Galactic Civilizations IV News

[h2]Galactic Civilizations IV Update Now Live[/h2]
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We’re excited to announce the release of Galactic Civilizations IV v2.91 which brings a host of improvements and refinements that will make your journey through the cosmos even more enjoyable.

[h3]Key Highlights:[/h3]
Gameplay Improvements: Enjoy smoother gameplay with fixes to various quests, including the “Cosmic Containment” evolution and the frequency of the “Orb of Draginol” and “Retribution” quests. We’ve also made adjustments to ensure that the effects of the “Precursor Heir” are felt globally.

Visual Enhancements: We’ve updated all remaining icons to align with the Galactic Civilizations IV aesthetic, ensuring a cohesive and polished look throughout the game.

Text and UI Refinements: We’ve polished descriptions and tooltips for better clarity, corrected minor text errors, and improved the user interface for a more intuitive experience. Expect smoother camera transitions and enhanced visibility of important stats on the Shipyard Screen.

In my previous developer blog #78, I gave a quick overview of the dreaded Cosmic Contaminant and their aggressive “all against the galaxy” playstyle. This week we’re going to examine a Core Civilization with a contrasting playstyle that can favor a defensive posture with the occasional military excursion to secure a needed Strategic Resource.


Ladies and gentlemen, I’m pleased to introduce you to the Luxar Dominion!

The Luxar are a civilization made up of Citizens with the Crystalline Phenotype, who need no Food but will reproduce very slowly until significant amounts of Promethium are stockpiled. To make up for this, they have fairly high Statistics compared to your average humanoid, with high Diligence, Intelligence and Resolve ensuring you get more out of your Citizens than most other Civilizations.


These high performance Citizens, along with the Phenotype description above, implies one particular playstyle for the Luxar Dominion: accumulate as much Promethion as possible, avoiding spending it as much as possible to build your Growth rate, and then maximizing Housing and Approval boosting assets onto your planets. Your Citizens will become a powerful economy in their own right towards the end of the game, ensuring your smaller empire remains competitive towards the end of the game: your low Growth rate means less colonization, and you are likely to be quite small compared to your neighbors for a while.

One of the downsides to being the small fish in a pond full of sharks like the Drengin Empire, Korath Clan, Cosmic Contaminant and Yor Singularity, is that you’ll attract early wars, and you’ll be playing either very diplomatically, or very defensively as a consequence of that. This is where the Luxar’s Civilization Abilities can help.


The large combat bonuses granted by Paranoid only apply to fleet battles within the borders of your own Influence but when stacked with a well upgraded Military Starbase and a (hopefully) technologically advanced fleet of warships, the Luxar become extremely difficult to beat when defending their own territory.


The Luxar Dominion’s Civilization Traits further emphasize this defensive nature, with Courageous granting a large Planetary Defense bonus, with Gentle actually reducing their ability to counter-invade the worlds of other Civilizations.


This is their one trade-off, as they also get some pretty nice economic boosters with Rich, Clever and Militant boosting Credit production, Research and starting Control respectively.

Furthermore, to bolster their offensive and defensive strategic capabilities, the Telepathy ability grants access to two active use Executive Orders, both of which are really fun because they give you options in the form of an Event.


Pandemonium is a multi-purpose offensive play with several options when targeting an enemy planet: reducing Planetary Defense mean Invasions will resolve faster, perhaps supporting a lightning fast offensive to take a planet before enemy fleets can arrive to defend.

Reducing Influence and Approval suppresses the Citizens on the planet and slows the growth of cultural borders, Manufacturing, Military and Research. Playing this on an important Core World, such as Earth as shown in the screenshot below, could have a dramatic effect on the enemy’s economic and cultural output.


The third option applies a more direct penalty to Manufacturing and Research: this may or may not end up being a more severe penalty than the Approval reduction, depending on who you’re targeting and their relative Planetary Outputs and Approval rate.

Serenity targets one of your own worlds, with the options to dramatically improve Growth, Approval or Influence and Tourism, depending on your needs at that time. This flexibility can cover a lot of potential issues you’ll come up with in the early game, with the last option to boost Influence generation and Tourism being particularly effective in the late game once you’re territory is a lot larger.


