Stardock Games - Everything about Stardock Games

Ashes Event: Metal Mayhem – August 7th, 2021

SchismNavigator — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 1:41:29 PM -0400

This Saturday community manager Schism Navigator will be hosting community games for Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation.

Our events are open to all, with no minimum skill level required. All are welcome and all we ask is that you bring a good attitude!

For this game we will be playing with the opt-in build available on Steam.

Time: 7th August, 1700 UTC

Lobby: Metal Mayhem

Stream

Discord

Galactic Civilizations III Releases Highly Requested Update

Tatiora — Sat, 07 Aug 2021 11:48:00 PM -0400

Galactic Civilizations III Releases Highly Requested v4.2 Update

Stardock released a v4.2 update today for Galactic Civilizations III, its massive space sandbox 4X strategy game. The update has taken a large amount of community feedback into account as it works to address the game’s balance.

The version 4.2 update focuses on balancing several existing elements within the game, including planet classes, resource requirements for certain Starbase modules, habitable planet counts in each map size, and more.

“This update wouldn't have been possible without our community,” said Stardock CEO Brad Wardell. “Without their feedback and their sharing of saved games, it would have been much more difficult for us to take a look at some of the more specific balance issue within various play scenarios.”

Some adjustments have been made to values granted by certain technologies, and the default player count on each map size has also been increased. The AI has been updated to be more generous when trading tech, and an AI player will no longer rush a ship when it doesn’t need to.

Since Galactic Civilizations III released in 2015, Stardock has made frequent updates while taking player feedback into account. Because of this, the game has continued to improve throughout the years, ensuring that even long-time players have something new or interesting to look forward to when an update is released.

The v4.2 update is now available. Make sure to check out the full changelog down below!

Get the core edition of Galactic Civilizations III on Steam, Epic, or Stardock for $29.99.
Learn more at: www.galciv3.com

v4.2 Changelog

Fixes

Typo Fixes
Fixed an initialization bug

Balance

Planet class 26 added
General balance of planets classes moved down some.
Players can start slightly closer together.
Starbase particle beam support weapon no longer requires Elerium
Starbase Stinger missile support weapon no longer requires anti-matter
Starbase Shield Generator support module no longer requires Elerium
Starbase Point defense support module no longer requires Elerium
Starbase Titanium plate module no longer requires Durantium
Starbase perimeter Scanner no longer requires Durantium
Starbase sector scanner Durantium cost reduced from 2 to 1
Starbase modules resource cost reduced by 1
Starbase Archeology module benefits increased
Starbase level 1 economic modules no longer require special resources
Content approval threshold reduced from 45% to 40%
Starting year increased from 2242 to 2243 for Retribution
Tiny map habitable planet count increased from 32 to 36
Small map habitable planet count increased from 40 to 48
Medium map habitable planet count increased from 100 to 120
Large map habitable planet count increased from 200 to 250
Huge map habitable planet count increased from 300 to 320
Gigantic map habitable planet count increased from 400 to 450
Immense map habitable planet count increased from 500 to 550
Planetary Improvement tech increases admin points +1
Colonial Engineering tech increases admin points +1
Artificial Gravity tech increases admin points +1
Interstellar Resupply tech increases admin points +1
Xeno Commerce tech increases admin points +1
Xeno Entertainment tech increases admin points +1
Retribution: Star distance reduced from 7 tiles to 5 tiles.
Default player count per map size increased:
- Small: 3 to 5
- Medium: 6 to 9
- Large: 8 to 11
- Huge: 12 to 17
- Gigantic: 16 to 21
Colony ships cost more
Prototype hyperdrive requires anti-matter instead of Promethion
Slight bump to improvement costs.
Tiny hull receives +2 speed buff
Small hull receives +1 speed buff
Cargo hull cost increased.
Capital world now provides +5 Credits per turn.
Capital production bonus increased from 2 to 3.

AI more generous in tech trading
Fixed bug that could cause an AI player to rush a ship when it didn't want to.
AI will no longer overwrite its current improvement project.

GalCiv IV Dev Journal #7 - The Changing Face of Space Robots

Frogboy — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 2:07:03 PM -0400

Somewhere around here I have the original image of the Yor from 1992. They don’t resemble the modern Yor very much. When I wrote the Yor origin story back in 1987 (when I was in high school) the Yor followed the common trope of AI servants who rose up against their masters. Their masters, in this case, were a race of beings known as the Iconians (who are also in the game).

The Yor of 1995

Yor of 2021

As time has gone by, I’ve thought about making the Yor be less Cylon like and more like a post-singularity hive mind. The argument could be made that humans just 50 years ago might end up “Post-Humans” ala Ashes of the Singularity.

The reason I bring this up is that GalCiv IV has the concept of “achievements”. These are essentially quests that when completed, allow the player to gain prestige which is one of the victory conditions. According to the data we get, the Yor are the #2 (after humans) civilization that people play as. And so in this thread we’d like to hear some things you’d like to see with the Yor (what sorts of quests would you like to see?).

