Despite the fact that Galactic Civilization 3 left Early Access a while ago, Stardock has been keeping the game up-to-date and fresh at the demands of the community - and more is on the way.
We already know, from Stardock’s GalCiv3 roadmap, what will be coming in upcoming patches: 1.6 will include improvements to starbases (as well as substantial AI improvements), 1.7 will have changes to the UI while 1.8 is said to allow for mods.
But what about after that? One of the elements that CEO Brad Wardell is keen to see added is improved lore to the universe and planets that you encounter, a feature he is personally lamenting himself.
“It’s less a balance issue,” he says, “but more about a hundred little UI things that make it less fun for me to manage a large empire as well as feel like this empire is “real”.
Wardell goes on to explain what he means: “In GalCiv for OS/2, the version of the game from the 1990s that I wrote as a college student, you could go to the details of a planet and look at all kinds of stats, the history of the planet, assign members of the local senate to optimize production (as a planet grew, it elected senators, the player could assign what those senators did for the planet – boost manufacturing, improve morale, etc.).
“GalCiv III doesn’t really have that kind of thing. It has a lot of other things (like the amazing ship designer) but I tend to prefer to role play my games and have an easy way of knowing what’s happening across my entire civilization at a glance.”</b>
Wardell states that this is something that Stardock will be focusing on quite heavily in 2016.
In addition to this the flexibility to play as larger or smaller civilizations will be enhanced, initially beginning with the 1.7 update but being properly formed at a later date. “How a small organization is run is very different from how a large organization is run,” says Wardell. “There are countless books on this phenomenon. The problem is that in GalCiv III, running a small civilization is always a disadvantage which is not realistic.”
He adds that the addition of administrative points in 1.7 will be the base for being able to play as a smaller empire. “Once that concept [administrative points] is implemented, then we can actually go out and expand on it through a whole government style sub-tech tree where forms of government, cabinets, political parties, start to show up.”
Wardell also pointed to reducing late game micromanagement as a big focus for the team in 2016, as well as a suggestion - with no given date - that ‘all-in’ battles will be added at some point.
And that’s probably not even everything that the team would like to see added into Galactic Civilization III by the end of the year.