Galactic Civilizations IV News

Hello everyone! This week, I wanted to talk to you all about the GalCiv IV’s Ship Designer.

As a feature, the Ship Designer allows players to do two important things:

1. Create custom ships specially tailored to their needs
   
2. 
   
3. Create really, really cool designs
   

In this Dev Journal, I am going to focus on the latter.

As you might guess from my username, I am a big fan of all things dragons - therefore, it should come as no surprise that the Drath are my favorite civilization.

And so, I would like to walk you through how I went about creating my new Drath ship, the ExoDragon.


The first step in creating a new ship design is opening the Ship Designer.

The Ship Designer can be found in the Main Menu left of the Workshop, Language, and Options buttons.

You can also access the Ship Designer mid-game from any Shipyard though options like Components and Operation Abilities will be limited by your current Technology.


Before fully launching the Ship Designer, you will be prompted to select Ship Style, Ship Colors, Sub Surface Textures, and Material Modifiers.

“Ship Style” refers to the “set” of Ship Designs used by each civilization - in this case, the Drath Ship Style is used by the Drath. Completed designs get added to the selected “set” and made available to any civilization using that Style.

Ship Colors, Sub Surface Textures, and Material Modifiers are not saved with any completed design but instead applied to all ships according to the current Civilization. Players can change these settings later while creating/editing a custom Civilization or setting up a new game.

An easy way to find what Sub Surface Textures and Material Modifiers a Civilization uses by default is to make a copy of that Civilization, edit it, and navigate to the “Fleets” tab of that Civilization. For your convenience, however, I’ve assembled them all into one easy table!




By setting these options in the Ship Designer, we can get a better understanding of how each design will look in-game.

For this endeavor, I was designing a ship for the Drath, so I chose the Drath Style and changed the rest to match the default Drath settings:

• Drath Ship Color
  
• Scales and Orange Peel Subsurface Materials
  
• Metallic (Bright Lights) and Low Reflectivity (Bright Lights) Material Modifiers
  

With this out of the way, I launched the Designer.


After launching the Designer, I opted to get the ball rolling by creating a New Ship Class instead of choosing to Edit an existing design. This was because, for my purposes, I wanted a blank canvas.


Next, I chose to leave the Ship Type as “Unclassified.”

By making this choice, I avoided locking my design into a specific role. For reference, selecting “Flag” would have attached a Flag Module, “Colony” a Colony Module, and so on. An Unclassified ship with none of these Components can later be copied and edited to be any ship under the sun.

With the ship type selected, I was free to “Start New Design” and enter the Designer proper!


Now it was time to get started… almost.

Before I set off on creating a Dragon, I needed to set the stage.

The first step of my preparations was choosing a Hull. For a new Design made from scratch, it’s important to select a Hull as a Hull determines your ship’s Capacity for components and when it can be unlocked.

Hull Capacities are as follows:

• Tiny = 8
  
• Small = 18
  
• Medium = 32
  
• Large = 60
  
• Huge = 100
  
• Cargo = 20 (for non-combat ships)
  

I opted for a Large Hull for this design.

Next, I added a Hexagon the size of a standard tile for reference. To do so, I navigated to the Cosmetic Pieces and sorted by Style. The Hexagon piece appears near the top.

Once selected, I held CTRL + Shift and clicked anywhere within the viewport - snapping the Hexagon to the center/origin/root of the scene.

Lastly, I ensured that I had Advanced Edit Mode and Design Gizmos enabled (personal preference). I found these options at the bottom of the screen next to the animation toggle buttons.


With that out of the way, it was time to start creating!

I wanted my dragon to feel more “organic” than the usual Gal Civ spaceship, so I decided to start my search for parts with the Festron. Their carapace-y pieces looked appropriately draconic with the Scales Sub Surface Texture which was exactly what I wanted.

I started the design by chaining a handful of these pieces together slightly scaled down and tapering out to create the body.

Along the way, I adjusted each piece using the control panel on the bottom right-hand side. Often, using the scroll wheel while hovering over an individual slider offers precision that can be hard to achieve by hand.

Once I had my base, I switched focus to creating natural-looking movements.


Starting at the “neck” I used the animation tool to create an Oscillating Rotation on the X and Y axis of each section.

The Ship Designer’s animation tools allow you to edit and animate rotation, offset/motion, and scale. For animation, each of these attributes is animated in a loop where you the designer can control the speed and adjustment.

By default, animating Rotation spins each piece around a specified axis but by ticking oscillation, I achieved the motion I was after.

By oscillating ~30 degrees in either direction on the X and Y axis, I made the dragon “look” left then right, up, and then down. By halving the speed of the left-right motion, I gave it the appearance of “looking around” in an organic fashion.

With these motions repeated for each section of the body, my dragon was moving!

