Galactic Civilizations IV News

Building a strong economy is a foundational aspect of all 4X games, regardless of your overarching aims in that particular campaign: whether you’re racing for a technological victory by researching the most advanced technologies, or raising an unstoppable military juggernaut to crush your enemies with, “the sinews of war are infinite gold” to quote Cicero. Or, in the case of Galactic Civilization’s IV: Supernova, infinite credits.

And even that timeless wisdom doesn’t quite do things justice in a space 4X: infinite credits would be pretty helpful and though we can trade cash for various things with other players, and there are ways to rush build, buy or otherwise purchase goods and services, we can’t always instantly transform credits into advanced technologies, Cultural Starbases or a host of other tools we need if we’re to lay eyes on that victory screen.

GalCiv’s resource system is a large topic, and we covered it fairly extensively in this video on Youtube, but as a continuation of our series aiming to demystify the early game for new players, I’d like to pass over that fine detail and instead give you some very broad advice on how the economy works and what each of these resources does.


As a quick recap, natural resources are represented as Planetary Input, which are then converted by Citizens, Districts and Improvements (and a few other miscellaneous things) into Planetary Output. Manufacturing and Influence are used at the planet level, for colony construction and shipbuilding, and pushing out your borders respectively.

Planetary Output values then contribute to your Empire’s overall treasury of resources known as Civilization Output, where they’re used for various things, and these are fairly intuitive: Research allows your scientists to discover exciting new technologies, Food is shared across your Civilization for Citizen growth and approval, and Income is taxed at a set tax rate to provide Credits, for paying for all your infrastructure, with the surplus pooled and available to spend on a turn-by-turn basis.



This screenshot from my video on GalCiv’s economy summarises things a bit more simply.

Here’s a quick example using Minerals and Manufacturing.


The Core World of Ivoria here has mineral resources called Mineral Input, worth 5 points. We’ve also got a Colony attached, Ivoria III, which is contributing it’s own Mineral Input of 3, for a total of 8.0. If we had Asteroid Bases around Ivoria, you’d see their input here too.


This Mineral Input is then processed by Manufacturing Districts, any manufacturing Improvements (like the Planetary Generator and Elemental Fabricator here), and some other bonuses such as our Governor’s Diligence score (Diligence is a character trait used to modify Manufacturing), and the various Diligence scores of our Citizens too.


You can think of Citizens bonuses to Mineral Input processing as having dedicated workers leading your main industrial operations, and for some civilizations which hate pollution and shun organized industrial efforts, as some kind of highly efficient and alien cottage industry. We can assign Citizens a Worker job, to help them focus on improving Manufacturing output even further.

There are other modifiers involved, including Economic Starbases (which have an industrial element that helps production) and various effects from Civilization Abilities, in game Events and more.

Finally, after applying our current Approval as a multiplicative modifier, we’ve ended up with a score of 23.8 for our Manufacturing Output on Ivoria.

Approval is, and I stress, VERY IMPORTANT, because it directly affects the output of Manufacturing and Research, and low Approval can be crippling to your economy, so work to keep your Citizens happy!


So, what can we do with this Manufacturing output? Well, every construction project on our planet has a Construction Cost, and our Manufacturing score is deducted each turn from that cost until the total cost is paid, at which point you get your shiny new Coordination Beacon, in the example above, which required a total of 120 Construction points to create.


That Manufacturing score is also translated into another resource called Military, which is basically the same as Manufacturing Output, but is used by your attached Shipyard to create shipyard projects (warships, research missions, starbase modules and more).

This is a very brief overview by way of example, and we’ve only taken a look at just one of the Planetary Input/Output chains, but I hope this helps to demystify some of these arcane numbers a little bit. Technology, Farming, Wealth and Culture all have their own little rules but you should be able to follow the example here, with the help of the in-game tooltips, to work out what modifiers are affecting each, and where they are used.

