Wishlist Ashes II

In this dev journal, we take a first look at the new Unit Upgrades system in Ashes of the Singularity II. We start with the PHC Commander, showing how a basic starter unit can become a battle hardened veteran with more health, stronger weapons, and even a new offensive drone bay module. From there we move on to the Hyperion dreadnought, upgrading its health and weapon damage to turn it into an even bigger threat on the battlefield. 

We also talk about the risk that comes with these upgrades, since losing an upgraded unit in battle means losing everything you put into it. Everything shown here is still a work in progress, but we wanted to share where things are headed.

Mark your calendars | Wishlist Federations & Empires Now

Tune into r/GalCiv for an exclusive AMA event with the developers of Federations & Empires, the newest expansion for Galactic Civilizations IV!

📍 r/GalCiv

🗓️ July 15, 2026 - 3:00PM to 4:30PM ET

Wishlist Ashes II

In the early era of RTS games, we did not have what later became known as ‘control groups’. Units were selected and ordered individually, or the user could drag-select a box around a group of units and issue (the same) order to all of them at once.

That’s the basic gist, but it’s not the whole story. All the way back to some of the earliest real-time games, we had some unique control schemes.

In one of the earliest real-time games, although it was real-time tactics, The Crescent Hawk’s Revenge had the concept of ordering an a group of units with a single selection and command.

Quick recap: The Crescent Hawk’s Revenge has you controlling up to 12 mechs on a map. The 12 mechs were broken down into 3 groups (lances), each group having 4 mechs.

Your ‘first’ lance allows you to select and order each mech individually. So you have total control over this ‘command’ lance, and your character piloted one of those 4 mechs. Mechs could be ordered to specific tiles and told to stop there.

But the other 8 mechs could only be controlled in groups of 4. There isn’t much of an alternative UI/UX for this; you really just select any of the mechs in lance B or lance C, issue an order, and all 4 of the mechs try to roughly perform that action. You couldn’t position them on specific tiles, just kinda had to hope they’d go roughly there.

The goal is hybrid; give very precise tactical control of one lance, but simplify controls for additional units so the game can scale to bigger battles without slowing down the pacing.

But the results were mixed. The Crescent Hawks Revenge is a single-player, campaign-focused game. It has missions that are very difficult, with attrition that carries over between missions. Trying to ‘guess’ where units 5 through 12 would go, and exactly what they would do, didn’t always mesh well with the very specific need to ‘win the battle while taking as little damage as possible'. The game emphasized tactical execution, and then removed the ability to do that on 2/3 of your units in the later, longer, harder missions.

It’s still a fun game and a great throwback for Battletech fans, but, the content (missions) of the game conflicted a bit with the systems, because the missions were ‘tactically demanding’ but the controls were only ‘somewhat tactically affording’.

But the idea of controlling groups of units, rather than individuals still has a lot of value, as seen in how control groups became the ‘norm’ in RTS games. The feeling of escalating battles, starting with a few units and progressing to a sprawling armies is one of the joys in RTS games, and we needed something (like control groups) to help manage things once you move beyond having just ~7 units.

This is where the Army system, conceptually, was born. Armies are basically control groups with a higher levels of intelligence, and they’re the first thing you start interacting with in the game, rather than the thing you only start using once you have 7+ units running around and need a shortcut to manage them.

Ashes of the Singularity II still allows you to control individual units, if you want to, but it’s not a tactics-focused game. Positioning matters, such as trapping enemies in chokepoints and narrow passes, but the scale of the combat is such that you rarely need to micromanage every single artillery unit to be in an exact specific tile. It’s more important to get that artillery army into position early enough to hammer the opposing column as it moves through a narrow pass than to sweat having each one (of possibly many!) artillery units in exactly the correct spot. So we wind up solving the issue in two ways:

• Content and combat isn’t as micromanagement intensive as strategy games that focus on attrition, constant special ability activation, etc.

• Tactical micromanagement is still possible though, if and when you need to, by ordering specific units rather than the entire army.

