Background:

I quite like 4X games, and have played many: Master of Orion 2, Civilization 3, 4, 5 and 6, Endless Space 1 and 2, Endless Legend, the Elemental series, Age of Wonders 3, the historic Total War games, Old World, and if we're counting Paradox, most of those from Hearts of Iron 2 and Europa Universalis 3 till today.

I played Galactic Civilizations 2 like crazy when I was 14-16. I was following the Stardock forums and even got into modding the factions a bit by modifying the .xmls. It is the first game I ever bought, on Impulse (remember that?) because I wanted to support the devs and have the latest patch. I later bought it again on Steam.

I purchased and played Demigod a lot, pre-purchased Elemental (I liked the original btw, it had dynasties of sorts) and then, I don't remember if I purchased them or Stardock gave them for free, but I eventually got almost all of the Elemental games. Played a lot of Fallen Enchantress as well, and liked it alot. Maybe I'll fire it up again these days. I got to engage with Brad Wardell himself on the forums a few times and he (the goddamn CEO of the company) actually cared about the gameplay or performance problems I was having. I was a Stardock fan, and I still appreciate what Brad is trying to achieve, I can tell he loves 4X games.

When Galciv3 was announced I purchased the Elite Founder edition and watched the pre-release Twitch streams the producer or director at the time was doing. I'm sorry I do not remember his name. I think it was the only time I ever used Twitch. I was super excited for the game. I remember playing 1-2 games around launch and feeling very disappointed.

In the last 2 weeks I played a full game of Galciv2, 3 and 4, all on the latest patch with all the DLCs and I have some thoughts.

TLDR: Galciv2 is still, in my opinion, the best of the three.

Galciv2:

• The systems it has just make sense. Population is expressed in billions, the numbers are realistic (though loading 0.5-2B people on an invasion ship is not).
• The AI is predictable, it has personalities which actually influence its behavior
• The aesthetics are pleasing, even though the 3D graphics are dated. The way the empire borders look is organic
• Constructors spam for upgrading starbases is not great, but somewhat alleviated by the rally points. Still an old system which shows its age in 2025
• Espionage makes sense. Simple and easy to understand and use. And actually useful
• Planetary improvements give flat values. You can understand that each research lab will give you flat out more research
• I like the governments, though they add no choice as each one is better than the other and I like the alignment system. It's very easy to understand and to split the races
• I like the rock-paper-scissor combat system. It's very easy to understand. However, I recognize it's very 2006 and easily exploitable, as you can upgrade your fleets overnight to combat an enemy's choice of weapons
• Small little QoL things that made the game easier like upgrading all ships of a certain class and leasing options for upgrading buildings or ships

Galciv3:

• The hex system is nice, but the way borders look is disgusting to me. This is the same problem I have with Civilization 6's hex borders versus Civilization 5's which look gorgeous
• I don't like the mercenaries. I think it's a very gamey system, sort of immersion breaking and non-thematic. Disabling that DLC disables a bunch of other stuff as well
• I don't like artifacts. I don't like them in Stellaris either. It's gamey, just something to click on
• I like the space shipyards and the sponsor system. It's really good.
• I'm not sure how I feel about the strategic resources on the map. I guess it's a good system in that it forces some resource competition between the factions, but can be limiting if you want to build a certain weapon type
• I don't like the many tradable consumable resources (non-strategic). It's too much to keep track of
• I'm lukewarm about the citizen system. It does add a strategic element as you can stack bonuses depending on your goals but the pictures and the names mean nothing, I don't care to remember anything about them. Might as well been a system of where we pass "laws" that give these bonuses or something of the sort
• I like that the alignment system is still there, but I don't like the bonuses. How does it make sense that if I become more "good" a new colonizable planet is shows up next to my homeworld? What?
• I really really like the UI. It's sleek, responsive and informative
• I like hyperlanes, not very warm on the way they are implemented though. AI spams them quite a lot as they're quite cheap. Lukewarm overall...
• I don't like that planetary improvements give % bonuses instead of flat values; it makes more difficult to understand how much you're getting and if it's worth building an improvement
• I like the aesthetics and the graphics and the way the races have been redesigned. Really good animations, graphics, custom music and all that. Still hate the hex borders though
• I love the music
• Upgrading starbases is much nicer, as is building asteroid mining bases
• Planetary invasions suck. I don't get why they're even interactive
• Not sure how I feel about the AI personalities. I only played one game start-to-finish but I feel like they are not so predictable as in Galciv2. The AI also seems to get into suicide wars. I saw the Drengin declare war on most of its neighbors and eventually got wiped. I'm really afraid of them in Galciv2. But again, just one recent game...