Sins Community Games – 31st July

SchismNavigator — Fri, 30 Jul 2021 9:19:48 AM -0400

Time: 31^st July, 1700 UTC

Lobby Name: CC - SOTP

Slots: 6-10 Est.

Type: PVP / PVE

Join community manager Schism Navigator as we host a community games night this Saturday in the European evening. These events are a great opportunity for everyone to get online and play games together. All skill levels welcome.

If you are playing, please join the voice chat on the Sins of a Solar Empire official discord server. Though it is not mandatory to be in voice it is preferred, and we will prioritize those on voice.

We will be playing the Halo-themed mod Sins of the Prophets. Please make sure you download and set it up before the event.

Stream

Mod Download

GalCiv IV Dev Journal #6 - Those First 20 Turns

Frogboy — Tue, 03 Aug 2021 10:19:46 PM -0400

One of the challenges we have in setting up maps is the question of how quickly should players be meeting other civilizations in the game? How quickly should things show up? How much should the game direct you?

I decided to take a hard look at GalCiv II and GalCiv III to see how different those first 20 turns worked out.

GalCiv II: First 20 turns

Turn 1:

No on-screen direction but the UI is pretty clean and My ship is already selected to move.
Selected ship has an automate button visible so I press that.

There is an anomaly right away so I get to see what it does.

Ooh money.

There is a second one nearby that gives me money.
The Stellar Miner has an automate button too so I press that.
I send the colony ship out to explore
There is no guidance that I should do something on my planet.
I click on the planet and press the view button.

Because available projects is blank I am clued in to click on the green tiles.
List of things to build are very clear:

vs.

The build ship part is not easy to find.

It has a very large colored bar telling me how long it will take to build. Because it’s 29 weeks it’s orange which makes it stick out. This makes me look for other buttons like Purchase.

Ship build list comparison:

Way less screen dirt and simple explanations.

There is a button that says purchase on the screen:

So I press that. I notice this versus the tiny buy button in the queue in GalCiv III which I didn’t notice because ther’es only a few buttons on this screen to notice.

The first turn also gave me a bunch of money which trained me to think that money must matter.

Survey ship has a lot of moves:

We are still on turn 1.

Got a bunch of money
Got a new ship
Very obvious benefits

News announcement:

Turn 2:

Loading ship.

I send my ship to Mars.

I am asked to name it.

Text is pretty terrible but it’s pretty.

Mars sucks.

Got my third planet (on turn 2)

Ugly ugly text. But Good, Neutral and Evil are pretty clearly spelled out along with funny text.

I choose evil.

This bit of personality helps with engagement.

Survey ship finds more stuff.

This sort of text is engaging.

Research screen has the tree and the list on the same screen. The benefit of each one is pretty obvious.

Turn 3:

I meet an alien on turn 3.

Survey ship finds more neat little stuff.

Turn 4:

Turn 5:

Turn 6:

I definitely want Universal translators now

Turn 7:

Second alien:

I like that I can see how long it will take the ship to build from this screen.

Turn 8:

This is cool because it means early game there are 1 per galaxy things that are another thing players might want to build instead of other things. GalCiv III has nothing like this.

Survey ships get 5 moves
Colony ships get 4 so things get around a lot faster

Turn 9:

Turn 10:

I choose warfare next.

Minor civ:

Strategic map is clean looking.

Turn 11:

I am feeling collective pressure.

Humans are diplomats so they start with the ability to get good techs.

I’m getting fun trades right out of the gate.

Turn 12:

Nothing

Turn 13:

Look how noticeable the mines on the asteroids are? I also like that there is a ship going around building these.

Turn 14:

Another colony:

Turn 15:

All this money helps me jump start my planets.

Espionage?

Turn 16:

Takes 20 weeks to build a ship unless you rush it. But I get a bunch of money from plentiful anomalies which I’m scooping up fast because so is everyone else.

Turn 17:

Yay us!

Turn 18:

Turn 19:

Turn 20:

Nothing.

Conclusions

There’s a reason this game is considered the best space 4X game of all time by many. Clean UI. Great pacing. Obvious gameplay (especially for the time).

My ratings for GalCiv II:

Engagement: 5/5. Great flavor text. Stuff is making my civ improve quickly.
Intuitiveness: 4/5. It’s usually obvious what to do because there isn’t a million things happening on the screen. But no Shafer button and no tooltips.
Pacing: 5/5. Within a few turns there’s other civs, lots of interactions, and a feeling that things are building up.
Desire to keep playing: 4/5. The game doesn’t fully hold up ove time. But I still want to play it.
Overall: 4/5. Was easily the best 4X space game of its time. These days it would be in the top rung.

Now, let’s look at GalCiv III.

GalCiv III first 20 turns

I realize I’m pretty critical here, but this is so that we can make sure GalCiv IV is better.

Turn 1:

No on-screen direction on what I should do.
No on-screen explanation on how to move anything.
No on-screen explanation on what the ships do.
No anomalies or other things for my survey ship to interact with so I just move it.
I order constructor to build a starbase. No hint on that it affects things in range.

