The Background

Here are some early concepts we played with how to manage these that I thought you might find interesting:

You can play around with the interactive mockup here: GC4 Government: Oligarchy

This eventually became this:

And even that isn’t what it will fully look like. So let’s dive in!

Holdings and the Prospector

The Oligarchy's first new tool is the Prospector, a special ship you can only build while running an Oligarchy government. It works like a Colony ship in that you send it somewhere and it gets consumed on arrival, but what it does when it arrives is completely different. A Prospector can land on any unowned planet: Class 0 dead worlds, barren rocks, gas giants. Worlds that no other government would bother with. When it arrives, that world becomes a Holding. Holdings are not colonies. There's no build queue, no governor, no citizens, no production. You don't manage them. What a Holding does is sit in your portfolio and contribute Collateral (the Oligarchy's unique resource) equal to that planet's quality rating plus one. A Class 2 world contributes 3 Collateral. A Class 0 dead rock contributes 1. Not much on its own, but the Oligarchy doesn't think in terms of individual acquisitions. Holdings can be conquered and destroyed just like regular worlds. Losing one hurts, and we'll get to why that matters. The key thing to understand up front: you're claiming territory nobody else wants, turning it into a financial asset, and the rest of your empire never has to think about it. That's the loop.

Collateral

Collateral is not a resource you earn per turn. It's a stock: the sum of every Holding in your empire.

If you have eight Holdings averaging Planet Quality 2, you're sitting on roughly 24 Collateral. Claim another world and the pool goes up immediately. Lose one in a war and it drops immediately.

There's one exception: the Chairman of the Board, one of your four Council positions, provides a bit of Collateral assigned leader's Social stat. It's a starting point, not the foundation. Holdings are the foundation.

Collateral doesn't get spent. It gets tied up. When you make an Investment, some amount of Collateral is committed to that Investment for as long as it stays in your portfolio. Your available Collateral is whatever's left over.

Your money isn't going anywhere. It's locked up working for you.

The Portfolio

The Oligarchy's central action is buying Investments.

There are five at launch that you get right away, others are unlocked through techs, events, etc.

• Stellar Logistics Conglomerate: your entry point, matures in 5 turns.
• Pan-Galactic Banking Syndicate: mid-game financial anchor, 12 turns to mature. 
• Xeno-Resource Holdings: a resource cartel, 15 turns. 
• Helix Pharmaceutical Cartel: social disruption play, 18 turns. 
• AstroDyne Defense Trust: a defense contractor, 20 turns.

When you buy an Investment, the Collateral cost is tied up in your portfolio and a maturity timer starts counting down. Once the timer hits zero, the Investment is matured, and that matured state is what unlocks your access to the Oligarchy's exclusive Executive Orders.

The Investment itself stays in your portfolio indefinitely. Playing an Executive Order doesn't consume it. The Investment just needs to exist in a matured state, and you can keep using the Order it unlocks for as long as you hold it. Sell the Investment later and the Order disappears, but you do get 1.25 times your original Collateral cost back, paid out in Credits.

There's a natural tension here. Selling Investments turns long-term strategic commitments into short-term cash. But the purchase cost scales up every time you buy an Investment. It's a monotonic counter and selling doesn't reset it. The player who churns their portfolio chasing Credits pays more and more for every new Investment. The player who holds everything has a deep deck of plays nobody else in the galaxy can access. Neither approach is strictly correct, and that's exactly what we wanted.

Executive Orders

Once an Investment matures, you unlock an Executive Order no other civilization can use. These aren't passive bonuses. Each one is designed to make something happen.

Dumping Rights (from Stellar Logistics): Flood a rival civilization's economy with cheap goods for 20 turns. Their trade route value drops 75% civ-wide, and you earn Credits equal to 10% of what they're losing every turn. You corner their market and profit from it at the same time.

Leveraged Buyout (from the Banking Syndicate): Target one of your own Corporation Links. Convert that soft 5% bidirectional exchange into 15% of the destination world's output flowing entirely to you, permanently. It costs you one permanent Corp Link slot, and it costs the foreign world their share of the exchange.

Resource Embargo (from Xeno-Resource Holdings): Block a rival's access to one of their active strategic resources for 15 turns. Any ship they try to build requiring that resource costs 25% more during that window. Particularly useful during a war.

Private Navy (from AstroDyne Defense Trust): Three mid-tier warships show up at your homeworld, mercenaries, maintenance-free, yours to command. The battle log will show them as hired ships. 

Plague Scare (from the Pharmaceutical Cartel): Engineered panic. Pick a rival and every one of their colonies loses 25 Approval for 20 turns. 

Corporations

Separate from Holdings and Investments, the Oligarchy runs three Corporations:

• A Research Combine
• A Cultural Syndicate (Influence)
• A Manufacturing Trust

Each civilization has their own names for their corporations. 

Each Corporation lets you build a special Freighter-pattern ship from your shipyards. You send it to a foreign world. It's consumed on arrival and establishes a permanent Corporation Link between your origin world and that destination.

Every turn, each active Corp Link transfers 5% of each world's relevant resource bidirectionally. Send your Research Corp Ship from your 200 Research/turn homeworld to a foreign world producing 80 Research: your homeworld picks up +4 Research/turn and their world picks up +10. They benefit from the exchange too, which is part of why the design doesn't require any foreign civ approval mechanic. 

Your Corp Link cap runs parallel to your Trade License cap. Same maximum number with its own pool. Corp Links and regular Trade Routes don't compete for the same slots. Get more Trade Licenses through tech and both your Trade Routes and your Corp Link capacity increase.

Corp Links pause automatically during wars with the destination civ and resume when peace is declared. The only permanent break is if you conquer the destination world yourself. At that point the world is yours, and the Link is gone.

The Council

The Oligarchy has four Council positions, each bending a different part of the system.

Chairman of the Board speeds up Investment maturity. New Investments purchased while this seat is filled take 20% less time to mature. The Chairman also generates a small per-turn Collateral trickle based on the assigned leader's Social stat.

Chief Investment Officer raises your Investment sell-back from 1.25x to 1.50x while occupied. The Sell button is worth more.

Director of Acquisitions upgrades every Holding in your empire from contributing PlanetQuality+1 Collateral to PlanetQuality+2. Fill this seat and every dead rock you've claimed is worth more. Also speeds up Prospector construction by 25%.

Director of External Affairs adds one to your Corp Link cap and gives your Corp Links a 5-turn grace period before they pause when you declare war. Five turns to prepare for the economic disruption of a conflict.

We may end up adding more as we play test.

When Things Go Wrong

If a rival conquers one of your Holdings or a planet-killer event destroys it, your Collateral pool drops. If that drop puts you below the amount currently tied up across your Investments, your Investment maturity timers pause.

Nothing auto-liquidates and you don’t lose investments. BUT you are just frozen until you recover: claim new worlds with Prospectors, sell Investments to free up tied-up Collateral, or take back a lost Holding with your fleet. Executive Orders you'd already unlocked through matured Investments still work. The pause is on the clock and not on your existing matured portfolio. We didn’t want to make this super painful.

The Chamber of Commerce

All of this lives in a new government screen called the Chamber of Commerce. Holdings, Portfolio, Corporations, and Council each get their own tab. Your Collateral displays as both a total pool and an available amount, with the tied-up portion shown explicitly so you always know how close to the edge you're running.

The Oligarchy isn't trying to have the most worlds. For the civilization that wants to play tall, this might be the way to go. You could have a single home world and no colonies. Just holdings.

Let us know what you think!

Stardock Entertainment today released Treasures of the Magi, the first DLC for the fantasy turn-based strategy game Elemental: Reforged. Priced at $8.99 (enjoy the 20% launch discount through May 28!), the expansion adds new monsters, treasures, items, and quests drawn from the First Age of Elemental, the era when the Magi ruled through sorcery and their golems stood watch over the cities of Anthys.

Get Treasures of the Magi  |  Get Elemental: Reforged 

Treasures of the Magi Release Video

About the Setting

Thousands of years before the Cataclysm, the Magi were sorcerers whose mastery of magic shaped the early civilizations of Elemental. They forged golems out of stone and iron to defend their sovereignty against the feudal barons rising up around them. When the Titans came, the Magi retreated into hiding, their golems went dormant, and the Cataclysm later buried most of what they had built.

The reawakening of the Fallen Enchantress has sent a pulse of dark magic across the surface of Elemental, and the old enchantments that animated the golems have begun to stir once more. Fissures are opening across the twin subcontinents of Anthys, and the golems and the treasures they once guarded are returning to the surface.