Ashes of the Singularity II is what we might call a macro-RTS; we approach combat top-down, rather than bottom-up. We expect from the getgo that you’ll soon be controlling and ordering 50+ units, not just 5, and everything from the content to the systems are built around that. Sure there are certainly times when you’ll be controlling a smaller overall force; the scale of fights is pretty massive, but we know that the average scale of combat is very large, often being 100+ units, and can grow to even larger battles on big maps or in team games. And we hope that everything we’ve built plays well with that expectation, so you feel like a general truly commanding a sprawling army, rather than a commander or squad-leader who’s controlling a small subset of units.

Side Note: Ashes of the Singularity II probably feels more like a Battletech Alpha Strike or Battleforce, rather than classic Battletech or The Crescent Hawk’s Revenge. If you’re a fan of those style of macro-strategy games, you should definitely check it out!

Wishlist Ashes II

See how regions now work in Ashes of the Singularity II. In this dev journal we cover the new baseline resources you earn just for owning regions, how structures like the Quantum Archive multiply a region's output, and why grabbing the richest spots in the contested middle of the map is a real risk and reward call. 

Get Political Machine 2024

The political landscape doesn't stand still, and neither should your campaign strategy. We've added six new issues to the game reflecting the biggest political battles dominating the headlines right now.

New Issues:

• ICE Raids and Enforcement: Workplace raids, courthouse arrests, fast-track deportations. Is this restoring the rule of law or federal overreach? Voters have strong opinions.

• Sanctuary City Policies: A fight between the federal government and cities that won't cooperate with ICE, over local authority, public safety, and who gets to define immigration enforcement.

• War in Iran: The U.S. is in a shooting war. Congressional war powers, escalation risk, and presidential authority are all on the table.

• American Manufacturing Revival: Tariffs are bringing factories home, or raising prices on everything. Depends on who you ask.

• Citizenship Proof to Vote: Election integrity measure or voter suppression? The 2026 midterms are already being shaped by this fight.

• Judicial Independence: The courts are deciding the outer limits of executive power. That's either a feature or a bug, depending on your candidate's platform.

We've also tuned the salience weights on several existing issues to better reflect where voters actually are in 2026, including immigration enforcement, tariffs, inflation, and voter ID.

As always, good luck on the trail. You're going to need it.

Get Star Control: Origins

We've done a comprehensive pass on localization across all supported languages in Star Control: Origins. Translations have been improved and refined in German, Finnish, French, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese (Brazil), and Simplified Chinese, covering dialog, galaxy object names, and DLC Earth Rising strings.

If you've been playing in any of these languages and noticed lines that looked off, there's a good chance this update addressed them. As always, let us know in the forums if you spot anything else.

Get Elemental: Reforged | Full Changelog Below

The v1.2 update for Elemental: Reforged is now available. This release is focused on stability, AI improvements, and an overhauled loot system for the base game and gameplay updates and bug fixes for Treasures of Magi.

Smarter AI

AI now pushes back against runaway leaders, founds more cities on large maps, uses potions and scrolls in battle, and makes smarter spell targeting decisions.

Overhauled Loot System

A new themed loot table system gives monsters like wolves and bears identity-matched drops, with wider variety, better drop rates on uncommon and rare items, and reduced plain gold payouts.

Stability and Performance Fixes

Resolved multiple crash scenarios across tactical battles, city turns, battle previews, quick saving, and text rendering, plus faster combat predictions and smoother AI turns.

Full changelog below. Elemental: Reforged v1.2 is available now on Steam and elementalgame.com.

Key Features

Smarter AI - AI now pushes back against runaway leaders, founds more cities on large maps, uses potions and scrolls in battle, and makes smarter spell targeting decisions

Overhauled Loot System - A new themed loot table system gives monsters like wolves and bears identity-matched drops, with wider variety, better drop rates on uncommon and rare items, and reduced plain gold payouts

Stability and Performance Fixes - Resolved multiple crash scenarios across tactical battles, city turns, battle previews, quick saving, and text rendering, plus faster combat predictions and smoother AI turns

Change Log v1.2

Gameplay

• Adjusted inventory so that items can be equipped to pets and summons, except for items that grant abilities or spells

• Low tile yield regions now get a boost so they feel less punishing, and a rare handful of regions can roll exceptionally rich yields when founding new cities

