The future of Galactic Civilizations

Draginol

Join Date 03/2001

+137

The future of Galactic Civilizations

The good news is that there will be a Galactic Civilizations III. The bad news is that it won't be out this decade.

Galactic Civilizations II v2.0 is currently in development but it's free for all players of the expansion packs. But that will serve as the code basis for any further GalCiv II updates.

Right now, the team is working on the "unnamed fantasy strategy game" sometimes called "not-MOM" (not Master of Magic). It's a totally new graphics engine that makes use of multi-core CPUs and GPUs but will still run fine on lower end hardware thanks to built-in detection that will determine "how much stuff" to display in real-time.

That game will go into public beta early next year and its release date will be largely based on player feedback. As many of you know, we are in the position of being able to keep working on our games until everyone's happy with them. Our non-game part of the company does so well that there's no pressure. We want to make it the best turn-based strategy game of all time.

THAT engine will be what serves as the basis of a future Galactic Civilizations III. That means GalCiv III will have features like tactical battles (as an option), multiplayer, more sophisticated planetary development, and much more.

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Well if GalCiv3 is going to use the not-MOM engine, I guess that kills my recent hope ... https://forums.galciv2.com/324143

Still, the not-MOM engine sounds like a big improvement.

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But yeah, it's happening rather slowly

Isn't that the way it always goes?

Actually, no. It was something like last November I double checked the figures for an article (and found they were either accurate, or 'close enuff', depending on what references I checked.) that was noting that by that point in the life cycle XP had 50% market share over every competitor. We're now a year later, and honestly, the rate of increase is still positive, but slower than it was then.

The *why* for the difference is open for debate, but *whether* Vista is showing the uptake of XP certainly isn't.

Jonnan

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Any chance that GalCivIII will be native to both PC and Mac?

I converted to Mac several years ago. I use Bootcamp to play my fave PC titles on Mac, but it would be great if I could play GalCiv in my native MacOS.

Any chance this will happen?!?

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Ynglaur

Join Date 05/2006

+11

FWIW from a consumer: producers that release games when they're ready rather than have the "eh, we'll patch it later" approach seem to do remarkably well (Stardock, Blizzard (the original Diablo team was tiny by modern standards...), Bungie in the Marathon days (pre-Microsoft). Likewise, games that don't require a $4,000 rig also seem to do well. I'm in the enterprise software implementation space, and there's little more frustrating than watching a client flush a $10M investment because they won't bite a $50k incremental cost to just do it right the first time.

Stardock seems to get that.

Cheers,
A project manager

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I feel the need to sound off in a different way - I am so happy that Multiplayer will come to Galactic Civilizations III!!! I've been playing this game series since the first one came out, along with some of my friends (as of Twilight, the count is up to eight of us!) and we've got enough people to fully populate a galaxy and play the game - but we can't.

I'm not big on say, some sort of global ranking, or fierce competition, but I really do relish the ability for us to all get together and play GalCiv for a saturday instead of Civ IV.

Thank you, SD, I drool in anticipation of multiplayer Galciv. (And please let us easily use modified assets in unranked MP games!)

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Man, all I play are rts and the odd sports game....I wish stardock did both because it's the only gaming company that does things right. EA needs to be squashed, they couldn't care less about quality or customer service.

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I can't wait for Not-MOM! (Can I shorten that to NOM? Ooh, Novice of Magic?)

I also can't wait until GC3. I'm fine with it having multiplayer, even though I'd never use it myself. I just hope that doesn't mean the AI is going to be neglected.

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I'd hazard a guess that MP is in because they think they can have a bigger team for GC3 than they did GC2 and can give the fans that want multiplayer what they want without sacrificing AI.

I wouldn't want Multiplayer either, if the AI was sacrificed, because sometimes I won't be able to fill all the slots with players.

Speaking of slots - GCIII is going to need more empires that we can throw in. Eight isn't enough for Gigantic, much less Immense. I want like sixteen-empire games. And on maps bigger than Immense, with more stars and less empty space. If I have to play my empire for a month or more, you're on the right track.

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I can't wait for the fantasy feast to begin!

Hope we can get some first teasing news about it soon!

But how do I get through Christmas this year still waiting for Santa in January ...

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Also, a request for GalCiv3 from a moder - even if it's not used for the ingame tech trees, can we have the ability to have a tech 1) be able to require two or more prerequisite techs (IE: Killer Beam Laser requires Plasma IV and Killer-Chicken Studies), and also the option to make a single tech be able to be unlocked by two techs (Cryobeam requires EITHER Plasma IV OR Frozen Chicken Patties).

The tech tree is neat, but still kinda limited.

I'd also like the idea to have mutually exclusive techs (You may research EITHER Chicken Fried Steak or Double Whopper, but NOT both) for a lot of reasons.

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Agreed, and moreso - I'd like the tech tree to have accessible for modding;

Mutually exclusively techs, like good /neutral/evil, but customizable

Hidden techs;

multiple tech prerequisites (Two is by it's nature sufficient - if you need more than two, you can design it in multiple stages - nonetheless the ability to do more than that would be better.

And non- tech prerequisites; similar to the disease tech, something that allowed a tech to only be accessible in specific games when an empire get's 'lucky'. Or unlucky as the case may be.

Jonnan

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I request that we keep calling it "Not-MOM" even after the title is announced, and even after the game is released.

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This is already possible, although the tech tree often doesn't display correctly in that situation. I only know of one mod that actually uses it off-hand.

The limit appears to be eight prerequisites.

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Quoting Ben Parrish,

reply 12

I request that we keep calling it "Not-MOM" even after the title is announced, and even after the game is released.

I like using: NMoM.

It sounds like something exotic.

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Solam

Join Date 03/2007

+16

I want not-MOM ASAP. I can't wait. I am counting the days to November when we might get the announcement.

I'm already waiting for Legends of the Seeker (the new tv series based on the Sword of Truth book series) to start november 1st. Then it's not-MOM countdown for the announcement.

Galciv 3 is also a good news. even though Galciv2 still as lots ot give me. I can't just beat the game on Challenging

Stardock is a great company and as great customer service. It's borderline UNREAL how good you are compared to your competitors. Hats off to you and all your team.

Keep up the good work.

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I like the larger huge maps n GalCiv games, lol.

I look forward to this GalCiv3 to come, multyplayer is where it sells for me.

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Quoting Spartan,

reply 89

I like using: NMoM.

It sounds like something exotic.

Neither NMoM nor not-MoM really rolls off the tongue and not being something doesn't look too good on box covers.

Why not simply RoM - Return of Magic? It's not taken and all the old farts can recognise it as the return of... that... game.

If SD can pull it off in the spirit of MOM, I'll buy. Don't need to see the feature list or any screenshots.

Corrupted flying demon hounds from hell versus the ninja wrestling troll nuns. Ah, there was so much tinkering in that game, modifying the terrain (on strategical and tactical level), the units, their magical buffs, equipment... and the tactics.

Some games are replayable even nowadays. Magic Carpet 2, MOO2, Populous 2, Settlers, and of course... MoM. None of them ever had a worthy successor.

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Hello stranger. Got a game started?

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Its been some time since galc civ 2, twilight came out, I searched around and couldn't find any defininte news announcements, so are they actually making gal civ 3 or did they just scrap the idea? There isn't even a forum section for it and wiki says its under development?

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It's planned, but Brad's taking some time off to tinker with the AI in Elemental, and I think they have a few other things in the pipes before GC3, but I remember reading somewhere in the labryinth that is stardocks forums that they have minor amounts of plot developed for it but, other than that, I don't think its any farther along than a twinkle in Brad's eye yet.

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