[Other games] Galactic civilizations released March 26th.

[raynor]

The socio-economic and diplomacy models are more complex. The planetary infrastructure is more complex. In effect, Gal Civ makes SEIV look like a game that is just about moving about fancy looking ships. SEIV really is a pretty simple game when you get down to it. Given that the author of SEIV didn't have to consider politics, social forces, planetary infrastructure, etc, it really is disappointing that he couldn't come up with at least a checker-like AI. Still, the Eliza-like intelligence simulation does well enough when you give it a bonus that is about 2000% of the bonus in any other equivalent space conquest game.

[Fyron]

If you can only interact with the AI, complex diplomatic models do not mean much. It all boils down to "do we like you or not". SE4 actually has a complex diplomatic model; the AI just does not work with half of it.

So basically, GalCiv has a lot of needlessly complex information and models. There is often beauty in simplicity. From what you have said, it sounds like GalCiv will be a micromanagment hell. That level of detail for each and every planet looks like too much for a 4X game. You are not developing a planet, but an inter-galactic empire. The focus should not be on planetary infrastructure and the socio-economic forces of each planet, but more on a galactic scale.

SE4 could use a little more complexity in planetary infrastructure and such, but not too much.

[Mephisto]

Why don't we just wait and see?

[gregebowman]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:

FQM can be used with nearly any other mod, so it can easily extend the playing time of any other mod. Just play some games with FQM Deluxe: it makes the maps much richer and more varied, and overall gives (IMHO) a better experience than using the standard quadrant/system schema.

As one who had just started to use FQM, I guess the question would be asked which mods can't use FQM?

[Aloofi]

Ewkk, there are no fleets in GalCiv!

[Fyron]

As one who had just started to use FQM, I guess the question would be asked which mods can't use FQM?

That depends on which FQM you are talking about, really. Maps generated with FQM Standard can be used with all non-quadrant mods except for Devnull Mod. But, Devnull has an earlier Version of FQM Standard built into it, so this is not too much of a loss. Proportions can be a bad mod to use a FQM map in because of the asteroid fields. Remote mining the large number of asteroids gives you a lot of resources that you are not supposed to have in Proportions, and takes away many special Proportions aspects. The maps will indeed work, but it could be problematic.

FQM Deluxe has to be manually combined with other mods to work with them, as per the instructions in it's help folder (or on the FQM web site). It should work fine with nearly any mod out there (other than mods that make extensive changes to planetsizes.txt and secttypes.txt, but most mods don't do that).