One more useful tip: to reset all animation, hit the pause button and then add any piece. Doing so will return the animation to neutral.


My next step was developing the head. For the head, I drew from a handful of different styles - most notably the Festron, Iconian, DLC, and Altarian styles.

Important to note is that I did not use the Mirroring toggle on the control panel for any of these parts. Normally, designers would want to “Mirror” parts like wings across their designs to halve the time they spend attaching them.

This technique would not work for my dragon as Mirroring in the Ship Designer happens across central axes and is not based on the piece the mirrored object is attached to.

A mirrored horn would end up floating away from the head when it looks to one side or another which I wanted to avoid.

Instead, I utilized the Flip toggles on the control panel to match each duplicate part accurately.


As I continued, I added Iconian-style wings and “eyes” using the Basic Light 005 piece. I gave each wing slight “stretching” and “dipping” movements, exaggerated by the preexisting movement of the body.


Nearly done, I added and animated two arms with grasping claws and removed the reference Hexagon.

Lastly, I did one more pass I chose certain pieces of my dragon where I wanted to Invert the material - switching the Primary and Secondary colors and styles.

With that complete, my dragon was finished!


I took a quick moment to capture some screenshots.

With the black background toggled (found next to the animation buttons at the bottom of the screen), I used the “Print Screen” button on my keyboard to take screenshots with transparent backgrounds. I was then able to retrieve these photos from my GalCiv4>ScreenShots folder.


With that, I saved the design with the temporary name of DragonShip_01.

Once saved, you can find your designs in your list of available designs for that Style. With any of these selected, you can hit the edit button and return to make adjustments, add components, and so on!


As an example, you may want to download the ExoDragon for yourself and equip it with some powerful Beam Weapons like the Disruptor Pulse Array or Doom Ray.

By going in and editing the design, you can do just that! You can even hide these components (or any piece you choose) if you want the effect but don’t care for the appearance.

From here, customize to your heart's content! Though be aware of each part's Mass and manufacturing time.

One more thing to be aware of is that your custom ship designs are available to the AI as well as yourself so don’t be surprised if you spot your ships prowling the galaxy!


To wrap everything up, I’d like to thank you for reading and encourage you to share your own designs on the Gal Civ IV Steam Workshop!

All you need to do is click “Upload Design,” give it a name and description, and send it on its way.

I’ve had a blast designing the ExoDragon but most of all, I’m excited to see what you create!

Check out the ExoDrake for yourself here!

In Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova the beliefs, customs and social dynamics of your civilization are determined by your Culture, consisting of an amalgamation of eight different in-game Ideologies. These aren’t just there for flavor, they can bestow powerful benefits and abilities for your fledgling empire.

Let’s take a look at how Culture and Ideology works together!



Each Ideology is comprised of a tree of linked bonuses, known as Ideological Traits, which can be unlocked by spending Culture Points.


Culture Points are generated each turn with extra points awarded for making ideologically motivated decisions in Events, through various Improvements on Core Worlds, and through many other game systems here and there. Each Ideological Trait purchased with your Culture Points will become progressively more expensive as the game progresses from start to finish.

Furthermore, each Civilization will have a Cultural Awareness score for each Ideology in the Cultural Progression system: this represents a percentage of the Culture Points that will be deducted from the total number of points required to unlock a trait, and is known as the Ideology Discount for that Ideology.


In short, the larger your Ideology Discount, the faster you’ll progress through that particular Ideology. Cultural Awareness (and thus Ideology Discount) points are accumulated in various ways, primarily through your Civilization’s preferred Ideology pick at the start of the game, and then as rewards for making choices that support that Ideology when Events appear throughout the game.

Here’s a list of the available Ideologies and simple summary of what each one represents.



While Ideological Traits have been picked to be consistent with the underlying philosophies that underpin that Ideology, there’s a variety of effects within each one, and those picks aren’t always quite as simplistic as “this is the warfare ideology” and “this ideology deals with economy”.


Sure, you’ll find that focusing on some Ideologies will heavily buff a specific aspect of your game: for example, Pacifism contains many Diplomacy bonuses, but these will usually be accompanied by other, more varied effects that suit the philosophy of pacifism. The one exception is Progressivism, which is almost exclusively hyper-focused on increasing your ability to research.

The Ideological Trait Altruism in the Pacifism tree here grants a very significant +2 Diplomacy bonus, but it also grants you a 10% proportion of all Planetary Inputs from each homeworld of a friendly Civilization to your own homeworld. This is a powerful Ideological Trait if you are intending on maintaining friendly relations with many other factions, and depending on the way your game is going, it could be a life-saver.


Let’s say you started the game in a position where you were beaten to the best colonies by your closer rivals and you’ve been somewhat economically outpaced as a result. You can’t get the military you need to beat them by force, and you haven’t quite got the cultural output you’d need to push their borders back with influence either. At times like this, trading and rushing for Diplomacy boosting Techs and Ideological Traits, like the Pacifism line, can be very effective.

