Forum Overview :: Galactic Civilizations :: Gal Civ 3 vs Gal Civ 4

[quote name="laudablepuss"]This is long, so if it's not interesting enough to read all the way through (and it isn't), maybe when you're playing GC4 and staring at the screen wondering WTF, bring this up and skip to the appropriate section and hopefully things will be slightly more comprehensible. Note that the comparison is Gal Civ 3 with all the expansions, and the current state of GC4: Supernova, which is at 1.6 as of this writing. <b>Invasions</b> In Gal Civ 3 you recruited legions, then built transports and put them onboard. They then got used up over the course of 1 or more invasions, then the transport disappeared (because there were no more legions). So you make your transport and then attack a planet, and then you get a little map where you can place your legions, then you watch them swarm around until one side or the other is dead. In GC4, you make transports also, but there are no legions. You just assign a citizen to the new ship, and it's better if he or she has a high resolve trait because that helps. You also have "siege" ships in GC4 that just shoot at the planet below, basically. They automatically have their "siege" component on board, so don't worry about that when designing them. I think the siege ships are pretty optional. Anyway, you gather your fleet with a transport and a siege ship or whatever and attack a planet, and it tells you how many months it'll take to conquer it. At the end of that time, the planet is yours. Neither the transports nor the siege ships seem to get used up, so you can just hop over to the next planet. Not sure if that's WAI (works as intended) or not. <b>Ship battles</b> In GC3, viewing fleets you could see the three categories of attack and defense. Kinetic attack and armor, missile attack and point defense, and beam attack and shield defense. Those 6 stats plus the fleet hit points were what told you how tough that fleet was. The game would helpfully calculate your odds of winning against that fleet also, so you didn't have to try to figure out your chances in your head. Move your ship or fleet on top of another ship or fleet, and combat happens. In GC4, viewing fleets you see their combat rating and hit points. Combat rating is the combined attack and defensive rating of the ship or fleet. Hover over it and it'll break down what's going on for you in a mouse-over display. The game calculates your odds of winning a battle, but with this simplified approach the game has done 90% of the work for you anyway. You can move your ship or fleet on top of another ship or fleet to fight them, but you have two other options also: beam volley or missile volley. Beam volley has a range of two, missile volley has a range of 4 spaces, so you can engage guys from a distance. You can use these once per turn. Note that if you actually wipe out a ship or fleet this way, you get no experience for your fleet. :/ Still it's handy for cleaning up shitty little pirate ships. <b>Citizens/ leaders</b> In Gal Civ 3, these guys were how you focused your economy, basically. You slowly acquired new leaders over time, and when you did the game notified you and you had the option to train them to be generic "leaders" -- able to do any economic job -- or "scientists" or "entrepreneurs" etc. They could also become generals, spies, diplomats, or commanders. Commanders get dropped into a fleet and their commander ship appears. In GC4, it's a bit more complicated. Leaders are similar to but distinct from citizens. Leaders are recruited and cost money. Also you have only a limited selection although you get new options over time, or you can use an executive order (if you've researched the right tech) to invite some leaders to show up. These guys get assigned to your cabinet positions (which give civ-wide bonuses), to ships that need commanders, to factions within your civ that can help you, and to other civs as diplomats (if you want). They are also, crucially, your planetary governors. Any planet over class 5 probably should have a governor on it. Putting guys in your cabinet positions is really critical especially early in the game when your ship range is limited and any bonus there is a help. Leader loyalty is a big deal for governors, not an issue for other positions. I feel uneasy about putting disloyal guys in my fancy flag ships, though. But for ministers and whatever, who cares. Also keep an eye on the tiny badges some leaders have. Some of these are great bonuses and some just suck. Citizens by contrast are guys that appear on your planets. They represent 1 pop cap, so if you have a pop cap of 6 on a planet, you can have up to 6 citizens. These guys get used for colony ships, constructors, troop transports, and for the Prospector prototype ship. Dunno what the strategy is for colony ships and constructors, but resolve is important for transports, and intelligence and diligence and resolve are important for the prospector. But really, if you randomly put guys on here, it's fine. You can also train your citizens to do different jobs, or just leave them in their auto-assigned jobs. This might help focus your planet's economy but I haven't really done anything with