The Luxar’s unique Growth mechanic of requiring Promethium stockpiles is an interesting challenge to overcome. Promethium may or may not be in abundance on your game map, and if not, it’s likely to be one of the prime factors driving you to territorial expansion and war. Of course, you can trade for it, but this is expensive, and securing your own Promethium mining operations is going to be very important.


This isn’t to say that the Luxar cannot play a taller game, with less Core Worlds and Citizens, as they do get better performance out of the population (see screenshot above for a better than average Citizen) they do have working the assets on their Core Worlds.

However, increasing that Growth rate will usually be of prime interest to a Luxar Dominion player as the Statistic boost they get is not overwhelmingly strong. While your Citizens will be better than average, they’re not superhuman… or supercrystal, whatever.

The Luxar Dominion’s preferred Ideology is Collectivism, which grants access to some very useful supporting Ideological Traits.


Unification grants a decent Influence boost in the early game, helping expand their borders out a bit faster to counter their slower colonization efforts. It can be tempting to grab both Shared Belief and Consensus to fully leverage the power of Citizens with the Collectivism Ideology and dramatically improve planetary outputs (through increased Approval) as a result. Unified Coordination and Mass Mobilization are war focused Traits and increase both wartime Manufacturing rates and the maximum size of your fleets.

Whatever Core Worlds attached to Colonies will be more productive with either Interdependence or Solidarity, while the capstone Trait Hive Mind will further improve your Citizens, and grant access to a powerful endgame Tech to help close the game with too.


So the Luxar’s game, if you decide to play to their strengths, is one of careful expansion to take the Promethium and other Strategic Resources they need, without over-extending, safe in the knowledge that what you do hold is very defensible and reasonably productive.

They’re not the Mimot or Torians, and cannot usually take huge amounts of territory in the early game, which means you’re naturally playing a somewhat “taller” game than many of your rivals, at least until a good quantity of Promethium is sat safely in your stockpiles.

But overall, this is a strong, stable civilization that can make a lot of space for themselves in the midgame by concentrating their forces onto prone neighbors weakened with their psychic abilities, and then maneuver themselves into a winning position as the game draws to a close through the power of their collective Citizen economy.

So, take the psychic crystal guys for a ride and see if you can win a race for galactic supremacy with them!

[h2]Final major update to political strategy simulation updates issues and voter enthusiasm to give most accurate model yet [/h2]

Stardock Entertainment released the final major update for its political strategy/simulation game, The Political Machine 2024 today. The new version adjusts the top political issues along with voter enthusiasm as of October 2024.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2512090/The_Political_Machine_2024/

“We are seeing a lot of movement on voter enthusiasm,” said Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock Entertainment. “The election is solidifying around a handful of key issues such as inflation, abortion and the border.”

For the enthusiasm update, Stardock has attempted to simulate the effect early voting is having on turn-out and how it might affect the election.

“It’s been challenging to have the game’s underlying model factor in voting that occurs over multiple days,” said Wardell. “But I think we are getting there. We will see how close we are soon enough.”

As for the game’s much-celebrated deep-election simulation features, where AI Donald Trump runs against AI Kamala Harris in pure sim mode, the outcome remains too close to call but with a slight edge for Trump.

“The model continues to call out North Carolina as a state we should be keeping an eye on. We are still investigating why it thinks North Carolina and not Pennsylvania is the linchpin state,” said Wardell.

Hello everyone! Welcome to this week's dev journal, where we're diving into the exciting process of creating a Custom Civilization in GalCiv IV.

Crafting a custom civilization is a fantastic way to explore diverse playstyles and unique Ability combinations. Whether you're blending elements from your two favorite civilizations, bringing a beloved sci-fi faction to life, or inventing something entirely original, custom civilizations offer endless possibilities.

To get started, select "New Game" from the main menu and choose "Custom Civilization" from the list of available options. This will take you to the civilization creation screen, where the real fun begins.





The journey starts in the Biology tab, where you can infuse your custom civilization with personality and flair. Here, you can name your civilization, select a portrait for its leader, determine the Species of its Citizens, and more. Each of these elements is customizable, and you can even add new images by placing them in the appropriate folder.



To streamline this process, GalCiv IV features AlienGPT, a handy tool that automatically fills in entries based on a brief description. Any text or settings generated by AlienGPT can be easily adjusted to suit your vision.







