Galactic Civilizations IV News

[h3]Discover the secret history of the Arnor along with enhanced gameplay updates, new technologies, and Crises to overcome[/h3]


Uncover mysteries from the darkest reaches of the galaxy in “Tales of the Arnor,” a new DLC for 4X grand strategy game Galactic Civilizations IV available on Feb. 27, 2025. This new content allows players to explore the history of the Arnor civilization, introducing new narrative and gameplay elements. In Galactic Civilizations IV, players build empires and engage in space battles, and "Tales of the Arnor" will add new content to create new opportunities for players to gain valuable knowledge and all new tech to gain galactic supremacy.

"Tales of the Arnor" features several key additions, including the campaign "Legacy of the Arnor," which provides background lore on the development of various civilizations. Players will encounter new content, including anomalies, relics, and artifacts to discover, as well as late-game crisis events tied to the unfinished projects of the Arnor. The DLC also introduces a unique tech tree for the Cybernetic phenotype, featuring exclusive planetary improvements, ship components, and early-game events. Additionally, the Civilization Creator now lets players to select their desired tech tree, allowing custom Civilizations to match preferred playstyle.

"With 'Tales of the Arnor,' we’re providing players with additional lore and gameplay options, allowing players to engage with the history of the Arnor while making choices that affect their civilizations,” said Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock. “With new challenges and new experiences for our players, Galactic Civilizations IV continues to be one of the best 4X experiences available."


[h2]Key features of Galactic Civilizations IV: Tales of the Arnor include:[/h2]
[h3]Explore the Legacy of the Arnor Campaign[/h3]
Take on the Legacy of the Arnor campaign to uncover the history of the Arnor and the foundations of galactic civilizations. Discover how different species and empires evolved through distinct paths shaped by their environments and cultures.
[h3]Investigate New Anomalies, Relics, and Artifacts[/h3]
Unearth hidden treasures and challenges that add depth to exploration. These discoveries provide opportunities to gain valuable resources, expand your knowledge, and trigger unique events.
[h3]Address Late-Game Crises[/h3]
Face new late-game crisis events tied to the unfinished projects of the Arnor. These challenges will test your leadership skills as you navigate the consequences of their actions and the ripple effects across the galaxy.
[h3]Develop Unique Technologies[/h3]
Access a distinct tech tree for the Cybernetic phenotype, unlocking exclusive planetary improvements, ship components, and early-game events. These advancements reflect the unique characteristics and strengths of your civilization.
[h3]Enhanced Civilization Creator[/h3]
The updated Civilization Creator now allows players to select a specific tech tree for their custom civilization, offering greater flexibility and strategic depth in designing unique civilizations.


In addition to the Tales of the Arnor Expansion, Galactic Civilizations IV, is also receiving a free update today for all players! Update v2.94 features a map generation update with improved player placement and Fog of War system; better UI for the planet, ship designer, and shipyard screens; and better gameplay balance with improved combat, citizen specialties, colonization, and many other changes. This update is available for all players today!

[h2]Pre-order Now:[/h2]
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2671170/Galactic_Civilizations_IV__Tales_of_the_Arnor/













View the full changelog here
Players can look forward to quality-of-life enhancements aimed at refining the gameplay experience based on community feedback.

[h3]Improved Map Generation[/h3]
One of the notable updates is the enhancement of the map generation system. Players can expect better player placement, which should contribute to a more balanced start for each game. Additionally, the Fog of War system has been improved, allowing for a more strategic approach to exploration as players will need to be more mindful of their surroundings.

[h3]Enhanced UI Screens[/h3]
The user interface has also seen some thoughtful updates. Key screens such as the Planet Screen, Ship Designer Screen, and Shipyard Screen have been refined for better clarity and usability. These changes aim to streamline the management of civilizations, ship design, and planetary development, making it easier for players to navigate the various systems within the game.

[h3]Gameplay Balance Adjustments
[/h3]In terms of gameplay balance, update v2.94 includes several tweaks to combat mechanics, citizen specialties, colonization, resource management, research, orbitals, and ship hulls. These adjustments are designed to create a more balanced experience, ensuring that different strategies can be viable without any single approach overshadowing others.