I’d also strongly recommend that you check out the video I linked at the start of the article, as it details all this much better, and in a much more amusing format too, I hope!

If you’ve got any questions about this or anything else, just leave them in a comment and I’ll do my best to answer them.

Cheers!

[h2]Coming to Steam August 15, 2024[/h2]
Sequel to beloved strategy title features new asymmetric playstyles, dynamically changing maps, deeper tactical combat, expanded strategic depth, and more.

[h3]Check out Rimmy Downunder's latest playthrough and our date announce trailer at the end:[/h3]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

A new chapter in the never-ending war for the galaxy will be written as Stardock and Ironclad Games announce that Sins of a Solar Empire II is set to release on Steam on Thursday, Aug. 15. The sequel to one of the most beloved strategy titles of all time, Sins of a Solar Empire II will once again feature a seamless combination of real-time strategy and 4X gameplay, delivering sprawling empires, huge tactical fleet battles, and unforgettable gameplay moments that can only be found in Sins II. Players who wishlist now will receive a reminder when the game releases in just under two weeks.

“It’s been amazing to see how hyped fans are for the release of Sins of a Solar Empire II on Steam,” said Brian Clair, Director of Publishing at Stardock Entertainment. “We have seen so many people who were fans of the original Sins, and Sins: Rebellion, sharing their excitement for this long-awaited sequel. Sins of a Solar Empire II will deliver epic galactic warfare and strategy to players. We can’t wait to share more with you and celebrate the launch of Sins of a Solar Empire II on August 15!”

Sins II will give players more tools than ever to form their own play styles as they battle, scheme, monopolize, and manipulate their way to victory. The sequel also introduces new emergent tactics and strategies that reward creative thinking. Players can protect vulnerable units by body-blocking missiles with their Titan, launch a surprise attack from a rogue asteroid when its orbit reaches the enemy's back line, or guard themselves against a backstab with a time-locked alliance.

Sins of a Solar Empire II Key Features:

• Three unique playable races including the Advent, Vasari, and TEC return with two sub-factions that utilize unique items, mechanics, and Empire Systems to achieve total victory
  
• Orbiting planets that dynamically alter the map during play, requiring players to gradually shift their strategies as new challenges and opportunities present themselves
  
• Enhanced tactical battles and deeper combat simulation featuring tracking turrets and missiles that can be blocked by ships or shot down
  
• Minor factions that provide unique capabilities to players that befriend them through a new influence system
  
• New economy model that allows players to truly customize their worlds to fit production needs
  
• 10-player multiplayer matches that allow players to seamlessly join or resume games
  
• Build and command thousands of high fidelity ships that are effortlessly powered by a new 64-bit multicore engine
  
• Capital ships that can be equipped with special augmentations to be more effective in battle
  
• New in-game mod browser allows for easy installation for mods and maps
  

Sins of a Solar Empire II is available to wishlist now. At launch, the base game edition will be offered at a special discount price of $39.99 for a limited time. Additionally, the Sins of a Solar Empire II - Premium Edition will be available for a limited-time price of $79.99 and will include the base game, first Content Pass and the Sins of a Solar Empire II soundtrack.

To follow on from our previous developer blogs aimed at onboarding new players into our flagship turn-based space 4X game, Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova, this week I thought we’d have a look at a simple system you can use to select a plan of technological development that will best fit your current game situation.


Technology, from a top down perspective, is pretty easy to understand in Space 4X: you generate some kind of research resource, in GalCiv ours is conveniently called Research, and once you’ve accumulated enough of it, you can use it to unlock new capabilities for you to play with.


Technologies, or Techs, are usually unlocked in some kind of sequence, and an advanced technology may require the unlocking of one or more prerequisite Techs before you can select it. It’s all pretty intuitive: you’ll need to discover a laser gun before you can build an advanced laser gun, and you’ll need to discover both lasers and space stations before you can access an orbital laser platform.

Tech trees are often subdivided into different research fields, for flavor and to keep everything more organized. Furthermore, technologies generally become progressively more expensive the further down the technology tree you explore.

