Star Control: Origins aliens come to Galactic Civilizations III in exciting new DLC
New Alien Civilizations bring their own ship styles, unique race traits, diplomatic quirks, AI personalities, and more!

The Star Control Heroes DLC pack introduces four major new civilizations to Galactic Civilizations III. All of the new alien factions come equipped with a unique leader, ship, music, and traits that make each civilization look and play differently from the existing major civilizations.

Play as or against the Tywom, the lovable, needy slugs, or as the kind (but surprisingly aggressive!) aquatic Mu'Kay. You can also play as the naive-but- deceptively powerful Mowlings with their god-like protector, "Jeff," or the recently liberated and mysterious Trandals.

Galactic Civilizations III is the most popular space-based turn based strategy of all time.  Your civilization has just achieved faster-than-light travel and the galaxy awaits you.  But you are not alone and must deal with alien civilizations through diplomacy, trade, cultural hegemony, or military conquest either against the computer or against friends online. 

MAJOR RACES IN HEROES OF STAR CONTROL: ORIGINS

The Tywom Hello, best friends! These yellow slug-like aliens would like a hug. They’re slimy, and you don’t want to give them one, but still - it’s all they really want. The Tywom want to be friends with everyone, which makes them great diplomats, and their constant desire for approval gives them a bonus for any other factions who happen to love them.

The Mu'Kay Greetings, Federation members! Founders of the Federation for Allied Species, the Mu’Kay are intelligent cephalopods who live entirely in aquatic environments. Their natural intelligence makes them excellent researchers, and their polite (if occasionally condescending) manner lends itself well to diplomacy. Unless you’re a fish. Then prepare to be eaten.

The Mowlings All hail the mighty Jeff! The Mowlings are small, bear-like creatures who worship a mysterious deity they call Jeff. Frankly, they’re a little lost without him, so they spend their time finding new ways to worship him. The Mowlings get a special Temple of Jeff improvement (one per planet) that grants bonuses to influence and approval, and in return Jeff orbits their planets protectively.

The Free Trandals Cast off the shackles of the Overmind! The Free Trandals are the escaped faction of a race that has been enslaved by a malevolent AI known only as Overmind, who uses their bodies to advance its own nefarious purposes. Now, the Free Trandals work to free their brethren and rebuild their lost culture with what little they have left. Possessing a surprising capability (and healthy paranoia) for advanced technology, the Free Trandals are far from helpless both on and off the battlefield. Their warrior instincts may be long buried, but their ships, while few in number, are enormously effective against silicon and synthetic based life forms.

Additional Features in Heroes of Star Control: Origins

• Dozens of new ship parts inspired by Star Control: Origins for building and modifying your own ships
• Several new music tracks from Star Control: Origins
• New faction traits
• New ship designs, colors, and styles

Get Heroes of Star Control: Origins today!

v3.1 is Now Available

In addition to the release of the new DLC, v3.1 is also available today. This update adds some important AI and quality of life changes, as well as the ability for players to design their own color palettes for custom factions. With v3.1, players will be able to adjust the color scheme for the UI, maps, and ships as well.

Official v3.1 Changelog

AI Improvements

• Synthetic races are better at killing you
• Synthetic life forms will not longer try to build farms.  Instead, they'll destroy the arable tiles to make room for something more useful to them.  
• Crusade: AI better at gaining citizens at higher difficulty levels.

Balance

• Fertile tiles are more common.
• Mercenaries: Avatar mercenary antimatter cost increased from 1 to 5.
• Crusade:
  
  • Prolific ability population growth reduced from 0.2 to 0.1 (otherwise it was basically tripling initial population growth).
  • Aururus Arberetum provides a % growth benefit instead of a flat so that a given player (such as an AI player) doesn't gain a disproportionate advantage from having one.
• Intrigue: Changed the "Destroyed Planets" crisis outcomes to be only "mostly destroyed"

Interface

• Custom Colors: Design your own color palettes for custom factions, ships, the UI and maps.  
• Population growth now shows to 2 significant digits.
• Added a button on the title window to force sync the mods.  Use this if you have subbed/unsubbed to ships or civs outside of the game and that content isn't showing up correctly.  
• Crusade: Shows your leader instead of the news robot

Bugs

• Fixed a few MP crashes
• Typo fixes: For extreme colonize, it is Barren, not Desert planet types.
• Base Game only: AI will not try to research Crusade specific techs.  
• Mercenaries: AI no longer tries to "mine" the Bazaar

As the Tywom like to say, HELLO, BEST FRIENDS!

Just playing the start of a new GalCiv III v3.1 game with the Star Control DLC added.  Let's take a look at what we can expect.

