Stardock announced the release of Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova Edition (Supernova) today. Stardock is celebrating its 30-year anniversary this month with the sequel to the game that started the company back in 1993.

“This is, by far, the biggest game release we’ve ever done,” said Brad Wardell, founder and CEO of Stardock who returned to design Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova after handing the reigns to others for Galactic Civilizations III and Galactic Civilizations IV: base game. “We’ve been so fortunate to be able work with our fans to create something that we think strategy game players are going to really appreciate. You can really tell the love and care that we’ve put into this release.”

The game takes place shortly after humanity has discovered faster-than-light travel. Earth has united and the stars await. The player takes on the role of a civilization's leader (Earth or one of the many alien civilizations) to expand their species into the universe and contend with competing civilizations who are doing the same.

Supernova introduces many firsts for PC gaming including AlienGPT, a generative AI technology trained on Stardock’s own art portfolio that allows players to describe their own custom civilization, and generates not just what the civilization looks like, but its background, lore, galactic events and interactions with other civilizations.

Other new features include Terror Stars, a new end game technology that causes enemy stars to go Supernova, a new mission system, an interactive tutorial, new victory paths, a new core neutral AI opponent system, a host of new alien civilizations with their own tech trees to play as or against, an artifact Vault and hundreds of other additions and enhancements.

“Having done a lot of games in early access over the years, we’ve never had a game receive the kind of positive, enthusiastic response this has,” said Wardell. “With the community, we’ve taken a top to bottom look at how strategy games in 2023 should play and made dramatic improvements as a result. In the past couple of years, the ability to collaborate online has really changed, which has fundamentally altered the way we make games, and the end results are clearly on display in Supernova.”

Stardock has also enhanced the modding and multiplayer functionality in Supernova. Cooperative multiplayer has been added and a new integrated modding system lets players upload their own factions, starship designs and more.

https://testx-steam.c5game.com/steamstore/app/1357210/Galactic_Civilizations_IV/

https://youtu.be/rA_b-H7xuow

Stardock has released the latest sequel of its award-winning space strategy game series today into early access. Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova sees the player as the ruler of a united home world that has just discovered faster-than-light travel.

https://testx-steam.c5game.com/steamstore/app/1357210/Galactic_Civilizations_IV_Supernova

Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova continues a 30-year trend of innovation in the series. This latest sequel introduces AI-generated content OpenAI’s ChatGPT technology allowing players to create their own civilizations that uses AI to create the lore, conversation dialogs, quests and more. The game also uses AI, trained on decades of Stardock’s alien art to deliver custom graphics for their custom civilization.

"We are thrilled with the new additions that Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova brings to the genre,” said Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock. "The use of cutting-edge AI technology allows players to generate entire civilizations that look and feel unique with just a few lines of text has us particularly excited."

In this space-based strategy game set in the 24th century, players take on the role of a leader of a spacefaring civilization, tasked with exploring and colonizing the known universe. With an array of new features and improvements, Supernova offers an unparalleled 4X strategy experience for players of all skill levels.

“We’ve really focused on making the game more approachable to new players,” said Wardell. “This is the most sophisticated strategy game we’ve ever made, so we have put extra time into UI improvements, tutorials and context-sensitive information.” 

Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova focuses heavily on replayability. Players can choose several different galaxy setup options, a different opponent to play against and now with the AI generated events and quests, each game will feel like an epic moment in the history of the galaxy.

New features in Supernova include cultural progression, new combat and planetary invasion systems, galactic sectors, new alien civilizations, AI assisted computer opponents, and the integration of ChatGPT and AI art generation. Additionally, the game boasts a multi-sector map design, planetary sieges, multi-turn battles, a host of new weapon designs, starship classes, Terror Stars that destroy entire star systems, and hundreds of other improvements for enhancing the player's ability to build the ultimate space empire.

 

New Alien Civilizations bring their own ship styles, unique race traits, diplomatic quirks, AI personalities, and more!

The Villains of Star Control: Origins DLC pack introduces four major new civilizations to Galactic Civilizations III. All of the new alien factions come equipped with a unique leader, ship, music, and traits that make each civilization look and play differently from the existing major civilizations.