In Galactic Civilizations IV, Research points are generated by the Citizens on your Core World working in tandem with Research Districts and Improvements, from research modules on your Economic Starbases, from various in-game events, as a reward for picking certain Ideological Traits and many more.

Techs can also be traded with other Civilizations, and are relatively valuable as a trade commodity as advancing through the research tree is an effective way to win the game.

Part of the strategy in a space 4X comes from plotting your trajectory through the technology tree to unlock the abilities, equipment and other fun stuff you’ll need at each given point of the game.

GalCiv is a sandbox oriented 4X game, featuring many setup options to customize the map and endless variations of in-game situations to face. This requires a fairly large and varied Tech tree, and GalCiv tries to avoid any one path being an optimal solution regardless of the in-game conditions, meaning new players can get a little overwhelmed with the choices on offer for the first few plays.

So what do you want to research first?


This is a huge topic with an infinite number of permutations: in situations like these we want to be thinking in terms of systems, rather than goals, because systems be refined as we develop as players. Here I’ll give you a very basic system that you can use to analyze your game state and figure out how you want to proceed down the tech tree.

Our goal is to win the game, and crucially, we must not lose the game before we can win it. There are many ways to lose, but picking the wrong Techs only to run afoul of a situation that those Techs have not prepared you for, is almost guaranteed to qualify.


For beginners, defeat usually means being militarily invaded or culturally dominated by your stronger neighbors. Alongside defending our civilization from these threats, we must also maximize our empire’s size and ability to generate game winning resources to keep ourselves strong enough to face challenges until we achieve victory ourselves. Running out of Credits or Food might not immediately end the game but it makes the game a lot more difficult to win until you’ve fixed that particular issue.

So, when the game starts and as the first couple of dozen turns develop, you want to be looking at your position on the map, relative to your neighbors and game-winning resources such as high class planets, strategic resources and Precursor artefacts.


This start as the Arceans gives us lots of room to expand but eventually we’re going to run into the Xeloxi who have a lot of colonies around them and are likely to grow fast and strong. There’s no immediate need to defend and in fact, focusing on the Weapons or Logistics line of Techs would stunt our growth.

So, first we grow, but we must intersperse growth and economic Techs with military technology too: one of the triggers for the AI to declare war is you not fielding a military large enough to counter theirs if they did decide to attack. You must not look weak!

In this case, we could focus on Techs that increase the movement speed of our ships, to get our Colony Ships and Constructors out to where they need to be before our rivals.


We also want to improve the economic output of our Core Worlds, whether that’s through increasing the amount of Citizens we can house (the green Planetology branch of Science) or by increasing our Manufacturing output (the orange Industrialisation branch of Engineering).


But before too long, it is imperative that we defend what we’ve built, and this is where the Weapons and Logistics lines come in.

There is more to defense than just warfare. We can build trade routes with our neighbors and make ourselves unattractive for invasion by making it financially damaging for them to declare war on us. The yellow economic branch of Governance can help here, by increasing the number and value of the Trade Licenses we can setup with other Civilizations in the game.


This is a very useful type of “defense” that simultaneously increases our growth by maximizing Credit generation, while keeping our relations with other players high enough that they’ll be less inclined to attack.

In the same screenshot you can also see the blue diplomatic branch of Governance, another defensive branch that effectively makes it harder for your enemies to declare war. Culture (above that) helps you defend from enemy Influence attacks, and increases your own threat vector with your own culture too!

On some maps, with very aggressive neighbors starting very close to you and very few empty worlds to colonize, it might be smarter to build your military a lot faster than this, instead only researching what you need to keep your defensive forces strong enough to dissuade invasion and perhaps start a war of your own, to take enemy worlds.

This is a potentially endless topic and so I have to end it here. My intentions are to get you thinking about reading the situation on the game map turn by turn, and then picking your research topics to both keep yourself in the game while maximizing your potential “to keep on keeping on”, until you get a chance to reach out for victory.