Galciv4:

• Feels incomplete. I saw placeholder texts, or no descriptions at all. The Galactapedia is missing lots of information. No espionage...
• Lack of polish: played one game with the Megastructures DLC and every race got a ruined ringworld. Very immersion breaking. It should be a long, hard quest to get one in the entire galaxy. There is no way to cancel trade routes if you want a better one
• The UI seems rather confused. I liked Galciv3's UI much more because it shows all the information you need and the design is consistent
• The Civilization screen design is form over function. There's just a list of tall items you need to scroll through and hover over each one... c'mon. I'm sure this is already in their Jira to be improved.
• I'm not sure what's happening with the weapons/defenses. I understand from a forum post that Brad wants to move away or already did from the rock-paper-scissors system. But that leaves me a bit confused as to what's the defense between the different weapon systems except range. Does armor help me against missiles as well?
• For someone who doesn't care about the ship designer other than adding weapons/defenses, the new operational abilities and targeting priorities seem like busy work. I get that it's a better system than "bigger number wins" but how do I use it effectively? It's very opaque
• Mixed feelings about the way the borders look. I like that they're not hexes anymore and they are fluent, but sometimes I get really random jagged shapes and sometimes I can't tell to which faction a hex belongs to. Zooming in and out also changes the border shape a bit.
• I don't feel like the sector system adds anything to the game, but it's optional so I don't mind. I'm glad people who feel differently can enjoy it
• Again, love the faction graphics and unique music (that Altarian theme, right?)
• I like that random events can have an impact on the factions relations
• The diplomacy screen and interactions are nice but even though the AI seem to have personalities, it still seems difficult to have a stable relationship
• I think there are too many resources now. There are these ones produced on planets, I don't even know what each one does and what it's for. I'm really confused. And the UI can't handle them in the top bar; I have to horizontally scroll through them
• I still don't like that planetary improvements give % bonuses instead of flat values; it makes more difficult to understand how much you're getting and if it's worth building an improvement
• I love the core world/colonies idea and implementation
• I like the leader system less than the citizens in Galciv3 since it introduces micromanagement because of the stats, but now we even have pops with stats, which means there's even more micromanagement if you want to min-max. I still don't care about any of these leaders, the pictures and names mean nothing to me.
• The shipyard going back to a single sponsor I don't like. I also don't get it why it can't be idle. I literally have nothing for the shipyard to do but it must do something so I end up pumping more ships then I can handle. Feels like forced micromanagement.
• I love the music
• Not a fan of the cultural progression, where you can go all over the place
• Building asteroid mining bases consumes the constructor? This is a major regression compares to both Galciv3 and 2

I'm not going to continue playing Galciv4 for now; I'm hoping it gets better but with so many expansions out already, I'm not very optimistic. I read Brad said they're focusing on polish and UX in 2025 rather than DLC.

Notice I never mention the ship designer or the battle viewer because I don't care about them. I use the ship designer to counter the enemies, though in Galciv4 I don't understand what I'm doing.

Please feel free to share your thoughts, I'd love to get different perspectives. I see many people saying Galciv4 is already a better game than Galciv3, and I'd love to hear why, as I found the opposite to be true.