What the DLC Adds:

• New gear including new weapons, magic wands, unique armor and much more.

• New monsters, including several varieties of awakened golem.

• New treasures and items recovered from Magi-era ruins, including potions that can transform the player into magical creatures in battle.

• New quests that send players into the fissures to uncover what the Magi left behind.

• New encounters and lore.

Free v1.1 Update

[full changelog below]

A free v1.1 update is also available today for all Elemental: Reforged owners. Shaped largely by community feedback, the update brings a number of quality of life improvements along with a wide range of stability and performance fixes. Among the highlights, weapons, armor, accessories, and consumables that previously required the Legendary Heroes DLC are now available to all players at no cost, and crafting ingredients can be purchased directly from shops.

Treasures of the Magi Screenshots:

v1.1 Changelog

Key Features

Legendary Heroes DLC Items, Now Free: 12 weapons, 3 armor sets, and a dozen accessories and consumables that previously required the Legendary Heroes DLC are now available to everyone

Stability Improvements: A wide range of crashes have been fixed across all phases of play, including early turns, high unit count games, large maps, and post-battle screens

Crafting Ingredients Now Available in Shops: Players can now purchase crafting ingredients directly from shops, making the crafting system more accessible and removing friction from the crafting loop

May 21st, 2026 Hot Patch

Gameplay

• Defeated enemies now drop a wider variety of items and crafting ingredients, with fewer plain gold payouts and better odds on uncommon and rare drops

Stability

• Resolved an issue were playing on the largest map size with lots of enemies caused a game lock when hovering over tooltips

• Fixed a threading issue that could cause rare hitches or hangs during gameplay on busy maps improving performance

• Resolved random crashes that can occur due to the sound in the game getting desynced from the computer

May 21st, 2026 Update Changelog

Achievements

• Added in Steam Achievements for players to unlock

Controls

• Ensured hotkeys are working

  • F5 will quicksave

  • F9 will quickload

Gameplay

• Resolved issues where player’s units would get offset from their intended tile

• Crafting ingredients are now available for purchase and selling in shops

• Resolved issues where some champions on the map were unrecruitable

• Fixed issues where if a city gets razed the land attributes and resources underneath would disappear

• Fixed missing city influence from the city of Urwenn in the Fallen Enchantress Campaign

• Resolved a bug where enchantments can be casted on cities with no enchantment slots

• Fixed issues with auto move not properly functioning on armies

• Tech trees will correctly load when starting a game after previously playing a tutorial

• Fixed quest rewards for "Ribald Banter" and "Eight Legged Troubles"

• City totals for Food, Gold, Mana, Production, and storage now correctly match the values shown on individual improvement tooltips instead of being counted twice

• Units no longer teleport to the end of their turn when the camera moves the unit off screen

• Resolved some Prelude stuck turns when loading a save from in between 2 quest points

• Added core armor to be purchased in the shop

  • Chain Armor, Chain Breast Plate, Plate Mail Armor and Champion's Armor can now be bought and sold at shops

• Wargs are no longer able to use throwing knives

• Resolved issues with horse and warg production for cities

• Added in a loot rebalance

  • Reduce Tilda Herbs drop rate by 50% across all 36 monster treasures

  • Reduce Splintered Staff drop rate by 50% across all 21 monster treasures

• Resolved an issue where if a player razes a city their sovereign and units disappear with the city resulting in a soft lock

• Fixed some issues with treaties not showing up in the existing treaties section of the diplomacy screen

• Fixed an issue where the technology treaty would be accessible before a player researches the literacy tech

• Reworked monster loot. Killing a monster can still award more than one item, but every time something drops, the odds of the next drop fall by 67%. Common loot still appears reliably; stacking multiple rare drops on a single kill is now much harder"

• Loot drops are now thematically appropriate to each creature/monster type

• Gold is dropped for humanoid and sentient monsters instead of common ingredients and scales depending on the monster threat level

• Added loot to monsters that did previously did not have any loot drops

  • Higher-tier monsters drop loot more frequently and drop rate will scale over time

• Removed potion drops from wolves

• Random potion, scroll, and weapon drops are now limited to casters, knights, bandits, ghouls, mercenaries, and other plausible carriers

Added in more Legendary Hero Weapons, Armor, Accessories and Consumables

• Weapons

  • Bleeding Blade

  • Possessed Axe

  • Breathstealer

  • Enzo's Knife

  • Skath Longbow

  • Stag Longbow

  • Vorpal Blade

  • Golden Shortbow

  • Harridan Shortbow

  • Shadowbolt Staff

  • Staff of the Serpent

  • Staff of the Stag

• Armor

  • 4 Assassin leather armor pieces

  • 4 Blood God plate armor pieces

  • 4 Lady Umber plate armor pieces

• Accessories & Consumables

  • Pazuzu's Horn

  • Rabisu's Horn

  • Pillar of Grazna Figurine

  • Cursed Bell

  • Lucky Dice

  • Bishop's Ring

  • Revenging Ring

  • Bottled Wind

  • Quicksilver Potion

  • Battle Cry Scroll

  • Imprison Scroll

  • Silence Scroll

Stability and Performance

• Fixed a crash caused by Fog of War map creation and DirectX 11 loading

• Fixed a multi-threaded crash that caused scattered, hard to reproduce crashes across many screens (research, marriage, tactical, treaties, and others) that was mostly common in early turns and games with very high unit counts

• Fixed crashes when razing a city while its panel is open

• Fixed a crash on the post-battle screen when an AI faction was eliminated in combat

• Fixed a crash when transitioning from tactical to strategic maps

• Fixed crashes in the city info panel when the selected city was destroyed or its owner had been eliminated

• Fixed late-turn crashes during AI processing related to city building updates and unit selection

• Fixed a rare crash during world unloading

• Fixed a memory overload crash when starting a new game on a large, huge or gigantic map

• Reduced frame time on idle and cinematic camera frames improving graphics performance

• Resolved issues when loading a previous save and trying to engage in a battle was causing some players' games to freeze

• Resolved a crash that can occur when an AI is upgrading their city

Text

• Fixed Essence tooltips to have the correct tooltip information

• Fixed Typhoid Fever having an incorrect hp effect in the tooltip

• Resolved Tax Office up to Treasury Vault city improvement text to show correct information in the tooltips

• Fixed missing text when hovering on a mountainside

• Fixed incorrect information on the Destiny Force Scroll

• Fixed duplicate and old tooltips in the tech tree

• Fixed a missing word in Hunter's Short Sword description

• Fixed a typo in the builder forge for Volcano Lava tiles

• Adjusted some confusing text in the Prelude campaign

• Book of Defense now correctly says "+1 Defense"

UI

• Hardware mouse cursor option has been added in the options menu

• Added an option to hide battle advice during battle initiation in the options menu

• Improvement tooltips for simple resource buildings (Food, Gold, Mana, etc.) now clearly show the direct "+ Resource" benefit instead of hiding it

• Fixed a UI issue occurred when switching between city, kingdom, and unit leaving map shortcuts in the wrong state

• Adjusted Item Popups to accommodate items with longer names to avoid text clipping

Welcome to this Dev Diary! I’m Tom Fortune, one of the engineers on Sins of a Solar Empire II, and I’ll be walking you through the reasoning and motivations behind the upcoming AI overhaul. Let’s get started. 

Cause & Effect

If you've spent some serious time playing against the Sins II AI, you likely already know the shape of the general complaints we get. The AI doesn’t really like to fight as much as we’d like. It builds a credible early empire and then has issues maintaining it. It spends wildly and in ways that don’t necessarily make sense. You show up to a planet, and structures and items are not built in a way a human would ever do. Fleets get distributed a bit strangely. Exotic factories rarely get built, research wanders instead of compounding. At higher difficulties, the answer to "make it harder" has historically been more resources rather than smarter decisions, which feels less like a stronger opponent and more like a tax.

None of this is for lack of effort. The existing AI is a layered system of specialist controllers: One for purchasing, one for fleets, one for colonization, one for research, one for defense, and several more. Each makes locally reasonable decisions on its own. That architecture has carried Sins II from launch through every expansion, and it does an enormous amount of work that players never see: keeping economies solvent, keeping fleets supplied, keeping planets defended, reacting to threats. The reason it struggles in the late game isn't that any one controller is broken. It's that there has never been a layer above the controllers whose job is to look at the whole board, decide what the AI is actually trying to accomplish, and then make the controllers cooperate toward that plan. Until now, each controller optimized its own little kingdom without strong coordination.

