Stardock's 4X strategy game Galactic Civilizations 3 has recently received one of its biggest patches so far. The rather plainly named Update 2.0 brings with it a new resource, Starbase Administrators, reworked diplomacy, a better ship builder UI, as well as various bug fixes. Out of all these changes the biggest one is the addition of Starbase Administrators which you will now need in order to construct... you guessed it, a Starbase! As such, you will no longer need to crank out Starbases in order to stay competitive, so feel free to toy around with smaller, more focused empires.
As for diplomacy, the AI will now take several factors into account when determining trades: your current standing with them, your relations with their allies and enemies, how the trade will affect their economy, and so forth. If trying to keep track of all of this sounds a bit tedious, worry not as Stardock has also added detailed information on why a specific trade was accepted or rejected, so you can always adjust your strategy in future deals.
For those of you interested in all of the specifics, here are the full patch notes:
Administrators
• Starbases now require one "Administrator" to build
• Number of starting Administrators depends on galaxy size
• Research certain Government Technologies to increase the number of Administrators
• Current number of available Administrators can be seen on the resource bar or the starbase list tab.
Diplomacy
• General pass on conversation weights such that the AI will talk more and offer more interesting trades.
• AI players who dislike you will charge you more in diplomacy
• Changed diplomacy attitude label from "allied" to "loves (they're not allied)
• Changed diplomacy attitude from label "war" to "hates" (they're not at war)
• AI should be better at focusing on a given weapon or defense tech rather than trying to research multiple paths.
• AIs will heavily weight their relations with other players based on who is at war with whom and why
• AIs will tend to come to the aid of their friends even if the enemy is more powerful
• AI now has the capability of explaining in detail why they rejected (or accepted) a trade offer (though will require translation of new strings)
• AI will use a redlining system of evaluating proposals such that each sub-AI routine will add marks to the proposal with potential veto power.
• AI now has the capability of explaining in detail why they rejected (or accepted) a trade offer.
• By default, the auto-generated military ships will have their categories folded for easier UI navigation.
Balance
• Home planet production points base increased from 1 to 10
• Significantly reduced starbase spacing radius to 2 tiles, allowing you cluster them closer together.
• AI is substantially better at evaluating what ship to build, when and where
• Early game improvements made less expensive
• Late game improvement benefits reduced slightly
• Research improvements have been rebalanced.
UI Improvements / Bug Fixes
• By default, the auto-generated military ships will have their categories folded for easier UI navigation.
• When a player designs a ship, it will, by default, be added to the favorites
• Added the currency, morale, population, and turns information to the planet and shipyard window
• Changed Terran and "space monster" fighters size from small to tiny, matching the sizes for other factions. This change prevents a crash in the ROT campaign
• Map Editor: Fixed a problem that prevented the Mini-map Preview from working.
• Replaced Diplomatic Specialization 3 to be "Efficient Administration" on all trees. (Base Game and Campaigns.)
• Fixed bad Matter Disruption Cost multiplier that was making Matter Disruption 2.6 times more expensive than it should have been.
• Changed the width of the asteroid tooltip window and "nearest owned planet" value so that the value can no longer overlap
• Negative Strategic resources are no longer shown in the trade options when they were negative
• Updated map lighting settings to decreased ambient light and increased key light to make the ships look less flat.
• Mercenaries: Ships that you can't afford are greyed out.
• Fixed issue where Ancient Kinetic Augmenter had weapon FX even though it is a support module.
• Removed military ring Starbase range boost now that we have implemented Administrators.
• Fixed a problem that was causing rebellions in peaceful corners of the galaxy.