Caltrops - Galactic Civilizations

Forum Overview :: Galactic Civilizations

by pinback 09/09/2025, 3:37am PDT

I am finally trying to play a game of this, just to say I played a whole game of this. I will never get close to being able to give the level of criticism that laudable has, I will never understand the game that well, I am playing it like I play all 4x games, just clicking on shiny things and hoping for the best. I am definitely on the "min" side of "min/max".

I'm generally enjoying my time with it, except for the UI. IN GENERAL, the UI is fine, but there are things broken with it that I cannot believe are still not fixed, and I see have been complained about forever. Like, stuff you'd fix in the first alpha of a game. Here is the big one:

Space is large. The game will prod you when you have a ship ready for orders, and will select it for you. However, space is large, and if you end up doing anything else, you won't be able to find your ship without spending 30 minutes scanning the entire map.

"Wait, can't you just click on the ship name and it will center it for you?" No.
"Wait, it says here the "C" hotkey will center the selected object!" It does not.

There is ONE WAY I have found to re-center the ship, which is to DESELECT everything, and then click the "you have ships ready to move" icon again. There is no other way to find your ship other than this. I cannot believe this is still a thing, still complained about, still un-fixed.

Second place is: "ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO MINE THIS ASTEROID BELT?" Except it doesn't take you to, show you, or indicate in any way which asteroid belt it is talking about. What I do is click "Yes", because if I sent a mining ship there, I'm pretty sure I still want to mine it, but I still have no idea what belt it's talking about, which asteroid miner set up shop there, etc.

Like, it aggressively does NOT want you to know where things are happening and where your guys are.

Ah well. Fuck you, Brad.

GC4 is still enjoyable, but that is because of the inherent enjoyability 4Xs all have built-in, not because of anything special about GC4.