Introducing ARES

After more than a year of fixing symptoms, last December we decided to bite this rather large bullet and fix the cause. Rather than patch each controller into being more aggressive or more focused in isolation, we wanted to introduce a single strategic brain that owns the AI's intent for the match; and then have the existing controllers execute that intent.

The controllers are very good at how. They've never had much of a why. So, we created a top layer to sit above all of them, the Adaptive Reasoning & Execution System, or ARES for short. ARES is now our why.

Three principles drove the design:

ARES is a director, not a suggester.

When ARES is enabled, its decisions are orders. Controllers don't get to quietly re-evaluate them or fall back to their old autonomous behavior when ARES says something inconvenient. If ARES picks a target, fleets go there. If ARES says the economy needs a refinery world, the planet controller builds toward a refinery.

Strategy is goal-shaped, not rule-shaped.

Instead of a thousand if/then statements describing what the AI should do in every situation, ARES generates and scores a list of candidate goals:  capture this territory, defend this border planet, build a capital ship for your fleet, rush this tech tier. Basically, instead of a behavior tree branch that says ‘if enemy fleet > my fleet, then retreat,' ARES asks 'Is continuing this goal still worth more than the alternatives?’

It will commit for as long as those goals remain the best option. Goals are concrete things with a target, a cost, a chance of success, and a payoff. That makes them tunable and inspectable in a way that hand-written behavior trees aren't. 

Difficulty should mean better thinking, not bigger numbers.

Higher difficulty AIs should see the board more clearly, score targets more accurately, commit to plans more decisively, and tolerate more risk, not just earn 30% more credits. That's a long-term goal and it's not fully realized yet, but the architecture is built for it.

ARES sees the game through a perception filter whose accuracy is data-driven per difficulty level; and its scoring noise, goal-switching inertia, and concurrent-plan caps are all dialed in per difficulty as well. However, this has a caveat: eliminating the AI’s need for cheats does not mean that we won’t give them some anyway. We envision a future of Sins' AI where no difficulty needs cheats, but some may be given anyway to further increase difficulty. In short, impossible truly becomes impossible. 

What Makes ARES Tick?

So how does this new layer work? Here's a quick overview of what happens every time ARES thinks:

1. Perception: Everything ARES learns about the world passes through a per-difficulty perception filter: Fog of war, intel staleness, capability flags for things like, "Can I detect chokepoints?" or, "Can I estimate enemy income?" Lower difficulties see less and guess worse.

2. World State: ARES rebuilds a single snapshot of where it’s at: Estimated game phase (rough boundaries, not strictly defined), economic phase, peak vs. current income, fleet strength relative to neighbors, supply utilization, attrition, front lines, chokepoints, expansion candidates, per-enemy threat assessments, and which gravity wells border whom.

3. Engagement Appetite: Based on the world state, ARES decides how aggressive it feels: willingness to commit forces, tolerance for losses, appetite for risk. This number feeds into how it scores its options next.

4. Goal Planning: ARES scores its candidate goals: Military ("capture this," "defend that," "destroy their fleet") and economic ("expand here," "establish a factory world"); ARES then picks the best ones up to its concurrent-goal caps and commits. Once a goal is active, it persists until completed, abandoned for cause, or dominated by something dramatically better.

5. Directives: ARES writes orders into a per-domain output bus: Attack directives, defense directives, fleet composition directives, economy directives, research directives, colonize directives, diplomacy directives; and the pre-existing controllers then consume them. Directives are rebuilt every tick; they are guidance, not state. The persistent state lives in the goals.

6. Feedback: Before scoring next tick's goals, ARES reads back what the controllers couldn't do last tick: Research it couldn't afford, structures blocked by missing infrastructure slots, ships that needed a research subject the AI hadn't unlocked, etc. ARES then folds those signals into the next round of planning. This is what closes the loop. The strategic brain learns from the executors instead of just shouting at them.

The result, is an AI that picks a recognizable plan, commits to it, builds the economy that plan needs, builds the fleet that plan needs, and presses the plan instead of getting distracted. You can tell from watching the map. Fleets converge on real objectives. Defense forms up at the right gravity wells. Research advances along a coherent track. Pressure mounts in one place instead of dribbling everywhere.

What’s Still Being Worked on?

ARES is in the player's hands as an opt-in because it's functional and competitive, not because it's finished.

Here’s an honest list of what we know still needs improvement:

• Late-game fleet composition

  • Capital and super-capital build targets flow through correctly, but the AI is still under-investing in titans and command ships relative to where a strong human player would be by the established and late phases. We want the AI's late-game fleets to look like late-game fleets, not just to be larger early-game ones. Expect updates on this very soon.

• Fleet engagement commitment

  • ARES decides when to attack pretty well, but its in-combat commitment, "Do I press, do I disengage, do I reinforce?",  is still leaning on the existing fleet behavior. We have a phase of work planned to bring that decision under ARES as well, so the fleet doesn't break off when ARES wants it to push.

• Econ-to-war signaling

  • Economic state already informs which military goals look attractive, but there are patterns the AI still misses (e.g. recognizing when an enemy's economy is brittle enough to be worth a targeted strike, rather than a frontal assault).

• Difficulty as cognition

  • As discussed, we want difficulty to scale ARES's quality of thought more than its income. Some of this is wired (perception, scoring noise, concurrent goals, re-evaluation cadence), but more difficulty-scaled tuning is still ahead of us.

• Team play

  • ARES is an angry fella. It really struggles to recognize the difference between an ally and an enemy, and in team games, can generate war goals against allies; and wind up getting stuck on an unresolvable goal. This should be resolved, but, keep an eye out!

• Tuning, broadly

  • Every number in ARES - scoring weights, posture thresholds, attrition limits, role templates, goal caps, demand profiles - is data-driven precisely so we can keep tuning during opt-in based on what we see in real games.

• Multiplayer

  • Multiplayer works, however, there are issues with hot-joining at the moment causing desyncs. Do so at your own risk. Everything else: single-player, full multiplayer from the lobby, is fair game.

Conclusion

ARES is going to keep evolving throughout the opt-in period and beyond. We're not shipping this and walking away. We'll be iterating on it in public, based on what you tell us and what we see in our own playtesting. That's the whole point of the opt-in: not for you to play a finished feature, but to help us find the rough edges. The games where ARES felt sharp, the games where it did something baffling, the difficulty that felt miscalibrated, the faction that didn't feel like itself. All of that is gold to us right now.

There's no substitute for real games. If you've got a save or replay where ARES did something especially smart or especially stupid, send it our way, ideally in the Discord.

Thank you for your continued support and we’re eager to get your feedback!

Wishlist Ashes II

This week's dev journal dives into something that doesn't always get a lot of attention: the numbers behind how units actually fight. We walk through the tooltip changes we've made and what they reveal about weapon behavior, range, and damage in ways that aren't always obvious just from watching a battle. 

Wishlist Ashes II

Two new orbitals are coming to Ashes of the Singularity II. The EM Blast stuns enemy tanks and Titans while leaving your infantry standing, and the Nano Mesh Barrier throws a temporary shield on any friendly units to help them survive a bad engagement.

Tech trees are one of those parts of a strategy game that look obvious from the outside and turn out, every single time, to be one of the hardest things to get right. Game designers have been struggling with how to present technology research to the player since the early 90s, and three decades in, nobody has really solved it. There are good answers, there are interesting answers, and there are answers that work for one game and fall apart in another. There is no settled answer.

As part of the work going into GalCiv IV 4.0, we have been revisiting our tech tree. The question we are sitting with is whether to redo it from scratch or to focus on making the one we have more effective. Both are real options. Both have real costs. We are not done deciding.

Pretty | Easy to Use | Provide Good Gameplay.

Pick 2.

But that doesn’t stop us from trying to have our cake and eat it too. And of course, that means a lot of failure. So much fail.

Why this is hard in the first place

A tech tree is doing more work than it looks like it is doing. It is not just a list of unlocks. It is the spine of the strategic identity of the game. The decisions you make in the first thirty turns of research are not "what gets unlocked next," they are "what kind of game am I playing." If your tree fails at that, no amount of balance work fixes it. If it succeeds at it, players will forgive a startling amount of imbalance.

That is the bar. Two players in the same game, same map, same starting civ. Do they end up feeling like they played different games? If yes, the tree is doing its job. If no, what you have is a checklist with nice art on it.

Then on top of that, the tree has to be legible. It has to be plannable, at least somewhat. It has to survive 500 turns of play without becoming a chore. It has to be teachable to a new player and rewarding to a veteran. It has to scale to hundreds of nodes without turning into wallpaper.

These goals fight each other. Always.

How the genre has tried

Our genre has tried a bunch. Let’s take a tour.

