I went through both lists, and recompiled them here with slightly different wording (since some ideas were mentioned several times but used different language. So it's a melding of all your great ideas - and are just the ones that are somewhat attainable in future patches. Also, the ones that would offer the greatest lift in gameplay mechanics and fun. (grammar and spellchecked too)

* Remove the +300% food tiles (a sure way to tank your approval if you ever use them) or slightly change the morale curve on populations over 19 billion. As it is, under the current morale rules it is usually a detriment to try and use them for their intended purpose, so I ignore them. They are a trap for the inexperienced, however.

* Change and/or fix the way non-matching defense is reduced by weapons fire, so that off type weapons do more damage to defensive ships.

* Change Starbases to huge hulls to increase their hp. Allow constructers to repair a Starbases hp rather than upgrade it if they are damaged.

* Demographics.
Instead of the "everyone is wiped out in planetary invasions", there are separate policies for conquest for each race
Annihilation- Simple enough. Evil Only.
Slavery- conquered population provides bonus production. There is a chance of revolt. Evil only.
exploitation- Conquered population provides bonus tax income. There is a chance of revolt. Neutral and evil.
non-policy- No effect. for neutrals who don't want to bother with revolt risk.
Equal rights- conquered population gradually merges into conqueror's. Bonus influence. Good only.
The revolt risk could be mitigated through the presence of new "police ships" or eliminated with a new "oppression palace" improvement.

* Anything that makes repetitive tasks more automated is good. It'd also be nice to be able to set a planetary production 'queue' (ex: build 2 constructors, then 2 defenders, then shutdown) or at least have the ability to change multiple planets shipyard queues in the civ manager screen

* Lower the cost curve on spies a little bit, so later on it doesn’t take so much to get that next spy.

* Frequency of all Mega-events. Like a % slider for each one. Therefore if we love the Dread Lords event and dislike the pirate event, we could raise the Dread Lord to 30% and drop the Pirate to 10% (have min/max for each so you can't totally eliminate the possibility of an event).

* A diplomacy option that I can use that is the equivalent of "Your troopships are a bit too close to [OwnedPlanet], if you don't remove them it will be considered an act of war." type of thing

* Different kinds of minor races. Some are docile, and some are wildly expansive and aggressive. Give them the bonuses they need to fill out their role.

* Allow the custom race config screen to go negative so we can build in both positive and negative modifiers right in the create opponent screen. I know how to do it via editing, but I'm sure people would like to play with that function too. I'd propose a maximum of -3 allocated attribute points, which would give the race a corresponding 15 + 3 = 18 bonus points to work with.

* Cari said this wouldn't be too difficult to implement... but allow Music to be replaced in \\ My Docs\My Games\GC2DarkAvatar etc so we don't have to over-write music files or drop new ones into the game directory. Therefore the game would check for that folder and use those music files first. It would also make it easier for people making complete customraces, as they would have to direct those music files to be put anywhere outside the \\ My Docs \\ GC2DA directory...

* Tech trading is indeed a bit too difficult now post-patch. It was too easy pre-patch before. I'm sure there's a middle ground there that will be just perfect (maybe the average between the two weighted towards being slightly more difficult).

* Allow non-data specific options to work with Metaverse. For example work like Logic Sequence’s.

* Metaverse - have the top 25 Empires on a 3d globe, instead of just the top 10 on a flat map. It's hopeless for smaller Empires to get listed in the "big time".

* A general issue... When I'm creating military - extremely war-related custom races, they are being pummeled in-game with statistical frequency. I think this is because it handicaps them early game compared to other races because they fall behind the curve early (research and social building) and can't catch back up... ever. Though all their stats may be in soldiering, attack, defense, HP's it generally doesn't do a lot for unless they're in a small map and go to war ASAP.

* Once a minor race is exterminated, that race name is no longer used later on.

* A % chance that if your spy is caught they will know who planted it and it will affect diplomacy. The better the espionage level, the more likely you are to find out who put the spy there. But still have the % chance you figure out where they're from be small.

