We have previously discussed the perils of running a galactic civilization.  People living hundreds of light years away from their home world will have relatively little interest in the political intrigues of the capital.  That’s where the government types come in.

What is the best type of government for your civilization? There is no right answer.

Let’s work through a scenario and how it might play out.  The star Procyon is 11 light years away from Earth. 

Procyon A is 11 light years from Earth.

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The situation is desperate.

The Terran Alliance is slowly losing the war to the Drengin Empire.

Is Earth doomed?

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Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation embarked on a remarkable journey throughout 2017 to get to where it is now. It's something I am very proud of. In a previous Dev Journal I mentioned how I often get nostalgic thinking back to all of the old silly quirks and overpowered stuff, so I thought that'd be something worth writing about. Today, I'll be mapping out and reflecting upon the immense progress we have made and provide some insight about my intentions along the way.

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Intrigue is the third expansion for Stardock's massive-scale space strategy game, Galactic Civilizations III. This expansion changes the game in significant ways to extend playability and introduce new dynamics, adding politics, governments, civilization crises, the GNN, elections, and the Galactic Market to the game. 

We're also updating the base game to version 3.0 with the release of Intrigue; you'll see we've called out areas where changes are made in v3.0.

This will walk you through the far-reaching changes to gameplay that Intrigue introduces - some subtle, some more obvious.

What's new with Intrigue?

• Governments. Determines what your civilization can and can't do, as well as provides bonuses, special ships, etc.
• Galactic Elections. Puts limitations on democratically elected governments.
• Cabinets. Provides advisors who can give you additional bonuses and capabilities.
• Events. Lots of new ideological events
• The Galactic Market. Buy and sell resources on the open market.
• Crises. Civilization-wide quests that look at the state of the galaxy and your government, then force you to make some tough choices.
• The Galactic News Network. AI driven news to help players know where they stand in the universe.
• Commonwealths. Empire getting too big? Create baby civilizations that are allied with you, pay you money, and add to your influence without any of the headaches of directly running them.

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Everyone loves a good start.

Every game of Galactic Civilizations is different.  The original tagline was: “Never the same game twice.”  It isn’t that the game is randomized as much as it is that each game is designed to be carefully imbalanced in a way that tries to push the player into avoiding well-worn strategies.

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Hey guys! I've been working at Stardock for a bit over a year now as a designer on Ashes of the Singulairty: Escalation. It's been an incredible journey, so I wanted to share my experience of how I got here and what it's been like. 

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In preparation for the Game Developer's Conference we wanted to put a polish pass on the planets in Star Control: Origins.

There are about 3,000 unique planets that are split into roughly 75 different classes.  Each class of planet has its own challenges, as well as its own mineral deposits that you might want to collect (along with ruins, cities, smugglers, creatures, etc.).

Today, I'm going to walk you through how we create our planet classes.

Unique, Procedural and Hand-Crafted

You can't hand craft 3,500 planets.  And it would not be a good thing for every planet class to be the same.  So how do we solve this?  Through a mixture of procedural generation and designer balance. And this gets me up to "Programmer art" level.

The Primordial world

One of the planet classes is known as a Primordial world. These are worlds that are still simmering with active volcanoes, have a variety of minerals, and occasionally have life.

A humble beginning

Yea...not so pretty

But that's ok.  We can fix all that.

We start with our planet template which is called...wait for it...Primordial. This file refers to materials (what thinks look like) and stamps (what things are shaped like).

In the game, they're located here:

1. In assets\PlanetTemplate are the types for every planet.

2. In assets\Terrain is the default.terrainmaterial set.

3. In assets\Stamplists the stamplists are available.

4. In assets\Stamps are the stamps the stamplists use.

Setting it up

From my Primoridal planet template, I set up the stats and choose my stamp list.  The stamp list is a series of stamps with weighting on them that helps determine the odds of a given stamp being chosen for a particular planet at a particular time.  This way, every planet looks different.

Choose our stamps and weights

Now that I've set up my stats (the weather, what minerals are likely to show up, odds of life, temperature, gravity, etc.), I choose what stamps will be on there. Now, the fun starts.

That's just me picking 6 stamps and putting them up.  Just curious what that will do.  I hit F5 on the planet and...

Mmmm. Bumpy.

Trial and Error

Over the next several minutes I pick various other stamps and end up with this:

Time for some atmosphere

Back in the planet template file, I can set up my atmosphere. Basically, what color is it, how transparent it is, and how thick is it.

Final Result

My Primordial planet

Now it's ready to leave the designer's "programmer art" state and move to the artists for further polishing and iteration over the months. 

This is just one class of planet.  Each planet of this class will be different.  But you can also create specific, individual planets that can look like anything you want. 

I suspect there will be a big library of planet classes made by fans (as well as specific planets) that will easily blow away my quick work here, or even the final effort, based on what I've seen people do in other games.

Feel free to ask any questions.

The premise of Galactic Civilizations is that you have united your homeworld and are now ready to send your first colony ship off into space.  What kind of alien worlds do you think we can settle?

The reality is, many worlds are not going to be safe for us.  We'll have to live in environmentally sealed enclosures at first.  Not because they are too cold or lack the right atmospheric conditions (though that is an issue), but rather because many worlds will have microbes that just aren't compatible with our biology.

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Greetings Offworld CEOs! Work continues on Offworld, but we don’t have anything to show off just yet. However, with the recent launch of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, this seemed a good time to touch on an idea that’s core to Offworld Trading Company: the privatization of space back here on Earth.

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"You need to establish trust with gamers."

Some of our community managers and devs discuss what makes a stream good, and then what streamers do to make a stream truly great. Check out Episode 5 of our "Strategy Visions" series here!