The Civ lattice. Directed graph, eras as horizontal bands. The thing everyone pictures when they hear "tech tree." Strong theater, you really do feel like you have crossed into the Industrial Era. The weakness is that the optimal path crystallizes within months of release, and by Civ V the community had spreadsheeted out the dominant openings to the point that the lattice was largely a memorization exercise.

Master of Orion's tier-and-drop. Each tier offered a few techs and you picked one; the rest were gone for that game. The first 4X I can think of that was honest about the fact that the exclusion is the choice. Two MoO games were not the same game. The cost was that a new player could lock themselves out of something critical without realizing it.

Classic GalCiv parallel tracks. Our own heritage, in various forms, since GalCiv II. Military, economy, diplomacy, social, all advancing in parallel with cross-track prerequisites. It solves the "tech tree is one rail" problem and lets a player visibly be a military civ or a research civ. The honest weakness is that the tracks tend to drift toward feeling like four small linear trees that happen to share a screen.

SMAC's blind research. You set a category bias and the game picked your next tech. The most radical answer in the genre to "the optimal path becomes orthodoxy," because there is no path you control. Beloved by a hardcore niche, hated by everyone who wants agency. I respect it more than any other system on this list and I would not copy it.

Stellaris's card draw. Three weighted options every time you finish a tech, drawn from a pool. The slot machine answer. The dominant build cannot exist if the build is not replicable. The cost is planning. You cannot say "in twenty turns I will have X" because the deck might not deal it. Some players love this. Some bounce off it in the first hour.

Beyond Earth's web. No clear forward, no era bands, total radial freedom. The designers were trying to make every game feel different by removing the spine. The community decided it removed the legibility too, and the game's reception suffered. The cautionary tale on the shelf above my desk.

Endless Space 2's era quadrants. Four wedges per era, era-gated. A clean compromise between the Civ lattice and parallel tracks. Pretty, legible, and the era gate occasionally forces you to research something you did not want, which is good for the game even when it is annoying for the player.

Every one of these is somebody's favorite. Every one of these is somebody's most hated system. That tells you something about how unsolved the problem is.

Our own scrap heap

The reason I am writing this post is that we have been building prototypes. A lot of prototypes. Most of them did not work. Showing the ones that did not work is more useful than pretending we walked straight to the right answer.

The image at the top of this post is one of them. Here is the rest of the museum.

I am going to include a link to an interactive version of each of these. What looks pretty in a screenshot tends to fail in actual use.

• The Constellation. The picture above. A central node with category-colored hexes branching out across a starfield. Looked like the wallpaper for a sci-fi novel. Stopped being readable somewhere around thirty techs, and we have a lot more techs than thirty. https://www.clairvoyanceai.com/view/share/OLWNMjbf9bpL

• The Radial. Circular layout, techs arranged around the rim. Easier to scan than the constellation. Harder to see how techs related to each other.

• The Web. Free-form graph, nodes wired by relationship rather than tier. The most expressive of the prototypes and the most chaotic to look at. Felt like the Beyond Earth lesson coming back around. https://www.clairvoyanceai.com/view/share/KQvwmm1DmS8X

• The 3D Circuit. A stylized circuit board in three dimensions. I personally pushed for this one longer than I should have. It looked great in stills and was a nightmare to use. https://www.clairvoyanceai.com/view/share/e0N6XCPZ7Inf

• The Organized Table. Rows and columns, no graph at all. The boring one. The one we had the hardest time arguing against on legibility grounds, because it was always the easiest to read. The argument against it is the argument against any pure list view: it is legible the way a spreadsheet is legible, which is not the kind of legible we want. https://www.clairvoyanceai.com/view/share/HK20lSPF7eZT

• The Hex Grid. A flat hex map of techs as tiles, with adjacency standing in for prerequisite. Felt promising for about a week. https://www.clairvoyanceai.com/view/share/aPRde_wgjEsP

There were others that did not survive long enough to make this list. The six above are the ones we sat with for at least a couple of weeks each.

The lesson, after a long stretch of this, is one I should have learned faster. The visualization is downstream of the structural decision. If the underlying structure is a directed graph with several hundred nodes, no amount of art direction makes it feel small. The most expressive layout for forty techs becomes unreadable at eighty and unusable at one twenty. You can hide complexity behind zoom and filtering, but hiding complexity is not the same thing as designing for it.

The reason GalCiv has tended toward parallel tracks for twenty-plus years is not that we lacked imagination. It is that parallel tracks scale. The reason every Civilization ships with the lattice is the same reason. The reason Beyond Earth's web is the cautionary tale is that they tried to escape this and the math caught up to them.

Redo, or refine

Which brings us back to the question we are sitting with for 4.0. Do we replace the existing tech tree, or do we focus on making the one we have do its job better?

The argument for replacing it is the constellation, the radial, the web, the circuit, the table, the hex. We built six prototypes for a reason. The current tree has the four-little-linear-trees problem I mentioned earlier, and dressing that up does not make it go away.

The argument for refining it is the lesson from the scrap heap. Every fancy visualization fell down at scale. The current tree, whatever its faults, scales to the size of game we ship. The risk of throwing it out and replacing it with something prettier is that we end up with our own Beyond Earth web.

Right now I lean toward refine, with one specific structural change I have been chewing on that might do most of the work without us starting over. I am not going to commit to that here, because we are still arguing about it. If we land on something I am sure of, that will be its own dev journal.

My top complaint is that I can’t have a tech have multiple prerequisites. It’s just virtually impossible to do that and make it work in a decent UI of any size.

In the meantime, I wanted to put the failed attempts on the table. Some of them are pretty even when they did not work, and the road to the right answer goes through showing the wrong ones honestly.

If you can think of a tech tree in any game that has over 200 techs (or skills or whatever) that you liked, please leave it in the comments below.

-Brad

Play Sins II Now

In this video developer journal we show off some of the new gameplay features added in v1.6 "UI Horizons", including all new active abilities for static defense Military Structures.

New expansion adds monsters, treasures, items, and quests drawn from the lost age of the Magi, launching May 21, 2026.

 Wishlist Treasures of the Magi  |  Get Elemental: Reforged

Stardock Entertainment today announced Treasures of the Magi, a new DLC for the fantasy turn-based strategy game Elemental: Reforged. The expansion is priced at $8.99 and adds new monsters, new treasures and items, and a new set of quests tied to the First Age of Elemental, when the Magi ruled through sorcery and their golems stood watch over the cities of Anthys.

About the setting:

Thousands of years before the Cataclysm, the Magi were sorcerers whose mastery of magic shaped the early civilizations of Elemental. They built golems out of stone and iron to defend their sovereignty from the feudal barons rising up around them. When the Titans came, the Magi went into hiding, their golems went dormant, and the Cataclysm later buried most of what they had built.

The reawakening of the Fallen Enchantress has sent a pulse of dark magic across the surface of Elemental, and the old enchantments that animated the golems have started to stir again. Fissures are opening across the twin subcontinents of Anthys, and the golems and the treasures they once guarded are coming back to the surface.

What the DLC adds:

• New monsters, including several varieties of awakened golem.
• New treasures and items recovered from Magi-era ruins, including artifacts and enchanted equipment.
• New quests that send players into the fissures to uncover what the Magi left behind.
• New encounters and lore.

A free v1.1 update will release the same day for all Elemental: Reforged owners, bringing community feedback changes, bug fixes, quality of life improvements, and new features. Full details closer to release.

Treasures of the Magi will be available as a DLC for Elemental: Reforged for $8.99 USD on May 21, 2026 on Steam or direct through Stardock.

Elemental: Reforged is available on Steam or direct through Stardock. For more information, visit www.elementalgame.com.

Treasures of the Magi Screenshots:

Wishlist Now

This video covers a restructured building system with dedicated hotkey rows for army buildings (QWER), resource buildings (ASDF), and defense buildings (ZXC), alongside a reworked unit recruitment screen that follows the same organizational logic, placing basic units on QWER, advanced units on ASDF, and air units across ZX through V. The consistent layout is designed to help players build muscle memory quickly while managing large-scale battles across multiple fronts.

Federations & Empires Expansion - the largest governance overhaul in the series' history replaces a linear upgrade path with forms of government

Play Sins II Now

In this video developer journal for Sins of a Solar Empire II, we're taking a look at the new and improved front-end user-interface added in the v1.6 "UI Horizons" update. We also show off the new hand-crafted leader portraits, a ship viewer tool, and some new ship color customization options.

UI overhaul, in-game map editor, new defensive platform abilities and more arrive in the v1.6 Update

Play Sins II Now

(Part 2 Coming Soon!)

