So how do you make your galactic civilization feel like it’s a living, breathing thing? Put (simulated) living, breathing things in it: characters. We have moved everything that makes sense from being an abstract number to being a character.  Population? Instead of it being 3.2 billion, it's just 3 characters. Every character has stats and background. Every character has a set of skills with numerical values to them.  They also have a backstory and can be interacted ...

With the benefit of hindsight… Every 4X game I’ve played struggles with the late game.  This is because they tend to become a micromanagement slog where the outcome of the game was known long before.  So how do you address this?  Well, the wrong way to do it is with AI governors or other such “help” from the AI. GalCiv IV flips the concept of governors on its head. In previous GalCiv games, you had to manage every single planet you coloni...

During the development of a game, many ideas will look good on paper only to be found to not work out in practice.  Normally, these ideas get killed off before implementation and even fewer ever get seen by the public. In the case of Galactic Civilizations IV, because we’re going out in ALPHA, you will get to see some ideas fully implemented that we have already decided didn’t work out. Today’s example for discussion: The Ideology compass. Here’s how it ...

For this entry, we are going to give you a tour of Galactic Civilizations IV as it exists, in alpha state, in June 2021.  We’re very excited. There’s a lot in here but so very much more to do. Note : I’m playing at 5K so I’m smushing my screenshots down so that they’re not quite so huge.   Choosing a Civilization For the Alpha, you can only play as the humans.  This is because we intend to make the civilizations much more distinc...

The process of getting a new player into your game and making that process an enjoyable experience can be the difference between success and failure for your game.  If you make a game for a publisher, you can assume there will be a milestone that involves the onboarding.  Let’s take a look at how GalCiv IV does it and what has changed since GalCiv III. Title Screen We went through many iterations for the title screen.  How many buttons should there be? Which butto...

One of the challenges we have in setting up maps is the question of how quickly should players be meeting other civilizations in the game?  How quickly should things show up? How much should the game direct you? I decided to take a hard look at GalCiv II and GalCiv III to see how different those first 20 turns worked out. GalCiv II: First 20 turns Turn 1: No on-screen direction but the UI is pretty clean and My ship is already selected to move. Selected ship has an a...

For many years,  I have put the Galactic Civilizations games through their paces to see how well a given game does at feeling like a story.  I do this to help nitpick things we need to change.  With the beta for GalCiv IV just around the corner, I thought I’d see how well the game stacks up so far. I also will be inserting comments that normally we would have at internal meetings, but for you aspiring game developers I wanted to show some of the feedback the team gets fro...

In the previous entry , we discussed whether we needed a battle viewer.  That’s because combat in GalCiv IV works somewhat differently than previous entries. Specifically: Combat on the map can involve multiple (ranged) tiles which complicates things a bit. Combat can take multiple turns which complicates things After getting a lot of helpful feedback we think we’ve come up with a way to have our cake and eat it too: AAR (After Action Reports).  Whenever combat take...

A million years ago in the 1990s when I was designing the OS/2 versions of Galactic Civilizations I gave the player sliders to adjust what they were spending their resources on.  This system lasted right on through Galactic Civilizations II for Windows. GalCiv I for Windows   GalCiv II for Windows GalCiv III v1.0 for Windows While highly useful for min-maxing a relatively simple economic system, it suffered from being pretty opaque in how it worked and was pretty ...

“This is just GalCiv II but with better graphics,” was a comment some GalCiv fans made when GalCiv III was first released. That was no more true than saying Civilization V was just Civilization IV with better graphics, but we understood where they were coming from.  There weren’t a lot of big bullet item changes from the previous version. That was because most of our time and budget was spent building a brand new space 4X game engine. As good as GalCiv II was, it was bu...

The Galactic Civilizations games are known for their ship design features. But ship design occurs before the ship is made.  What about after?  Galactic Civilizations IV will be introducing a new feature for upcoming Beta version (this Winter) called “The Vault”. The Vault is a set of special items the player either produces or, more commonly scavenges across the galaxy.  Destroying the monster ships, pirates, enemy fleets, etc. will result in scavenging th...

**NEWEST  WALKTHROUGH HERE ** Introduction If you’re coming from Galactic Civilizations III, you’re in for a treat. And if you have never played a Galactic Civilizations game before, then know this: this game is specifically designed to answer to the question, “I want to play a space 4X game, what game should I start with?” Read on to learn what this game is all about, who made it, and why we made it. A little about the team The highest rated space ...

You wanted it. We’re giving it to you.  The Battle viewer. Beta 2 of Galactic Civilizations IV brings back the Battle Viewer and a new After Action Report.  It’s pretty basic for Beta 2 and we plant to add a lot more to it. Today, I’m going to talk about what is already in it and what we plan to add. The viewer and the after action report There are really two elements here that players tend to want to see: Their ships in action to see how different de...

By the year 2232, the malevolent Drengin Empire reigned supreme over this area of space.  The once mighty Arcean Empire, that had long kept the Drengin Empire in check, was utterly defeated and their world left in ruin. The home world of the Torian Confederation was occupied with great cruelty.  Even the rising Altarian Republic was brought low and forced to sign an armistice and took on a role known as the Altarian Resistance. Earth was left untouched thanks to a Precursor technolo...

Pacing in 4X strategy games is crucial.  So I decided to look at GalCiv II, GalCiv III and the GalCiv IV alpha to take a look at how fast things move along.   T urn       GalCiv II (Twilight of the Arnor) GalCiv III (Retribution) GalCiv IV [Alpha] 1 · Researched New Propulsion Techniques [7 turns] · Planet Project: Innovation Complex [16 weeks] · Music: Haunting · Startport: Rush bought Co...