Play as or against the Measured, the overly bureaucratic race of sentient coral, or as the extremely polite (but surprisingly cannibalistic!) Phamysht. You can also play as the frightening race from another dimension, the Xraki, whose only desire is to destroy everything in their path, or as the immortal and genetically superior Scryve.

Galactic Civilizations III is the most popular space-based turn based strategy of all time. Your civilization has just achieved faster-than-light travel and the galaxy awaits you. But you are not alone and must deal with alien civilizations through diplomacy, trade, cultural hegemony, or military conquest either against the computer or against friends online.

In addition to the new DLC, we've released a new v3.9 update for the game that includes massively shorter late game turn times, updated balance based on feedback, AI improvements, new star base modules and lots more. The changelog at the bottom of the post has more details, so be sure to check it out!


The Measured
Do you have a form for that?

The Measured are an extremely bureaucratic race of sentient coral who once enjoyed a thriving and rich civilization before they were genetically modified by the Scryve. They now serve as the record keepers for the Scryve Empire, a role to which they are well suited.

The Phamysht
So lovely to MEAT you!

The Phamysht are a race of extremely polite cannibals who find other beings generally intolerable. The galaxy is a messy place, and they’re here to finally bring it some class and refinement, even if it does mean eating lesser races out of existence.

The Xraki
CHAOS. ENTROPY. FEED!

Although they are considered to be fanatical monsters by most, the Xraki weren’t always that way. They hail from another dimension and were driven mad through the evil ministrations of the Scryve Empire, who turned them into their shock troops.

The Scryve
Permission to exist: Denied!

The Scryve are a race of immortals who weren’t always the villains. Their civilization was once filled with idealism and hope, but terrible events over time slowly corrupted them and withered their empire, turning them instead to brutal violence.

• Dozens of new ship parts inspired by Star Control: Origins for building and modifying your own ships
  
• Several new music tracks from Star Control: Origins
  
• New faction traits
  
• New ship designs, colors, and styles

Get Villains of Star Control: Origins today!

https://testx-steam.c5game.com/steamstore/app/1104410



Features

Modder Inspired Balance update 

Special thanks to Horemvore, Old Spider, and the modding community. Brad/Draginol reviewed his mods to evaluate whether some of those ideas should make them into the game. We love seeing players that are passionate about the game and it's great to see their work making the game better for everyone.

Zone of Control update

No more fog of war in your empire.  All territory in your Zone of Control now is always visible.  This helps you keep an eye on what other factions are doing in your backyard.  

Performance

We've made a substantial improvement in performance.  This boost is especially noticeable in the shipyard screen and in late-game turn times.  

Change Log

Balance

• PlayerStartSpacingWideMod changed from 1.0 to 0.33
• PlayerStartSpacingNarrowMod changed from 0.50 to 0.175
• Basic Life Support range bonus increased from 0.25 to 0.30
• Large hull ship maint increased from 3 to 5
• Huge hull ship maint increased from 3 to 7
• Cultural treaties now benefit both sides
• Military Alliance treaties now benefit both sides
• Planets rebel a bit slower than before.
• AI values supply ships more when it's not at war.
• Surrender change: Surrendering players now destroy their worlds upon surrendering unless they are surrendering to a particular player in which case they will transfer their homeworld (and only their homeworld) to that player. This reduces the late game sudden explosion in micro-management of worlds the player may have no interest in. AI also destroys its ships.
• All territory in a player's ZOC is always visible. No fog of war (in your borders).
• New starbase module: "Ascension Gate Study." Allows the player to get a lot more out of the Ascension Gates.

Fixes

• Shipyard won't rebuild the list of ships unless there's been a change to the resources the player has. This dramatically improves late-game shipyards screen performance.
• Improved turn times, especially late game.  
• Fixed issue where disabling a DLC via command line would not have the grayed out portraits show up.
• Fixed some pixelation on the Campaign screen.
• Adjusted list container on the custom faction screen to avoid clipping of the Abilities list on lower resolutions.
• Fixed typos and grammar errors
• Added typos and grammar errors
• Shorten names that were too long
• Fixed colony list in Civilization screen showing the incorrect manufacturing stat in the column labeled for social manufacturing.
• Fixed several places in the UI that were showing incomplete or inaccurate stat breakdown tooltips for manufacturing because of missing tooltip data.
• Got rid of leftover debug UI graphics in the Promotion Stats tooltip (seen in the commander unit promotion screen).
• Fixed too-skinny approval field in the main map planet tooltip if the colony had 100% approval.
• Fixed a crash whenever an AI player surrendered over their stuff to another player.
• Changed description of Silicon-Based life to reflect that their cities were changed to use Promethion instead of Durantium.

