to turn off stealing/trading unique techs. I'll probably leave it on, but it should be an option.

evil is supposed to be better... the rewards for evil are immidiate gains... the rewards for good is the way the AI treats you. Good races stand up for each other... I do think however that it should be powered up... that is, if an evil civ declares war on a good civ then any good civ in good standing with the first one should help it, Monatary aid sounds like the best way of doing so. (think how in the begining of WW2 the us was sending money and supplies to the allies)

also "3. It would be nice to know if the bonuses from a wonder/building is civilisation wide or only applies to that planet. "

I also wish for that. Its been one of my biggest gripes, I just can't tell if a bonus is planet wide or empire wide...

but its more easy to win as evil... i also think that evil is overpowered or good is too weak

good countries should defend their allies good or bad.


bad countries would only have allies as long as it is convenent.


but no country would ever identify itself as good or evil

speaking about allies... AI rarely researches Alliances technology, that tech should have way higher priority

Some last minute things I'd want

1) Support for 12 races in the game
2) Slightly better defensive options for starbases
3) AI will research Alliances, or at least allow for Alliances to be proposed by a player with that tech to someone without the tech.

Can this be done for items on a ship's hull now that animations are in?

1] Blinking animation (so you can make lights blink)

2] Rotation amount 0°-360° (so you can have a piece that rotates back and forth)

3] Planar movement with distance and speed settings (so you can have a piece that moves back and forth along a line)

=$=

Take a look at this post. I've been trying to make a master list of features to add to the ship designer (its going slowly). Feel free to comment, or add suggestions.

WWW Link



Lets not stop at blinking. Lets have something that can go through a series of images (including blank). That way, we could have a light flash blue, green, then red...

Wait a sec! How about having this be made advanced enough so we could make a ship look a christmas tree?

I'll keep it quick, all this is in my opinion:

SERIOUS SUGGESTIONS:
- Option to turn extreme environments for planets on or off, in the same menu as Tech Trading and Mega Events.
- United Planets votes less hateful to evil civs.
- Evil Civs less powerful, Good more powerful, Neutral of equal power to both.
- I know I'm probably in the minority with this one, but option to turn ethics off completely...
- ..or relegate it to an automatic process based on actual gameplay decisions and not arbitrary choices picked between three extremes on a pick a choice screen. Ethics are a reputation, not a choice the civilisation can make depending on what mood its leader is in at the time or how much money they have. Evil races should be considered evil because they declare war on weaker ones for no apparent reason, good because they stick up for others, etc.
My main criticism of the ethical stuff is it isn't 'ethics' at all. Sacrificing 100 of your kinsfolk a day for the benefit of the others could be the 'most good' choice in some theories and not so in others. It's overly simplistic to say that some choices are 'evil' and others 'good' based on the system imposed by the game, I'd prefer to scrap 'ethics' altogether. That'd finally put an end to the 'evil is too powerful' argument once and for all as well.
- Address the erratic weapon 'balance' of the three weapons trees. Stardock, for all the absolutely wonderful things they do in GalCiv, appear to bite off a bit more than they can chew with the current system, which is a bit of a mess. Beams have a huge jump to more-or-less match the others in power at the end of the tree, Mass drivers have the insane Nano-Ripper halfway through and a disappointing finish, Missiles are always better than both. The different costs of research, prices and weights of components do not balance things: one is nearly always best off going up the missiles tree, except in certain documented circumstances that can be found elsewhere on this forum. I know they're supposed to have different general power levels, but why exactly is this? Make them have the same power for the same amount of research commitment and use the rock/paper/scissors (for want of a more apt term) weapon vs. defence system, which works well and would increase tactical consideration if all weapons and armours were equally matched at each generation across the three respective categories.
- Auto-attack and auto-explore that is aware of the actions of other ships. I don't want 5 separate ships all going after the same target or exploring the same area at once.
- Set patrol routes for ships.
- 'Sentry' and/or 'Guard' functions with any use at all.
- Automated spreading of military ships to distribute themselves and orbit planets: if one has only a few production centres that turn out ships every turn it's currently a micromanagement hassle to distribute them to defend your planets in orbit.
- Auto-Explore that switches to Auto-Attack should war be declared on you without having to find your ships or fleets you told to clear up that fog to make themselves useful while they wait for some action.
- Internal trading networks for production bonuses.
- Shipyard accessible outside of the main game where you can create templates for use ingame. I get to the point where I need to design a new ship then give up because I can't be bothered at that precise moment as I need it right now for killing things.

SILLY IDEAS:
- Some techs give you a 'free' ship. It's likely that during research a prototype is built, e.g. for a Survey Ship. Why can't we use these ships?
- Ability to distribute research production across more than one tech at once. The total research production if you wanted to research two techs at once would be halved across the two, and thirded across three. The upside is less micromanagement, downside is research of individual techs is slower.

two words: blinking lights

- Maybe a toggle none, rare, common, abundant, almost all

- Well at least a score boost to the good civs or score penilty for evil.

