Welcome to this week’s AI butt kicking. Who am I? I’m Brad Wardell, the guy in charge of the AI. Me and my team are working to make sure that the GalCiv III AI isn’t just good but the best 4X AI that has ever been made. But we have a lot of work ahead of us over the next few years. Every so often I mutilate the GalCiv AI to find new ways to improve it. If you’d like to see the last humiliation, it’s here: https://forums.galciv3.com/463674 The set up...
Galactic Civilizations is a turn-based game. Turn-based games are, well, notoriously boring to watch someone else play. This little guide is how to get the fun going fast! Preliminaries Make sure you got a pretty good PC We need a pretty decent setup. 8GB of memory to run the larger maps. What most people don’t realize is that GalCiv III is both a strategy game and a galactic simulator. Every turn, we have to simulate the goings on of an entire galaxy and that req...
So you don’t want to play as the Humans? Not even the Drengin? You want your own race completely? Then I have good news for you. Galactic Civilizations III allows you to create incredibly custom civilizations right in the UI. The marketing department isn’t happy about this. So much DLC money lost. This guide will show you how to make your own truly custom race really fast. Step 0: Preparations We presume you will want to have your own unique leader image. So ...
Greetings! So you’ve decided to conquer the galaxy. Good. Use this guide to help get you started. Introduction In the year 2178 human beings on Earth invent a technology called Hyperdrive which allows ships to travel faster than light. In hindsight, it might have been better if they didn’t. Nevertheless, by 2242, the galaxy is in a rage of expansion and conquest. You are the leader of a civilization that is now expanding into the galaxy....
Greetings! Over on Steam I wrote a really long Beta 6 notes post that you can find here: http://steamcommunity.com/app/226860/discussions/1/618460171327189089/ Here I’ll do a general highlights of Beta 6. You can read the Full Change Log too. The suffering is nearing an end We’ve been running the Beta 6 builds for a few weeks now. Beta 5 and its branch has done a great job in preparing ironing out the literally hundreds of issues players have reported. UPDA...
For those of you interested in game development, this will be part of a series of how we address “stupid” AI mistakes. What I’ll be showing in this series are AI mistakes along with what I did to address them. Feel free in the comment section to include saved games and other examples that you think are worthwhile. Just to be sure, “stupid” means exactly that. Stupid != “non optimal” (“I can’t believe the AI chose a factory over a research building as their 5th impro...
Introductions: The oldest actively developed space strategy game series Galactic Civilizations is the oldest actively developed space strategy game in the world. The last version, Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor, was released over 7 years ago and remains to this day the highest rated (by Metacritic average) space strategy game of all time. The series has sold over 5 million copies since its inception back in 1992. Suffice to say, Galactic Civilizations III h...
It. Is. On! Our story so far… As an AI test, I see how well the Drengin do in what would normally be a multiplayer game. I have this map where I play as the Terran Alliance run by those crazy primates from Sol 3 (aka Earth) from the year 2245. My opponent are those brutal, skin eating bastards from Drengi who recently wiped out their own sub-species the Korath because, they’re just that nasty. In the previous tests, it’s been a sad sad story of me just wiping out the stupid...
For those of you who haven't been following Stardock these last few years, it has helped found a series of new studios out in the Maryland and Austin areas. In Towson Maryland, we have 3 studios located in the same building which is where I am today working on the GalCiv AI. The people who make up the new start-up studios include many of the leads of Civ IV and Civ V. So as I'm writing the AI, I am literally feet away from Brian Wade (Civ V AI) and Soren Johnson (Civ III and ...
It was a totally awesome weekend for GalCiv AI and perf progress. There is a lot new in GalCiv III over GalCiv II but one of the most obvious is the number of players and the galaxy size the game supports. GalCiv II topped out with 16 players. That was a lot for back then when you’re dealing with a non-cheating, sophisticated computer AI that has to design its own ships and planets. But GalCiv III tops out with 128 players. That’s 8 times more players than GalCiv II and the ...
Hey guys! I’m going to be hard core on the GalCiv III AI this weekend. For those of you just checking in, I put together a long laundry list of new functions I need to improve the AI. In the old days (when I was younger) I would have written those functions myself but now I’m old and fat and lazy and my far more talented colleagues can put together something a lot less hackish. So this weekend, I’ll be using these new APIs to vastly improve the AI. The weather ar...
One of the biggest updates for Founders yet. Ship list with stats, lots of new images and articles. Feel free to discuss here.
Starcraft requires a great deal of skill to play. But not all races require the same skill level to play. For example, a Platinum Zerg player is probably more skilled than a Diamond Protoss player. Having both worked on and played Starcraft over the past 18 years, below is a rough estimate of the skill level difference between the different races. Explanation This chart is, of course, subjective. I’ve played all the races for many years and love them all...
If you’re not familiar with Galactic Civilizations then you are in for a treat this May when Galactic Civilizations III ships. GalCiv is the ultimate sandbox game. The universe is your domain and you are in charge of a fledgling interstellar civilization. In order for the galaxy to be immersive, the computer opponents need to be interesting, challenging and intelligent and do so without having to rely on cheating. You can play multiplayer but we don’t want to have to rely on th...
In order to preserve a more perfect record of the terrible, terrible things I say on a regular basis I am going to post them here, in writing. A note for children who may read this: Grownups have jobs. They spend a lot of time at those jobs and over time they become friends with the people they work with. As a result, they may say things to one another with humor. This is called banter. Banter is humorous discussion shared between friends that when taken out of context can...