* Revamp the Dread Lord Mega-event, give them a planet and high soldiering like they have now, but also apply a little of the old pirate event to it (with Dreadlord ships of course).

* Have anomalies randomly reappear once in a while during the game. 3% chance of 1/2x(1-5) anomalies, where x is the number of large sectors in the game. And 1-5 is the random multiplier.

* A little protection for mining bases. Maybe some tiny guns (mass drivers) that stick up, or even a bubble shield that covers the base. It could add one more to the mining line of research.

* Planet invasions not be a massive genocide, that way we have a more realistic play in having to deal two or three different spices living on the same planet.

* Queuing in this game. In Civilization, one can click on an advanced tech and the game will automatically research all the techs I need in between. With GalCiv one could, for instance, click on the last of the Laser techs and not have to go back to the tech screen until those were all done. Just get a notification that one step was completed and the game would continue researching my line, and we wouldn't have to go in just to click the Done button. Also, with unit builds, the ability to select multiple ships that keep getting rebuilt. We like having mixed fleets, but it's such a hassle trying to organize them all. It would be great if we could have, say, a planet build 3 small ships of different types then 1 medium, and have them all rally to a fleet point. Then it would just keep rebuilding this ship order and all we'd have to do is send the ships to their destination.

* The off type defense bug should be a pretty high priority.

* Lower the number of Starbases than can be built per sector. And then make Starbases a bit stronger in defending themselves. This way they will not be so common and each one will be much more valuable and independent.

* Evil races being able to break alliances. That would be cool and would fit with their theme (especially the Yor and Korath) although maybe only on higher difficulties they could do so.

* Fix the permanent fog of war on the outside perimeter of maps.

* A repair command. Maybe it could be done by the survey ship, giving the survey ship something to do when there's no anomalies around. Or you could load it with repair modules, which are produced at home, and then loaded onto the ship... carried to the ships that need repairing, and then used up. That would be a neat graphic. You'd see the repair modules (look like trade modules) and then after the repair those modules disappear.

* Be able to queue research so that it will continue without us having to click a lot.

* Starport Upgrades(Tech/PI): improves the starport by adding repair bonuses to ships in orbit and increasing military production.

* Slow Start option where you begin your game with just a colony ship and that's it. Plus no home planet. More like a Civ start.

* Restrict access to view techs, ships and planets from the diplomacy screen - making them visible only through spies and/or good relations. Never offer techs the AI determine are strategic regardless of relations.

* Don't provide help during negotiations by turning your offer green/red. Provide two or three tries before having the AI break off negotiations. Offer the color coding to be enabled once 'high' level of infiltration is reached or a 'close' relationship is formed.

* Some form of movement for military Starbases. It should be very slow (one square per turn), and should also cost per each move (massive fuel and logistics costs to move it). Maybe 10 bc/square.

* Repair module for military Starbases?

* New impassable zones. Radiation zones (which you can't pass through until you've researched the radiation planetary tech. Gas zones, which you can't pass through until you've researched the toxic planetary tech, and Supernovas, which you can't pass through until you've researched the Heavy Gravity planetary tech.

* Fleets remain intact when their in orbit. (They don't dissolve their fleet).

* Allow spies to be put on enemy Starbases. Having a spy on a star base gives the following advantages. You can see visually in the sensor range of the Starbase. After xxx number of rounds, the spy can remove a Starbase module of their choice.

i forgot something too...

Visible battle damage to your ships. By this I mean that after a battle some of the jewelery you added will be missing, making the ship appear "broken" and as it repairs those pieces come back as they were before.

Or pehaps adamamaged ship will lose some of its fight ability rather than just its hit points, as in having a damaged rail gun or something.

When starting a game, I think it would be cool if there was the option to choose the average starting planets' quality. For example, I like playing with a few high quality planets instead of a bunch of low quality ones.

One of the reasons people love stardock so much!

anyway.. different planet backdrops on the invasion screen, if you attack a Mars like planet - have a dusty red landscape to fight on, and so on. I think you would have to do about six styles (Ice, Water, Earth, Toxic, Barren, Desert). I know its not possible (yet) to do tanks/soliders for each side but the planet backdrop could be done and would make a difference.