Then one of my own
- ability to keep auto-survey in your own space as an option (great for later in-game when war is declared, wouldn't be much use early ingame.) Then have the ability to specify not to explore wormholes. (already suggested that, big problem early in game.)

DISREGARD MY EARLIER POST: It isn't letting me edit/delete it.

I'll keep it quick, all this is in my opinion and should for that reason not be taken too seriously:

SERIOUS SUGGESTIONS:
- Option to turn extreme environments for planets on or off, in the same menu as Tech Trading and Mega Events.
- United Planets votes less hateful to evil civs.
- Evil Civs less powerful, Good more powerful, Neutral of equal power to both.
- I know I'm probably in the minority with this one, but option to turn ethics off completely...
- ..or relegate it to an automatic process based on actual gameplay decisions and not arbitrary choices picked between three extremes on a pick a choice screen. Ethics are a reputation, not a choice the civilisation can make depending on what mood its leader is in at the time or how much money they have. Evil races should be considered evil because they declare war on weaker ones for no apparent reason, good because they stick up for others, etc.
My main criticism of the ethical stuff is it isn't 'ethics' at all. Sacrificing 100 of your kinsfolk a day for the benefit of the others could be the 'most good' choice in some theories and not so in others. It's overly simplistic to say that some choices are 'evil' and others 'good' based on the system imposed by the game, I'd prefer to scrap 'ethics' altogether. That'd finally put an end to the 'evil is too powerful' argument once and for all as well.
- Address the erratic weapon 'balance' of the three weapons trees. Stardock, for all the absolutely wonderful things they do in GalCiv, appear to bite off a bit more than they can chew with the current system, which is a bit of a mess. Beams have a huge jump to more-or-less match the others in power at the end of the tree, Mass drivers have the insane Nano-Ripper halfway through and a disappointing finish, Missiles are always better than both. The different costs of research, prices and weights of components do not balance things: one is nearly always best off going up the missiles tree, except in certain documented circumstances that can be found elsewhere on this forum. I know they're supposed to have different general power levels, but why exactly is this? Make them have the same power for the same amount of research commitment and use the rock/paper/scissors (for want of a more apt term) weapon vs. defence system, which works well and would increase tactical consideration if all weapons and armours were equally matched at each generation across the three respective categories.
- Auto-attack and auto-explore that is aware of the actions of other ships. I don't want 5 separate ships all going after the same target or exploring the same area at once.
- Set patrol routes for ships.
- 'Sentry' and/or 'Guard' functions with any use at all.
- Automated spreading of military ships to distribute themselves and orbit planets: if one has only a few production centres that turn out ships every turn it's currently a micromanagement hassle to distribute them to defend your planets in orbit.
- Auto-Explore that switches to Auto-Attack should war be declared on you without having to find your ships or fleets you told to clear up that fog to make themselves useful while they wait for some action.
- Internal trading networks for production bonuses.
- Shipyard accessible outside of the main game where you can create templates for use ingame. I get to the point where I need to design a new ship then give up because I can't be bothered at that precise moment as I need it right now for killing things.
- Make a ship return to the nearest shipyard for upgrade rather than sit in space and get upgraded by magic.


SILLY IDEAS:
- Some techs give you a 'free' ship. It's likely that during research a prototype is built, e.g. for a Survey Ship. Why can't we use these ships?
- Ability to distribute research production across more than one tech at once. The total research production if you wanted to research two techs at once would be halved across the two, and thirded across three. The upside is less micromanagement, downside is research of individual techs is slower.
- Conversion of a built-up but now lamentably useless starbase back into half of the constructors that went into it.

USER INTERFACE:
- Tone down the psychedelic default race colours. I'm sent on a trip every time I glance at the mini map with the territories marked.
- Make it possible to see which colours are already taken by the other races when customising a race.
- Diplomacy screen with windows-explorer-like collapsing menus. Current boxes are too small for large lists.
- Planet quality visible next to planet names on diplomacy screen.
- Keep planetary improvements in consistent positions by category on the window thingy at the side.
- 'Automate' function for Survey Ship that auto-surveys.

- 'Automate' function for Survey Ship that auto-surveys.

This already exists. Highlight your survey ship, push A. Repeat process to turn autosurvey off.

"Guard" function has a valuable purpose - it keeps fleets you want to sit still from coming up when you push the find button   

A vassal feature. I'm actually surprised they haven't done it already. Would go nice with being a Drengin and enslaving other civs rather than destroying them.

See that is exactly what I am talking about... Oh the UP is hating on evil civs and crippling them too much... oh but the evil civs are way to powerful (weapon wise) compared to good civ...

I mean, If its got both weaknessess and strengthes then its balanced. Thats the whole point... balanced doesn't mean "the same" or "the same with different names". The whole idea in galciv is to have much more varied situations allowed you to have a type of rock paper scissors kind of warfare. Are you a good civ? maybe you should go for a diplomatic victory rather then the annihilations of all other races in the galaxy. Are you an evil race? maybe sweet talking all your neighbors into one big happy peaceful alliance isn't for you.

