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In the year 2245, the Terran Alliance and their coalition had emerged victorious in a battle against the Drengin Empire, thanks to the recovery of a mysterious Precursor weapon. The Thalans, an advanced civilization that claimed to be from a nightmare future where humans were responsible for the destruction of the entire Milky Way galaxy, persuaded the humans to send the Precursor weapon back into the void of the pocket dimension it had been previously sent to. Shortly after, the Thalan Empir...

One of the things this Winter we're doing is updating the graphics of GalCiv IV in lots of various ways.  One upcoming update to GalCiv IV will be a revision to all the planetary improvements. For example: [New research building]   With 4K and 1440p becoming more common we really needed to up the game. We will also be updating some of the minor races.   So for instance, remember this guy? Pretty grotesque. He's being updated with this guy: ...

With Galactic Civilizations IV now generally available it’s time to talk about…THE FUTURE. First, we’re really glad you guys seem to like the game.  Releasing a game, especially one where people have been working on for years, is, as you can imagine, very stressful.  This is doubly true when the game tries out so many new things. Below is a very tentative roadmap of what we expect to release and in what order.  This is all subject to change based on feedba...

It’s hard to narrow down what screenshots help show off Galactic Civilizations IV the best.  Below I’m going to post some of my favorites, but we’d love to read your opinions and what screenshots you might think better represent the game to strategy gamers. This will come as no surprise to those of you who have been playing the series, but it has always mattered a lot to me that Earth is in the game. Because of that, it makes it really easy to compare how far the se...

**NEWEST WALKTHROUGH HERE**IntroductionIf 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 teamThe highest rated space strategy game of ...

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 WindowsGalCiv III v1.0 for WindowsWhile highly useful for min-maxing a relatively simple economic system, it suffered from being pretty opaque in how it worked and was pretty terrible for immersion....

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.   Turn     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 Colony ship with monthly p...

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 thing...

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...

Starting with Galactic Civilizations II, we allowed players to go and watch their ships fight it out in battle in a separate battle viewer screen.  But, what if we could show the battle on the main screen? That is, what if we could just zoom in on a fleet and rather than it being the leader ship with a number by it, it actually changed to show the entire fleet?  So if you wanted to watch a fleet fight it out, you would just watch it right on the map. Thoughts? ___________________...

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 buttons sh...