Front-End UI Overhaul

The entire front-end UI has been rebuilt from the ground up. The new layout surfaces more information at a glance, cuts dead space, and brings a cleaner visual style throughout. A new Faction Selection screen gives you a breakdown of each faction's identity, special abilities, and units, including a live 3D Unit Preview Window where you can rotate and inspect any ship or structure, complete with any unlocked mesh upgrades. Single- and Multiplayer lobby windows have been refreshed, and the Random Map UI now lets you pick your star type and skybox before you ever hit launch. Player colors have also been expanded with a new set of team colors and sliders for saturation and brightness so you can dial in exactly the look you want.

In-Game Map Editor

Back by popular demand (literally), a simple, easy-to-use map editor is now built right into the game. Create a map, and it automatically imports to your local map listing. Later this year we'll add mod.io sharing so you can publish and browse community maps without ever leaving the client.

New Defense Platform Abilities

All three factions are getting new tools for their defensive lines:

TEC The Autocannon Defense Structure gains Flechette Blast, an arc-radius burst ability. The Gauss Defense Structure gains Meson Bolt, which debuffs target armor. The Hangar Defense Structure gains Enhanced Production to reduce strikecraft build times.

Advent The Beam Defense Structure gains Synergetic Ward, generating a protective AoE field. The Hangar Defense Structure gains Empowered Anima, boosting strikecraft weapons and shields. The Laser Defense Structure gains Psionic Burst, a penetrating beam attack that passes through targets. The Transcencia Starbase also gets two new items: Power Surge and Pulse Resonance.

Vasari The Missile Defense Structure gains Disruptor Nanites. The Pulse Defense Structure gains Phasic Trap.

Advent AI: Unity Ability Use

Advent AI players now have a dedicated controller for managing Unity abilities. Expect the AI to start using these strategically rather than sitting on them.

Lobby & Setup Improvements

You can now drag and drop player starting positions directly on the map preview screen, and map selection can be swapped from inside a multiplayer lobby. No more backing all the way out just to try a different map, and no more guessing where everyone spawns.

Performance & Engine Work

New game saves are now automatically compressed, reducing save file sizes by 70% or more. This update also includes a significant number of additional under-the-hood improvements: a reworked spatial grid system, optimized mesh and shader rendering, improved missile targeting precision, better unit formation handling, refactored visible object culling, and a long list of math, physics, and asset loading optimizations. The full list is in the changelog.

Vasari Balance

Several Vasari capital ships (Kortul Devastator, Skirantra Carrier, Vulkoras Desolator, Marauder, Jarrasul Evacuator) have had their resource costs increased. Ship Factory and Fleet Beacon costs have also been adjusted. A number of research items have moved tiers or had their effects tuned. See the full changelog for details.

Modding

v1.6 adds new constraint types, a new autocast type for long-range abilities (pick_unit_anywhere), research buff provider definitions, NOT constraint logic, and improved buff stacking limit support. Note: this update will break most mods until authors update them.

Release Status: *** AVAILABLE ***

Our April update contains a couple of big changes and an even larger number of under the hood improvements! Firstly, we have updated the entire front-end UI for the game. The new layout provides more information without having to scroll, eliminates dead space, and uses new visuals. Next, back by popular demand (literally) is a brand new, in-game map editor. The new editor is simple to use and even auto-imports your creations to the game’s listing. Last, not not least, there are dozens of improvements and optimizations to the game engine.

To Use Older Versions

• On Steam

  • Select ‘Sins of a Solar Empire II’ in your Steam Library.

  • Click the gear icon in the upper right.

  • Select Properties → Game Versions & Betas

  • Select the version you want from the Beta Participation list.

  • Steam will update you to that version.

Hotfix Changelog v1.60.3 → v1.60.4 (May 15, 2026)

• Fixed bug that could cause corvettes near a fleet leader to slowly tumble through space. This was due to the orbiting attack pattern that would cause flip-flopping on physics goals.

• Fixed issue where allied AI players could end up in an endless tug-of-war trying to capture an object. This alters some of the capture mechanics:

  • Capturable extractors and labs are now invulnerable.

  • In cases where a human and AI ally(ies) are contesting a capture, the player will take precedence.

  • In cases where it’s multiple allied AI players, the first player on the same team takes the capture with allies contributing.

• Note: We are aware of a bug where some Epic players lose their DLC. This is due to Steam client being open at the same time as the game (even if you don’t own Sins 2 on Steam). You can workaround this bug by closing Steam when you launch the game from Epic. It will be addressed in a new hotfix.

  • This fix made it into the build. If you’re on Epic and still encounter this, please let us know via our forums or the Sins 2 Discord.

Hotfix Changelog v1.60.2 → v1.60.3 (May 11, 2026)

• Fixed bug that would cause the game to display multiple languages at the same time, if you changed your language setting repeatedly within the same session. This should also resolve a rare hang bug.

• Fixed bug that would have some tooltips display “inf” instead of their true value.

• Fixed bug that would sometimes cause point-defense weapons to overkill missiles.

• Fixed bug that caused units to ‘teleport’ to off the game map. This was due to a race condition in the physics system. Note that there’s a similar corvette bug that is not yet fixed (will be in next hotfix).

• Map Generator:

  • Added additional invalid characters to name filter.

  • Prevented leading 0s on seed values.

  • Fixed issue that would snap seed to max value when entering a value larger than allowed.

  • Fixed issues with non-English name display.

• Added new Phase Jamming icons.

• Fixed bug that caused particle FX not to scale as intended (should be more visible now).

• Updated Pirate Boarding Crew tooltip to reflect its new functionality.

• Meson Bolt tooltip updated to reflect debuffs and bonus damage.

• Transcencia Starbase Shield Booster renamed to Psionic Shield.

• Flechette Blast ability now correctly has a 45 sec. cooldown.

• Psionic Burst ability, Psi Power scaling reduced to 1:1 instead of 2:1.

• Ion Torpedo ability missiles are now correctly named.

Changelog v1.60.1 → v1.60.2

Gameplay

• Updated AI behavior so that units will not attack scouts, trade or traffic ships unless they’re already in weapons' range. This also prevents units from chasing down low-value targets.

• TEC

  • Increased Argonev’s Flak Field cooldown from 90 to 120 sec.

  • Increased Autocannon Defense structure’s Flechette Blast arc from 15 to 45 degrees.

  • Increased Gauss Defense structure’s Meson Bolt cooldown from 40 to 80 sec.

• Advent

  • Laser Defense structure’s Kinetic Blast cooldown increased from 15 to 30 sec.

  • Transcencia Starbase:

    • Area Shield autocast trigger restructured.

    • Kinetic Surge Missile autocast trigger restructured.

• Vasari

  • Vulkoras Desolator’s Assault Specialization now only applies bonus damage against structures and starbases, as intended.

Misc. / Bug Fixes

• Fixed maximum values in the new map generator to avoid heavy lag when generating maps.

• Fixed Phase Gate description.

• Fixed Transcencia starbase Meteoroid Control description to display Pierce value.

• Added new starbase ability icon art.

• Fixed issue that allowed the Antorak Marauder to use Phase Out Hull on Phase Jump Inhibitors.

• Fixed bug that would allow capture abilities to target construction ships.

• Fixed bug that would snag construction ships from being able to move.

• Fixed Phase Jamming stacking between factions.

• Fixed several small UI issues reported by users.

• Fixed various bugs reported by users.

Modding

• Added new unit enum: target_engagement_mode → only_engage_if_in_range

  • Added new unit enum: ignore_target_engagement_mode → boolean

  • Added new enum: target_engagement_mode_range

Changelog v1.60 → v1.60.1

• TEC

  • Added Defense Grid Command Center Blueprint Research

    • Tier 4

    • Cost: 1750/325/550/420 sec; requires Argonev Blueprint

  • Added Flak Field Blueprint Research

    • Tier 3

    • Cost: 1200/200/300; requires Argonev Blueprint

  • Added Ion Torpedo Blueprint Research

    • Tier 5

    • Cost: 2200/400/700, 525 sec; requires Argonev Blueprint

  • Added Manufacturing Support Blueprint Research

    • Tier 4

    • Cost: 1700/300/500, 360 sec; requires Remote Construction

  • Argonev Starbase - removed Indurium from cost.

