Galactic Civilizations III - Rise of the Terrans DLC DLC

Looks good on paper but minimal effort was spent to make this special.

Ran into bug not able to confront the Stellar Guild 4500 turns in, all tech researched and nothing left to build. Can't even Ascend to beet the campaign.

I bought this pretty much sight unseen because I love the game so much. I'll admit, I was hoping for more new ship parts more than anything else. I am glad to see another new Earth race available and will certainly be trying it out (just as soon as I finish my current game-in-progress). And considering the number of hours I have in game play, I think I can be considered a fairly good judge by now of what works and what doesn't. As always, keep up the good work, development team. You rarely dissapoint.

The latest update fixes some problems with this DLC, and even adds a new ship style for the United Earth faction! Now this DLC is truly worth it in my opinion!

The only complaint I have is; why didn't they include the Xendar as a playable faction? Not a deal breaker, but a what were they thiniking one for sure.

This DLC gives you a different take on the Terrans. The United Earth faction has 2 racial traits in common with the Terran Alliance with UE having 2 other traits (one of which is a +2) and Ta having 3. They both have the Engineers ability (shipyards production decays at half the normal rate) with the Terran Alliance having the Colonizers ability (Colonies first improvement free) and United Earth getting the new Experienced ability (25% extra experience for ships from battles). The two Terran factions do use the same parts and colours but would you really expect that in a 60 year range the external look of the ships would change that drastically. United Earth has been given a different leader due to them being based of earlier Terrans. The are 2 campaign missions (the Snathi pack had just 1) so take that into consideration if you consider the reuse of the Terran parts to be cheap. I'll edit this post more when I've had a chance to play the missions.

Just thoroughly disappointed in the game. I expected more from a company that has been doing these kinds of games for this long.

I love these story mission DLCs. I hope Stardock keeps them coming, obviously with just as many feature DLCs. I love this game, but do agree it has lots of room to improve. I think DLCs are the best way to achieve this improvement, as game prices have been the same for more than a decade. DLCs are the way the industry survives because most gamers are cheap.

No no no... just no. This is a $5 DLC that contains almost NOTHING. The "new" faction is a retread of the humans, and the other two "new threats" ARE NOT PLAYABLE FACTIONS! What a waste of time! Campaigns interest me not at all, I want new ship parts (got some of those), new factions (not really), new ship styles (one), and new gameplay (none). Basically, $5 isn't much, but you could totally pass this up unless you are an avid player. And, with a few more DLCs like this, there will be fewer of those around, thinks I...

