This may be your computer system. I often play insane maps with 50 ai, minors and will have over 100 systems I have to manage, well into turn 400. Get at least 16gigs of ram, have a processor that has at least 4 cores and 4 threads, ideally 8 threads and a video card that has 4 gigs of ram. This should mitigate any late game long turn times. 

On the subject of this thread. >>>> Brad, I cannot state in words  how excited I am to hear this. The fact that you and CariElf are corroborating on Gal Civ III makes my brain go into euphoria spins! 

Bring on the humiliation of humans against the ai! Let the previous naysayers whine about how they think the ai is cheating when in fact it is not and they are just not 'good enough' to beat it! 

Cheers!

This Quest for the Space Magic, always get well epic. That's why it is so exciting, and a bit terrifying at the same time. Even while doubt is the steed, the dawn will proceed! Make haste but take heed.

Oh, I'm back to the Amiga game "Faery Tale Adventure", with the rhyming (Ccopy protection look-up words ). Total derail once again. But there is a point, in that nostalgia sometimes get in the way of fair evaluations now and then. For those of us that are old, that is. Heaven forbid one should be young with all this wonderful technology, and yet miss out on that ancient digital magic. We had Magnetic Scrolls! Not kidding!!! 

Your definitely not alone! I consider it big mistake from the beginning of GCIII, not to include politics. It was one of the greatest and most innovative, I would even say believable points of GCII. And it made player really feel he is managing living empire, more than anything else.

So yeah, finally it´s coming back!

in which case, surely there should be no food resource at all then? or at least no starvation, with food being productivity/morale booster / migration factor. (absolutely no idea what system is in gc3, just generic mumblings)

I am a strategy nice guy. battles do not turn me on

I look forward to espionage and more political stuff.

I prefer to strategy using spys to destroy tech, food and water etc.

And then there is the political game play.

Wrap these things up with different races and away you go.

Actually, that's only SOME people. That's why they only get the shoot'em up games. Most of us GC lovers are strategy aficionadi.

The first two of the original MOO series (Master of Orion, Master of Orion: Battle at Antaris (aka MOO2), and perhaps MOO3 (I never played MOO3 so I don't know anything about it) ran on DOS.

The latest MOO is nothing more than a graphics and OS upgrade with some added minor features. I got into the EA and I don't like it (I didn't like the original MOO either). It's mechanics are too much like the original MOO. What little I heard about MOO3 was that its mechanics were the same as the original. The mechanics in MOO2 were quite different and very enjoyable (in other words, I liked it).

First in class AI along with the ability to easily make unique custom empires and ships were the two draws that got me to this game.

Also, we gotta have politics. Just gotta have those.

If Gal Civ 3 wants to go in the full on empire management/4x that's totally fine with me. I'm really looking forward to the new expansion!

Ok, Frogboy.  If the AI is a cakewalk I'm blaming you.

And I'm very very good at turning the AI into patty cake.  

Great news. I'm with the Frog! Features the AI can't handle is not worth implementing.

Totally agree with you Frog.  I don't think the game should have been released without all the things you are talking about.  Have been disappointed with it for a long time because of the lack of features the previous games had.  Maybe you should address some of the other issues people have been trying to solve with mod's; i.e. Insane/Abundant research.  Like to see some original features that none of the Gal Civ games had before.  Like I thought the Mercenaries expansion could have let you buy bad ass troops from some crazy minor civilization, or let you sell you troops out.  Some leaders don't like to use there loyal subjects as cannon fodder.  And really invasions in this game are just too easy.

I have my own gripes about this game. It just enjoy it like I did in GalCiv 2. A few months ago, I played more GalCiv 2 than I've ever played of GalCiv 3. The magic GalCiv 3 should have isn't there. I feel that the gameplay that I should be enjoying is stuck behind features that I don't like and features that slow the game down.

I don't like planet improvement adjacency bonuses. I think it gives planets too much attention in the game. I'm a player that likes to standardize planets. I don't like making planets special. Planet improvements or effects that improve ship quality and speed (thinking back to GalCiv 2) is one of the few reasons I might make an exception.

Tech specializations is an inconvenience. You can only pick one. Once you pick one, you can never research the other options. You can however trade for them, which makes it feel like a poor game mechanic to encourage players to not obliterate other civs. On top of that, other civs sometimes gifts you specializations which prevents you from researching your favorite specializations. I remember in GalCiv 2 where you could trade for civ unique techs. They felt more special and worth while than these "paths not taken".

Resources is another problem. In theory I should be able ignore this part of the game, but in practice its kinda hard to. If you don't nab resources in your space, then the AI will. This can result in your space being filled enemy starbases trying to mine resource around or near your stars. It makes it hard to deploy your own starbases around your planets. Another problem is that many techs only unlocks starship components that require special resources to be built. So a module that might increase the firing rate of missiles on a ship but requires antimatter to produce. I find that it is kinda hard to employ such ship as you have to be very mindful of where your resources are deployed. On top of that, you have be mindful of such ships when its time to build a new generation of ships. For instance, if you are moving on to medium hulls, you might want to decommission your small ships that are using antimatter so you have antimatter resources for the medium hulls.

The information UI isn't that good. GalCiv 2 had a lot of charts and stats you could look up. In GalCiv 2, I could quickly tell you what my ship logistics or miniaturization stat was. However, In GalCiv 3, I have to select a fleet to see what my logistics was, and I don't know an easy way to tell you what my miniaturization stat. I feel this game doesn't tell me the information that I want to know.

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The Good. I think starbases in GalCiv 3 is much better than in GalCiv 2. Starbases never got much love in GalCiv 2.

Two things I can think of that could make starbases better. First is the ability to mark locations for starbases, before you build the starbase, so you start ordering constructors and develop it. You can't do queuing stuff until the starbase is built. The second would be having starbases being able to mount starbase modules of any type. I think that economy starbases is hands down better than any other kind of starbase. I don't see much justification for building a military, influence, or mining starbase instead of an economic one. Having multiple choices doesn't work well if you think the other options aren't that good.

while i dont think ive ever built an influence starbase  i will usually try and pull of a mining SB if it doesn't get in the way of my economic SB's and as for military I see them as my superhighway to the rest of the galaxy i try and build highways to connect one cluster to another.

There's a mod available that allows you to research all specializations.

Not to sound critical of you, but thinking that the other options aren't good doesn't make that so, it just reflects the limitation of your perspective/strategy that you cannot perceive their potential value.