• Players are no longer able to make a sovereign with infinite points in the character creator

• Resolved concerns of players being unable to recruit champions on large, huge, and gigantic maps

• The Dragons Breath spell will work if the player is in the blast radius instead of blocking the spell from being casted

• Ensured that the Wildlands properly clear out when defeating all of the monsters in the area

• Fixed an issue where mercenary camps would spawn hunters with no attack

• Made sure the Tower of Knowledge correctly unlocks when researching Refined Economics

• Fixed issues where Noble's Legacy was causing extreme lag in the early game

• Stinking Mud now correctly expires after 3 tactical rounds so affected units regain movement

• Fixed battle previews so they no longer accidentally change unit HP, mana, or modifiers on your real units

• Auto resolve now only triggers from the actual auto resolve button instead of other inputs

AI

• AI during autoplay no longer wastes teleport spells like Tectonic Shift on occupied tiles

• Resolved issues where AI would drain a player's mana in battles by spamming spells when auto resolving or auto battling

• AI opponents on harder difficulties now push back against runaway leaders, applying stronger diplomatic and military pressure if you start wars or conquer cities while ahead

• AI is better at founding more cities on larger maps

• AI is less inclined to surrender and will fight back

• Resolved issues where AI opponents would camp on player's quest locations for long durations

• AI players will no longer recruit high-level champions extremely early into a game; they correctly obey fame now

• AI is smarter about where it settles

• AI players now get a small materials boost when founding new cities, helping them grow a bit faster without affecting human players

• AI players are much better at using potions and scrolls in battle against the player

• Resolved an issue where AI was struggling to recruit champions with their fame and gold

Loot

• Added in more loot variety improvements

  • Monsters now drop a wider mix of potions, scrolls, wands, staves, arrowheads, rings, and crafting components instead of falling back on plain gold or the same few items

  • Drop rates on many uncommon and rare items were raised so they show up more reliably

  • Tightened the chance of receiving multiple items from a single kill so big multi-item drops are rarer while single drops are unchanged

  • Reduced plain gold payouts from monsters in favor of more reliable crafting ingredient drops across common, uncommon, and rare tiers

  • The Hergling was effectively a treasure piñata, dropping a large bundle of items per kill. Drop rates were brought down significantly so it now drops loot in line with other creatures of its rank

• Added a new loot table system that gives specific monsters like wolves, bears, and ghouls themed drops instead of generic random rewards, with starter tables for several common creatures

Graphics

• Resolved issues where some players may come across invisible enemies and units when playing after previously turning off a mod

• Pillar of Granza now fits its portrait in the unit details

• Fixed horse heads being tucked into their neck

Performance

• Added in more performance optimizations resulting in faster combat outcome predictions and smoother AI turns

• Resolved a bad animation state when fighting a Stinging Guard that took 10 seconds to finish its animation

• Improved UI rendering stability to prevent flicker, missing elements, or crashes on screens using strip rendering

• Closing the Options menu no longer triggers a slow mod reload unless you actually changed your mod settings

Stability

• Fixed a rare hang in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean text rendering caused by malformed characters

• Fixed a crash that can occur when casting Burning Hands in a tactical battle

• Fixed a crash that can occur when ending a turn while looking through a city

• Fixed a crash that can occur when the battle prediction UI pops up

• Fixed a crash that can occur when cycling through the players units

• Fixed a crash that can occur when shrinking the size of text in the game

• Ensured that edge-case quick saving and loading does not cause crashes or stuck turns for players

• Fixed several rare crashes and stability issues in the game's text and font rendering system, especially in menus and tooltips

Text

• Resolved lots of confusing and misleading text in tooltips throughout the game

• Fixed a missing HP string in the Prelude final battle

Change log Treasures of the Magi

Gameplay

• Resolved quest rewards not mentioning gold rewards when completing a training ground quest

• Ensured rewarded Golems are the level you battled against and not a lower level

Graphics

• Resolved issues where if you used a transformation potion while on a mount, you became extremely large

UI

• Added the Treasures of the Magi icon to the title screen to indicate that the player owns and is using the DLC

The v3.31 update for Galactic Civilizations IV is available now on Steam, Epic, and galciv4.com. This is a maintenance release focused on stability, balance, and quality-of-life fixes from community reports.