GalCiv II is probably the best of the current 4x space games but here are some additions that might be nice.

1. Leaders for ships and planets. These characters give more character to the game.

2. A spreadsheet view for colonies to make managing them more efficient.

3. More cool stuff for the good guys to help balance them against evil.

I'm new to the game, but there are a couple of things that I would like to see added:

* More options when it comes to United Planet Meetings. It seems far too passive. It would be nice if you could propose some "basic" legislation that could be voted on in subsequent turns. Also, it would be nice if you could choose to defy/ignore UP legislation without necessarily leaving the UP. Perhaps some serious trade sanctions would be made against you (and worsening relations among the other races) if you defy the UP decisions. Trade sanctions and possible war against the other races would be preferable to getting stuck with some of the bad decisions in the UP (i.e. the two module limit on starbases when you're having a massive military buildup on your border).

* As someone else mentioned, making some kind of use for those PQ 0 planets would be great (beyond having them randomly hit by a comet). In the case of my latest game, I randomly ended up with a ton of PQ 0 planets in my half of the map and only 1 asteroid field. It would be nice if we could set up automated mining operations on those planets. Perhaps those planets would still be subject to the random comet hit, so as to increase the tension if one is blown up.

* Not sure if this one is possible, additional planetary defense types would be good. Perhaps some ground based missile platforms or beam bases that could be used to attack nearby ships (like in the MOO series or Ascendancy).

1) Diplomacy: Add options to tell AI back off my territory (and then possibly add asking permission to send ships through).

2) United Planets: Give advance notice of issue coming up for vote (4 turns or so). Allow a set of options to be brought up by player and AI.

3) Spying: Allow spies to just spy (info gathers only, harder to detect). Also maybe in that line, don't allow players to place spies on a tile right off the bat. First they have to "spy" and then once they've done it for a turn or two, then they have the option to hinder some tile (disallowing cheat spying on a planet just by bring up the option to place a spy). Also allow someway to have some chance to determine who is spying on you and have consequences for that.

4) Automated Research: Click on an advanced technology, and computer auto-researches (just informing each time a new tech is done) upto that tech.

5) Ground Combat: Don't make it total genocide every attack. Have more options for attacking and defending (maybe in a two or three round sequence).

I've tried to read through everything on this post, but there are only so many hours in the day. My changes would be:

1) A way to view the position of ships when trading for them. This was in Galciv1. At the moment its a tedious process to note down the names of all the ships you might want to trade, and impossible to tell the location of any potential ships you might want to acquire.

2) Some way of telling how much of your trade revenue is due to economic starbases. Unless I'm reading a key readout at the moment there is simply no way of telling how much of an effect these are having.

3) A more proactive AI regarding diplomacy. I have NEVER once seen an opponent try to trade shipsm or starbases, bribe me into a war, or any of the interesting stuff I frequently do to them. They only seem to want to tech trade and blackmail/grovel.

4) An easy way of identifying the value of techs during trade. Civ4 has a pop-up detailing the reasearch points required for any tech, so you know how good a deal is. On the same subject, it would be nice if the AI stopped trying to flog me beam weapon theory for my latest colonization techs

5) Rebalancing of the UP eg the anomalies motion usually occurs when there are no more left. Also more information to help make your decisions - if all starbases in anothers influence will cost the owner I need to know how that would affect me rather than taking an educated guess!

6) Some way of warning opponents off either from trying to culture flip you or from invading. At the moment you can either passively accept or go to war, there needs to be some middle ground.

7) Some work on performance. As has been detailed things are much slower and jerkier than prior to the expansion. At the very least it would be nice to see an option to turn off some of whatever is causing this slowdown.

8) An option at startup to choose what percentage of habitable worlds need colonisation technology.

9) A cleaning up of the planetary invasion interface. At the moment there is too much guesswork as to where all the numbers are coming from and how much weight each has. Again, in civ4 simply hovering over an enemy unit gives a detailed breakdown of how all influences are contributing to the outcome.

10) A return to the GC1 interface changes when you become good or evil. Why was this removed? It really helped with immersion and offerd some differentiation between good and evil.