After several years of post-release development and multiple expansions, Galactic Civilizations IV has a hell of a lot of content. 4X is a relatively complex genre and GalCiv leans pretty hard into the “sandbox” side of things, providing the player with many tools and options to play with when planning their conquest of the galaxy.

This is great for the player, but with such expansive scope and depth, paired with periodic patching to iron out bugs and address various issues that crop up, the overall balance of the game will come under strain. By balance here, I’m not just talking about the relative power levels of the various Civilizations, and the many abilities they bring to bear against one another. This overall balance must also consider how well major (and minor) gameplay elements and individual mechanics interlock and interact with one another too, to ensure that the overall fun factor of the game isn’t bent out of shape.


There’s a lot to consider here: the overall pacing of the game needs to feel good, with a clear and distinct start, middle and end, and the AI needs to be able to play the game in a satisfying way too. All of these things can kind of drift as more features get added, and we always make an effort to tighten things as we go. Sometimes though, you need to stop and make a concerted effort to examine the way the game plays right now and then focus in on those areas that need looking at.

With that in mind, you’ll be happy to note that we’ve got a new patch incoming that helps tighten up GalCiv4’s gameplay from top to bottom. While balance patching isn’t quite as sexy as a big content drop, the game should be a lot tighter and more fun to play as a result of this.

All that said, there are some really cool changes in here too! Here are some of the more noteworthy changes made to the game.

First up, we should talk about the improvements made to map generation.

Firstly, we know that not everybody enjoys playing with multiple sectors, but still want the epic scale of a huge map, to build and destroy civilizations on. For you guys, we’ve increased the size of the very largest single sector map.

As you can see, this is a truly enormous map set to the Gigantic setting. I’ve removed the fog of war so you can get an idea of just how many stars and planets you’ll have in play with Occasional Star Frequency. You can imagine what it’ll be like if you increase Star Frequency!


If that’s a bit much, and if you like very big games with lots of distance between stars, but want less Core World management, you could try it with Star Frequency set to Rare.


This picture is quite misleading, looking like a smaller sector perhaps. Make no mistake, this is still a truly massive map. That said, with less stars populating it, there’ll be a lot more distance to travel between worlds, and you’ll have less colony management to worry about.


Here’s what your starting situation looks like. The outer light-blue circle around Geode there is your starting Ship Range, and you’ll need think carefully about how to get all that way over to your neighbouring stars and get another Core World going!

This highlights just how versatile GalCiv is as a sandbox game: if you play with the map settings, you’ll get some really cool and interesting game variants, often increasing the challenge in interesting ways too!

Back to the update, the game will now generate more stars overall, on all Star Frequency settings, and if you want more habitable planets, we’ve increased both their number on the Abundant setting and the maximum number of planets that can be colonised at once. This should please players who like to settle and manage very densely populated Civilizations.

Blackholes are also somewhat more common now, which in turn should increase Antimatter and the possibility for more Stellar Gateways, for those of you who own the Megastructures DLC. Also, if you do own this expansion, we’ve increased the amount of Gigamass gained from Gas Giants, which will increase the amount of Gigamass in the galaxy overall.


Civilization Proximity when a map is generated is now more satisfying and coherent to the settings you choose. Players should mostly be placed in their own sector when “Very Far” is chosen, if there are enough sectors spawned on the map, and Civilizations occupying the same sector will be now appropriately separated.

This should address a long held concern about player placement on the map overall, ensuring map generation and Civilization Proximity settings are more intuitive to use, to get a result closer to what you’re expecting to see.


Exploring those maps is important too, and we’ve improved the auto-explore AI system to work faster, smarter and focus on exploring stars, to find the best worlds and orbiting strategic resources, eliminating the fog-of-war in the process. Speaking of which, performance improvements to the fog-of-war system have been made to dramatically reduce the late game turn processing times, and increase the general performance of the FOW system overall.

Moving to the UI, changes have been made to reduce clutter and improve the overall user experience of navigating the Planet Screen, Ship Designer Screen and Shipyard Screens.