UI

• Reworked the way that the "Max Manufacturing" stat is shown in the stat breakdown tooltip. It now also displays the social and military manufacturing stats and their breakdowns, including the slider values when Crusade isn't enabled.
• In Crusade mode, "base research" or "base manufacturing" or "base income" are now displayed as Raw Production, to accurately reflect where that number is coming from (as opposed to being some calculated value from sliders and such in non-Crusade).
• In non-Crusade mode, fixed bug in the spending breakdown at the bottom of the manufacturing, research, and income stat breakdown tooltips where it showed player-wide raw production or slider values instead of colony-specific ones.
• Moved "Collect Gameplay Data" option to it's position to prevent the spinner option from taking its place.
• Various flavor text changes to abilities, components, technologies, improvements to make them more clear.

AI

• AI values hypergates much more.
• AI evaluates foreign influence before determining whether a planet should be colonized.

Crusade and Beyond

• Recently conquered planets are now immune to culture flip for 15 turns.
• Planets that have been culturally flipped have a 15 turn morale penalty.
• Planets now receive a default planetary defense bonus and a resistance bonus.
• Default colony ship loading population reduced from 2 to 1.
• Population used for filling colony ships increased from a radius of 6 to 10.
• AI ship design evaluation decreased from 20 turns to 10 turns.
• UpgradeDiscountFactor increased from 0.5 to 0.9.
• Bonuses to players playing at easier levels changed from a % to a flat.
• Civilization capital sensor range increased from 12 to 16.

Intrigue Only

• Patriot government ship loses a Railgun and a Harpoon to make it a bit less powerful.

Retribution Only

• Echoing Heartstone Artifact power reduced from 10,000 to 1,000.
• Tech Inflation increased from 2% to 2.5%.
• Starting Taxation increased from 25% to 33%.
• Galactic News earlier turn increased from turn 10 to turn 15.
• Galactic News cooldown increased from 12 to 20 turns.
• Colony Limit Max Penalty increased from 6 to 10.
• Default starting money increased from 3,000 credits to 5,000 credits.

 

Last year we released Heroes of Star Control: Origins, and it proved to be so successful that we're following it up with Villains of Star Control: Origins DLC. The DLC arrives on August 27th and comes with 4 new playable races, each with their own unique abilities, ship styles, and theme music.

The Star Control: Origins multiverse is filled with beings of all shapes and sizes. Here is a preview of some of the darker species coming over to Galactic Civilizations III.

The Measured
The Measured are sentient coral. They once had a rich, thriving civilization before they were modified by the Scryve (who we will discuss in a moment). The Measured are the Bureaucrats of the Scryve sector which makes them fit in with the gameplay of Galactic Civilizations III nicely. They not only get the Bureaucrat ability but receive a new one: Mitotic which gives them free administrators when they colonize new worlds.

The Phamyst
The Phamyst are the galaxy's most polite cannibals. They find other beings generally intolerable. The galaxy is a messy place and they are just the ones to bring class and refinement to it.

The Xraki
The Xraki are considered fanatical monsters that came from another dimension by most. But things are not quite as they seem. The Xraki were once the shock troops of the Scryve Empire who harvested them and modified them via the Scryve's exclusive access to the only known Origin in the galaxy (a device that allows its user to go into alternative universes).

The Scryve
The immortal Scryve were not always villains. The Scryve Empire was once full of idealism and hope. Time and events slowly corrupted them. Now, the once all-powerful Scryve Empire is slowly dying. They have controlled our part of the galaxy for so long that few species have been left untouched by them. The Scryve are unlike any villain from the Galactic Civilizations universe. Where the Drengin are brutal, violent and intolerant the Scryve are civilized, thoughtful and methodical. The Scryve could best be described as a people who followed "the ends justify the means" one too many times.