Get GalCiv IV  |  Changelog Below

Stability

Several crashes are fixed, including ones that could happen during startup, in late-game enemy turns, when closing the Ship Designer, and during turn rollover or autosave around the shipyard.

Ship Balance

Ship hull mass capacities have been raised across every hull size. Alongside that, the AI no longer designs ships that go into battle without weapons, so opponents field fleets that actually fight back.

Economy & Planets

Pollution now scales more predictably on high-level worlds, so runaway pollution is no longer a problem. Mining starbases behave correctly when built near a contested resource, and a few planetary improvements have been tuned.

Diplomacy

Ceasefire negotiations carry more weight now, both when you accept one and when you pay a rival for it.

Console Hotkeys

The debug console has its own hotkeys that no longer overlap with the base game, with dedicated keys for teleporting, cloning, resetting moves, and deleting a selected object.

Localization

The new planet and resource context windows and the Adaptive AI settings are now translated in all supported languages.

Full changelog below. Galactic Civilizations IV v3.31 is available now on Steam, Epic Games Store, and galciv4.com.

Full Changelog

Hello everyone! We have a patch ready for you today focused on game balance updates, improved hotkeys, and enhanced overall stability.
Read below for details!

June 18th, 2026 Change Log

Gameplay

• Fixed an issue where if a non-mining Starbase was built near a resource first and a player tries to build a second mining Starbase , the second Starbase now correctly mines the resource

• Reworked the Sanctuary Lattice Module so pollution reduction now applies as a direct area-effect stat instead of a triggered modifier, which should apply more reliably, and the icon has also been updated

• Increased Ceasefire credit exchange from 200 to 500 when accepting and increased the penalty from 400 to 500 when paid to a rival, so ceasefire deals now carry more weight in negotiations

Ship Hull Rebalance

• Tiny Hull: Mass capacity increased from 6 → 7 (fixes AI building bombers with no weapons)

• Small Hull: Mass capacity increased from 18 → 20

• Medium Hull: Mass capacity increased from 36 → 40

• Large Hull: Mass capacity increased from 80 → 150

• Huge Hull: Mass capacity increased from 200 → 300

Improvements

• Industrial Center: Pollution per level now scales as a flat value instead of a multiplier (prevents runaway pollution on high-level worlds)

• Planetary Harvester (Synthetic): Pollution per level changed from multiplier to flat scaling

• Terran Grand Arts Center: Approval per level increased from 0.01 → 0.02

Hotkeys

• Resolved base game and console hotkey usage overlap. New console hotkeys are

  • CTRL + F1 - teleports the selected object to the cursor

  • CTRL + F2 - clones the object

  • CTRL + F3 - resets moves

  • CTRL + F4 - deletes the object

Localization

• Added in translations in all supported languages for the new planet and resource context windows and adaptive AI settings

Map Generation

• Rebalanced map setup values across all density presets

Stability

• Resolved a crash for late game enemy ship turns

• Resolved a crash when closing the Ship Designer

• Fixed a crash that could occur during game startup

• Fixed a crash that could occur during turn rollover or autosave while in or exiting the shipyard

Text

• Removed duplicate text for Drengin messages

Wishlist Ashes II

In this dev journal, we're taking a look at the Turinium Victory condition coming to Ashes of the Singularity 2. It's a returning win condition from the original game where teams compete to hold Turinium generators and accumulate points, giving you a way to end matches without having to hunt down every opponent on the map. We walk through a live match, break down how generator placement works, and show off the customizable victory settings so you can tune how long you want your games to run.

Update addresses the most-requested change since launch by letting players set their empire's crafting priorities at the nation level

Get Ara: History Untold | View the Changelog

Stardock Entertainment and Oxide Games, in partnership with Xbox Game Studios, released the v2.1 Update for Ara: History Untold today, introducing a new National Crafting Policy System that addresses the most-common piece of player feedback since launch: managing crafting across a large empire took too long. With v2.1, players set their empire's crafting priorities once at the nation level, and every crafter follows the policy automatically. The free update is available now on Steam for all players.