One much requested feature to note here: the Planet Screen now has a handy filter to sort Improvements by their output category.


Technology costs scale up a little faster than before, which means players get to enjoy each tech level a bit longer, remembering you can adjust this speed in the game’s settings if you like it even faster, or slower.

The AI now prioritises Culture techs more than before: Culture and Influence have changed quite a bit since the release of Supernova, and being a very powerful mechanic, getting it balanced right is really important. The AI should now be better at keeping up with the player when they’re going for an Culture-based victory, choking their opponents out with rapid Influence expansion!

There have been many tweaks and changes to the game’s economy, particularly in terms of resource generation at the Core World level. There are too many to mention individually but here are the main changes.


Firstly, Citizens and their various Specializations (or Jobs) now have more impact on Planetary Output values for Manufacturing, Research, Income, Food and Influence, which will have the knock on effect of giving a decent economic boost to Civilization’s (and players) that prefer Citizen-based industry over mass industrialisation using Districts and Improvements.

Furthermore, there have been some tweaks made to Crime to make it feel more impactful. We’ve altered the effects of some of the tools you have to deal with it, making some cheaper and more effective, while reducing the efficacy of some of the more overpowered crime reduction abilities.


The end result is that Crime is a more serious issue to deal with, keeping it a relevant threat for longer, but ensuring the player still has options to reduce it if they want to take those extra steps.

Furthermore, taxation is now more infuriating for your Citizens: previously it was a bit too easy to max out your tax-rate and have everybody go about their lives pretending that losing 75% of their income to the taxman was just fine and dandy. You can still do that, but it’ll require a bit more coercion, bread and circuses, or outright mind control to achieve.


There have been some significant changes made to the game’s resource economy: Strategic and Luxury Resource costs in the Bazaar are now much more market-driven, meaning that the prices will change more dramatically depending on supply and demand than before.

Furthermore, Luxury Resources (that’s the really exotic stuff like Helios Ore, Techapod Hives and so on) are much rarer now, and more valuable as a result.


Moving onto the ship designer, Ship Hulls, from Medium upwards, are now generally larger and can take more components, meaning more choice in how you build the larger warships and non-combat vessels in the game.


In combat, weapon ranges have been increased overall, with missile weapon systems getting an extra shot in each time they fire, and extra damage added to boost their power a bit more.

There’s some exciting news for Diplomacy: players can now trade Colonies and Starbases with one another in the Trade screen. This will open up some interesting strategic options, where you may want to trade away a planet you’re likely to lose to an Influence push and get something in return for it. Another option might be to capture a Core World in a raid and gifting it to another Civilization in return for an alliance, or perhaps to put that Civ’s new holding between you and your foe and potentially drag them into the war too…

Finally, we’ve improved the formatting and translation for non-English languages, improving the game for our international GalCiv fans too.

I think that’s enough for now! I hope you can see that these balance changes are actually pretty exciting and will change the game for the better in a big way.

Let us know what you think in the comments below, and I’ll catch you next time!

Cheers!

Hello everyone! For today’s Dev Journal, I will be going over Resources in GalCiv IV.

In the past few Dev Journals, we've been exploring new features introduced by GalCiv’s latest DLC: Megastructures. However, for my first Journal of the new year, I want to take a step back from the late-game-focused expansion to cover some GalCiv fundamentals.


GalCiv IV has no shortage of Resources, and I’d like to focus on the five most common Resources you will encounter while expanding your empire across the galaxy.

These Resources are:

• Durantium
  
• Promethion
  
• Elerium
  
• Antimatter
  
• Thulium
  

[h2]What are they Used For?[/h2]
Let’s go over what each of these Resources is used for, starting with Durantium.


Durantium is a highly valuable Resource, particularly important in the early game. This is because Durantium is required for the construction of most Orbitals and several powerful Manufacturing and Military Improvements.

A steady supply of Durantium will invariably accelerate the development of your colonies and allow you to increase their Manufacturing capabilities.


Similarly, Promethion is extremely valuable as it is a required Resource for most Research Improvements and Research Missions.


A solid cache of Promethion can help you outpace the competition in terms of research speed and technological progress.