The Scryve are masters at conquering and then holding. Not only do they have the Conquerors ability, they also receive the new Imperial ability which gives their ships a HP bonus in their territory based on the number of colonies whose zone of control are contiguous with their home planet.

Where to get it...

Villains of Star Control: Origins will arrive for Steam on August 27th for $5.99. Not only does each new species have their own unique abilities, but they come with their own ship styles, which means lots of new ship parts to play with.

Build a civilization that will stand the test of time in the largest space-based strategy game ever! Choose from dozens of unique races and make a name for yourself across the galaxy through diplomacy, espionage, technological advances, and more.

Galactic Civilizations III is a 4X space strategy game set in the 23rd century. Humans and aliens compete against each other for domination of the galaxy through war, cultural hegemony, diplomacy, and more. Customize your game experience right down to every detail: galaxy size, opponent factions, victory conditions, AI difficulty level, and frequency of galactic events and anomalies.

Don't have Galactic Civilizations III? Save 84% for a limited time!

https://testx-steam.c5game.com/steamstore/app/226860/Galactic_Civilizations_III/


*Sale valid August 15th, 2019 at 1PM ET - August 19th, 2019 at 1pm ET.

Galactic Ascension Status is new in v3.8 for GalCiv III. Our VP of Entertainment, Derek Paxton, decided to sit down and have some fun with it last week - check it out here!

What's YOUR favorite victory strategy?

https://www.stardock.com/games/article/496427/

Galactic Civilizations III v3.8 Update Brings Major UI Changes

Set in the 23rd century, Galactic Civilizations III is a 4X space strategy game where humans and aliens compete against each other for domination of the galaxy. v3.8 brings a few exciting changes to this already massive game, which you can read more about below.

No more sneaky Ascensions! At the forefront of the update are changes to the Ascension notifications and UI. Each civilization's progress is now displayed on an easy-to-read progress bar, and anytime someone gains control of an Ascension crystal, an icon will alert you to it. 

The shipyard display now shows how much production is being sent to that shipyard so that you know how fast it's able to build things. The planet list views will now also show research.

We've also made some other improvements to the UI's layout, including updating screens so that they use fonts, colors, and font sizes consistently. We've also added a feature where you can adjust the difficulty level in the middle of a game. Read the full list of changes below!

Changelog

• As soon as someone controls an Ascension crystal, have an icon show up and informs you that Ascension has started. Mousing over should show you how far along each civ with Ascension is from ascending as a % bar with (turns).
  
• UI Layout updates
  • Updated most screens to use fonts, colors, and font sizes consistently.
    
  • Made fonts bigger wherever possible.
  • General cleanup of margins and list entries wherever possible.
  • Removed extra returns from the "word on the street" blurbs.
  • Move some of the drop-downs in options screens to keep them from clipping.
• You can now adjust the difficulty level mid-game through the options screen (single player only).
• Starting ships don't append a number to their name unless another ship of the same design has already been spawned. This is to support custom flavorful names for core starting ships from starting ship designs
• Updated starting ship names of factions added to the game after Crusade.
• Shipyard display now shows how much production is being sent to that shipyard, so you know how fast it can build things.
• Fixed an issue causing the unit buttons from not showing up in Medium UI on the Colony List screen.
• Planet view list now displays research
• Fixed Tourism exploit in Crusade version of the Consulate
• The AI has been ordered top stop freezing time to keep its mission ships safe. (stuck turn fix)
• Addressed "word on the street" grammar and spelling mistakes
• Removed duplicate planet data in crusade and base game data folders that could potentially cause bad things(TM)
• Adjusted the choose civ screen to improve text wrapping
• Fixed alignment issue on the Drath starting screen
• Fixed a bug that prevented commanders from being assigned to United Earth ships

Don't own Galactic Civilizations III? Get it Now!

https://testx-steam.c5game.com/steamstore/app/226860/Galactic_Civilizations_III/

For the game's 4th anniversary, we've focused exclusively on a top-to-bottom series of improvements based on fan requests! These improvements are major quality of life changes that improve the overall experience of Galactic Civilizations III.