[h3]The Biology tab also offers options with significant gameplay impact:[/h3]

• Cultural Focus: Raises cultural awareness of the chosen ideology, offering discounts for cultural Traits within that ideology's tree. (Refer to Dev Journal #70)
  
• Species: Each Species boasts unique strengths and weaknesses that can dramatically influence your civilization's playstyle. (Refer to Dev Journal #64)
  
• Personality: Dictates the behavior of your civilization when controlled by AI.
  

With the Biology tab complete, it's time to move to the Abilities tab, where you have the most control over your civilization's strengths and weaknesses.



Every civilization has a "budget" of three Trait Points to allocate to civilization Traits. These Traits can have positive or negative effects, depending on how you distribute the points. Positive Traits cost Trait Points, while negative Traits provide additional points to spend. Bonuses provided by traits will generally be modifiers to various global stats like Income, Research, or Control.



Next up are Civilization Abilities, which are akin to Traits but with broader, more powerful effects. Unlike Traits, civilizations are limited to two abilities. Selecting the right combination of Traits and abilities is crucial for crafting a civilization that aligns with your playstyle.



For inspiration, consider existing civilizations like the Corporate Sector. Focused on economics and trade, they maximize the Rich Trait and possess the Traders and Wealthy Abilities, granting bonus trade routes, a wealth of credits, and boosts to gross income and ship range.



Additionally, you can customize the map, interface, and music themes from this tab, allowing you to tailor your civilization's aesthetic.



Commander Ships are formidable vessels with unique special abilities that can be game-changers at any stage. Choose a fleet that complements your playstyle or compensates for your weaknesses. Combat-oriented commander ships, for instance, can bolster defenses for pacifist civilizations that might otherwise be vulnerable targets.



The final settings in the Abilities Tab concern your civilization's Homeworld. When selecting your Homeworld, consider the Species of your Citizens, as different Species thrive on different planets. Aquatic or Mer Species, for example, benefit from an Oceanic Homeworld.



With that, we proceed to the final step of civilization creation in the Fleets tab!

On the left side of the Fleets tab, you can customize the style, colors, textures, and materials of your civilization's fleets. For a comprehensive list of each default civilization's color-texture-material settings, check out my Journal on the Ship Designer, Dev Journal #71.



On the right side of the Fleets tab, you can assign different ship templates to each ship class. The same customization applies to your civilization's Starbases, allowing you to mix and match ship and Starbase templates to your heart's content.



Once everything is set, hit save and embark on your new adventure!





Before diving into gameplay, consider sharing your creation with the community by uploading your civilization to the Steam Workshop. Our community is full of talented civilization and ship designers whose creations may offer the perfect additions to your next game.







With each new civilization crafted, the roster of potential avatars and adversaries expands. Soon, your games will be populated with a diverse array of unfamiliar faces, each bringing fresh challenges and opportunities.

Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova has a plethora of weird and wonderful alien civilizations for you to lead to victory, but it’s been a while since we examined one in any great detail. I thought this week we could take a look at one of the more dangerous phenomena to be found lurking out in the galaxy: the Cosmic Contaminant!


They have a pretty unique playstyle that come with a host of challenges for the player to work though, and when you’re up against them, you need to watch them very carefully as I think they’re probably one of the most dangerous foes you could meet in the cold depths of space, owing to their aggression, incredible Manufacturing output and proclivity to spreading where others initially cannot.

The Cosmic Contaminant (or CC for short) are race of strange, rapidly mutating creatures with an unusual growth cycle that thrive in radioactive sludge and other heavily polluted environments. Their Civilization Trait Radiated allows them to immediately colonize Radioactive worlds and suffer no penalties on heavy Polluted worlds.

In fact, their Species Phenotype is Radiotrophic, granting an Approval bonus on Core Worlds with high Pollution levels. Note that the Species Traits show below, with their negative statistic modifiers, look quite weak. However, this only shows the Irradiated Amoeba stage of their life-cycle and we’ll cover the rest shortly.


It is this affinity for Pollution that gives the Irradiated their powerful Manufacturing potential, as they ignore the usual Approval penalties that accrue on heavily industrialized Core Worlds and can jam in many Industrial Districts and Improvements. Furthermore, their rapid Growth means you can quickly pack a lot of Citizens onto each world, further boosting your Manufacturing (and other Planetary Output values) to levels most other Civilizations can only dream of achieving.