As you get better at the game, you’ll have outgrown the “defend or grow” thing. Then, you’ll learn the various Tech trees, and what they can offer you in terms of long term strategies and from there, you can develop your own playstyle. Some players love to rush for the military techs and overwhelm their enemies with advanced armadas of deadly warships, while others race for Culture, Influence and Precursor relic techs to try to win the game in a less-aggressive fashion.

As always, the choice is yours!

Following on from last week where we gave some advice on game settings to new players coming into Galactic Civilizations IV for the first time, this time around we’re going to examine a crucial 4X game feature that often goes overlooked by new players: the “goodie hut”, or Anomalies, to give them their proper GalCiv name.

The 4X gameplay staple mechanic of collectable resources randomly scattered across the map goes way back to the original Sid Meier’s Civilization at least, and is so ingrained into strategy gaming in general that veterans of the genre tend only to notice it if it’s absent, seriously unbalanced in terms of pay-out or requires too much player attention. In the latter case, players tend to turn the feature off completely.

We’ve tried to make this feature a lot more interesting and fun, while ensuring it stays relevant for longer into the game without it taking too much attention away from the player.


Very generally speaking, Space Junk and Capsules will offer a some kind of situation to the player and ask for a decision to be made, the choice of which determines the outcome. Most of the outcomes are good, while negative ones are greatly limited in scope and mostly there for flavor, to provide just a little risk for excitement purposes rather than inflicting a lot of damage: nobody enjoys having their game ruined by a seriously powerful, random punishment.

The pickups on offer from Space Junk and Capsules vary greatly, and range from simple payouts of Credits and strategic resources, powerful ship components that can be added to your Commander’s ships to some very powerful and interesting story-based events.

Capsules tend to pay out more intact or useful items, while Space Junk is often less valuable but can often be attached to some of the more dangerous or exotic in-game Events, but this isn’t a strict rule and there’s a lot of variance between the two to prevent the game feeling predictable.

Artifacts work somewhat different, and will usually place a powerful player-useable item into The Vault. These items can then be played as a special ability at any time during your turn, with many varied effects.


This one provides an instant +500 Influence points to any planet you control. In the early game that’s a lot of Influence and can be used to great effect to either resist enemy Culture, or push your own cultural dominance on your neighbors.

To address the common complaint that players feel compelled to manually grab every single random goodie they can, in Galactic Civilization’s IV: Supernova we limit the ability to survey Anomalies to specialized ships with the Flag module. This means players aren’t motivated to build a ton of extraneous resource collectors for the purpose of cashing in on all that loot at the expense of enjoying other aspects of the early game exploration phase.

While we’re on this topic, it’s worth mentioning that GalCiv includes a related system of in-game Events that use a similar multiple choice system to create potentially branching stories, and these work in tandem with Anomalies to breath some extra life and player immersion into the cold, dark and empty void that space is usually imagined to be.


Immersion aside though, here are a few reasons why the inclusion of randomized pickups works so well at the start of a 4X game, and why new players really should expend the effort chasing them down.

Firstly, in any game with procedurally (or randomly) generated maps, scattering some useful pickups around for the player to find serves to encourage exploration out from their starting position in the hope of finding some extra gold, credits, metal, technologies or other useful items.

Why it is that some new players have a tendency towards turtling up in their starting location is a complex topic and I’ve got no easy explanation for it to suit a short developer journal like this. Suffice to say, in most strategy games as a beginner, sitting around in your small starting position hoping to outpace your rivals by making the most of your meagre resources is a losing strategy.


The computer players in GalCiv will quickly send out scouts to explore, and Flag Ships to claim the various Anomalies scattered throughout the sector. You need to do the same if you want to keep apace of the race for galactic dominance. Anomalies are one way to get players out exploring space and finding all that good stuff, including the best planets, strategic resources, Precursor Relics and the locations of your rivals.