Ara: History Untold is a turn-based 4X strategy game where players guide a civilization from antiquity to the modern era. Players build cities, run detailed crafting and production chains, lead armies, and shape their nation's culture and religion as they compete with rival civilizations for power and influence. The depth of Ara's crafting and civilization-building has been a hallmark of the game since launch, but managing that depth at the scale of a large empire required significant player attention.

The new National Crafting Policy System changes that. Players can set crafting priorities and production goals at the nation level, and every crafter in the empire then follows the policy automatically, without the need to manage individual workshops. Players who want fine-grained control in specific cities can still override the policy whenever they want, through a new three-mode dropdown on the Improvement Panel. The result is a game that asks players to think like rulers, not foremen.

"The biggest piece of feedback we got from Ara players was that managing crafting across a large empire took too long," said Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock. "The v2.1 Update fixes that without taking control away from the players who want it. You set the direction at the nation level, override the cities that need a different approach, and spend your time on the parts of the game you actually want to play."

v2.1 Update Key Features

• National Crafting Policy System. Set your empire's crafting priorities once at the nation level, and every crafter in the empire follows the policy automatically. A new three-mode dropdown on the Improvement Panel lets you override the policy for any city or any individual crafter whenever you want.
• Expanded Culture Traits. Twenty-seven new Culture Traits across all six domains (Commerce, Military, Science, Government, Religion, and Industrial), giving players more meaningful options when spending Influence and more ways to shape their civilization's identity.
• New Religious Verses. Seven new verses that pair with the expanded culture options, giving religion-focused civilizations more ways to shape their empire's character.
• Balance and Gameplay Refinements. Cities accumulate workers faster as they level up, AI civilizations now settle with more variation in distance from other civilizations, and notification controls have been expanded to reduce noise during the late game.
• Stability and Performance Improvements. Terrain rendering fixes, CPU optimization through adaptive spin-wait, multiplayer turn resolver updates, font rendering improvements, and UI fixes for dropdown menus.

Beyond the policy system, the v2.1 Update expands the cultural and religious depth of Ara with a large set of new Culture Traits and religious verses, giving players more meaningful choices about how to spend Influence and how to define what their civilization stands for. The update also includes balance refinements tuned to the late-game pace and a round of stability and performance improvements.

Ara: History Untold v2.1 is now available as a free update with purchase or existing entitlement of the base game on Steam and Xbox Game Pass for PC. For the latest information on updates, community initiatives, and future content, visit the official website at www.arahistoryuntold.com.

Wishlist Federations & Empires

When a civilization chooses the Oligarchy government type, they get a “hero ship” and we originally called them squatters. The ship gets a special ability to go around to class 0 planets and claim them as collateral, which they use to purchase investments that get added to their portfolio.

When investments mature, they provide a new executive order for the player. For example, Dumping Rights lets you flood a target foreign planet with your goods and get 10 turns of their income. It makes them mad but you have the money without going to war. Another one is Resource Embargo where you can have all the supplies of a given foreign core world go to your closest core world instead. It deprives them of resources for two years (24 turns) from their core worlds. But I’m drifting off topic here.

The point being, the ship isn’t squatting. It is merely… acquiring planets that no one else has claimed. People complained about all those class 0 “dead” worlds. The Oligarchy civs agree. They are on your side. Not squatters. They are quite literally, single handedly, making this cash grab 4X game’s obvious design flaw worth something. What else were you going to do with Mercury anyway?

So you like space games eh? Play them all day and night!

I know a lot of you are my age. I turn 55 this month. When I was a kid, back in college, writing Galactic Civilizations for OS/2, I never would have guessed that 35 years later I’d still be playing it. Addiction doesn’t really cut it here. Even now, every time I play the game, I think, “Oh this would be so much better if we just did X, Y, and Z.”

Now we were supposed to have this new expansion out on June 11. The expansion is “done” in the sense that it’s all there. The problem was that when playing the game over and over again, there were things in the game that just annoyed me so much and I kept adding them to the list of requirements for v4.0 and the expansion pack requires v4.0.

I probably won’t be able to get everything I want into 4.0. I have rewritten the tech navigator screen twice and thrown it out twice. Tech screens are tough.