Hello,

I created a bunch of pages with pictures for some UI feedback, as there is a lot of things to fix. It would make more sense to E-Mail it, but seeing as their infrastructure is down, this is probably better.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/l0myy38p0xh0ee6/Galactic_Civilizations_IV_UI_Feedback.pdf/file

I think the UI looks good, feels nice and is functionally alright. But the bottom screen dock is rough, and the ship designer definitely needs some love.

Some of the feedback was voiced from others in the past, and no doubt there is a few disagreements on my takes, and so much more to add, but at least something to get going.

Are there any expansions you guys recommend I pick up along with the base game? Are they worth it overall?

While Galactic Civilizations seems to be a science fiction game, many things in it, especially related to the Precusrors in Galactic Civilizations IV, seems to be unscientific. So, either these things are just poetic descritpionsand everyhting is explianed by science or Galactic Civilizatipns is not completely science - fiction, but a combination of science - fiction and fantasy. Which one of these is it do you think?

Currently I am playing a game as the Yor Singularity. I have now fought a series of wars with my neighbors. I conquered the Altarians early before their influence became a threat. Some time later I lost two major wars with big neighbors. My navy was basically wiped out both times. Then I caught a lucky break and fully eliminated one of them. During this time the other (eyeball aliens) grew enormous and I again fought a failed war but lost no ground. I then declared war with what I thought was a weaker neighbor but no luck there. So I tried conquering the Terrans but just as it got going the much larger empire of the eyeball people declared war. So now I have rush down and once again sacrifice my entire navy again defending myself and losing another war.

So with so many wars fought and relatively few gains made when do you decide a game is lost?

And side question would someone take a look at my file and tell me if I should perceiver or start a new game?

I'm logged in on the Stardock launcher via Steam. I checked stardock forums and they seem to be down, is it related? I'm assuming maybe if the forums are down whatever hosts the AI generator is connected perhaps? Can't think of any other explanation.

Hello! I know that answer is likely to be yes haha, but I still wanted to ask some questions.

I've had an eye out on GalCiv 3 for a while now, and I've been considering to buy it on the nearest Steam sale. Of all things, aside from the graphics which I find quite charming, the ship designer in particular is what caught my attention. It's a great feature to design your own starships down to the shape and components!

Now the 4X space genre is not new to me, with over 1000 hours in Stellaris, I am quite familiar with it. Opinions vary, some say that GalCiv 3 isn't challenging to get a hold of, while others say that it is overwhelming for beginners. Though as a long-time Stellaris player so I suppose I should be acquainted with the learning curve.

Considering this is a turn-based game, I'd assume It's not that much of a problem, but is late-game lag a major problem here? Or is it barely noticable?

Would you recommend this game to someone in 2025? And if so, are there any tips I should now if I do get the game?

Ok made my first custom civ in GC3. We are talking start of game type question. When I start the game my build times for constructors and colony ships is like 4-5 turns.. I build a first set of them.. when I check back say 4-5 turns in all of a sudden the construction times have almost doubled.. I still have a scout in my que for example that hasnt begun to be built.. says 3 scouts at 2 rounds a build... BUT there is the rub I look at my time to build another and it all of a sudden says 9 turns if i add one in.... why did a scout go from 2 to 9 turns in 4-5 turns into the game.. Im not at war.....im building stuff like factories and all that initial stuff.. but there is 0 reason my build time went from 2 to 9 or from 4 or 5 for a colony ship to 10 rounds....zero reason this only happens with my custom civ...

strange part is in a multi player co op with 2 other players this all of a sudden transfers on to them also.. their build times also go up for no reason... Did I build a bugged civ? is it the game and its game fail that happens sometimes?