The diplomatic boost you’ll get from stacking those Diplomacy modifiers will keep your larger neighbors from attacking you early, granting you valuable time and space to build your own economy, set up trade routes (remembering that trading with other civilizations also grants you a diplomacy bonus!) construct more defensive stations and fleets, and so on.

Furthermore, your smaller, taller economy will benefit from those extra Planetary Inputs you’re skimming from all the friendlier civilizations in the game. And there’ll be more friends on the map, because you’re now an expert diplomat!

All of the early traits in each Ideology are useful, and you’ll often be torn as to what to pic. This is deliberate, we want you to make tough (but hopefully fun) choices!


If I can, Cultural Awareness permitting or not, I often like to beeline for Moral Relativism in the Nihilism tree: the ability to gain Cultural Awareness in every ideology when you make an event choice is very, very powerful. This allows you to eventually pick choices from whatever Ideology you want, and get a reasonable Ideological Discount on each: very nice if you want to pick and choose the best traits from each tree!


The Culture and Ideology system is designed to work in tandem with the Tech tree too: you may be investing all you have into your military, to face down an incoming threat, and that choice will likely be hampering your research efforts. However, by jumping into the Progressivism line of traits, you can pick up the slack and put those Culture Points you’ve got piling up to some good use!

At the end of each tree, there is a powerful “capstone” trait. I won’t spoil them, but they are very desirable and grabbing one during the course of your game will often enable you to begin to snowball in power in some way. Of course, your enemies have access to these too…

Whether you focus your efforts on just one or two ideologies to make the most of your Cultural Awareness, or you just pick the traits that give you the most useful bonuses for you at that point of the game as you accumulate the Culture Points to grab them, is up to you!

Hello everyone, nice to meet you! I am DraconicDesign, the new Associate Game Designer on Galactic Civilizations IV. Moving forward, I will be making periodic contributions to the GalCiv IV: Supernova Dev Journals. I hope you’ll look forward to hearing more from Battlemode and myself as we continue spotlighting GalCiv's various systems!

In Galactic Civilizations IV, Influence is a powerful (and often overlooked) tool in many players’ arsenals. Influence controls the spread of your civilization’s borders and, with a high enough Influence, will allow you to overwhelm another civilization’s borders and even flip their worlds to your control. If played correctly, Influence can enable players to defeat opposing civilizations without ever going to war.

As a 4X player, my playstyle often revolves around economics and wealth. I love to amass huge quantities of gold or credits and spend my way to victory. To shake things up, I wanted to explore a different playstyle focusing on victory through Culture and Influence.

My goal: Conquer an Enemy Civilization through Non-Violent Means

My first step on this path was picking my Civilization.


I decided to choose the Phalenoids.

Both “Likeable” and “Persuasive,” the Phalenoids have a natural advantage in Diplomacy. Phalenoid Citizens also prefer to befriend other species and receive an Approval bonus when sharing worlds. And, of course, the Phalenoids have the unique “Nocturnal” ability which provides a 15-month alternating cycle of buffs.

During the “Season of Waking,” the Phalenoids receive boosts to Manufacturing and Growth, while in the “Season of Dreaming” they receive boosts to Research and Influence.

To further enhance my odds of success, I opted to raise the “Influential” trait to its highest setting and subtracted a point from “Brutal.”


From the outset at turn 1, the buffs provided by the Nocturnal ability’s “Season of Waking” allowed me to build a strong foundation. The +20% Growth lent itself to rapidly expanding my population and colonizing many nearby worlds. +20% to Manufacturing enabled the rapid establishment of districts.

With these effects combined, I established manufacturing and research engines in my home world – a prerequisite for unlocking Influence-improving technologies and improvements.

Soon after, I encountered the Torians. They would quickly become the target of my cultural conquest.


To enhance my Influence Growth as early as possible, I adopted the Heart of the Empire and Cultural Values policies. Additionally, I opted to spec into the Egalitarian Ideology for its free colony ships and Influence-boosting traits.


Starting on turn 16, my Civ entered the “Season of Dreaming” and gained a 20% boost to Influence growth. This effect bolstered the already rapidly growing Influence on both my Core Worlds. Sensor Array Orbital Improvements, technologies like Xeno Entertainment, and Cultural Districts enhanced my strategy – particularly on Naledi I.

The planet “Naledi I” sat in between two competing Torian Core Worlds, and its rapidly growing Influence allowed it to quickly flip the majority of either planet’s Zone of Control (ZoC for short.)


The power of this Influence was enough to initiate rebellion on the neighboring Torian planets as early as turn 30. Around the same time, I became aware of the Torian’s steadily increasing dissatisfaction with my growing cultural influence.