Starbase is off centered by default.
No on-screen direction on what I should do.
I construct an ascension ring and an economic lab.

Research screen pretty decent.
Choose artificial gravity.

No direction on what I am supposed to do here.

No direction on what I am supposed to do here.
Pretty terrible UI.
No guidance that I should rush building something so I don’t.

Turn 2:

Nothing

Turn 3:

Nothing

Turn 4:

Nothing

Turn 5:

I next choose space elevators.
By Survey ship has reached its destination so I send it to another star system.

Turn 6:

Colony ship built. I load it up and send it to another star system.
Earth has built the improvements.
I really wish I could see how fast the ships being built in the shipyard were being built based on my choices here.
I order another colony ship to be built. I wish he game gave me direction on what I might want to do.

Turn 7:

This is nice. But it would be cooler if this was presented as a cut-scene. Meanwhile..blah blah.

And then this came up. This UI is really ugly and hard to read.

I take the free ship.

Turn 8:

Nothing. Ships move.

Turn 9:

My survey ship is attacked.

Super ugly confirmation screen. I’d rather the game camera panned to the action and showed me the battle.

Turn 10:

More pirates attack.

I wish my survey ship leveled up and got goodies.

Colony ship built. I order it to another system.
Space elevators researched
Choose military tech since I’m dealing with pirates.
I order a constructor to be built.

Turn 11:

Would be cool if this allowed me to customize my Civilization in some random way giving me 3 choices.
Also first new colony:

So ugly. There’s no tooltips to even explain what benevolent and such means. What does +10% influence mean?

I choose the malevolent one because +10% research sounds best.

I order a space elevator to be built.

No direction on what I should do here.

I choose the one that gives me a ship.

No suggestions given. The thing on the right should be a tooltip. I choose the scientist.

Turn 12:

I choose weapons.

Constructor built. I build another.

Turn 13:

Nothing

Turn 14:

Constructors being built pretty fast. So I build a colony ship. Which will only take 2 turns. This feels unearned.

Turn 15:

Colonized another planet.

These bonuses mean nothing to me. I choose the benevolent one since it’s just plain better.

I choose the tech which gives me stuff.

There are 9 players on this map and I still haven’t met any.

Finally!

Turn 16:

Colony ship built. I send it to one of the good planets I’ve found. The strategic zoom UI is really good making it easy to manage my empire.

I don’t feel like I’ve earned being able to crank these ships out in 2 turns.

Now I choose universal translator.

I think faster moving scouts (and the AI making them aggressively) would really help. But a scout takes 2 turns just like a colony ship!

Turn 17:

Nothing

Turn 18:

Nothing

Turn 19:

Earth is fully built up in 19 turns!

Rex has a shipyard too. Planet is barely developed but can crank out a colony ship in 4 turns!

Colonized another planet.

Pretty.

Got another culture point.

Turn 20:

I want to build military ships but they are hidden:

So I wouldn’t notice them.

Conclusions

It’s still a good game despite my complaints. But the pacing and UX needs work.

My ratings:

Engagement: 3/5: It’s OK but I’m not very invested in my civilization. It feels a lot like work. The UI is very sterile.
Intuitiveness: 2/5: Pretty bad. No sort of guidance given.
Pacing: 3/5: Stuff is happening but every ship costs 2 turns basically which reduces choices. Took way too long to meet anyone else. And I never had any interactions.
Desire to keep playing: 4/5: Yes, it has that one more turn feeling which saves it.

Applying lessons

The most recent GalCiv III update coming out (v4.2) includes some improvements in these areas. But again, how quickly do people want to meet new players? IMO, this is where minor civilizations might be interesting as a middle step.

As a player, how would you like to see your setup screen improved (specific options) to help cater to your personal pacing preferences?

Sins Community Games – 26th June

SchismNavigator — Fri, 25 Jun 2021 12:21:21 PM -0400

Time: 26^th June, 1600 UTC

Lobby Name: Cosmic Chaos

Slots: 6-10

Type: PVP / PVE

We are hosting a community games event for this Saturday around European evening time. Community managers Schism Navigator will be hosting. But these events are also an opportunity for everyone to get on and play games together.

If you are joining please be on the Sins of a Solar Empire official discord server.

Stream

Screenshot of the Week - GalCiv IV

redskittlesonly — Sun, 01 Aug 2021 3:52:39 PM -0400

Almost done claiming and colonizing all of the worlds around your home planet? Get ready to explore a new sector where a whole host of new worlds, resources, and opportunities await you.

Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion v1.96 Released

Yarlen — Tue, 22 Jun 2021 11:04:15 AM -0400

Ironclad Games and Stardock are pleased to announce the release of version 1.96 for Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion today. The full change log can be found at:

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/505490/

Screenshot of the Week, Sectors - GalCiv IV

redskittlesonly — Sat, 19 Jun 2021 7:31:22 AM -0400

When you're looking to rule the galaxy you need to be able to see everything - where your strongholds are, where your enemies are lurking, and where you have left to expand to. The new sector view lets you zoom out to view all of the sectors on the map so you can make better decisions on your strategy.