While Durantium and Promethion are highly valuable for colony development, Elerium, Antimatter, and Thulium are crucial for Ship Construction.

Elerium is used to construct ships with powerful Beam Weapons and Shields, Antimatter is used in Missile Weapons and Evasion systems, and Thulium is used in Kinetic Weapons and Armor.


This isn’t to say that Durantium and Promethion don’t also have a role in ship construction. Durantium is used to construct powerful Carrier Modules and is required for the Extended Reinforced Hull Flagship upgrade, while Promethion is used to increase a ship’s Moves with several Drives.


All Resources and the current amount held by the player will appear at the top of the screen in the Resource bar for your convenience.


[h2]Resources On the Map[/h2]
Each Resource can be found scattered across the map as you explore.

The first two Resources, Durantium and Promethion, can both be found spawned around stars of any color. Durantium specifically tends to spawn near stars with long asteroid belts (though it can be found around stars without them), while Promethion tends to favor stars without asteroid belts, with some exceptions.


Thulium is more limited, spawning exclusively around blue and purple stars.


Elerium and Antimatter are unique in that they don’t spawn around stars but are found inside Nebulae and around Blackholes, respectively.


[h2]Collecting Resources[/h2]
Resources found around stars and on the edges of black holes can be collected over time by well-placed Mining Starbases.

Constructor ships are used to build these Mining Starbases. When flown to a desired tile, they can be converted into the Starbase of choice. Starbases come in four varieties: Mining, Economic, Military, and Communications. Mining Starbases will only appear as an option if a minable Resource is within that Constructor/starbase’s radius.


When establishing a Mining Starbase, it pays to position your Starbase between as many Resources as possible. Upgrades to Mining are applied to every Resource in range, and later, Starbase range can be upgraded to reach Resources that may have previously been just out of reach.


Another viable way to collect these Resources is by using the Galactic Bazaar. The Galactic Bazaar is unlocked by the Universal Translator technology and allows you to purchase or sell any of the five staple Resources alongside a rotating group of four other Resources.

The Resources available to you can vary based on what Resources spawned in your sector or near your colonies. Thus, the Bazaar can be an ultra-convenient way to earn credits by selling Resources held in excess and gaining access to Resources otherwise not available to you.

Be careful, however; the more you buy a Resource, the more expensive it becomes, and the more you sell a Resource, the lower its value.


[h2]Other Resources[/h2]
There are over a dozen other Resources that you may collect or encounter during play. Most of these Resources can be found on random planets and harvested via specific Improvements or Orbitals.

Many of these Resources can be purchased on occasion from the Bazaar, earned through Events, or traded for with other civilizations.


These additional Resources are commonly used to construct various Improvements and are generally not as critical as the main five. However, they can still provide significant advantages and should not be overlooked.

[h2]Resources: Conclusion[/h2]
Understanding and effectively managing Resources in GalCiv IV is crucial for the successful expansion and development of your empire. The five primary Resources - Durantium, Promethion, Elerium, Antimatter, and Thulium - each play distinct roles in enhancing your colonies, advancing research, and constructing powerful ships. By strategically placing Mining Starbases and leveraging the Galactic Bazaar, you can ensure a steady supply of these vital Resources, giving you a competitive edge in the galaxy.

Thank you for reading this Dev Journal. I hope it provides you with valuable insights into Resource management in GalCiv IV. Stay tuned for more updates and tips in future journals. May your empire thrive and conquer the galaxy!

The Ringworld is the final and most mighty of the titanic projects available for construction in the new Megastructures expansion for Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova, allowing the fabrication of a perfect artificial world in the shape of a ring, wrapped around a hosting star, for the people of your Civilization to settle and work on.

While not quite the crown of the Megastructures research tree (that accolade is reserved for the final level of Augments for the Stellar Nexus) the Ringworld is hi-tech stuff and takes a significant research investiture to achieve.