v3.7 improves ship AI, multiplayer performance, memory use, pathfinding performance, pacing, and the empire management UI, as well as addresses a host of minor bugs. It's available now as a free download for owners of the base game.

https://testx-steam.c5game.com/steamstore/app/226860


See the full changelog here: https://testx-steam.c5game.com/app/226860/discussions/1/1679190184061949039/

Galactic Civilizations III v3.6 Community Update improves custom ship mod compatibility, adjusts commonwealth worlds, and more

We're launching a version update today that addresses the most important feedback we get: YOURS. We've addressed several community reported issues in our continuing effort to bring you the best GalCiv game possible. We put balance and bug fix work into both the base game and the Retribution expansion with this update. Some of the biggest changes we made include:

• Merging fleets no longer renames them
  
• Custom ships work better with mods
  
• Artificial life forms can no longer build farms because robots don't eat food
  
• Your commonwealth worlds can no longer flip worlds in your empire (because that was treason!)

See the huge changelog below!

Don't have Galactic Civilizations III?
Buy from Steam | Buy from Stardock[www.galciv3.com]

Owners, the v3.6 update is ready and waiting for you in your Steam client.
Don't forget to pick up the newly released Retribution expansion today!

www.galciv3.com | www.galciv3.com/retribution



Gameplay

• Nerfed "Lossless Life Support" module
  
• Fixed typos in "Lossless Mining" module descriptions
  
• Updated Tourism bonus for the "Popular Race" trait to be flat 1 and 2% instead of multipliers of 10 and 20%
  
• Updated united planet tourism board to be flat with a 10% bonus (was multiplier of 100% which was crazy)
  
• Colonizing the Promethion Refinery precursor world now grants 5 Promethion
  
• Set "Virtual Vacation" to be a player wonder
  
• Changed "Influence Per Turn" from multiplier to flat on the Galactic Showcase
  
• Fixed mismatch of description and text in the "Antimatter Weapon Colonizing" event
  
• Tweaked pathfinding so that it doesn't attempt to find a path to the node closest to a blocked destination if the start tile is already the closest node
  
• Silicon-based life can terraform and colonize high level extreme worlds
  
• Removed farms for Synthetic lifeforms and enabled terraforming improvements and high end extreme world techs
  
• Fixed "Orphaned Improvements" and techs in the Retribution tech tree
  
• Fixed issue with Iridium tech tree failing on "Tariff Focus" specialization

UI

• Changed it so that when you merge a fleet, it will keep a custom name for the resulting fleet. If both fleets being merged have custom names, it keeps the fleet name of the bigger fleet.
  
• Adjusted "Economic Warning" flavor text to fit with new conversation popup font size.
  
• Fixed typo in "Precursor Research Node" description.
  
• Improved the text alignment on the UP Resolutions window

Bugs

• Fixed custom ship style sets having the wrong strategic icons. Players will have to re-save their ship style sets (and change the effect ships classes to what they want along with their text, since that is info that is saved off). Prevents players from having to remake the ship style sets and only deal with what was changed
  
• You can no longer assign commanders to planets
  
• Ships with "one per player" components can upgrade to ships with the same components
  
• Cleaned up code that clears/applies rebellion status to prevent edge cases where planets can flip when they shouldn't (like when the tile is owned by a commonwealth of the planet owner)
  
• Addressed a MP crash related to mismatched DLC
  
• Fixed mismatched strategic icons on some ship classes
  
• Fixed typos in "Plasma Arc" event

Mod fixes

• Ships created with mods now show up correctly
  
• Prevents crash if a tech unlocks more than 12 things at once (modders -- you know who you are!)

Retribution

• Fixed issue where Hypergates didn't fire any shots during battle because they didn't have range
  
• Changed the Hyperlane tool tip to account for the minimum move cost, so it will now show the max bonus as 900% instead of +-100%
  
• Removed extra space in the Korath faction description
  
• Added "lossless life support" back into the Retribution tech tree
  
• Updated Thalan conversation text to reflect that they bring in multiple ships now in mission 4
  
• Add basic Block Hulls to Korath Ship style