Anomalies are also a lucrative resource to fight over with your neighbors: sure, you’ve got that Open Borders treaty to stop that bigger neighbor from invading you for your stuff, but now they’re snaffling up all those Artifacts you didn’t get around to claiming. Is that a reason to go to war? Or do you redirect your own Flag module-enabled vessels to their territory to respond in kind?

In many classic 4X games, the “goodie huts” are an early game feature that are mostly exhausted by the time the eXploit and eXterminate phases of the game come into play. Put more simply, after the first couple of dozen turns, you and the AI will have found them all and that’s it.


In Galactic Civilizations IV, researching various Techs in the tech-tree will unlock the ability to detect even more Anomalies, and this provides the player with an interesting decision: if you’ve somehow managed to build more Flag modules (and there are several ways to do this!) it can be great strategy to unlock more and more Anomalies and claim their secrets.

This can be particularly useful if you’ve not got a whole lot of physical space around you to claim, with few habitable planets available for traditional resource generation.

Furthermore, many of these goodies can be sold for Credits and even with lots of space to explore and expand into, those extra Credits can come in handy to rush-build that Colony Ship you need to beat your neighbor to that high class planet between the two of you!

Finally, having some random goodies dotted around is just plain fun! It’s really cool to find a powerful weapon in a floating capsule, or an Artifact that can damage an entire enemy fleet, helping you win an otherwise unwinnable conflict!

Hopefully this has given you some insight into why Anomalies exist, and why you should go grab them!

Till next time!

Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova has had a large influx of new players in recent months and the game can be a little overwhelming to first time players. We’re going to take a look at a good game setup for a first time player. Before we do though, let’s look at some of the key ingredients that go into shaping a playthrough.

There are 23 prebuilt playable factions in the game, that we call the Core Civilizations, and while the AlienGPT custom civilization builder ensures these aren’t your only options, each of these Core factions play quite differently.


Not only do they have their own specific strengths and weaknesses when compared to one another, but they’ve been carefully designed to generate interesting gameplay situations when they’re added to a game with other complementary civilization choices.

So, how is it that the various civilizations differ from one another and what causes these interesting situations to occur?

Part of this is down to the game AI that each civilization uses when the computer plays them, which is partly determined by their Personality settings: Opportunistic civs will strike when they see a weakness, while Cultural civs tend to favor playstyles that increase their Influence across the galaxy.


But this combination of game AI traits also reacts to the current game state at any given time, and so they’ll be making decisions based on the actions taken by human and AI players around them too.

That Opportunistic civ will see a weakened neighbor as a chance to strike and it may invade, conquering more territory and making itself stronger in the process. In the same situation, a Peaceful civ is less likely to take an aggressive stance and this can allow the weaker nation to recover their strength.

Added to this, each Civilization has a set of gameplay characteristics called Civilization Traits, and Civilization Abilities.

These characteristics help inform the player (and the game AI) on how they might best be played: the Corporate Sector are very powerful when they’re played as intended: building a very powerful economy, with strong trade networks. This means they’re better off keeping out of early wars unless they’re absolutely necessary, and using their abilities and traits to powerhouse their economic output. This will eventually lead them into a commanding game position, as all else being equal, they can afford to buy their way out of pretty much any situation they’ll face.

The strengths and weaknesses of each civilization in any given situation and their positions relative to one another, added to the way both the player and the AI is playing the game, creates an ever evolving set of game conditions, and this is the real meat of GalCiv’s dynamic gameplay.


Picking many of the more peaceful, pacifistic civilizations who prefer to build their empires up and trade with others will create a game that is dramatically different to a game with mostly Aggressive, Cruel and Xenophobic behavioral traits.

For new players we generally recommend a mix of civilization types, as it brings the most dynamic games: the various AI players will react and counter-react to one another in innumerable interesting ways as the campaign develops.