Thanks for listening!

I want more tech options for espionage. It's just a little too, eh, little. One tech that grants an improvment that eats up a tile just doesn't fulfill my desires to be a backstabbing bastard. Being able to target a specific tech I'd like to steal would be great, even if it's got really high failure rates.

Also, more xenobiology techs. I'm not really sure how or what, but it seems like a good idea that needs a few more things to make it shine.

An option to crank up the likelihood of getting bonus tiles on planets would be nice, it's kind of a let down to colonize 30+ worlds and not get a special feature on any of them. We can do it with anomolies, asteroids, and planets in the galaxy, so why not?

A +300% morale bonus tile, any kind of economic bonus tile.

Thanks for doing this Stardock, you are the best game company I've ever been in contact with .

As for improvements, I would like to see the endgame.xml thing implemented (Cari will know what I mean ).

Some additional ideas and feedback on the suggestions of others



Excellent suggestion. But there would have to be a way to specify which starbase improvements are automatically built and which aren't, so the constructors don't waste their (and my) time building useless defensive and sensor modules. How about when you construct a starbase, you tell the constructor which modules you want built and in which order.

Also, with such a change constructors should become somewhat more expensive and cost maintenance money (since you only need a few of them instead of hundreds)



I second that. For example the Galactic Guide Book is a Galactic waste of money, since by the time you have it the survey phase of the game is already over

- Change drives to be a one per ship module

The new space and cost requirements in DA for drives were already very useful, but it's still easy for the player to vastly outmaneuver the computer using better and more drives. Also, for gods sake please stop the AI from fleeting ships with different speed



Nice one, I agree. Also, let evil races do some seriously mean stuff like selling the player (or another AI) an economic or research treaty and then attacking



I did some testing with very high defenses myself, and I consistently got better results using matched defenses than mixed or pure off type defenses against a single weapon type. Still, if it is a bug, it should be fixed.



I would suggest a rotating schedule to choose the topic, with the powers with high influence getting the choice more often



That doesn't apply just to power plants, but to all buildings that are one per planet (so starports too for instance). Nonetheless, I'd prefer those buildings to be replacable too



two good suggestions to reduce diplomacy cheese



cool idea, would be another useful diplomacy option



I confess I am somewhat guilty of "starbase spamming". When I think about it though, one starbase per sector might not be a bad idea at all, it would certainly make my space prettier. However, the effect of most starbase modules should be increased a bit to compensate for that. Another effect of this would be to close the gap between good players and the AI some, since the computer frankly has no clue how to use economy starbases

- Give the quartely report better texts. I alternately crack up and groan when I read reports like "The population of the Yor collective has reached 787.4 billion. Considering that it was 787.3 billion one year ago, that is pretty staggering growth". The game should be able to recognize population stagnation. Also in the reports on wars between an AI and the player or two AIs it should take into account who conquered more planets in the relevant timespan and if the computed ratings are similar, the report should say that the war is deadlocked/stalemated at the moment.

- More texts in "word on the street" on the planets would be nice and encourage people to actually read them. They should not always be identical in the same situation, but rather be picked from a pool and include your people's views on a bit more topics. For example, if you are at the losing end of a war against the Drengin, how about the people (especially on planets along the front) say things like " ... is a nice planet for sure, but who know how long that is going to stay that way with the Drengin coming ever nearer"

I'd like to see content, things that give more warm fuzzies:

1. Animation for Dreadnaught (Huge) class ships, first built
2. Animations for Galactic Wonders
3. Animation for cultural flipped planets (revolt)
4. Even more amusing Ethical Decisions (loved the brain-liquifying one, btw )
5. In the Civilizations Manager screen, a symbol indicating a specific type of
special planet (Heavy Gravity, etc)
6. Easing of the diplomacy nerf of the latest patch (just throttle it back a little)
7. Easing of spy costs
8. A bit more powerful starbase defenses
9. A planetary tile for ECON bonuses

Anything that adds more content such as new animations, racial history, ethical decisions, mega events, or even new races is always a nice addition.