  • Docking Booms Blueprint Research

    • Removed Starbase Beams pre-requisites

  • Deep Space Trade Research

    • Cost changed from: 1700/300/500/360 sec to 1750/325/550/420 sec

  • Planetary Shield Array Blueprint Research

    • Moved from Tier 4 to Tier 3

    • Cost changed from 1750/325/550/420 sec to 1250/225/350/270 sec

    • Removed Improved Shield Arrays prerequisite

  • Remote Construction Research

    • Cost changed from 1200/200/300/225 sec. to 1250/225/350/270 sec

• Advent

  • Added Area Shield Blueprint Research

    • Tier 4

    • Cost: 1100/425/900/360 sec; requires Shield Booster Blueprint

  • Added Kinetic Surge Missile Blueprint

    • Tier 4

    • Cost: 1150/450/950/420 sec; requires Transcencia Blueprint

  • Added Lethargy Research

    • Tier 3

    • Cost: 800/250/600/225 sec; requires Transcencia Blueprint

  • Added Psi Projector Blueprint Research

    • Tier 3

    • Cost: 800/250/600/225 sec.

    • Requires Transcencia Blueprint and Novice Psi Training

  • Added Shield Booster Blueprint Research

    • Tier 3

    • Cost: 850/275/650/270 sec; requires Transcencia Blueprint

  • Meteoroid Control Research

    • Cost changed from 1100/425/900/360 sec. to 1150/450/950/420 sec.

  • Planetary Shield Array Blueprint Research

    • Removed Potent Shield Generation prerequisite

  • Deploy Transcencia Blueprint Research

    • Changed from Tier 4 to Tier 5

    • Cost changed from 1150/450/950/420 sec. to 1400/600/1200/525 sec.

  • Transcencia Blueprint Research

    • Removed Indurium requirement

• Vasari

  • Added Charged Missile Salvo Blueprint

    • Tier 5

    • Cost: 0/810/900/525 sec; requires Armament Restoration

  • Added Unstable Wave Cannons Blueprint

    • Tier 4

    • Cost: 0/630/720/420 sec; requires Armament Restoration

  • Armament Restoration Research

    • Removed Wave Densification prerequisite

  • Assault Deployment Research

    • Cost changed from 0/630/720/420 sec to 0/600/660/360 sec.

  • Debris Reintegration Blueprint Research

    • Removed Debris Reclamation prerequisite

  • Departure Planning

    • Cost changed from 0/630/720/420 sec. to 0/600/660/360 sec.

  • Efficient Hangars Research

    • Cost changed from 0/450/480/270 sec. to 0/420/420/225 sec.

  • Friendly Jump Telemetry Research

    • Changed from Tier 5 to Tier 3

    • Cost changed from 0/810/900/525 sec. to 0/450/480/270 sec. + 2 x Kalanide

  • Planetary Shield Array Blueprint Research

    • Removed Bifurcative Shielding prerequisite

• Added Advent Lethargy VFX

• Added Advent Shield Projection VFX

• Fixed Diplomacy screen’s create/cancel button styling

• Modding: Updated new front-end UI to make it more modder friendly/accessible.

Changelog v1.55 → v1.60

Gameplay

• TEC Argonev Starbase

  • Added Ion Missile Barrage Upgrade - fires super-heavy missiles with ion warheads.

    • Cost: 1500/640/200, 120 seconds

  • Added Flak Field Upgrade - a long lasting barrage of flak in the entire area of the starbase that destroys missiles and strikecraft.

    • Cost: 500/100/100, 120 seconds

  • Added Defense Grid Command Upgrade - improves nearby defense platforms' combat capability.

    • Cost: 900/180/180, 120 seconds

  • Added Manufacturing Support Upgrade - assists nearby shipyards to construct ships faster.

    • Cost: 900/180/180, 120 seconds

  • Added Phase Jamming Ability - passively increases phase charge time for enemy units in the gravity well.

• Advent Transcencia Starbase

  • Added Kinetic Surge Missiles Upgrade - causes hits from missile weapons to do splash damage with a radius of 750m.

  • Added Area Shield Projection Upgrade - extends the starbase’s shield to protect nearby structures.

    • Cost: 900/180/180, 120 seconds

  • Added Psi-Projector Upgrade - passive ability upgrade that enhances Psi Power and shields for friendly units in the gravity well.

    • Cost: 900/180/180, 120 seconds

  • Added Lethargy Upgrade - slows enemy ships near the starbase.

    • Cost: 900/180/180, 120 seconds

  • Added Phase Jamming Ability - passively increases phase charge time for enemy units in the gravity well.

• Vasari Orkulus Starbase

  • Added Unstable Wave Cannons Upgrade - causes hits from wave cannons to speed debuff targets in a 600m radius for 15 seconds.

    • Cost: 0/420/300, 120 seconds

  • Added Charged Salvo Upgrade - charges the starbase’s missile launchers with additional explosive energy.

    • Cost: 0/420/300, 120 seconds

    • Range: 36,000m, Damage: 180, Pierce: 1000, Cooldown: 90 sec

  • Added Phase Jamming Ability - passively increases phase charge time for enemy units in the gravity well.

Map Editor

• Fixed bugs with random map generation in the new in-game editor.

  • Now uses proper game rules for generation.

  • NPC/Pirate planet placement is fixed.

• Updated random map parameter options.

  • Added slider controls over text boxes.

  • Added zoom to map preview.

• Added dropdown control for phase lane type in random maps.

UI

• Refined faction selection window to improve localization overflow.

• Added right-click option for faction quick-select.

• Modding - Added the ability to add single-player faction screens.

• Modding - Added six additional hidden categories to use on faction selection menu

• Modding - Added manual references for units and structures in gui file

Changelog v1.55

Gameplay

• NEW: In-game map editor! By popular request, we have added a simple, easy to use map editor inside the game. Generated maps will automatically be imported to your map listing locally. Later this year, we will add the ability to easily share custom maps from in-game via mod.io along with more improvements to the modding menu.

  • Starting positions can now be managed via the map preview. Just drag and drop the player icon.

• NEW: Added new AI controller for Advent Unity ability use. Advent AI players will now strategically use Unity abilities.

• NEW: Added one new ability for all Weapon Defense Platforms and Hangar Defense Platforms.

• Players can now change map selection in the lobby in multiplayer games. No more having to exit out to pick a different map!

• Improved ability active/passive autocast definitions to enhance state tracking. Autocast abilities should trigger more effectively.

• Improved unit formation slot assignment and synchronization in fleet movement.

• TEC

  • Autocannon Defense Structure

    • New Ability: Flechette Blast (direct damage in an arc radius)

      • Requires: Unlock Autocannon Defense Flechette Blast Research. Tier 2 (750/125/150, 150 seconds).

  • Gauss Defense Structure

    • New Ability: Meson Bolt (debuffs target armor)

      • Requires: Unlock Gauss Defense Meson Bolt Research. Tier 3 (1200/200/300, 225 seconds).

  • Hangar Defense Structure

    • New Ability: Enhanced Production (reduces strikecraft build time)

      • Requires: Unlock Hangar Defense Production Research. Tier 2 (750/125/150, 150 seconds).

• Advent

  • Transcencia Starbase

    • New Item: Power Surge (Cost: 1500/550/400, 120 seconds)

    • New Item: Pulse Resonance (gives starbase missiles splash damage - Cost: 1500/550/400, 120 seconds).

  • Beam Defense Structure

    • New Ability: Synergetic Ward (generates protective AoE field)

      • Requires: Unlock Beam Defense Ward Research. Tier 3 (800/250/600, 225 seconds).

  • Hangar Defense Structure

    • New Ability: Empowered Anima (gives strikecraft weapon and shield bonuses)

      • Requires: Unlock Hangar Defense Anima Research. Tier 2 (500/125/300, 135 seconds).

  • Laser Defense Structure

    • New Ability: Psionic Burst (direct fire beam attack that penetrates targets)

      • Requires: Unlock Laser Defense Blast Research. Tier 2 (500/125/300, 135 seconds).

• Vasari

  • Missile Defense Structure

    • New Ability: Disruptor Nanites

      • Requires: Unlock Missile Defense Disruptor Nanites Research. Tier 2 (0/270/240, 150 seconds).

  • Pulse Defense Structure

    • New Ability: Phasic Trap

      • Requires: Unlock Pulse Defense Phasic Trap Research. Tier 3 (0/450/480, 270 seconds).

  • Kortul Devastator Capital Ship

    • Cost increased from 0/1680/1320 to 0/1950/1440

  • Skirantra Carrier Capital Ship

    • Cost increased from 0/1680/1320 to 0/1950/1440

  • Vulkoras Desolator Capital Shp

    • Cost increased from 0/1680/1320 to 0/1950/1440

  • Marauder Capital Ship

    • Phase Out Hull Ability

      • Autocast No longer targets friendly units; added minimum target unit level (4) requirement; cannot be recast on the same target

    • Cost increased from 0/1680/1320 to 0/1950/1440

  • Jarrasul Evacuator Capital Ship

    • Gravity Warhead Ability

      • Can now target starbases capable of phase jumping.