That said, Irradiated Citizens aren’t particularly useful in their Amoeba stage, with low overall statistics until they evolve to the Larva and Nymph stages. This means it can take the Cosmic Contaminant a little time to get their economy going, and newly colonized worlds can be vulnerable to invasion as the Amoeba’s low Resolve contributes little to defensive efforts.


Your homeworld of Yuggoth’na is pretty well defended though, as the Radiated Planet Class Effect gives a large bonus to Planetary Defense.

With the Adaptable Civilization Ability the CC can quickly colonize worlds otherwise uninhabitable to other civilizations and this gives them more early game expansion options. Facing off against them on smaller maps can be difficult as they’ll only be competing with other Adaptable Civilizations for the more exotic Planet Classes, and although their initial industrial expansion can be a little underwhelming, their Militant (+2) Civilization Trait paired with Fast (+2) means that they can rapidly utilize their specialized Executive Orders to rapidly grow Population (Mitosis), improve fertility of a colony (Fertilize Planet) or increase Pollution levels to improve habitability for your Citizens and reduce it for your rivals (Abhorent Infection).


The Cosmic Contaminant’s ability to conquer a large amount of territory quite quickly and then rapidly develop its industry to genuinely terrifying levels is tempered partly by the initially weak statistics of the Amoeba, and the abysmal -3 Diplomacy penalty from the Unlikeable (-2) trait.

Yes, they’re one of the strongest civilizations in the game when going it alone, but they’re unlikely to have many friends in the game, and they’ll be relying on all their cunning and industrial might to fend off threats left, right and center.


A Cosmic Contaminant player with many neighbors will have to focus on trade and diplomacy technologies to have a hope of keeping the wolves from the door, unless they can grow strong enough to take everybody on at once. Depending on the difficulty level, growing too large too quickly can also cause your concerned neighbors to consider you a threat worthy of a war or two.

This too provides a natural counter for their unnatural industrial growth potential, as they’re often forced into focusing on Diplomacy boosting Techs if they want to avoid early wars, limiting the opportunity to take the industrial and military Techs they really want to be grabbing early.

But it can be fun to just accept everybody is going to hate you and lean hard into the bad-guy role, picking the weakest neighbors and conquering them and their worlds before the others have time to react.


Trade Routes and their positive effect on diplomacy can keep a few choice rivals from declaring war too soon, and boost your own coffers for your own military expansion efforts for those unfortunate Civilizations you have chosen to take on directly.

Their affinity for the Nihilism Ideology opens up their options in a big way: Realism boosts their Trade Route income, while Flexibility ensures they get more out of the Bazaar, which can compensate somewhat for their reduced ability to acquire resources through Diplomatic Trade. Moral Relativism increases access to other Ideological Traits, and is never a bad choice in longer games. Finally, the Nihilism tree greatly enhances their military options later into a campaign, with access to Terror Stars letting them end the game with a bang.

When playing against the Cosmic Contaminant, you’ll usually want them out of the game as fast as possible. The worlds they settle (or conquer) will be so full of Pollution that they can be pretty uninhabitable for most Citizens until some of the later Pollution reducing Techs come into play, and this, paired with their formidable fleet production potential, make them an unattractive target for invasion. Fighting them head on is a dreadful experience unless you have a much bigger and more technologically advanced military, and the rewards for doing so are dubious at best.


It is perhaps their love for the sludge that keeps the disgusting Cosmic Contaminant alive most of all: nobody really wants to contest their enormous military for worlds they cannot use. Conversely, defending yourself against the Cosmic Contaminant and the threat they pose to your own people is of paramount importance and when strongly placed in a game, they can become an existential threat to pretty much everybody else in the galaxy and coalitions may form to face that threat early on.

The Cosmic Contaminant might not be cuddly or fun to be around, but they more than make up for this with their ability to rapidly overwhelm and consume their neighbors with startling efficiency. They’ll need it, because they’ll rarely have many friends, but if you can keep your wits about you and fully utilize all their horrible tools correctly, the world will be swimming in mutagenic slime in no time!

Enjoy!