GalCiv IV Dev Journal #5

Frogboy — Wed, 16 Jun 2021 2:41:50 AM -0400

During the development of a game, many ideas will look good on paper only to be found to not work out in practice. Normally, these ideas get killed off before implementation and even fewer ever get seen by the public.

In the case of Galactic Civilizations IV, because we’re going out in ALPHA, you will get to see some ideas fully implemented that we have already decided didn’t work out. Today’s example for discussion: The Ideology compass.

Here’s how it works:

There are 4 axis’s:

Collectivist
Libertist
Authoritarian
Individualist

Through the course of the game, players will encounter situations that give them awareness points in a particular area. You can’t spend these points they simply unlock the ideology perk.

Later, players can earn culture points through completing missions (quests) in the game. THEN they can spend a point to unlock something where their options are based on what perks they have awareness of.

Unfortunately, this is proving to be quite limiting and begs for political compass memes. So even though it’s fully implemented, it’s going to get scrapped.

In its place are going to be Cultural Spectrums.

Cultural Spectrums

With cultural spectrums, players will have several different spectrums to choose from such as:

Individualism <---> Collectivism
Traditionalism <---> Innovation
Xenophobia <----> Xenophilia
Harmony <----> Honesty
Shame <----> Guilt

It also opens the door for us to keep adding more.

When a player makes a choice, they will increase their stance on the spectrum. However, now, gaining +1 stance in individualism means losing a point in collectivism. As a result, when people unlock culture points, they will generally only have access to the ones that are near the “middle” unless they are playing pretty extreme.

Alpha Access is Now Available for Galactic Civilizations IV

Tatiora — Sun, 11 Jul 2021 3:07:51 PM -0400

Galactic Civilizations IV Enters Early Access
Players can now Play the Alpha

Join Early Access Now

View the Alpha Guide Here

Stardock released an Alpha version of Galactic Civilizations IV into Early Access today. As the all-powerful leader of a spacefaring civilization, the player must seek out new star systems and discover the exciting potential of the subspace realm. There are thousands of worlds to colonize and dozens of civilizations - both old and new - to encounter.

The game takes the best of what the award-winning space 4X strategy sandbox game series has to offer and adds many new and exciting features while vastly increasing in scope and depth. Galactic Civilizations IV utilizes new features like AI characters, star sectors, ministers, central control, a much bigger technology tree, and more.

Because of the dramatic changes from previous Galactic Civilizations games, the early access program for Galactic Civilizations IV is starting at the Alpha phase rather than the more typical Beta phase, so that player feedback can be incorporated early.

“Great games are built on player feedback,” said Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock. “We have always valued our community and encourage them to participate in the process as we develop new things. Putting Galactic Civilizations IV into an Early Access period during its Alpha phase allows us to hear what our players have to say now so we can deliver the best game possible later.”

Galactic Civilizations IV introduces sectors, which are connected through lanes that provide checkpoints and strategic interest. Each sector is like its own map, with several different solar systems contained within.

Players will need to assign governors and enact policies while also tackling big problems like pollution or crime on individual worlds they control. Citizens play a critical role with unique traits, specializations, and ideologies.

A reworked combat system provides tactical depth with players waging epic battles across multiple turns. Several new alien races join the favorite classics from previous games, each of them with their own strengths and weaknesses.

To get into the Alpha, visit www.galciv4.com

GalCiv IV Dev Journal #4 - A Guided ALPHA Tour

Frogboy — Wed, 30 Jun 2021 6:14:42 PM -0400

For this entry, we are going to give you a tour of Galactic Civilizations IV as it exists, in alpha state, in June 2021. We’re very excited.

There’s a lot in here but so very much more to do.

Note: I’m playing at 5K so I’m smushing my screenshots down so that they’re not quite so huge.

Choosing a Civilization

For the Alpha, you can only play as the humans. This is because we intend to make the civilizations much more distinct than they were in GC3 which means we really need to master the humans and general mechanics before going through all the others.

We anticipate launching with around 22 civilizations. The main civs from GC3 will return with one notable exception: The Thalan. I will miss them as they’ve been with us all the way back to the OS/2 days.

Customizing

While you will be able to create your own civilizations in the final version, we have taken this one step further by having some easy customization part of the base civilization as well. One of the things we noticed in GC3 is that most players didn’t realize just how much you could change on a given civilization.

Galaxy Setup and Opponent Setup

These screens are very basic. We plan to make these much more tweakable than they were in GC3. One new AI feature (not in the Alpha) is the option for players to have dynamic intelligence. You still set their intelligence like you would before but their intelligence will increase or decrease depending on how they’re doing (to certain limits). The idea is to provide a better game experience. This feature will be ON by default once it’s implemented.

Into the Game

This is what you will see at the start.

Your Survey ship is selected at the start and you now have advisors who will suggest what you should do. We will also have VO for advisors as well eventually.