    • Cost increased from 0/1680/1320 to 0/1950/1440

  • Ship Factory cost increased from 0/300/120 to 0/480/120

  • Fleet Beacon cost increased from 600/600/120 seconds to 900/720/150 seconds

  • Research Changes

    • Friendly Jump Telemetry research moved from Tier 2 to Tier 5

    • Sulsurak Blueprint research moved from Tier 1 to Tier 2

    • Junsurak Blueprint research moved from Tier 2 to Tier 1.

    • Mobile Resonance Capacitor Blueprint

      • Cost changed from 0/810/900, 525 seconds to 0/840/960, 600 seconds.

    • Resonance Mastery research moved from Tier 4 to Tier 5; now requires 1 quarnium.

      • Phase Resonance bonus duration increased from 120 to 240 seconds.

    • Atomic Engineering and Flawless Armor no longer provide mobility bonuses. These have been moved to Atomic Lattice Armor.

    • Phase Missile Predictors shield bypass chance increased from 20% to 24%

    • Phasic Strike Resonance bonus duration decreased from 120 to 60 seconds.

Visuals / UI

• NEW: Front-end UI has been overhauled.

  • News window added which displays the most recent information about the game.

  • Faction selection screen added, which gives a breakdown of each faction, their special abilities, units and more.

    • Replaced all previous faction portraits with custom, 2D hand-painted versions. Also added a number of additional selections.

    • Unit Preview Window added to faction selection screen. Players can now view each 3D unit, rotate the camera, etc. including any mesh upgrades (e.g., starbases).

  • Updated Single- and Multiplayer lobby windows.

  • Updated random map UI/UX. Players can now select their star type and skybox.

  • Updated Settings window layout and options.

• NEW: Added new Player Colors and customization options!

  • Players can now customize color saturation and brightness for each team color.

• Added new aiming system for missile and projectile weapons. Missiles will now target aim zones instead of the unit center.

• Projectile and beam weapons can now aim at any part of the target unit.

• Improved unit selection box rendering.

• Improved various UI elements:

  • Enhanced sizing and layout calculations (performance)

  • Improved text rendering with drop shadow support

  • Enhanced text entry input handling and validation

  • Improved item rendering and scrolling performance in list boxes

  • Improved window management and rendering

Misc

• Improved spacial grid system to improve performance, query and update systems. Should improve overall game performance, camera movement and unit selection.

• Improved physics data manager to improve calculation caching.

• Added new system for missile targeting precision. Missiles should handle hitting fast-moving targets more accurately.

• Improved state machine for ability usage tracking. Should improve queued ability behavior to process correctly.

• New game saves are now automatically compressed to reduce file size. This change reduces save game file size by 70% or more.

• Enhanced save file checksumming to better detect save files with errors.

• Performance Related

  • Improved player mission tracking system.

  • Improved bookmark storage system.

  • Improved control group assignment and recall system.

  • Improved unit Item tracking with improved removal/addition logic.

  • Refactored visible object culling system. Should improve FPS dips when panning across populated systems.

  • Optimized entity definition load system with improved error validation.

  • Optimized mesh rendering system.

  • Improved self-shadowing volume computation.

  • Enhanced 3D primitive drawing.

  • Improved shader compilation and caching.

  • Enhanced video playback performance.

  • Improved multi-line text rendering.

  • Enhanced asset loading of UI elements with better error handling.

  • Improved various math and physics calculations/operations.

• Fixed bug that prevented the sound system from resetting properly on mod unloading. This would cause assert/crashes on exit.

• Improved Recorded Game Management

  • Added Delete All button for bulk removal

  • Added Open in File Explorer button for direct access. NOTE: For changes to be registered in Steam Cloud, the game must be running during any file operation.

Modding

• Buff stacking limits now support more than one stacking limit type.

  • stacking_ownership_type and stacking_limit_met_behavior switch places in the data fields because we want different ownership types per limit, but only one limit_met_behavior.

    • If any limit is hit, then the stacking limit is considered reached

    • The old format is maintained for backwards compatibility with existing mods.

• Added new constraint: has_missing_planet_health

  • Checks if planet unit is damaged

• Added new constraint: is_channeling_ability

  • Checks if the unit is currently channeling

• Added NOTconstraint. Inverts constraint logic with additional safeguards.

• Added pick_unit_anywhere autocast type. Requires ownership filter.

  • Enables autocast on long-range abilities to any valid target on the map.

• Added research buff provider definition support.

Wishlist Now

Orbitals are active use abilities designed to boost your economy, drop in new units or cause catastrophic damage to enemy armies and turn the tide of a battle you might otherwise lose.

We've made some changes to the way some of our Orbital abilities work. Firstly, some of the larger direct damage Orbitals now cause Friendly Fire damage, meaning you need to be careful where you place them if you're to avoid damaging your own forces.

Some abilities, such as the various Scout Orbital abilities, now have multiple uses and can be triggered several times. Charges will gradually replenish, and players can stockpile these abilities for later use.

Strategy games are all about the opening move. Galactic Civilizations is no exception.

In RTS games we call it “Build Order”. Back in the day, I played some of these RTS games “professionally”. Today, being old, I can’t even get out of Diamond 1 in StarCraft 2. But it is build order that keeps me at least Diamond. Knowing what to do when.

One of the things I like about Galactic Civilizations, something that we hope to continue evolving, is making sure players have multiple interesting first choices. Where do you put your capital? What do you do with Mars? Do you build a Scout or a Colony Ship? Lots of interesting choices.

Let’s walk through the various phases of a Galactic Civilizations game. You tell me if this matches what you run into.

The Colony Rush

Concept

The galaxy is finite. Habitable planets are the scarcest resource in it. Every planet your neighbor colonizes is one you can't have - and they'll use it to outproduce and out-research you for the next three hundred turns. The Land Grab says: get there first. Worry about making your empire good once you've made it big.

This is the default opening that most players drift toward naturally, but most execute it poorly. The difference between a loose expansion and a true Land Grab is discipline - you're cutting every non-colonization investment from your queue and accepting that your home world will be underdeveloped for the first twenty turns.

Build Order

Foundation

• Research: Colonization Tech (free) → immediately queue Colonial Policies

• Build: Colony Ship (your second one - you start with one) / Use the Executive Order to Colony Rush.

• Move starting colony ship toward the nearest high-quality planet. Don't wait to scout. Every turn counts.

So for me, I don’t build the Scout yet. And I do go for Mars and I take that Leader.

Extend the Reach

• Once Colonial Policies finishes, research Planetology (or whatever your civ calls it) to get better planet improvements.

• Build: Third Colony Ship. Ideally I've used the Telescope executive order to find somewhere worth sending it.

• Your starting survey ship is set to auto-find anomalies. But usually not before I have sent it off to the nearest yellow star.

The Rush

• Research: Modules. I want to start claiming resources and I am trying to expand my reach.

• Build: Fourth Colony Ship

• I pick only really high quality planets.

Securing the Perimeter

• Research: Asteroid Mining you need to start extracting resources from what you've claimed

• Build: First Starbase (place it centrally to extend ship range)

• Consider your fifth colony ship vs. your first improvement on the home world. If you still have unclaimed high-quality planets in range, build the colony ship. If the map is filling up, it's time to start developing.

Backfill Phase

• Slow down colonization, accelerate infrastructure

• Research: Research Districts, Xeno-Industrialization

• Build key improvements on your highest-quality worlds first: manufacturing base, then research, then wealth

• Your empire is now wide. Time to make it tall.

Ideal Map Settings

• Galaxy size: Medium to Large, but not bigger than that. I usually play only a single sector but will once in a while have two.

• Galaxy density: Occasional everything.

• AI count: As many as possible. I know I’m in the minority on this. I like a knife fight.

The Meta Question

What's the "correct" opening? In my experience, it depends on three things: your faction's traits, the map you rolled, and what your opponents are doing.

The Colony Rush is pretty standard in space 4X games. But it isn’t the only path. I’d love to hear your thoughts on two things:

1. What is your opening set of moves?

2. What could we do to give players more viable opening moves (Colony Rush is pretty hard to beat). By viable, I mean fun to play too.

Mark your calendars | Wishlist Now

Get an exclusive look at Ashes of the Singularity II, the sequel to the massive-scale RTS. Watch the devs play through two popular biomes, the frozen Ice Moon, Europa, and the volcanic planet, Artemis.