To prevent relations from souring to the point of war, I established several trade routes, utilized the Goodwill Tour Executive Order, and researched the Emissaries and Diplomacy technologies to gain diplomatic bonuses. This strategy worked long enough for me to greatly improve my Culture-focused Starbases and steadily eat away at the Torian ZoC.


By turn 62, I had eaten away most of the Torian ZoC.


...And by turn 68 they had declared war. I had flown too close to the sun and war was inevitable.

The war waged and all the while my Influence grew – and by turn 74 I had completely subsumed the ZoC of both neighboring Torian Colonies. Around that time, as many as 75% of the citizens on either planet were rebelling due to my Influence.

On the opposite front, I aimed to conquer the Torian home world beyond my Influence-generating range.


I used the “Propaganda” invasion tactic as it technically stuck to my goal of a non-violent victory and managed to take over the Torian capital of Toria before too long.

Unfortunately, Naledi I changed hands to the Torians around the same time – and while I reconquered it soon after, the damage had been done. The percentage of rebelling citizens on both neighboring planets had reset dropping to a measly 1%.

This painful loss meant I could no longer wait for the colonies to flip – they would both fall to the same Propaganda that brought down Toria before them.


On turn 104, I conquered the final Torian colony – earning me a bittersweet victory.

I had won, but not in the manner I had set out to.


...And yet there was a silver lining.

A minor faction, the Thalan, had spawned on a planet within my ZoC and had declared war on me the moment it arrived. A mere 10 turns into its existence, 34% of the planet’s population was already rebelling. There was hope for a non-violent takeover yet.


New Cultural Starbases poured Influence onto the planet and turn by turn the rebellion percentage ticked up. Then disaster strikes – the Thalans were at war with the Festron! And the Festron began their invasion of the planet.

It came right down to the wire. The Invasion had been underway for several turns and the percentage was 99%.


And BOOM! Sweet victory, the planet was mine.

After a long 118 turns, I had finally conquered a planet without ever setting foot.

In conquering Koit II, no fleets or troops were lost, no planetary defenses were fought, and no invasions were staged. The cultural conversion of Koit II even allowed me to circumvent the restriction of one invader of a planet at a time - as the Festron had begun invading and would have prevented my own.


The ability to capture huge swaths of another civilization’s ZoC isn’t without risk. During my conquest of the Torians, I was able to march my Starbases progressively closer to their core worlds until they were mere tiles away.

The largest pitfall of this strategy is the gigantic Diplomatic de-buff that results. Opposing civilizations do not appreciate your encroachment into their territory and onto their planets. The further you push, the closer they come to declaring war and striking back.

Despite its drawbacks, this strategy is very effective at winning wars before they start. Proximity to these foreign planets allowed my Starbases to exert additional Influence – pushing each planet to rebel and accelerating the countdown to when they flip to my control. By capturing these planets this way, you can ignore the risks of combat and the negative effects of war weariness. And when war does arrive, you have a powerful advantage with Starbases positioned so close: each one can be equipped with defenses ready to destroy enemy fleets. The final great advantage is the ability to station your own fleets tiles away from an enemy planet safely within your own ZoC.

By playing a strong defensive game and letting your Influence continue to build the pressure, you can make victory inevitable. Each planet you flip contributes to your growing Influence. The wider your ZoC, the fewer resources and options enemy civilizations will have. The longer a war drags on, the closer each planet gets to flipping to your control.

Play smart and you too can expand your Influence across the stars!

[h2]Empires will rise and fall as Sins of a Solar Empire II is now available to purchase on Steam.[/h2]
[h3]A new era begins as the sequel to one of the most beloved strategy titles of all time releases today on Steam with new dynamic maps, deeper combat, and more.[/h3]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1575940/Sins_of_a_Solar_Empire_II/

The base game edition is available at a special discount price of $39.99 for a limited time.

Sins of a Solar Empire II - Premium Edition is available for a limited-time price of $79.99 and includes the base game, first Content Pass (see image below for details!) and the Sins of a Solar Empire II soundtrack.

The sequel to the iconic Sins of a Solar Empire, a classic strategy title known for masterfully blending real-time and 4X strategy gameplay, Sins of a Solar Empire II boasts a new engine that allows for even more epic space battles, larger sprawling empires, and signature unforgettable Sins moments.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

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Sins of a Solar Empire II features gameplay enhancements that let players take full control of how they conquer the galaxy. Emergent tactics like protecting vulnerable units from missile strikes with Titan ships, or launching surprise ambushes using the dynamically changing orbits of planets are now possible. Sins of a Solar Empire II will reward players for creative thinking, effective use of economic systems, and making convenient allies as they take over the galaxy.

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[h2]Purchase Options:[/h2]



[h2]Screenshots:[/h2]

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!