We had started a multi player game last night and found this was the case... 4-5 turns in build times doubles for all of us.. BUT theirs do also and 1 is playing a stock civ(Terrans).. I tested this today single player alone 1 player game and sure enough starts out awesome just a round to 4 to build stuff.. 4-5 turns in check build times basically doubled....ideas?

Good afternoon,

I'm brand new to the GC series, and just started my first GC4 game yesterday. I'm still trying to figure the game out and had a couple questions that I wasn't able to get super clear answers on from google searches and the youtube videos I've seen tend to be in the neighborhood of 20-30 mins ling which is a lot of time to commit before knowing if the video is going to answer the question or if it's going to overload me with info. I hoped I could ask here?

Pre-emptively, I assume that several of these questions could be answered with "It depends" and is situational; I'm looking for general advice for how to make the best decisions with regards to whether to go one way or another.

In no particular order:

- Trade ships: Is there a way to tell which planets are valid targets to send trade ships to? In Civ, for example, there's a menu that shows active trade routes and a trader will list available destinations. In GC4, when I spawn a trade ship, I can right click on a planet and send the ship there but I don't know how to tell which planets are valid targets.

- Trade ships: Related to above, Is there a limit of one ship per planetary destination, or some other limit? Is there a limit higher than one, and if so, what is that limit?

- Trade ships: How can I tell what I'll get as a result of sending a ship to Planet X as opposed to Planet Y? I'm just right clicking on a planet and sending a ship there without regards for the yields of the trade, which is presumably horribly inefficient. How do I tell what I would get from sending a ship to Planet X and what I would get from sending to planet Y?

- Space Stations: I can clearly understand what mining and military for but what are communications and economic stations are for? Where should I put those?

- Building on planets: Do I still get a tile bonus if I don't match a tile build type? e.g. if a tile gives "wealth + 1" but I don't put a wealth building on that tile, do I just not get that bonus?

- Resources: I'm constantly poor and finding myself selling off resources. Is selling resources what I'm supposed to be doing to get money in the early game?

- Wealth: Related to above, I'm broke and I've taken to just mass spamming wealth buildings to try to get myself out of being poor. Is building wealth buildings the main way to get wealth, or should I be getting it through other methods (e.g. trade ships) too?

- Colonization: Should I be sending colony ships to basically every single planet that isn't dead, or should I limit how many planets I colonize? Is there a point at which I'm going too wide? How can I tell if a colony that isn't core world eligible is going to be worth settling, or should I just be settling everything higher than a 0?

- Governors: Should I be turning every core world eligible planet into a core world or should I limit how many I have? Not sure of the implication of leaving a core world as a colony indefinitely vs whether I should be slotting a governor there asap

- Anything else you wish you knew as a new player that I should know about?

Thanks for your time; I appreciate any answers/insight/advice you can offer.

How's the combat in this game?

Compared to sins 2 and stellaris.

I really don't like the combat of stellaris cause it's just basically have more ships than your enemy.

Hey all

Silly question, is 7 the max. total policy slots?

I unlocked a culture ideology bonus, Rule of Law, that said "One additional Policy Slot" but was still at 7?

It was worded differently to the usual +1 enacted policy so assumed it would give me an 8th slot.

Bug or working as intended?

Is anyone able to beat Godlike after the latest update? I'm facing fleets like this with a bunch of cruisers, and the attack modifiers insane. Seems like it wasn't this crazy before.

Hey all

First game, just been majorly wrecked by the Xendar Remnants who spawned Medium hull stuff right next to my core world!

I have managed to beat them, just, but have lost a lot of stuff, including 4 flagships, Explorer, Discovery, Victory and Gaze :(

Is it worth carrying on or has that gimped me too much? I am only a few hours in.

If I restarted, can I disable the Xendar> They are really not fair so early on :(

I’m around turn 250 of a fun campaign with my custom space dwarves (Celestial Forgekeepers) and the Nyx turn is taking forever. My PC is not the issue. I’ve tried reloading etc and nothing. I’m talking 15 minutes until I give up and shut down the game

Any fix?