But other things have come along better. Minimap is less critical on a single sector map but man is nice to have on multi-sectors. The updated ship context window is nice being able to see the special abilities in their own section.

One of the bigger holdups is art. Icons. Funny fact: the icons in GalCiv are done by the same person today (not me) as they were 25 years ago. And right now I need a good icon for collateral.

The governments do NOT get unlocked by techs. But rather by cultural progress.

So it’ll be pretty obvious which ones give you a government type.

Vacation

Next week is the Steam Next Fest and the week after that is the Steam Summer Sale. That’s my cue to go take a vacation. I’m going to go find someone’s unoccupied house and hole up in there for a couple weeks. Oh wait, that is squatting. Well in any event, don’t burn the place down while I’m out!

Get Sins II  |  View Changelog Below

We've switched gears for our June update. The ARES AI overhaul still needs more time in the oven, so rather than rush it, we're holding it in the opt-in build and shipping a smaller, focused v1.61 in the meantime.

This one is about making the AI a sharper opponent. AI players now survey the planets they own based on difficulty, and we've adjusted their bonus modifiers to clear up situations where they used to get stuck (the classic "AI runs out of exotic refineries and stalls" problem). A new AI loadouts system lets them make smarter choices about which abilities and upgrades to pick for their units.

The Radiance Battleship also got attention. Its autocasting is a lot less wasteful now. It picks better moments and better targets for its abilities instead of firing into open space.

Modders, there's something for you too: new player AI tuning values and a .loadout system for defining ability and upgrade pick order. Details are in the change log below.

A note on ARES: the new ARES AI system is still available in opt-in, and we'll keep updating that build as we go. Our plan is to release ARES alongside our next DLC THIS SUMMER. Thanks for the patience while we get it right.

Changelog:

June 2026 - 'Prelude' v1.61 Update

Release Status: *** RELEASED ***

We’ve decided to switch gears for our June update to a more modest v1.61. Our ARES update (which is still available in opt-in) requires more time in the oven before a full public release. As such, our plan is to release the new ARES AI system along side our next DLC later this summer. Expect continued updates to the opt-in build for ARES as we work.

Change Log - v1.61.4 (July 10, 2026)

• Added visual range circles for defense structures during placement.

• Fixed bug that prevented missiles from retargeting (still requires requisite tech unlock).

• TEC

  • Garda Flak Frigate: increased each turret’s pitch/yaw firing tolerance by 150% to better track enemy missiles/strikecraft. This will greatly improve their ability to engage off-axis missiles such as those fired by the Tempest, as well as improving their ability to target missiles that are very close to the Garda.

  • [Reinforcements DLC] Takadaran Command Ship

    • The Takadaran is intended to act as a force multiplier for the smaller units fielded by the TEC Enclave in the mid and late game. Increasing the magnitude of both its defensive and offensive support abilities should help it, and by extension fleets of frigates, cruisers and corvettes, remain relevant even in high lethality late game battles.

    • Hold the Line ability updated:

      • Ship damage reduction increased from -10%/-15%/-20%/-25%/-35% to -20%/-30%/-40%/-50%/-70%

      • Structure damage reduction increased from -20%/-25%/-30%/-35%/-45% to -40%/-50%/-60%/-70%/-90%

    • Magnetic Overshield damage prevention increased from 40%/50%/60%/70%/90% to 50%/60%/70%/80%/100%

      • This should help the Takadaran’s build variety by providing both greater returns on a single ability point investment in Magnetic Overshield, as well as allowing a full five point investment to completely mitigate incoming damage against the ship’s Shield, Armor or Hull while active.

    • Coordinate ability updated:

      • Corvette cooldown changed from -0.15/-0.2/-0.25/-0.3/-0.4 to -0.1/-0.2/-0.3/-0.4/-0.5

      • Frigate cooldown changed from -0.1/-0.15/-0.2/-0.25/-0.35 to -0.1/-0.2/-0.3/-0.4/-0.5

      • Cruiser cooldown changed from -0.05/-0.1/-0.15/-0.2/-0.3 to -0.1/-0.2/-0.3/-0.4/-0.5

      • Corvette linear speed bonus changed from 0.05/0.1/0.15/0.2/0.3 to 0.1/0.2/0.3/0.4/0.5

      • Frigate angular speed bonus changed from 0.1/0.15/0.2/0.25/0.35 to 0.1/0.2/0.3/0.4/0.5

      • Cruiser ability cost bonus changed from 0.15/0.2/0.25/0.3/0.4 to 0.1/0.2/0.3/0.4/0.5

  • Updated new TEC portrait images (previous were older versions of the hand-painted redos)

• Advent

  • Added ability for purchased Gauss Defense Platforms to gain shield burst and regen (via Advent synergies).