The Ringworld will also require a non-trivial amount of Gigamass to manifest, both for the Megastructure itself and to construct the Dyson Sphere required to power it. As such, the undertaking of such a magnificent project must not be taken lightly and you’ll need to decide whether a new super-planet is a better fit for your Civilization’s current needs than a Stellar Nexus with Augments or a set of Stellar Gates. While the performance enhancing bonuses granted by an Augment will be game-changing, it’s also quite difficult to quantify just how useful a massive, highly customizable artificial planet-like structure can be on your game.

Here’s a virgin Ringworld, pristine and sparkling with potential, before a clumsy uncultured barbarian like myself has had a chance to maul it with his crude designs.


You’ll note that this creates a colonized “planet” with very high Planetary Input values, and 39 tiles to build on, with a mix of useful tile types to allow you to really get the most out of that landmass. What you build on this magnificent Megastructure, is completely up to you!

Do you build one out of necessity, because your exploding Mimot population has colonized every last world in your territory and you’re not quite ready to go to war with a neighbor for their own planets? Or do you plan on building an almighty armada to bring a war of destruction to all around you, and so fabricate a world dedicated to industrial might and shipbuilding?

Let’s take a look at a couple of Ringworlds built for different purposes, and hopefully whet your appetite for the possibilities they offer in a variety of situations.

Firstly, let’s take a look at one I built in my own game as the Corporate Sector.


As you can see from the screenshot, this was right at the close of the game with the CS, where my main goals were to accumulate enough Credits to keep my greedy money-grubbing Iridium Citizens happy and ensure I had the proverbial “Sinews of War” to ensure no other Civilization could best me in a war. Unless you’re solely relying on Supply Ships, constructed and flown in from off-world, you’ll often want some Industry on a Core World to get everything else up and running.

Over at the east end of the planet I built a fairly solid core of Industrial Districts surrounding a Stellar Forge, for a substantial Manufacturing score. I used Supply Ships to get this going quickly, while interspersing this industrial development with Housing, allowing Citizens who were outgrowing their own worlds to be transported over to rapidly fill this new planet. You’ll not usually get such a high Manufacturing score unless you manage to conquer the Yor’s homeworld of Iconia, or find a very high class planet and dedicate it to industry and Workers.


The rest of the planet was then filled with Income boosting Districts and Improvements, with a substantial proportion of the population assigned over to the Entrepreneur Job. Sure, there are some big end-game technologies in play here, such as Individual Divinity, and the boost that’s giving to Citizens is inflating these Planetary Outputs a little, but you’ll see that this one Ringworld is producing a massive 431 Credits per month alone (taxed at about 40% for 151 Credits per month).

If you really want to, you can fill it full of Approval boosting Improvements to get that tax-rate up even further, but even without those, I pushed the tax-rate to the maximum of 75% here, and despite this eyewatering assault on our Citizen’s wages, we’re still able to get a respectable 71% Approval rate and a 324 Credit per month Income, just for this one planet.


And I’m not even trying here: I’m sure all you minmaxers out there are going to have a lot of fun figuring out how to really powerhouse your economy with these Ringworlds. If you dropped the industry, relied on Supply Ships and then just covered the planet with Housing and economic assets, I’m sure you could do a whole lot better than this.

Now let’s take a look at Ringworld dedicated to a completely different purpose.


I don’t need to explain this one too much, it’s built to pump out the biggest, most dangerous battleships as fast as possible, while still generating some Wealth, with some Entertainment Districts to counteract the inevitable Pollution that accumulates on a big dirty industrial world like this. You’ll note there are no special industrial Improvements here, this is mostly just Manufacturing Districts and a bunch of Workers.

And this is one of the Iridium’s prized War Bringer Battleship models, being pumped out in a mere two turns because of that massive Military score.


These are extreme examples I’ve shown you, where I’ve really tried to build for one specific effect. Now, you’re going to have to get your thinking heads on (or make a spreadsheet) if you want to work out whether the Manufacturing output you’d get from a Ringworld would be better value for you than a well Augmented Stellar Nexus and the product modifier it adds to you Manufacturing right across your Civilization.

Which one is better is going to vary greatly depending on your own in-game circumstances, but the Ringworld has some advantages that the Stellar Nexus does not.