The Setup

Players have been asking for a way to customize the colors further than what was possible before and now they can do it.  So if you're into ship designing, you're in for a real treat!

Here is my super tame but very custom color scheme.

  Just starting up my game here with my custom civilization "Little Tiny Frogs".

I soon meet the Tywom, but without a universal translator, there's know way to know what they're saying yet.

The Mu'Kay are very much into "federation" building.   Keep an eye on them.

The cute but dangerous Mowlings are in.  As cuddly as they are, they start with the most powerful starting-unit in the game: Jeff.  Luckily, they are peaceful.

The United Planets.  This is where you can see how the art style of the Star Control aliens got tweaked a bit to fit in better with the GalCiv style.

It doesn't take long for the the ever aggressive Drengin and Yor and Krynn to begin going to war.  Just keep in mind that in Galactic Civilizations, the civilizations try to act rationally and towards their unique traits.  That means: If you add the heroes from Star Control into your game, you will want to mix them up with some baddies.

The Mowlings are not shy about asking for help if they need it.

My spies give me a lookout on the Tywom home world.  Take a close look at their citizens!

Meanwhile, the new ship parts (which are animated) allow the Mu'Kay ships to get a pretty distinctive style.

Speaking of cool ship styles.  The Mowlings may have the best ship design I've seen in the game yet.  They're relatable yet still somewhat alien.

As I stop for the day, my observers spot two fleets of Mu'Kay ships heading towards Drengi.  Don't underestimate the Mu'Kay!

The end of the Drengin Empire...

I think you guys are going to like this.  The changes in v3.1 that are also being released should make this a pretty special update.

This upcoming Monday, Stardock will be releasing a new DLC for its massive space strategy game, Galactic Civilizations III.

The new DLC, Heroes of Star Control: Origins, will introduce 4 new major civilizations to play as complete with their own ship styles, parts, new traits, diplomatic behaviors, and AI for $5.99. 

It'll be available to purchase on Steam, GOG, and of course GalCiv3.com, starting Monday afternoon EST, November 12.

About Galactic Civilizations

Galactic Civilizations is 4X strategy game set in the 23rd century. Having recently acquired faster-than-light travel, players are now in a race to explore and expand their civilization into the galaxy where they will research new technology, build up their planets, fight wars, negotiate treaties, trade goods and determine the destiny of the future of their people. Learn more at www.galciv3.com.

About Star Control: Origins

Star Control is an action adventure game putting the player in command of Earth's most advanced starship with the mission to save Earth.  It is a reboot of the classic Star Control franchise from the 1990s that introduces new species, new challenges and a rich deep universe to explore.  Star Control: Origins was just released and is available at www.starcontrol.com.

Screenshots:

We've updated so that all of our released
languages are now fully supported!
Enjoy the full range of dialogue and story in Offworld Trading Company
View the complete list of updates in the changelog below

We want everyone to be able to experience and enjoy all of the story, dialogue, and nuances in Offworld Trading Company and all of its DLC. We've updated support for the following languages so that the translations now extend to all aspects of the game:

Simplified Chinese
German
Brazilian Portuguese
Polish
Korean
Spanish
French
Russian

_______________________________________________________________________________________

What is Offworld Trading Company?

Take on the role of entrepreneur and travel to Mars for an economic showdown against
other companies in Offworld Trading Company! Buy out your competition and take control
of the Martian market in a strategy game where money, not military force, is your greatest
weapon. The real-time, player-driven market is the foundation of the game, allowing you to buy
and sell resources and materials - even the food and water that the colonists need to
survive. Build up enough capital and gain access to the lucrative offworld markets so that
you can buy out your rivals and claim the Martian economy for yourself.

Check out Offworld Trading Company on Steam today!

v1.21.24522 Changelog

• Localization has been improved for the following languages:
• French
• German
• Spanish
• Korean
• Polish
• Brazilian Portuguese
• Russian
• Simplified Chinese

Balance

• Elite Pleasure Domes now take the same entertainment share as a standard Pleasure Dome
• Elite Headquarters reverted to use the same amount of steel as other factions

Bug Fixes

• Scientist Nuclear Plants now have the same cost and power production as other factions
• Fixed an issue with the resume button on the Infinite Map Challenge
• Ticker Text now resets correctly

Over on the GalCiv III Steam page, I asked players to post their saved games so I could check them out.  And what I've been finding has been amazing and horrifying simultaneously.

Players are able to do things that I wouldn't have thought of.  This is why saved games are so valuable.  Many times I get feedback from players who say "The AI needs to do X" and my answer is, "well of course, it already does that!" But there is some other thing that it has decided needs to be done instead and the trick is to find out why.  That's where save games come in.

IceMania sent me a genius game where he's kicking the AI's butt.

