Enjoy AI improvements, new missions, and more in Crusade

and check out the AI adjustments and bug fixes in the base game!

Players who don't own Crusade yet can still experience smarter AI opponents, improved diplomacy, and more!

For a detailed list of updates, view the changelog at the bottom of this post.

Crusade Expansion-Only Updates:

AI Improvements The AI is substantially better at managing domestic affairs (improvements, economy, etc.), as well as issues abroad (waging war, exploration, etc.).

Game Balance Many adjustments to the game's balance through changes to missions, bonuses, ideology, and more also feed into the improved AI.

New Content More missions, more money (and probably more problems). The new missions will let you further explore the galaxy in search of wonders and resources to build up your civilization. The new "Mogul" promotion for your entrepreneurial citizens will net you 5000bc when you reach it. Score!

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Base Game, Galactic Civilizations III Updates:

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The v2.3 update is ready and waiting for you in your Steam client!

If you haven't already joined the Crusade, the expansion is available on Steam or at Stardock.

www.galciv3.com | www.galciv3.com/crusade

v2.3 Changelog:



Crusade Updates:

Update Starbase modules so their bonuses to stack, instead of upgrade.

Nerf and Re-enable the Arbitration Center, that was disabled, making the Arbiters ideology trait useless.

Shipyard HP and defenses reduced so that players can eliminate pirates and break defenses more effectively.

Slight increase in the amount of mining the mining modules produce per turn.

Slight modification of blueprints to not require as many resource heavy weaponry.

Asking someone to declare an embargo or to declare war now longer destroys the universe.

The "Certain" abilities now correctly award research points when ideological traits are unlocked.

Shipyards and Starbases are now destroyed only when a faction surrenders to the pirates

AI

Substantial AI improvement to how the AI builds planetary improvements

New AI governors for smarter AI planetary building.

Added support for AI specific events.

AI transports are much more intelligent than before about targeting planets

AI much smarter about focusing its endeavors on its target primary opponent and its assets

AI work on trying to get it to be smarter about when to make massive fleets and when to send out smaller fleets to finish someone much weaker.

Lots of AI work to try to find a good balance between the AI using its military might to conquer versus when it should hunker down. This will be an endless balance war for the AI.

Removed code that was blocking the AI from even looking at units that were far away that it knew about. While this made sense when performance was tight, now that this has been moved to its own thread on its own core, we don't care.

Damaged fleets that fall behind a certain threshold will be sent home to reinforce

More improvements to the AI guessing algorithm for where good planets are (or as novices say "AI cheating" -- it's not cheating).

Big one: For the human player, 3 survey ships sitting on the same tile will go to 3 different anomalies rather than all going to the same stupid one. The AI players are very unhappy with this change.

A LOT of AI work on getting the AI to sacrifice a fleet on a hardened position to soften it. The AI doesn't like to sacrifice units and marketing doesn't like it either because users will say the AI is dumb for sending weak fleets that can't possibly win. But sometimes, you have to do this to soften up the player's defenses if you have the power to spare.

Eliminated the tech governor for the AI. They don't need a script on what to research.

AI ship design much better than previous for putting together more powerful ships by saving up resources more than they were before (fewer better ships rather than squandering them on lots of crap)

AI is better about building transports when it should and not build them when it shouldn't.

What AI players build on planets is less scripted and more procedural.

New code for the case when the AI can't find something to build on a planet. It switches to the new procedural system to figure out what to build.

More AI differentiation based on player traits (moving away from races to support better modding)

Eliminated last vestiges of AI scripting for trying to achieve a particular victory. You can't script a victory in a game like this.

Ship tech research now weighs heavily what resources it has coming in rather than what it currently has in inventory. The AI getting lucky and finding say 5 anti-matter shouldn't dictate its weapon research choices.

Tech stealing by player or AI players made less frequent

Warmonger penalty more intelligent. If you attack early game, you get it for awhile and if you are declaring war on a lot of players (where a lot depends on how many players are in the game) then it goes on.

Pirates no longer look for danger when going to a destination because, again, quit being goddam babies.

Pirate player will assign its ships to be on the warpath so that they're not such babies about attacking other ships

Pirates will do suicidal attacks.

Pirates are no longer considered dead if they still have a shipyard. They are only mostly dead.