them. Leaders and citizens have stats. Intelligence is critical for certain minister or faction jobs, and governors give their planet a +intelligence value% to research. Diligence gives the ship your leader commands more hit points, and gives the planet they govern a +diligence value% to manufacturing. Social I think helps with approval on planets. Diplomats also benefit from it. Resolve improves your leader's ship's combat rating, so this is important there. If your civ is the kind that gets revolts and has to put them down, this is probably useful for a governor to have I guess. Expectations is a thing that reduces a leader or citizen's overall morale. It's not really an issue as far as I've encountered so far. All of those stats (except expectations) are also needed for certain minister (cabinet) jobs. <b>Commander ships and leveling ships up</b> In GC3, you could have a commander in your fleet, and this was a big deal. The basic commander offered I think 50% bonus to hitpoints and fleet movement. Wow! You could also make him an admiral and he gave different bonuses, or a privateer for off-the-books warfare, or a survey-type ship I think. All ships (commander or not) gained experience and leveled up, gaining hitpoints as they advance. In GC4, you have certain ships (up to 7 I think) that unlock with certain techs. GC4 calls them "flag ships". These 7 are sets that you pick when you design your civ (if you did that). You drop a leader on one and it appears near your home system. They, along with special prototype ships you unlock through surveying anomalies, and your survey ship(s), are the only ships that can upgrade. As these ships go up in levels, they can acquire new ship parts that, say, extend their sensor range or increase their speed. Or weapons that increase their combat rating. Other ships go up in level still, but they don't get cool new parts. <b>Planets and planetary improvements</b> In GC3, you had certain basic buildings -- factories, research labs, market centers -- that could be built over and over. But these were somewhat de-emphasized from the GC2 days IMO. You mostly (it seemed to me) had one-per-planet guys like the space elevator or rarer ones like the galactic mainframe that you built to increase the manufacturing or research on your planet. Spaces sometimes gave you bonuses, and buildings gave you adjacency bonuses, so positioning these buildings was important. The total planet specialization of GC2 was de-emphasized, although you could still do it. Lots of these improvements cost special resources to make so getting that shit is important. In GC4, to mirror Stellaris, those repeatable buildings are now "districts" and are just colored tiles. The one-per-planet or one-per-civ (or rarer) improvements are still there, different yet similar to GC3. You generally have way more tiles to work with now because the planet ratings are way higher in GC4. Another way to improve your planet in GC4 is from the map view (not inside the planet view -- although it should really be added there) where you can choose planetary "upgrades" from a little button next to the planet card. Here you can add orbital factories (if you have any), space elevators, and other stuff. Each planet has a totally random number of possible upgrade slots. In GC3, morale was a big fucking issue. Keeping your citizens happy wasn't really difficult but it was a constant concern. If you increase your planet's pop cap, you better have enough entertainment centers (or whatever) or improve the ones you have to cover it. Too many planets also dropped your civ's base happiness level and could create issues -- mainly unhappy planets got nothing done and contributed nothing. Maybe they could revolt? I never got to that point. In GC4, morale hasn't been a thing to worry about at all. I dunno why. But now there's crime and pollution to worry about. I suppose if I had a pure manufacturing planet AND it was volcanic, I could get the pollution high enough to really make people sad. I recommend not doing that. There's occasional precursor artifacts that you'll find that can reduce pollution but it's only good for -10%. Still better than a sharp stick in the eye. Same with crime, it hasn't been much of a problem, and there are various ways to combat it. I hate making prisons but that's an option. You can also imprison your citizens if they have the "criminal" tag, but I've never felt the need to do that. I send those guys out on constructors and hope that Outland happens. (hur hur) That's it for now. The other areas of the game I think are similar enough or straight-forward enough to figure out. Ideology is now lots of different progressions instead of just the three in GC3 -- benevolent, pragmatic, or malevolent. You now have civilization level policies that you can apply, but just reading the tool tips tells you what you need to know there. I'd say also: definitely don't ALWAYS just pick one of the three options the research screen gives you. Sometimes you need to get a tech, like hyperwave radio, and it's not going to be offered basically ever. Don't wait around for critical techs, get them when you need them. Most of the time, though, one of the three discounted options is aok. [/quote]