Survey ships do what they have always done which is explore anomalies. However, this time it takes a turn for them to do so:

This helps a bit with pacing and allows us to justify giving a little more meat to the anomalies.

Your First Colony

Pretty much every planet will have an event now. Here is the one for Mars.

The options in this example include:

Get a leader
Get an extra mineral
Get an extra tech

This lets me segway into what colonies do.

Colonies vs. Core Worlds

This is a feature I wish we had come up with in GalCiv I let alone GalCiv IV. Lots of planets are colonizable but most of them are pretty awful. By default a colonized planet is a colony that feeds its core world. In this case: Earth.

So while Elon Musk is on Mars, what does it do for us?

These planets send out potentially 5 raw resources:

Minerals
Tech
Wealth
Food
Culture

These then go to their associated core world:

This isn’t done yet by any means (it’s missing culture for instance). The planet then takes these inputs (including its own natural resources) and send them to the citizens:

That’s these guys:

This is your population. Unlike in previous GalCiv games, population isn’t some number that we use head canon to make sense of. Instead, it is represented by citizens.

Each citizen has its own stats:

Humans, being generic race basically, have fine stats. Perfectly fine. Not bad. Not good. Each stat corresponds with one of the outputs of the planet or some other planet stat.

Different species have different stats. For example, the Drengin have super-high resolve. The Torians have really high diligence. And yes, you will have planets with mixed races on them whose morale might change based on what you’re doing with their home worlds (i.e. have Drengin on your planet but you’re at war with the Drengin? Bad things).

Now, enhancing these citizens are your planetary upgrades.

There are three different types of upgrades:

Improvements
Districts
Projects

In previous games, we crammed all these into improvements which resulted in the game becoming pretty unwieldly later on. It also became a little frustrating because we had to name every improvement so you would be like “So is a Manufacturing Center better than a Mega Factory??”. Now, it’s simply a Manufacturing District that levels up based on techs and if there’s something special, that’s the improvement and those are one of a kind.

The tiles are color coded based on what gives a bonus. Bonuses being things that level up a given type of district or improvement.

All of this then ends up with the planetary output:

Minerals become manufacturing.

Tech becomes research.

Wealth becomes revenue.

Culture becomes influence.

Food…well food stays food unless we can come up with a better name.

These outputs are what grow your civilization in various ways.

The Shipyard

A core planet can have a shipyard. Colonies feed the core world and the core world feeds the Shipyard. This means that a shipyard doesn’t have multiple sponsors. Just its core world.

Early on, the ship choices are pretty basic. Colony ship or scout. Immediately available technologies include Starbases, Survey Ships, Armed Shuttles, Asteroid miners and others that greatly increase this.

Researching

Researching is very different in GalCiv IV. Now, the game will pull 4 random techs (5 if you have a research minister). You can “reshuffle” but it will make that tech cost 10% more for each reshuffle.

We have the tech tree button locked for now but it will be replaced with a research explorer. That’s because the new “tech tree” is much more sophisticated and not easily displayed on the screen.

New Colonists

There are no “administration points” in GalCiv IV. Your limiting factor will be people. For instance, when you build a colony ship you will need to move a citizen on to it:

So even though there area ton of planets to colonize and nothing technically stops you from colonizing all of them, you will find your population not able to keep up with your ambitions.

Leaders

The game should prompt you (but it is not in this build) that you have some leader candidates waiting. Leaders are citizens with leadership training.

Leaders cost money to hire. Eventually, players can train their own citizens to be leaders but early on, you can only get them from recruiting. The red box you see here (unfortunately) is how loyal they are. Shockingly, random humans I recruit for money are not extremely loyal for some reason.

Loyalty matters because it affects how likely they are to betray you. For example, to make a given colony a core world, you have to assign a governor to that planet. The governor provides perks and carries out your orders. The more colonies they have, the more likely they are to rebel (thus, there it a temptation to have a single mega world but you will find that creates problems).

When I hire a leader, I can make them a minister. The bonus they provide is based on their stats. For instance, Pranav here has an intelligence of 10. So when I make him my Minister of Tech, he gives me a 10% boost to research. If I had made him my minister of colonization, he’d have given me +1 moves but only +5 range because his diligence is only 5.

You can also assign leaders to govern planets.

Assigning leaders to marginal planets isn’t just a waste of a leader, it’s not very useful either because marginal worlds are never as effective as it would be as a colony having its resources greatly multiplied by its core world.

There are 3 other things to do with leaders as well:

Diplomats. Assigning someone to be a diplomat allows you to spy on another civilization or improve your relations with them depending on your orders. This hasn’t been fully fleshed out yet. Intelligence = Spying ability and Social = Diplomatic improvement bonus.
Commanders. Leaders also have a starship that they come with. You can choose to put them on the board as ships.
Think Tanks. As precious as leaders are early game, late game you will have quite a few of them. Think Tanks allow you to use leaders to bump up your civilization’s bonuses in various areas.