But you don’t have to: it’s possible you want to play a very relaxed and peaceful game where you chase victory through non-military means. Or, you’re all in on the warfare and so you want to get into battle as quickly as possible.

But that leads us to the next question: who do you play as in your first few games?

I’m going to suggest a good setup for a first playthrough of Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova.

This is what I’d consider to be a fairly well balanced game, where you’ll face a mix of threats and situations, and get to use most of the tools at your disposal in facing those threats.


For this kind of game, let’s pick the Terran Alliance: they’re a great all round civ and it’s no surprise that they’re the most played Core Civilization.

The Voyagers Civilization Ability means they’ll capture territory very quickly in the early game, and having a head start on exploration and colony acquisition can be very helpful when you’re starting out with GalCiv4, as the AI is very good at expanding its empire early on and you need to keep up.


Inspired roughly means you’ll have a lot more Leaders in your game, and because of the Faction system, the more Leaders you have, the better tuned your Empire will become in the long run.


Here we’ll keep the settings fairly standard, the key point here is you want enough space for about 10 civs in play and not to have any really extreme settings. You should adjust the difficulty to suit your experience with 4X games. If you’ve not played one before, I’d drop it down to one of the easier settings as you learn. The GalCiv AI is very strong when compared to most other space 4X games.


Here I’ve picked what I think is a fairly balanced mix of AI opponents, who will all have the capacity to play in various ways and none of them are completely one-dimensional in the way they approach the game, that’s not GalCiv’s style.

That said, we’ve thrown in some potentially dangerous and antagonistic rivals here: the Drengin Empire, the Festron Hunt and the Cosmic Contaminant will all likely give you trouble at some point. Their actions will likely create some very interesting opportunities for dialogue and diplomacy with the other, less aggressive civilizations once wars start kicking off across the various map sectors.

The Altarian Republic and Mimot Brotherhood are unlikely to be directly aggressive, unless you seriously provoke them, but they’re dangerous in their own way, pushing out Influence or just swallowing up all the habitable planets respectively. They’re going to be potential long term trade partners if you’re lucky enough to to border them too closely.

The Baratak Grove, Torian Regime, Altarian Republic and the Corporate Sector all play quite differently to one another but here I’d broadly categorize them as being “neutral” to your interests, meaning that their behavior could go any way. If you’ve got something they want, they could well declare war to take it as they can be opportunistic and expansionist in their nature, but they’re also more likely to help out in a bind that the Drengin or Cosmic Contaminant.

With this mix of Civs to play as, you’ll get a feel for most of the game mechanics that GalCiv has to offer, and you’re really free to take the game in whatever direction you want to. The Terran Alliance don’t have to be played peacefully, hell, the lore shows that they’re certainly one of the most dangerous factions in the known galaxy when they put their minds to it!

These settings will give you a drastically different game each time, depending on the relative placement of the AI factions.


Here, we got unlucky (or lucky, if you love early tension and threat!) as our immediate neighbours in this smaller sector are the dreaded Drengin Empire and the Cosmic Contaminant, by far one of the most aggressive and unpleasant factions in the game.


This isn’t too bad though, we’ve got the Torians and Corporate Sector in an adjacent sector of the map to trade with, and the Mimot and Altarians a bit further on too. If we can hold the Drengin and CC off for a while, this could be a very exciting position to play!


With the same settings, I try a new map, and this time, things are very different.

We’ve got the Arceans very close by, and things could go either way with those guys as they’re very strong in wartime. However, they can be friendly if you keep on their good side, and we’ve also got the Altarians in the perfect position to have Altarian neighbors: quite far away! This means you’ve got two potential trade partners.


This won’t be an easy first game though: despite my initial assessment, the Altarians are growing quite large already, and though they tend towards peaceful play, their Influence output is very dangerous and they’ll have to be dealt with, one way or another. The Arceans have also taken a lot of those valuable strategic resources you’ll need later too…

These settings should provide hours of fun and can be played many times over due to the differences in map generation and AI placement.

Enjoy!