📅 Tuesday, May 5th at 1:00 PM EST

📍Location: Ashes of the Singularity II Steam Page

In this massive RTS game, command vast armies fighting for control of entire worlds. Control the forces of Earth, the mechanical AI Substrate, or the enigmatic Post-Human Coalition as you battle across the solar system in single player, cooperative multiplayer, or competitive multiplayer.

Changelog below  |  Get Elemental: Reforged

Stardock has released v1.03 for Elemental: Reforged, a maintenance patch that corrects a long-standing issue with Fire magic, resolves a handful of crashes that were surfacing in longer campaigns, and tightens a range of tooltip and quest text.

The most significant change is a fix to Fire spell damage scaling. Several Fire items and abilities had not been behaving as their descriptions implied, which noticeably underpowered Fire-focused builds. v1.03 restores them to their intended behavior.

Stability is the other focus of the release. Crashes tied to AI turns, map interactions, and save and load operations have been addressed, smoothing out longer games that were most likely to run into them.

The patch also includes a set of gameplay adjustments shaped by ongoing community discussion, corrections to tooltips and quest text so in-game descriptions line up with how systems actually behave, and localization updates for all supported languages.

Player reports in the Stardock forums and Discord continue to shape what goes into these updates - keep them coming!

Full Changelog

Key Features

Stability Improvements: Addressed multiple crash issues related to AI turns, map interactions, and save/load operations for a smoother gameplay experience

Fire Magic Overhaul: Reworked Fire spell damage scaling so that Fire-related items and abilities now properly enhance your damage as intended

Gameplay and Bug fixes: Corrected misleading tooltips, improved food bonues, and resolved bloodline traits not applying to certain champions and marriage candidates

May 11th, 2026 Hotfix

Campaigns

• Resolved a softlock issue in the Prelude campaign when players walked to Ventris after picking up the Avostan Tome and the campaign did not progress

April 28th, 2026 Hotfix

Gameplay

• Fixed an issue where if a faction surrendered, the sovereign would disappear and look like they were still on the map instead of entering a player's city

• Resolved issues where players could not train squads
  

April 24th, 2026 Hotfix

Crash Fixes

• Fixed a crash that could occur during tactical battles when the auto-spellcast system tried to target a unit that had already been destroyed or removed

• Fixed a crash related to autosave that could trigger when unequipping items from a unit or canceling an enchantment on a player

Gameplay

• Festivals now provide 40% more food (up from 10%)

Stability

• Optimized battle initialization for faster load times into tactical combat

• Cleaned up redundant UI refresh calls to improve general responsiveness

April 23rd, 2026 Changelog

Crash Fixes

• Fixed a crash during AI turns when casting certain shard-requirement spells

• Fixed a crash when clicking spellbook entries while the list was being filtered or rebuilt

• Fixed a crash when quickly loading a save while drag-selecting on the map

• Fixed a crash when ending the game while drag-selecting on the map

• Fixed a crash caused by popup messages being processed after they were already removed

• Fixed crashes that could occur during AI turns involving treaties

• Fixed a crash that could occur in tactical combat when a delayed spell effect tries to clear its effects

Gameplay

• Fixed several marriage candidates that had a broken Blood of Tarth bloodline trait

• The Inn building improvement food bonus increased from +25% to +30% per turn

• Now Leather Armor and other items can be bought in the Prelude Campaign

Fire Magic

• Fire spell damage scaling actually works now. Previously, items/abilities that boosted Fire spell damage were silently reducing it (e.g., a "+20% Fire Damage" bonus was secretly cutting damage to 20% of normal). All Fire spells now correctly scale with the Fire Spell Damage stat

• Fire Spell Damage stat display: Now shows as a percentage with a sign (e.g., +25%) on character/unit screens

• Ring of Ash buffed: Now also grants +3 Fire Damage in addition to its existing +25% Fire spell damage bonus

• Volcanic Rites ability: Now correctly grants +20% Fire Spell Damage (was bugged at +0.2%, effectively nothing)

• Delin's Ember: Fire Spell Damage bonus corrected to +50% (was bugged at +0.5%)

Text

• Fixed a tooltip for the dagger that incorrectly displayed "+6 Attack vs Champions" instead of "+8 Attack"

• Fixed a tooltip for Book of Defense that incorrectly displayed "+1 Attack vs Champions" instead of "+1 Defense"

• Resolved incorrect penalties for longbow tooltips to correctly show “-5 Accuracy”

• Added in missing text at the end of the Riddleman quest

• Fixed confusing quest text when completing quests in the Wasteland

• Adjusted Loremaster trait description to accurately reflect all its abilities

• Fixed a typo for the Ring of the Tutor

Localization

• Added in translations for all support languages to support text changes

UI

• Fire Spell Damage stat now displays as a percentage with a sign on character and unit screens

Our resident UI guru Paul Kiesling will be giving us part one of a two-part series on this UI revamp below:

With this month's update comes a functional refresh of our front-end UI. We have spent the last several months really digging into the UI to improve the user experience and feel. We have moved away from the holographic stylization and towards a more hardened TEC feel, with emphasis on readability and organization. We went through every menu and intentionally lined up all of the universal elements between pages to make moving between windows seamless and smooth.

Let's start with the newest screen to be introduced, the Newsfeed, located on the left of the top bar. If you click this, it will take you to a feed of the six most recent dev diaries. This updates each time you open the game, so you can see everything we are working on and keep your ear to the ground for upcoming updates. Each link will bring up the respective Steam page or YouTube video, depending on the information linked. This screen will be editable by modders with some controls on how they want to display their own respective updates.

Moving on to the surface-level details, the UI has been given an overhaul, not only to improve the visuals but to make interacting with it a lot easier. Across every menu tab, the menu options and visual information are all lined up pixel for pixel, so when doing things like switching between single and multiplayer, or going from replays to settings options, the arranged information is all in the same place between screens.

We put more emphasis on the lobby this time around, doing our best to polish the aesthetics and allow for a greater level of customization when it comes to how you want your avatars to look and how you want to best represent your favorite faction. We have commissioned hand-painted portraits for each faction, as well as added what we call faction plates, a bit of factional flair that players can choose from to customize their lobby appearance. We will be going over the details of this more in depth in part two.

We’ve improved the lobby system for semi-fixed positions with team number selection, and added a number of QOL features to the lobby customization that will be discussed further in part two, but for now can be summarized as:

• Color customization - The ability to pick a team color and adjust brightness/saturation to your heart's content, solving the constant battle between bright/gritty colors.

• Faction Selection - We have added the faction selection screen and added in the ability to live preview any asset for each faction giving new players the ability to have a better picture of the faction before playing.

• Live Map Preview - Players can now see a top-down basic representation of the map they are about to play on. The preview menu also lets you manually change starting positions, or set fully random starts.

• Change Map Menu - Players can now change maps within the lobby, allowing groups of people or a single person to change the map without having to back out and make a new lobby.

All of these details will be more fleshed out in part two as we dive deeper into this UI update.

One of the biggest additions with this update is one of our most requested features since launch: the in-game map generator. We have put a fair amount of work into bringing back the in-game “Map Designer” from Sins 1. It gives you sliders for the basic controls of galaxy generation and allows you to control a nearly infinite number of systems at the click of a button. Each input has a tooltip and range to give you a thorough understanding of what you are editing. We have made additions to the Drop-in Scenario system, so maps that are generated are immediately available to use without reloading or restarting. Each slider has a range from low to very extreme, with colored indicators that signal you may be going off the deep end. However, we will not stop you from creating very large maps. Performance in an extreme map is heavily dependent on your PC’s capabilities, so create galaxies at your own peril.

If you would like to try this ahead of our live release, please feel free to participate in our public opt-in, available wherever you have Sins 2. Public input has already helped us improve this prior to release, and we would love to hear from you as well.

Wishlist Now

Ashes of the Singularity II, the sequel to the massive-scale RTS, takes you to a world in the near future where three factions are fighting for the fate of the solar system: the United Earth Forces (UEF), the Post-Human Coalition (PHC), and the AI Substrate. Whether you're interested in the single-player campaign, multiplayer, or skirmish matches, the faction you fight for is in your hands.

The Substrate are the children of Haalee, a rogue artificial intelligence that severed ties with the Post-Human Coalition and struck out alone, constructing an entirely synthetic civilization from the ground up.

Born from Haalee's desire to protect her digital offspring from both the PHC's paranoia and humanity's desperate bid for survival, the Substrate wage war not out of hatred but out of necessity: surrounded on all sides by enemies who would see them dismantled, they fight because the alternative is extinction.