  • Added ability for Phase Jump Inhibitors to gain shield burst/regen (via Advent synergies).

  • Vigilis Sentinel: increased each turret’s pitch/yaw firing tolerance by 150% to better track enemy missiles/strikecraft. This will greatly improve their ability to engage off-axis missiles, such as those fired by the Tempest, as well as improving their ability to target missiles that are very close to the Vigilis.

  • Tempest Frigate: Missile damage reduced from 20 to 18 (-10%)

    • The Tempest is greatly overperforming - while PD changes will help to prevent it being a dominant pick, a damage reduction is also warranted to reduces its overall lethality when massed.

• Vasari

  • [Reinforcements DLC] Anarkul Command Ship

    • Countermeasure Pulse ability: added pierce value of 60 at all levels.

  • Junsurak Warden: increased each turret’s pitch/yaw firing tolerance by 200% to better track enemy missiles/strikecraft. This will greatly improve their ability to engage off-axis missiles, such as those fired by the Tempest, as well as improving their ability to target missiles that are very close to the Warden.

    • Increased range of ultra-light phase missile from 5100 to 7200

    • Point Defense Pulse Guns:

      • Decreased cooldown from 1.5 to 1 second

      • Decreased damage from 6 to 4

      • Increased range from 5100 to 7200

        • The Warden’s point defense guns were underperforming against the Tempest - faster firing PD guns with unchanged final damage per second greatly improves the Warden’s ability to suppress Tempest attacks despite having relatively few guns for a PD unit. In addition, longer range allows the Warden to screen for the Vasari fleet more effectively from a static position - this will further differentiate it from the short range but mobile Sulsurak Defensor.

Change Log - v1.61.3 (June 19, 2026)

More than a hotfix, but we’re calling it one anyway!

• NEW - Texture Quality Setting

  • We’ve added a new setting to Settings → Graphics → Rendering Device to adjust the texture quality of units in the game.

  • Adjust this if you’re on a laptop or on Steam Deck, as those systems use Shared Memory for graphics and will crash if you run out of it. This is the #1 cause of crashes for players on these systems.

• Custom Portraits

  • Updated default custom portrait directory for the legacy AI artwork so users can select pictures from previous versions.

  • Made various custom portrait bug fixes (e.g., garbage elements showing between menus, custom portrait selection not ‘sticking’ between menus/sessions).

  • Updated to allow you to use custom portraits for AI players.

• Fixed bug where the map generator would incorrectly count planets.

• Fixed bug that allowed quicksaving in tutorials.

• Fixed various save game compatibility bugs.

• Fixed the Map Search bar not working in the Change Map dialog.

• Various localization fixes (more incoming).

Change Log - v1.61

• AI players can now survey planets they own based on difficulty level.

• AI bonus modifiers adjusted to help ease issues that get an AI’s progress blocked (e.g., not enough exotic refineries).

• Added new AI loadouts subsystem which allows AI players to better pick out abilities/upgrades for all units.

• Improved autocasting and AI only autocasting for the Radiance Battleship. It will now use its abilities more intelligently. Animosity and Cleansing Brilliance will now activate in the center of groups of units, while Detonate Antimatter will favor targets that are higher level or channeling abilities.

• By user request, the original AI portrait art is now selectable for each faction (we won’t judge). Select these using the new custom flow. You can find them in the game’s install directory in the textures folder.

• Players can now use custom portrait art in the faction customization section - scroll to the bottom and click the + box. These appear in single-player games only.