Looking at the stats, the things I'm noticing is how aggressive (and how powerful) the relics are.  Not over-powered just  that he was good at getting them.

Now, let's look at the AI players...

The biggest difference I see is the # of citizens.  Human players tends to be much more aggressive at acquiring citizens than the AI. In this game, the player has acquired 13 citizens by turn 61.

Here is an AI player on the same turn:

Look at that production difference.

Another big area I'm seeing is that top players are extremely good at expanding.  Seeing players with over 10 colonies in 60 turns makes me a bit sad because it means that we still haven't done enough to reward playing tall.

I'll be updating this entry as I go through more saves...

The Star Control universe is yours to shape and control with the free Multiverse DLC! Craft complete adventures, upload and download mods to the Steam Workshop, and more. v1.1 brings overall gameplay improvements, balance updates, and several other graphics and aesthetic changes. Learn more here.

Hello...BEST FRIENDS!

We are currently working on version 1.1 of Star Control: Origins and the first free DLC called the Multiverse.  We expect to have a beta version of v1.1 out this week for those who want to try it out.  

Multiverse

The Multiverse DLC will open up Steam Workshop to modders who want to create their own stories, maps, custom settings, aliens, etc. for people to play with.  This DLC will obviously evolve over time and get more features as we learn what kinds of things players like to share.

The Expansion

We will be announcing the first expansion in a few weeks which will be released as a single season pass so that we can release it as a series of micro-expansions.  It will introduce lots of new aliens, new places to visit, new quests and will benefit both players who have finished the main storyline as well as new players.

As always, let us know if there's anything you'd like to see.

Cheers!

Originally posted by Draginol here.

Celebrate 25 years of Stardock with some of our best deals ever on games and software during our anniversary sale! 

UP TO 80% OFF GAMES   |   50% OFF ALL SOFTWARE

King of the Hill is a scenario for Ashes Escalation where the player has to hold out as long as they can against endless waves of enemies. It plays out like a Tower Defense game; establish a strong defense and continue to place more turrets and upgrade them to bolster your position. Tower Defense games can be quite simple with limited options, but King of the Hill is complex because it's inside of Ashes with all the mechanics and content that the game contains. RTS games, and their cousin Tower Defense, are all about weighing up opportunity costs and making meaningful decisions. 

Continue Reading...

Greetings!  With Star Control: Origins out and having already sold nearly 50,000 copies after only a week of availability we are now ready to talk about...THE FUTURE.

We will be making an official announcement after version 1.1 (the big modding release) is available but we didn't want fans, especially those who are starting to finish the Origins adventure, to have to wait to know what's next.

Needless to say, we've gone back and forth on the best way to deliver new stories, quests and features to players in a way that fits in.  Now, keep in mind, the base game will continue to be updated and improved for free.  But obviously, new adventures and content are a different thing.  So what's the best way?

We looked at 4 options.  I'll list the 3 we rejected and why.

Option 1: Traditional expansion.  This is what we've done with our other games.  You make a single big expansion and release it.  Fans tend to like these in our strategy games.  However, the problem here is that this would mean waiting a year to continue the story in any meaningful way.

Option 2: DLCs.  DLCs make sense in many ways but they have a lot of issues too.  Many players will say that they feel "nickeled and dimed" when they see lots of little DLCs.  We ran into this with Galactic Civilizations III where we'd just release a few DLCs per year.  That sounds reasonable right? But after 3 years, there's now 12 of them and people get upset seeing all those DLCs.

Option 3: In-Game transactions.  Believe it or not, a lot of people do like these.  However, I personally don't like this.

So what's left?  We look around at other adventure/rpg games and a Season Pass works the best.   I won't get into too many details but the plan is to release 6 mini-expansions for $19.99.  The micro-expansions will be released one at a time and they will add new missions, new characters, ships, stars, map areas, features, etc.  

I wouldn't call these mini-expansions "episodes" because much of the content doesn't require that you have completed the Origins mission (plenty of it does follow the end of the Origins mission).  

The first mini expansion would be made available in November and they'd continue on a set schedule with all of them and a general (non-spoilery) list of features that each one will bring. 

When the first micro-expansion is installed, if you have finished the Origins story, the next stage in our multi-year story arc will continue.  So after the "credits roll" you get a new cut scene that introduces you to the new state of the universe.  On the other hand, if you have not finished the story or for those who have never played the game, they'll just see the galaxy a little more filled out.  New side-quests, just a bit more "stuff" to bring the universe alive.

What will effectively happen is that players will have more and more paths to choose from in deciding how best to help Earth and have a richer, deeper universe to play in.

Please let us know your thoughts.

[ German Version ]  [ Russian Version ]