Backstories

You may have notice a little text blurb on the leaders. That’s because each and every one has a backstory. You may (but probably won’t) run into a mission that is triggered by a given leader’s backstory. This matters because you will want to pay a little attention to the leaders to make sure they don’t have a backstory that’s going to come back to haunt you. Similarly, a leader who has a lost treasure in the family might result in something great for you.

The Map

GalCiv is known for being able to zoom in and out with total fluidity. This is being taken up a notch this time. In GalCiv IV, the start of the game is going to feel a lot like previous GalCiv’s.

Zooming out:

Solar system.

Zooming out:

Sector. What? Sector.

Zooming out:

Galactic.

Think of a map in GalCiv III, the entire map, as being a single sector. GalCiv IV can have many sectors depending on your map setup. These sectors are connected through subspace streams. You have to research techs to even see where the subspace streams and then another tech to travel through them.

Controlling a sector brings benefits, in particular, prestige.

Prestige

The most basic strategy game problem has been with us since the 4X genre was invented. You know you’ve won but it’s going to take you another 2 hours to actually get the game to acknowledge that. How do you solve that? GalCiv IV has a new victory condition: Prestige.

Prestige is designed to have the player win (we haven’t decided if AI players can win through this mechanism or not) if it’s obvious they’re going to eventually win. Each player collects prestige through their accomplishments. When the human player has the majority of the galactic prestige they win. Owning sectors is one obvious way to do that. To own a sector, you just need to control the most parsecs in that sector.

Another way to earn prestige are through galactic achievements.

These are disabled in Alpha 1 but they are, in essence, a bunch of lore-centric “quests” that if you have certain pre-requisites in your game become enabled and reward you, amongst other things, with prestige. So rather than having to grind through 2 more hours of cranking out ships or building influence or waiting to win via diplomacy you can alternatively win by triggering the Dread Lords return and fighting them off or uncovering the artifact that the Thalan are looking for (ahh see they’re not totally gone!) or numerous other really interesting situations.

Most achievements won’t be available in a given game because the conditions just won’t be right. But this also means a lot of replayability rewards. For instance, you can’t exactly exact revenge on the Drengin take over of Toria in 1543 if you aren’t playing as the Torians.

Executive Orders

The game should prompt you about executive orders but my build doesn’t have this yet. Executive orders are another obvious feature that we should have had in GalCiv I but I was too dumb to think of it back then.

Here’s how they work:

The planet you directly control (the capital world) gives you 1 point of control per turn. Your governed worlds can also give you a point of control per turn IF you place a special improvement on there. However, doing so really makes the governor angry.

Different civilizations have different executive orders and more are unlocked as new technology and new events and missions occur.

You spend control to, for instance, get a free colony ship or get a bunch of money (with a bunch of crime) or call an election.

Policies

Another feature not in GalCiv IV Alpha but coming soon are policies. These essentially let you pick and choose how you want your civilization to work. Different civs have different policies available to them.

Ideology Compass

Next week I’ll be talking about this feature. It’s actually going away so I won’t spend too much time on it. It’s being replaced by Culture Spectrums.

Ship Upgrades

Fleets can get upgrades when their XP grows. That upgrade only goes to 1 ship in the fleet.

Ship upgrades can boost moves, weapons or even give them other goodie that you’ve found.

Movements

Within your civilization are a number of movements. In other games, you might think of these as religious sects.

Ironically, these only make sense when Policies are unlocked but gaining favor with these movements will give you a lot of power in the policy screen.

Constructors and Starbases

This feature is in flux as we are developing this and the AI in tandem. But here’s the short version:

Constructors build starbases. You can upgrade them in lots of interesting ways. These upgrades cost a new resource called Modules that are produced at your shipyard.

Asteroid Mining

You can mine the asteroids but rather than just conjuring them with money you have to build an Asteroid miner and and them here.

These asteroids are then mined for their minerals which are then sent to their nearest world as…(wait for it)….minerals.

Trading

This part of the game is still a work in progress.

New in GC4 is the ability to threaten and persuade. You can attempt to get a better deal during negotiations by using these intangible “resources” to get a better deal.

Moreover, not shown here is that the size of the deal is governed by your diplomacy ability. Thus, trading civs will be able to conduct much bigger trades than ones without it.

Space Monsters

The galaxy is much more dangerous in GC4.

Space Monsters don’t just remove a ship from your service, they actually lay eggs in them and then the ship becomes another space monster. This was enough of an issue that I had to write an emergency AI update for the alpha because the AI was feeding these things ships.

Good Planets

There aren’t very many good planets out there. But when you do find one, you can add an governor to it in another way other than how I mentioned earlier.

Admittedly, we should add a button to take you to the recruit screen too.

Optimizing Immigration

Over time, you will have a lot of different races on your planets.

Some species are better than others for certain worlds if you have one in mind.

In my head canon on most Sci-Fi shows that involve ancient races, I tend to think humanoids spread out because their “masters” picked them lazily because they’re average at all things.

Pirates

There are a lot more pirates and other baddies out there. The thing to know here: Pirates can conquer planets. In fact let’s get into that.