Having beat the campaign and played with the United Earth Faction, I feel it is meaningful that I tell you what you'll be buying if you add this to your cart. I will tell you now that the only tangible thing that you will get out of this is the United Earth faction and the campaign. I will begin by explaining the Campaign you will be in for. [h1]Mission One: Haven[/h1] The first campaign involves the Stellar Guild as an adversary, and a lone Space Monster. This is also the only mission where you play as United Earth (You're Terran Alliance in Mission Two)... My experience with this map paints a simple portrait: Every planet you colonize brings you closer to actually fighting the Stellar Guild. Hold off on colonizing, and you have time to build a massive fleet. I figured this out early on, and decided to fortify before I actually faced anything. This meant that in the time before I decided to colonize Haven, I was able to dot the entire map in well-fortified Star Bases, fully developed planets, and created my own fleet of warships for whatever onslaught was coming for me. The First Campaign is a very simple one that leaves you alone for 3 quarters of the time, until you colonize the last planet, whereby it will generate the Stellar Guild, which is simply the "Pirate" faction, except with a planet. I wiped them out in only a few turns. The Stellar Guild is not a meaningful addition to the game. In fact, it is exclusive to the first Campaign mission from what I know this far. They do not appear elsewhere in the game. You can not communicate with them. Looking through XML files at DLC\DLC6_RiseoftheTerrans\Campaigns\RiseoftheTerrans\Game, you can find their faction information and, likely, could make a new minor faction or full faction out of them if you want. One thing I will give the first mission is the benefit that it is an easy win. This is not true for the second mission. [h1]Mission Two: Xendar[/h1] The second campaign mission wasn't a fun one, and I don't meant that in the "You're facing an onslaught of deadly enemies" way, no, I mean that in the way that the mission itself was extremely unbalanced and, scripting-wise, completely unfair. You start with a fleet of ships equiped with Beam weapons and Shielding. These ships are ahead of their time, and their weapons make them a convenience for the most part. Problem is, the defending Xendar ships seem to have beam shielding and are primarily armed with Kenetic weapons, which means your ships will get banged up unless you stack a doom-deck. On top of that, the faction bonuses for the Xendar allow them to construct ships at a rate much higher than your own. The reason for this lies in the scripted race traits and abilities for the Xendar, which make the game unnaturally hard. [h1]The Xendar[/h1] [b]Race Traits[/b] [i]PirateGold PirateBuilding Productive +2 Economical +2 Handy +2 Militant +2 Likeable -2 Organized +1[/i] [b]Abilities[/b] [i]Engineers Colonizers[/i] With Militant and PirateBuilding, the Xendar create fleets that are extremely large, filling up the Shipyards, and Planets they want to guard. You will run into full fleets in each one if you wait too long. With PirateGold, Economical, and Handy, they can sustain these fleets. You simply do not have enough planets or production to counter these, and unless you hit their shipyards first, you will be overwhelmed... Or annoyed enough to quit and try again. [i][Fun fact: The Xendar Ship Style actually comes from the Builders Kit DLC, a ship building set known as "Raider" in faction settings. You do not have access to these ships by buying this DLC, but they are the only new ship design added... And it's for a faction you don't even get to see outside of a single campaign mission][/i] I tried three playthroughs. I didn't lose a single planet to enemy transports (though I assume you're supposed to lose a few), but each game dragged on for 90+ turns as I tried to build an actual economy (hindered by pre-placed buildings) and at every angle I was inferior to my enemy. I got bored with trying to manage a decent fleet to combat the constant onslaughts and the horrible economic balance in this game. The third time around, I decided I was going to play differently. I was all about offense, and ignored defense. Using my beam ships and researching planetary invasion early, I took three planets from the Xendar; Farside, Ruby, and Pawn. These planets were largely unfortified, fresh colonies, yet they had been quickly developed by the Xendar, whereas my planets were still taking several turns to complete anything. I camped two fleets of beam ships at each Xendar Shipyard build point, and simply waited for them to create more ships to throw at me. One is at Haven, and the other is at Xendar (Capital). By destroying these shipyards before they completed any military ships, I was able to keep most of the challenge at bay (and by challenge, I mean completely unfair playing conditions). I ended up winning, but only because I had to create a fleet of Large Ships outfitted with Antimatter, Elerium, and Durantium weaponry. The campaign does add some enjoyable backstory to the game, and I love more lore, but the fact of the matter is that the campaign is also a very tedious and poorly-thought-out mess to play through, and I found it to be the most obnoxious thing I've had to do in GalCiv III... But hey, at least I've got the achievement to prove it. Now we get to the part about the new United Earth faction. [h1]Terran Alliance:[/h1] [b]Race Traits[/b] [i]Productive +1 Adventuresome +1 Likeable +1 Fast +1 Organized +1[/i] [b]Abilities[/b] [i]Engineers Colonizers[/i] [h1]United Earth:[/h1] [b]Race Traits[/b] [i]Productive +1 Clever +2 Handy +1 Likeable +1[/i] [b]Abilities[/b] [i]Engineers Experienced[/i] The United Earth is supposed to be a predecessor to the Terran Alliance by 60 years. With that said, the ship design they use is the exact same Terran Ship Style as the Terran Alliance, which for me, kills the unique aspect of this DLC. Designs really do change a lot in 60 years, so there should be more new content here to meet that fact. The least I can ask for is a somewhat altered design of the original Terran ships given its own category; it takes about 3 minutes to swap around certain models to give it a ship its own life. They could have even outsourced creating ships to the community, which could have given this DLC more flavor. For re-using the same exact ship design, I feel like creativity and vision were shoved aside for a quick, cheap release. Along with re-using the Builder's Kit DLC here, this release feels very cut down to me, especially knowing that there was more love and effort put into the Snathi DLC. The solar system is the same for both the Terran Alliance and United Earth, so a tale of two Earths is what you can call a match involving them. The Map Color is also the same; luckily, the game will automatically change the second Human faction map color to Teal to help avoid any confusion there. I think it would be wise to bring up these issues with Stardock Entertainment, just as friendly critique and reminder that they have the power to do better. Every faction has a soul. For them to release a faction that is cut down and lackluster compared to those in the base game, Mercenaries DLC, and Snathi DLC... well, it's a confidence crusher. My own personal worry is that the future campaign DLCs will skimp content in favor of quick and streamlined production like this one, and I really don't want to see that happen. I want to see this company expand on the universe we all know and love, and I want to see them do it as passionately as we would if we could, as that passion and love that created its predecessors. It is for that reason that I can not recommend this product in the condition that it is.