Evil civs:
-Everyone hates them.
-Their allies aren't loyal.
-The UP is cruel to them
+They got more powerful weapons
+Their random events are all beneficial.

Good civs:
+Good and Neutral likes them. Citizens of evil civs like them too (defections)
+Their allies are loyal.
+The UP likes them
-They got weaker weapons.
-Their random events are all negative (no matter what happens doing the moral things costs you)


Here is my suggestion about the issue... After you research xeno ethics CONTINUE to have random events... but diallow the opposing choices. So if you are good you automatically get the good choice. etc.

When playing evil I generally avoid researching ethics before I am done colonizing because of the benefits of random events.
When good I generally get it ASAP as it eliminates the penalties of random events.

I got an idea..

Why not have the events list posted to the metaverse when you submit your game? Then everybody at least could view what events led to your victory, or loss. What weapons did you research, what did you research, and in what order?

taltamir-

So are you saying it's just a fluke that 7 of the top ten are evil civ's and none are good? In fact only 2 are neutral the other 8 are evil in nature but, 1 of those is only somewhat evil.

So being that the game score is so well balanced then prove me wrong, get someone to get a good civ to break into the top ten.

I'm not saying the game is bad that it favors the evil civs, but I think there is enough evidence out there that supports the idea of evil always being the better option if your looking for a high score, Good civs just typically don't generate as high of scores as evil ones do therefore making it harder, which brings me back to my point that there should be some type of score bonus for good civs and take away from evil civ's dependent on thier choices in game, not taking into account xeno ethics.

I definitely second the idea of building an ethical reputation by your actions, not just the choices that pop up in events. I would also steepen the monetary penalty for choosing an alignment that is far from your own; being evil and buying neutral for 2500 is the best deal ever, but it shouldn't be. Perhaps make it proportional to current treasury/economy?

I also am greatly in need for a way to automate the distribution of warships amongst planets; the same principle for constructors heading to starbases would be nice as well.

Here's another suggestion from me

-Remove the 20,000 bc cap (upgrade of 30 smaller ships can sometimes get very expensive a lot more than 20,000 bc) Either that or make the cap larger (even 25,000 bc would be something) Or last make it a gradual cap so that you aren't just thrown into a negative budget as soon as you cross the hard mark. (make the cap more managable and at least a little more realistic, not saying that a hard cap is)

-Somehow make it easier to upgrade a number of ships without having to select each one and then select the new ship design on each one, somewhere in between all and 1. Like for say if you only have enough to upgrade half of the ships have a slider stating upgrade 50% of these ship types (now that might still not upgrade exactly all the ships near an enemy which would be very helpfull, but it makes things faster and make it a little less micromanagement) Do this but, never eliminate micromanagement:)

I like the partial auto upgrade idea, even if it was somewhat random. Maybe have two guidelines to assist in the predictability. (1) no units outside your sphere of influence can upgrade and (2) it takes the ships closest to your capital.

I know this is well known bug... but please fix the tech tree jumping (warp drive, invulnerability fields) in the next update. Its killing some games for me.

Love the Krynn.

I find it too easy to shift any nation to evil and get the weapons bonus. Like others, I think ethics needs an overhaul.

what about a hot-seat game in TA? it would be interesting to play with friends on 1 pc

Hi all-

Below is a list of constructive critisism. Take from it as you may

- When in the trade screen you can trade civs for all thier planets, money, ships, starbases, and influence by giving them 20 ships(amount of ships very depending on different things). This trade whould not have any benefit to them being that once they give me all thier planets they are no longer a race in the game and therefore thier remaining ships become pirates roaming the galaxy. Sometimes I am able to get more ships as well as more powerfull ships by using this trade option as well as cheaply take over a empire.

- Now that buildings become destroyed that you don't have the technology for or can't reproduce the technology for are destoryed, conquering a planet isn't as useful as it once was, Last night I took over the Dregin and Toran and I had a bunch of populated planets with little buildings of use. Most of the tiles were open for me to build new structures or had real basic structures of thiers to use, mind you I had all the technology that they were able to trade me. I think that they should somehow make it so that the structures are somewhat usefull be it with a penelty or something else, We could always destroy them if we didn't have a use for them.

- Some of the various Empires in the game don't seem to be building on thier planets or at a very slow rate, it the same game I refered to above I might have lost 3-4 structures on certain planets but, most of the planets only had 1 or 2 tiles used on class 15 and above planets, plus again I saw poor use of special tiles which the AI rarely seems to ever use correctly.

This is meant as good feedback nothing more.

Thanks,
Seilore

easy addition which i would like to see: when you build your first capital ship the game shows a pre-rendered video of a generic ship. the game engine already does an excellent job rendering the ships, why can't it show a scene with the ship you actually built?