The Official News Service for Metaverse Empires.
Galactic Civilizations: The Altarian Prophecy is Debated
Published on November 21, 2003 By Theoden of Rohan In PC Gaming
The Metaverse forums are buzzing about the new Expansion Pack for Galactic Civilizations, dubbed The Altarian Prophecy. This Expansion Pack will be a set of scenarios which will reveal the secret behind the Altarians. Some features to be included are two new races, a scenario editor, a map editor, and much more! The conversation is currently revolving around Stardock's decision to see if there is enough interest to release the Altarian Prophecy in full, or as a scaled back version available on Drengin.net. The citizens of the Metaverse have come forward quickly and loudly declaring their interest in this project. All that is required now is for Stardock to recognize this interest and move forward.

In empire news, the battle between the Special Forces, Jedi Republic and Mid-Western Confederation continues with the three empires closing to within about 100,000 points of each other. The contest between Special Forces and Jedi Republic is extremely close, with only about 30,000 points seperating the two juggernauts.

A struggle of special interest is occuring between Jedi Captain Mayito7777 of the Jedi Republic and Wild Wombat of Special Forces. These two warlords are setting a blistering pace of games played. Each overlord has over 160 games played, and the balance sways back and forth between the two almost hourly.

The Evil Empire has finally settled on a new motto for their dastardly empire. The winner was No conscience? No problem! by an overwhelming majority. The evil ones are growing as well and now stand at a total of fourteen overlords. Standing at eigth place, they are determined to pass the pirates of G.R.O.S.S.

Speaking of the pirate horde, Captain PontiusBruinPilot has announced the Second Annual Hobbit Tossing Olympiad. This heinous contest is held in Threadzilla and consists of the throwing of innocent hobbitfolk. Though PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has not commented on this terrible event, the pro-hobbit group CASH (Citizens Attempting to Save Hobbits) has begun a frenzied fund-raising event in order to combat this ruthless spectacle. Some watchdog groups have complained that CASH doesn't really care anything about hobbits but is more concerned with the money raised, leading the president of CASH to state "Hey, money makes the world care!" Already there are contestants brushing up on their hobbit-throwing skills and reports from the Shire claim there are bounties out on any hobbit who accidently wander out of the hobbit holes. Local law enforcement is unable to do anything since they have been captured for the event as well.

Most overlords are busy learning the ropes of the latest version of Galactic Civilizations, version 1.12. Some minor bugs have been reported, but in all, the most reported feature of 1.12 is the improved AI at Masochistic level. Many players who were proficient at Maso before the release of 1.12 have found adjusting to the behavior of the AIs difficult. One of the less appreciated aspects of 1.12 is the ability of the minor races to expand quickly, at some points even faster than the major empires. Though this behavior was welcomed at first, the fact is the minors may have been over adjusted and may need to be toned down a bit. However, there are few complaints of the new version. CariElf, Our Holy Lady of Software, has announced that many of the bugs have been fixed and will be released with the next update. Among the bugs, the most glaring is the limitation of UP voting issues to only two. This fix is anxiously awaited by all citizens.


Comments
on Nov 21, 2003
Great Update. please promote our website - evil.galciv.org in your next review
on Nov 21, 2003
Evil Empire has gained new player!!!
on Nov 22, 2003
I can honestly say that there is a heck of a lot of backstory on the Altarians.

While I was in college, I wrote the manuscripts for 3 books (a trilogy) that dealt strictly with how come the Altarians are they way they are.

The only issue is when I made the post about interest in the expansion pack, we had only had SIX pre-orders. The main problem, budget-wise, is that one feature: 2 new races, is about half the total budget and so if there's not huge interest, I'd rather just remove those two races or perhaps have them only in the campaign and not in the main game.

In order ot have 2 new races, the United Planets screen has to be redone which is a painful screen to do, the alien binks have to be generated for those 2 new races. The text has to be done for their responses. The various diplomacy screens ahve to be redone, etc.

If the two new civilizations, as a feature, coudl be zapped then we wouldn't have as big an issue if there wasn't huge demand for the expansion pack. Right now, we have to do 5k units to make it worth doing which is actually pretty large for an expansion pack that won't likely be at retail. But the poll numbers indicated pretty significant demand and so we decided to put in the 2 extra races on the list.

We have the two new races designed artistically, but we haven't made the UI changes.