Conquering Planets

Core Worlds require invasion technology and a transport with a legion of soldiers on board. But colonies? Not so much. A colony can be invaded with any armed ship. Pirates can’t colonize planets but they’ll happily use yours.

Similarly, we are working hard on the AI to make sure they understand the opportunities being presented when they see a bunch of undefended planets.

Conclusions

So this is really just the start of the GalCiv IV journey. We have so many more features and improvements to make. The goal of Alpha 1 is mainly just to see what we broke. Does it even run on your computer? What sort of ghastly problems did our new design not take into account of?

The rest of June will be spent just fixing terrible terrible bugs. Then in July we’ll get into adding in the obvious missing features that we already have. Then in August through November we’ll be implementing your ideas and suggestions as well as throwing out features that seemed like a good idea and replacing them with ones based on your feedback.

WHERE IS THE ALPHA?

We are running the Alpha here on galciv4.com (Early Access won’t be on Steam). We love Steam (and in particular I like a lot of the store improvements this year). But we really want a single forum for feedback and we want to discourage people from joining the Alpha unless they are super into being apart of the game design and development process.

I would love to hear your thoughts.

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All GalCiv IV Journals

Screenshot of the Week, Explore - GalCiv IV

redskittlesonly — Fri, 11 Jun 2021 12:29:51 AM -0400

Humans have always thought their solar system was so vast... but there are so many worlds beyond the Milky Way to explore.

Where will you go first?

GalCiv IV Dev Journal #3

Frogboy — Sun, 13 Jun 2021 4:08:02 PM -0400

With the benefit of hindsight…

Every 4X game I’ve played struggles with the late game. This is because they tend to become a micromanagement slog where the outcome of the game was known long before. So how do you address this? Well, the wrong way to do it is with AI governors or other such “help” from the AI.

GalCiv IV flips the concept of governors on its head.

In previous GalCiv games, you had to manage every single planet you colonized. This is all fun…at first. But by the time you have your 33rd planet, it starts to be a lot of work.

In GalCiv IV you don’t manage worlds by default. They are simply little resource pips for their core world.

Inspired by reality

Let’s say we colonize a moon of Saturn someday. Are we seriously going to treat that colony the same as we treat Earth in terms of focus? Of course not. The same is true in GalCiv IV. When you first colonize a world, it’s just a colony.

So when a planet is first colonized, it’s just a colony, and it sends back 6 raw resources to its core world:

Minerals
Tech
Wealth
Culture
Food
Control

We’ll get into these other resources later. The point being is that core worlds take these resources and do stuff with them. It’s the ultimate min/maxer’s dream.

But before you get excited about having your one super mega world having 130 colonies feeding it, this is where those pesky characters come in.

As mentioned before, your core worlds are the ones you’ve assigned a leader to govern. You, the player, manage these worlds with the governor providing the world with perks based on their stats. But technically, it’s the governor who is running the world even if you’re the one calling the shots. The governor’s stats determine what perks get applied to that world, but that character also has a loyalty stat.

I don’t need you

The more worlds under the control of a governor, the more a governor’s loyalty is tested. After all, if your governor controls all your planets, it’s really his empire - not yours. Why should he keep taking orders from you? Why not just become an independent empire and take those colonies with him?

Thoughts of rebellion can come both from within and without. It’s one of the ways the player can really screw with other civilizations as well by throwing money and resources at the governors of foreign civilizations to get them to rebel or even join you instead. Of course, the same thing can be done to you as well.

Finding a balance

So on the one hand, you will have some high quality planets that you want to be able to build improvements on, which means assigning one of your precious governors to it. And on the other hand, you’ll have dozens of low quality planets that you’ll want to have feeding those core worlds. Finding the right balance of when to make a planet a core world and when to leave it as a colony is a big part of the challenge in GalCiv IV.

Giving up a leader to turn a colony into a core world is a sacrifice, but the reward is being able to really magnify the production of that core world with resources coming in from its associated colonies. Just don’t overdo it, or you’ll find your civilization filled with rebellion and crime.

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All GalCiv IV Journals

Screenshot of the Week, Ideology - GalCiv IV

redskittlesonly — Wed, 09 Jun 2021 12:33:28 AM -0400

How you spend your culture points will determine what kind of leader you are and what type of civilization you lead: Authoritarian, Collectivist, Individualist, and Libertarian - with plenty of room to dance the lines between them.

Which way do you lean?

Galactic Civilizations IV: Community Q&A #1

SchismNavigator — Fri, 28 May 2021 2:07:52 PM -0400

Last week we did a community Q&A where we answered your questions!

Today we uploaded the recording of that questions and answers session.

For convenience we have also added timecodes for different questions so you can skip to what you missed or want to know first.

Brad Wardell – Creative Director
Chad LaForce – Producer/Cat Herder
Henry Pailing – Community Lead

Screenshot of the Week, Research - GalCiv IV

redskittlesonly — Wed, 16 Jun 2021 4:19:11 PM -0400

Prioritize your research! It's tough to trade with other civilizations if you can't communicate with them - universal translator can help with that.

Which technologies would you research first?