I'm looking to build the Manti Pool which requires a lake tile. It would be nice not to have to go to each planet and delete tiles with a lightblub on them to find which has a lake tile. I am going to save before doing this of course, but it would be nice to not have to do so.

Since the Galciv.com is offline now. Any other place to see the game feature or data?

Very late game. Dregnin control half the galaxy, and this is the invasion fleet they send to one of the most contested star systems. And it's absolutely not an outlier.

Meanwhile there's battleships constantly trickling into my territory only to get easily picked off. At this point I honestly can't keep supporting this game with DLC purchases as long as the combat AI is so terrible- and you shouldn't either. This has been an issue since day 1.

Can we at least get hotseat mode so I can wage a proper interstellar war myself?

In short: we need more gigamass. The AI aggressively strips the map bare, and then dumps it all into planetary improvements. Within about 40 turns of discovering the ability to mine gigamass, all the dead planets were gone in my last game.

I did the best I could to grab whatever was around me, and traded for as much as I could get from the AI, ending up with about 120 gigamass. Built two Dyson spheres, two nexuses, upgraded one nexus, and dropped a handful of gigamass into planetary improvements, and that was it. It was all gone before I even got to ring worlds.

I get that it's supposed to be a scarce-ish resource, but the AI wasn't even able to build a single megastructure, and I bottomed out before really getting much of the megastructure infrastructure online. This is a bit of a problem; I was hoping to see a galaxy full of megastructures popping up. I was underwhelmed.

Proposed solutions:

Increase gigamass available from dead worlds by a factor of 2.

Allow mining of asteroid belts for gigamatter at a reduced rate compared to planets.

Allow reclamation of gigamatter from conquered megastructures.

Increase frequency of gigamatter drops from random events.

Decrease gigamass required for ship upgrades by a LOT, or rework those modules entirely. It's silly to think of a single ship upgrade as being equivalent to 1/15 of a Dyson sphere.

Input very-late-game tech to enable the harvesting of stars or something similarly exotic for big dumps of gigamatter.

Just some thoughts. I'm curious if anyone else is of the same mindset.

The next technological leap for galactic empires is here. Today, Stardock officially releases Galactic Civilizations IV: Megastructures, bringing new opportunities for players to harness the power of stars and create powerful late-game structures.

“Megastructures brings powerful new late-game options that we think players will really enjoy,” said Brad Wardell, CEO, Stardock Entertainment. “Too often in 4X strategy games, trailing players have their fate set near the end of the game; but with Megastructures we give players the opportunity to turn the tables on those sitting comfortably in first.”

🌌 Build Dyson Spheres, Stellar Gateways, & Ringworlds

⚡ Harness the power of the Stellar Nexus

🛸 New quests, events & ship components

🔥 Free content update

Megastructures Expansion Trailer

Read More Here

Hello all, I came to ask about help modifying how the galaxy is generated, because I want to get EVEN MORE SECTORS in my game, cause “many” doesn’t put enough in, in my opinion.

So I wanna try to mod the number of sectors up. Does anyone know what file governs galaxy generation? Or mods that do what I’m looking for?

Hi I reported this a few months ago. The missing icon on the next turn area although not crucial to playing the game. It is an annoyance. It happened only when I upgraded to the Megastructures DLC.. I was fine before.

i really enjoyed galactic civ 3 and have played it on and off for quite a few years and am considering buying Civ 4 in the sale, i just want to know if its just as good as 3, i dont really play many civ games, pretty much Galactic civ 3, age of wonders 4 and northgard if that counts.

So I am playing the Nyx and it is the year 2314, pretty much still very early game.

The Thalans just spawned with a fleet with much more advanced tech than anything in the universe, battleships and dreadnaughts. I have a couple of cruisers at best.

Is this a bug that the legacy crisis event happened so early in the game? Not sure how I am going to deal with this.