Firstly, the Ringworld is much more difficult to remove from the game than the other Megastructures, as it must be successfully sieged and conquered. Of course, if you do lose it, your enemy can take it off you, and they’ll have access to all that infrastructure (and the Citizens) housed on it.


The other advantage is that the Ringworld can benefit you in a much more multidimensional way: you don’t need to pile everything into just Income or Manufacturing like I’ve alluded to here: you can build a more balanced Core World from it, and if you’ve saved some of the best Civilization Achievements for this world too, the Planetary Output values you can get from it can be truly staggering.

[h2]More Megastructures![/h2]
The latest DLC for Galactic Civilizations IV arrived earlier this month, introducing a host of powerful new Megastructures. In this week's dev journal, we're diving deep into another of this expansion's titular Megastructures: The Stellar Gateway.



[h2]Stellar Gateways[/h2]
Stellar Gateways are massive portals that utilize the reality-warping power of black holes to create connections between distant points in space. These powerful Megastructures are ideal for expanding to distant corners of the galaxy, establishing extended trade routes, or rapidly redeploying fleets.


Stellar Gateways are unlocked by the "Advance Nexus Augments" technology and are the third Megastructure to be unlocked by the DLC, following Dyson Spheres and Stellar Nexuses.


Stellar Gateways are constructed around the perimeter of black holes by new Stellar Architect ships using a resource called Gigamass. Each Gateway takes 8 turns to construct.



Building a Stellar Gateway requires 30 Gigamass, a finite resource collected by Planetary Harvester ships from dead planets. Each additional Gateway requires another 30 Gigamass, so you will need to consider the benefits provided by a new Gateway pair compared to other similarly priced Megastructures like Stellar Nexuses.

Once a second Gateway is completed, it will automatically pair with the first. Sending a fleet through one Gateway in a pair will instantly transport it out the other. Additionally, fleets will automatically consider Gateways when pathfinding/looking for the shortest route to a location.



To make navigating Stellar Gateways easier, we’ve added a convenient button to the Gateway Context Window. Clicking this button will instantly move the camera to and select the other end of the Gateway pair.

As you build more Gateways, you may want to reorganize, break, or form new gateway pairs. This can be done easily from a new tab in the Automation window accessible from the main screen hot bar.


Note: Stellar Gateways can be invaded and captured, and thus will need to be defended.

Fleets can be stationed on Stellar Gateways by turning them “on” or “off” via this toggle on the Stellar Gateway context window. While turned “off”, fleets will be stationed on the Gateway instead of being sent through - allowing you to fend off any would-be Gateway thieves. The Gateway’s current state can be seen at a glance using the icons overtop the Gateway itself. A Gateway being “off” will not prevent fleets coming through from the other end.


[h2]Transportation Network[/h2]
As stated before, Stellar Gateways are excellent tools for expansion, trade, and warfare. The ability to funnel new fleets straight from shipyards to far-out frontiers can be a game changer. Additionally, consider that the reverse is true - a military on campaign can return to the defense of your otherwise undefended core worlds and capital in a fraction of the time it would normally.

Having a strong network of Stellar Gateways can also be a diplomatic boon as you can establish the new Gateway Treaty with your allies - allowing them to use any of your Gateways and you theirs.


A well-placed Gateway will let you take your enemies by surprise with an invasion launched far behind enemy lines or it can allow you to resupply your invasion force with no delay. Altogether, Stellar Gateways are a powerful tool for any playstyle. The increased mobility that even a single pair of gateways provides can be extremely useful - especially on larger maps or games with multiple sectors.

As you explore the new features of Galactic Civilizations IV: Megastructures, consider the strategic possibilities offered by the Stellar Gateway. Whether you're expanding your empire or bolstering your defenses, the Stellar Gateway provides a versatile tool to enhance your civilization's strengths.

We invite you to share your favorite new strategies with us. How will you leverage the power of the Stellar Gateway to shape your galactic empire? Will you focus on rapid expansion, military dominance, or perhaps a thriving economy? The choice is yours, and we can't wait to see the creative ways you'll use these Megastructures to achieve victory.

Stay tuned for more insights and updates in our future dev journals. Until then, may your civilizations prosper and your stars shine brightly!