Galactic Civilizations III v.Next - Beta Now Available

redskittlesonly — Wed, 26 May 2021 11:19:03 AM -0400

Galactic Civilizations III's next update is now in opt-in and ready to test out! Players can expect tons of improvements and user requested changes, check them out below:

GalCiv III v.Next Changelog

Tiny hull receives +2 speed buff
Small hull receives +1 speed buff
Cargo hull cost increased
Slight bump to improvement costs.
Colony ships cost more
Prototype hyperdrive requires anti-matter instead of Promethion
Fixed bug that could cause an AI player to rush a ship when it didn't want to.
Easier difficulty levels made easier with "dumber" AI.
Default player count per map size increased:
- Small: 3 to 5
- Medium: 6 to 9
- Large: 8 to 11
- Huge: 12 to 17
- Gigantic: 16 to 21
Star distance reduced from 7 tiles to 5 tiles.
AI more reasonable in tech trading
Planetary Improvement tech increases admin points +1
Colonial Engineering tech increases admin points +1
Artificial Gravity tech increases admin points +1
Interstellar Resupply tech increases admin points +1
Xeno Commerce tech increases admin points +1
Xeno Entertainment tech increases admin points +1
Maps given more habitable planets:
- Tiny map habitable planet count increased from 32 to 36
- Small map habitable planet count increased from 40 to 48
- Medium map habitable planet count increased from 100 to 120
- Large map habitable planet count increased from 200 to 250
- Huge map habitable planet count increased from 300 to 320
- Gigantic map habitable planet count increased from 400 to 450
- Immense map habitable planet count increased from 500 to 550
Content approval threshold reduced from 45% to 40%
Starting year increased from 2242 to 2243 for Retribution
Starbase particle beam support weapon no longer requires Elerium
Starbase Stinger missile support eapon no longer requires anti-matter
Starbase Shield Generator support module no l,onger requires Elerium
Starbase Point defense support module no longer requires Elerium
Starbase Titanium plate module no longer requires Durantium
Starbase perimeter Scanner no longer requires Durantium
Starbase sector scanner Durantium cost reduced from 2 to 1
Starbase modules resource cost reduced by 1
Starbase Archeology module benefits increased
Starbase level 1 economic modules no longer require special resources
Planet class 26 added
General balance of planets classes moved down some.
Players can start slightly closer together.

We'll be updating this list as we put out new updates. We have a lot of plans for this Summer.

To Access

Go to Steam, go to the properties, go to Betas and choose the Opt-in (regardless of what it's labeled).

GalCiv IV Dev Journal #2

Frogboy — Mon, 07 Jun 2021 10:45:17 AM -0400

So how do you make your galactic civilization feel like it’s a living, breathing thing? Put (simulated) living, breathing things in it: characters.

We have moved everything that makes sense from being an abstract number to being a character. Population? Instead of it being 3.2 billion, it's just 3 characters. Every character has stats and background.

Every character has a set of skills with numerical values to them. They also have a backstory and can be interacted with in various ways. These characters do everything, from acting as your representatives on planets (governors – not AI governors – they don’t make decisions for you, they carry out your will), to managing your technology policies (and again, they don’t make decisions for you, they carry out your will).

When a character is put in charge of a planet, their stats provide perks to the planet. But like real people, they have needs and ambitions, and if those needs and ambitions aren’t satisfied bad things can happen, including them going independent and taking their planets with them. We’ll be talking about core worlds vs. colonies in the next journal. Suffice to say, these characters are pretty powerful.

On planets, population now grows in whole numbers since each population is now represented by a citizen character with their own intelligence, social stats, etc.

Jobs

Characters are given jobs in the game. All jobs make use of one of the character’s skills. Make someone a scientist, and their bonus to your colony is based on their intelligence. Make them an entertainer, and it’s based on their social skill. Make them a farmer, and their bonus is based on their diligence skill. Make them a soldier, and their resolve stat comes into play.

Similarly, characters that you make into ministers provide global bonuses based on their stats:

And of course, every species has pros and cons on these stats. Humans are, naturally, decent overall but not great in any of them. Drengin are very high in resolve but very low in social, for instance.

You, as the Emperor/President for Life of your civilization, must herd these cats while simultaneously dealing with guys like this:

But fear not - while there are thousands of characters out there, you only need to really care about a handful. Which handful you should care about depends on who you give what power to. Put someone in charge of 37 colony worlds and now you should probably care about them. But, some colonist on Backwater world 53 is probably not someone you need to think about…until it turns out that they contracted a parasite that takes over everyone minds and that it has since spread to nearby worlds. Or maybe that scientist on Urara IV whose wife is being held captive by the Drengin Empire and has been supplying them secrets in the hopes of getting her back. But you know, otherwise - nothing to worry about.

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All GalCiv IV Journals

Screenshot of the Week, Planets - GalCiv IV

redskittlesonly — Thu, 03 Jun 2021 10:43:43 AM -0400

As a leader of a civilization that spans a galaxy, you’re constantly looking for ways to improve.
Why not start with your home planet?