Yes. YES! YESSSSSSSSS! This is what I dreamed of.

Can we have an exact date on when the Elite Edition is going away and the beta is starting?

Also how has the Alpha gone compared to your expectations? Were there more or less founders compared to Stardock's estimates? 

130 empires playing on an insanely huge map?

YES PLEASE!!!

I just hope it runs and doesn't choke on its own tongue while processing turns like Civ V does. lol

So excited!  The family is mocking me for my grin.  Even the gamer geeks among them think I have gone a little overboard.

Wonderful. However, with what I have seen so far, I am becoming suspicious that 4G of RAM will not be enough to support them. Are you planning to include code to check how much RAM is available before permitting some galaxy sizes?

This could become quite interesting and challenging, but what is the memory cost going to be? Again, will 4G RAM support this without serious performance degradation? Will the start-up code check how much RAM is available before permitting any particular maximum number of opponents?

quoting post

Diplomacy and AI

Beta 1 won't have diplomacy in. Some modder might figure out a way to turn it on but it's not ready to be shown yet. I am not scheduled to begin writing AI code until October.  

In less than 1 week, these forums will likely get very very busy.

This is disappointing, though. A 4X game just isn't the same without diplomacy. I literally can only play for minutes at a time without it in. 

I guess I'll continue to wait. I'm hoping that you release a bunch of DLC because I haven't really taken full advantage of my Founder's purchase. 

Fleet Battles

The marketing team is struggling in how to describe the fleet combat in GalCiv III.  My suggestion has been to describe it in terms of Hearthstone.  Your fleet is your desk and your ships are your minions that you crafted.  However, where the analogy fails is that the actual "tactics" of fleet battles are handled AI vs. AI.  So your skill is about how you design ships and assemble fleets. Looking closely at what your enemies are designing with their ships and organizing them and countering it will be crucial.  

^^^ This makes me happy! NO TC please! Will the combat viewer be working?

All sounds very exciting, thanks for the update. Very much looking forward to seeing the huge galaxy maps and of course the fleet battles.

This would be great.

Perfect!

Hi All,

Ive been waiting for this game for some time. 

But I notice again that Tactical fleet combat is to be excluded again.

This is pretty disappointing.

You've managed to do everything better than Moo2, except that you've had to cut out one of the most important things in 4x, the ability to command your troops/ships.

Look how well the return of X-com did with their tactical battles, they were exciting and challenging (who says it cant be done well). However the strategic game was stripped down to its bare essentials and pretty much on rails, hugely reducing re-playability. Taking down UFO's was SUCH a wasted opportunity, I almost cried

During the early days of Galciv 2 I was very active in promoting Tactical combat and I'm fairly certain that you guys had said that this would be a part of Galciv 3. Well...if you aint doing it, then its a missed opportunity. AND will be detrimental to the sales of the game. Dont get me wrong, it will be a hit. But if you want to create a legacy to rival CIV, tac combat should really (have been) be included at some point. 

Players like myself, who are now leisurely greying, remember the classics (and still play them from time to time )  despair that everything is being watered down, made less thrilling, purely because some focus group or other choice method has ruled out key game elements that made the originals so much bloody fun. There are MILLIONS of us, we have the money, we have the time and if you show us the good stuff we will PAY. 

That said I will still buy the game and have a few rounds, purely because I love the Genre and do not want it to disappear, swallowed by the likes of GTA/AssCreed and all their brethren.

Thanks

Farakh

The TC whining just has to stop.  Moo2 was a tactical game to begin with, X-com was also...Galciv was not.  They aren't changing or watering down GC by removing TC.  It was never there, and shouldn't be.

Thanks for the update, Frogboy. Bring it on! I say.

In Civ I can throw a unit or stack of units at a unit or stack of units.  In GalCiv, I can throw a ship or a fleet of ships at a ship or fleet of ships.  What is the difference you are trying to illustrate as Tactical Combat?  I can understand someone wanting TC, even if I don't, but this is not a valid argument for it

If there were really MILLIONS of you, some marketeer would have found you a long long time ago.  But they know baseless exaggeration when they see it, being masters of the art.

Frogboy, have you played the card game Titanium Wars? The way the fleet combat works is kinda interstesting.

Also I'm curious your take on whether going pure DX11 is a good/bad idea? Are there benefits to going to pure DX11 (such as pipeline optimzatoins) that make up for the deficit that for some inexplicable reason people are running their PC rigs on 5 year old hardware. I'm actually a bit angry the Steam Hardware Survey gives such poor data on DX11 vs DX10 usage. I'm wondering if you have any game specific hardware stats you'd be willing to share for say GalCIv2 or Elemental that covers DX10/11 stats?

Really HAPPY I'll finally get to see all the shiny goodies we've gotten looks at on the devstreams, AND a week before I was expecting it. Now, what will really make me extra happy is when we finally get the diplomacy in. But I would rather see that start in awesome mode than just get something imperfect.