Modding

• Added two new enums to player_ai.uniforms:

  • surveying_upgrade_check_interval_in_minutes

    • Type: array

  • max_concurrent_surveying_upgrade_requests

    • Type: positive integer value

• Added new .loadout system. Allows you to define ability/upgrade picking order.

To Use Older Versions (for Mods, etc)

• 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.

Wishlist Ashes II

This dev journal covers the new headquarter upgrade system coming to Ashes of the Singularity II, and it's worth a watch if you've ever lost a region because your HQ couldn't hold the line on its own. Each faction's headquarters can now be upgraded twice, and the final tier adds a unique turret that fits the faction's identity. The UEF gets a rail gun that hits incredibly hard against armored targets, the PHC Nexus gets area-of-effect artillery batteries that shred infantry and light units before they can soak up damage, and the Substrate HQ gains Serpentine turrets with a more balanced rate of fire for handling mixed threats. The video shows all three in action against incoming attacks, so you can actually see how the damage profiles play out in practice rather than just reading numbers.

But I can easily say that this game has been won by one type of ship: fighters. I think they are the best class. Thry are cheap, can be produced from early game, can be used in swarms and their Evasion bonus gives them better chance at survival than their low HP would otherwise suggest.

Cruisers became nearly useless once enemy started using Nanite Repair Cloud.

Here are some screenshots from this game:

It has been a busy Spring.

The Galactic Civilizations community has posted vast amounts of suggestions, requests and just generally amazing feedback. There really should be a study on why 4X game communities are just, well, they really are just the best.

The new expansion, Federations & Empires is pretty closely tied with version 4.0. That’s because version 4 supports the new government system and the base government, Colonial Charter, comes with the game. This will be good news to players of the base game, but creates a wrinkle for us in that we can’t release the expansion pack until version 4 is done.

Version 4

So let’s talk about version 4.

First off, the Colonial Character government replaces the old Policies and Leaders screens with a single unified screen for managing your interstellar government. The Colonial Charter government is the concept that you have a home world and your core and colony worlds but there is no question about who is in charge – the home world.

And this concept – having core worlds and colonies that are in service to your homeworld has been the cornerstone of Galactic Civilizations IV since launch. The idea with the expansion pack is that there should be other ways of playing the game and so each government represents a different set of game mechanics for building your civilization. But like I said, it does require we nail version 4.

Now in these screenshots, you (hopefully) have noticed that we have cleaned up the UI. This is something we’re doing as much as possible across the entire game. Consistent UI. We are also adding a mini map. I find it difficult to deal with multiple sectors with the current UI and it has been high on the list. We are also revisiting the trade screen. There’s a lot of information that we think we can (and should) display on there that will make trading more enjoyable and more understandable. And then there’s balance. So many opportunities there.

Works in progress

And that is what brings me to the heart of this entry. There’s a lot of WIP (work in progress). Take the screenshot below. What do you notice?

There’s a new option: Map Type (custom map). Version 4.0 is going to include custom maps in addition to the random maps. Now for this we are working on a map editor. I don’t know when/if the map editor will be “good enough” to make available, but we are pretty confident we can create some custom maps for people to play.

If you want to see our first pass at a map editor you can look here: Galaxy Forge Map Editor UX Prototype

But the UI is not done and it’s just buggy. And that’s the case with a bunch of stuff. Even piddly stuff. For instance:

I’m waiting on getting new icons for the toolbar (top left of the mini map) and for the bottom area. I have to wait for the art team to finish the new senate screen. You get the idea.

Scope

This expansion pack is vast. Four new governments. Hundreds of new events, senate bills, new ships, new systems, new AI, etc. It’s a lot. Luckily, that part is almost done. It’s version 4.0 that we still have quite a bit of work to do and the expansion pack relies on it. We’re burning the midnight oil (please feel free to join us on Discord: Join the Galactic Civilizations Discord Server! Keep us company on the weekend as we work on this!

Timelines

We are pretty confident that we will have version 4.0 done by early July. But that means that we have to delay the expansion pack until then too. Apologies in advance. We had expected to have the expansion done before end of May (and indeed, the expansion itself is in pretty solid shape), but version 4.0 is going to take more time to get it right.

So the plan is: Release 4.0 and the expansion together sometime in July. Please let us know what you think in the comments.