Galactic Civilizations III October Beta preview

Today Stardock is releasing a huge new beta for Galactic Civilizations 3 that will add a copious cornucopia of content to the game. We were fortunate to get some answers about what's in this patch from the games lead designer, Paul Boyer.

The headliner for this patch is the diplomacy system which will include everything that was in the diplomacy system from Galactic Civilization 2 (trading for technology, creating treaties, and alliances, etc). New for Galactic Civilization 3 are research treaties and resource treaties. Research treaties allow both sides to get a research boost while the treaty is active. Resource treaties will allow you to trade Durantium and Elerium for technology or other resources in the game like technology. You'll also be able to trade unique technologies which can quickly change the balance of power if you're not careful. This isn't quite finished yet but will be available in later beta.

A final type of trade is the durational trade which allows you to essentially lease things by allowing one party to pay X amount of credits for something for a set period of time.

The big thing though with the new system is that the type and quality of the trade will play into the mood of the empires that you are dealing with. So if you want to keep people on your good side you will need to offer them fair trades as bad trades will upset them and impact your relationship with that race. This in turn impacts your leadership and place within the United Planets council (which is now a path to victory in the game).

Another addition to the beta is the Krynn, a race that was introduced to the Galactic Civilization canon in Twilight of the Arnor expansion pack. According to Boyer, the race has been fleshed out a a bit for Gal Civ 3 as they are now a group of individual races that are part of a religious order trying to grow their religion by bringing in new races to the Krynnaic religion. Their "superpowers" are all related to influence and approval as they essentially want everyone to be happy and that helps to spread their influence.

The race has one custom path in their tech tree called "The Path" that swaps entertainment centers and embassies for the Krynn temple which provides both influence and happiness and gives them a big advantage in influence.

On the dark side of things (because there's always a dark side) there is the Dark Path which is a religiously sanctioned underworld where the race's mafia lives and helps to influence the government and civilization in a slightly darker fashion. This darker path also allows you to have war profiteering which means you will be able to make a profit off of conflicts in the universe, even with races that you are in direct conflict with. Players will have a choice on which direction they want to pursue though so you don't always have to go light or dark (although we hear the dark side has cookies).

Other new things to the beta include the addition of the rest of the victory conditions (influence, technology, diplomacy, and ascension), precursor relics are now back and a lot of work has been done to the United Planets system.

The Krynn along with the diplomacy system are still being balanced out and Stardock wants to use this beta to have people kick the tires on both to see if they are fun and to check if either needs any tweaking for balance purposes.

Mr. Boyer also revealed that the game is still tracking to the timeline that Stardock CEO Brad Wardell revealed earlier this year. This means we'll get another big beta update in December, another one in the spring, and a final release in April 2015.