At long last, Galactic Civilizations IV v2.95 is here and it's a big one. I'd like to think it addresses most of the high priority feedback we've gotten on the game since launch, especially in terms of map generation.
But well beyond that, v2.95 is a major improvement in everything from performance, balance, multiplayer stability, late game stability, AI, and more. Seriously, this is a big update.
Assuming there's no issues with it, the next big update will be version 3.0, which is one that many of us here have been waiting to come together. This update has many months of improvements and editions that we've been waiting to push through QA.
Here is a sneak preview of changes coming v3.0, which is expected to release this Spring:
Hyperlanes
Originally, GalCiv IV was going to have really small sectors (i.e. imagine "medium" being the biggest) and you'd just go to other sectors.
However, many of us feel it is tedious to keep track of too many sectors. Over time, we've made the size of a single sector larger, but then we return to the problem of taking multiple turns to get to other stars. We initially fixed this by increasing the speed of ships, but that resulted in its own issues.
v3.0 is going to include Hyperlanes that will connect stars to other stars. They will not teleport like Stellar Gateways, but will function like Hypergates from GalCiv III - when you're on a Hyperlane, your ship moves much faster.
By offering the phase lane style of Sins of a Solar Empire / MOO2 while still maintaining the free movement of Galactic Civilizations, this will, we hope, give players the best of both worlds when traversing the galaxy.
Visual Uplift
While most of our players don't care too much about graphics, many still do. We've put considerable effort into enhancing the engine, which should improve the appearance of ships and other on-screen elements.
Ship Design and Battles
Much like other similar games, new installments of Galactic Civilizations have their own Lead Designer, who provides their own ideas on what the game should do.
For instance, I designed Galactic Civilizations II, but decided to take a step back for the development of Galactic Civilizations III. We brought in Jon Shafer, known for his work on Civilization V, to design GalCiv III. I returned for the design of the Crusade expansion pack, which changed some of the mechanics.
For Galactic Civilizations IV, Derek Paxton was assigned as the Lead Designer, with me completing the Supernova expansion. Supernova was merged with GalCiv IV for the Steam release, bringing notice to my different design preferences with some conflicting gameplay styles.
For version 3.0, I will most likely be asking the team to make the ship battles a bit. . . uglier, but provide more information. For me, the purpose of ship battles is to help players see how different weapon and defense systems work together, as well as how to counter other designs.
My main beef remains that we lack a good way to force players into commiting to a tech path / design so that countering and counter-countering can be effective at the macro scale. In GalCiv II, I solved that by having a rock-paper-scissors type mechanic on weapons and defenses, making it difficult to switch due to the costs of techs and defenses on their own branch. Feel free to discuss your ideas on this in the comments section.
UI UI UI
You have hopefully noticed that as each update gets done, we improve the UI in some way. The idea is to make information more accessible, text more readable, and executing your strategy more straight forward.
If there's something that really bugs you in the current UI or in v2.95, let us know in the comments.
Final Thoughts
This isn't anywhere near a complete list of improvements and changes for v3.0, but should give you an idea of what we hope to accomplish.
BTW, I hope you guys like "Tales of the Arnor". I think you'll find it pretty fun and interesting, especially those of you who like there to be more background lore in the game. It's through your support that we are able to continue with new content and updates!