Galactic Civilizations IV 0.55 Changelog

*** RELEASED 9/23/2021 ***

Features

• Yor Singularity- Play as the Yor, our first non-organic species. The Yor have no growth rate and don't require food. Instead, they manufacture their population as other species manufacture buildings. They can also colonize a variety of worlds that cant' sustain organic life right from the beginning of the game.
  
  Their citizens start out with generally weak stats, but they have access to unique technologies that upgrade the capabilities of all of their citizens and can make them very strong later in the game. Do keep in mind that in GC4 your civilization can be made up of citizens of many species so even though your Yor might not care about food, if you capture a world of Mimot they will become very angry if they don't have anything to eat.
  
  In addition to the above, all of the Yor Command ships are generally weak, but they boost the abilities of the fleet they are in, and each other if you decide to go full Voltron with them and make a super fleet.
  • Endless Zeros- Boosts the Hit Points of its fleet.
  • Echoing Void- Boosts the Moves of its fleet.
  • Suffering Within- Boosts the Beam Attack of its fleet.
  • Before Creation- Boosts the Missile Attack of its fleet.
  • After Death- Boosts the Defenses of its fleet.
  • Infinite Resolve- Boosts the Kinetic Attack of its fleet.
  • The Nameless- Dramatically boosts the Repair rate of its fleet.
• Mimot Brotherhood- They may look cute but anyone who has played against the Mimot knows that they are deceptively powerful. They have the highest Growth rate and the highest Food requirement. Meaning that you always have plenty of citizens (they fill up their worlds quickly) and will often be struggling to find them new homes and keep them fed. You will never struggle to find a citizen to man a Colony Ship to a Starbase with the Mimot.
  
  Their "rapid reproduction" applies to more than creating new citizens. The Mimot have the Proliferation ability which means that whenever they construct a ship, they get another for free. 2 colony ships, 2 constructors, 2 gunboats. This is why they spread so quickly. But their quick construction comes at a cost as all of their ships suffer a significant Hit Point penalty. If the Mimot's are to win wars they won't win against evenly matched fleets, they will need to overwhelm with greater numbers.
  
  The Mimot Command ships also play into this theme of reproduction as many can produce new ships on their own. Making even a lone Command ship dangerous if it is able to produce an entire fleet if given enough time.
  • Appeleur- This small scout ship can turn resources into new Probes to expand its search.
  • Puca- A weak ship that is able to escape from battles that are going against it.
  • Loireag- A legendary warship that is able to produce clones of itself.
  • Harpazein- A dangerous ship that is able to fire antimatter bombs at enemies (more about those later).
  • Dullahan- A slow carrier ship that is able to produce full Transport ships to invade core worlds.
  • The Gruff- A deadly warship on its own, augmented by the fact that it can produce more warships to join its fleet.
• Galactic Achievements- Galactic Achievements are a new feature we are testing. From this menu you can select a story event or challenge to undertake. Some require you to have met certain conditions before you can start them and all provide bonuses (including Prestige, the coming global stat for winning the game) if you complete them.
  
  Traditionally we would have had these as random major events to occur in the game. We are testing them as player-initiated events (ie: you say when you want the event to start). That may break the immersion a bit, but also gives you control over your game. It also allows us to make them even more challenging since we don't worry about them hitting you randomly (word of warning: beware opening a dimensional rift right next to anything you value in the Orb of Draginol story).
  
  The three introduced in this update are:
  • Shard of the Mithrilar- Find a perfect world deep in the depths of space. Hopefully, before your enemies do. You must research the Mithrilarian Epics technology before you can attempt this.
  • The Everwar- Lock all players into 200 turns of war with each other. There is no ability to declare peace within that time frame. All you can hope to do is survive. You must be at least 200 turns in the game before this story can be started.
  • Orb of Draginol- There are rumors of a powerful artifact in the universe. But it is in another player's hands. You must find it (which involves creating a dimensional rift and attracting the attention of the Dreadlords) and defeat the player before the Orb's power has made him unstoppable.
• Minor Civilizations- There are a host of new Minor Civilizations in the game. They have their own homeworld and shipyard. They can build ships but will never expand beyond their homeworld. More opportunistic players may decide to take their homeworlds and collect some new citizens for their empire. But players that opt to be more diplomatic can attempt to fulfill the minor civilization's request, it is unique for each civilization. If you give the minor civilization the help they are asking for they provide a gift every turn in tribute. The type of gift they provide is up to the player to pick from and depends on the minor civilization being talked to.
  
  For example, the Burran are being harassed by Pirates. if the player takes care of their pirate problem they will offer either some Research, Credits or Thulium every turn in gratitude.
• Prestige Victory- GC4 is going to support a Prestige, Conquest, Alliance, and Cultural victory. A player achieves Prestige by controlling ascension crystals, having advanced technology, being a military leader, an economic powerhouse, completing Galactic Achievements, etc. Basically, it is a way of ranking all the players in the game. If you have won by beating all the other players in several categories we don't make you play out the game, we award your victory (then if you want to play it out you can).
• New Battle Actions- We added our first battle action in the last update, the ability to fire missiles on the main map. This update adds more new ones (all the Mimot Command Ship abilities to spawn ships are battle actions) as well as the ability to have these actions cost resources. The new battle actions are:
  • Antimatter Bomb- This costs 1 Antimatter to use. It deploys like a missile but when it explodes it damages all enemy fleets, shipyards, and starbases within a 1 tile radius.
  • Repair Drones- A ship that is outfitted with Repair Drones can repair any fleet within a 5 tile radius as a battle action.
• Events can be civilization-specific- Events of all types can now be specific to a particular civilization. If you find the Festron survivors as the Festron there will be different options and dialog. The same for Drengin finding the Drengin Prison ship. The Yor also have some new events for colonization based on their unique perspective.
• Colony ships now have an Auto-colonize command.

Balance

• Increased the number of available slots on all Hull Sizes to allow for more customization or ship designers. This required all ships to be respeced.
• Added the Hull Support ship component.
• Added the Foundry ship component.
• Added the Promethion Drive ship component.
• Added the Thrusters ship component.
• Moved producing Nanobots to earlier in the tree.
• Battle Hammer class ships now have the Healing Drones ability.
• Updated all ships so that they aren't blocked if you don't have advanced resources. Instead, you are given the option of building a ship with or without the advanced resources.
• Separated Armed shuttles from Bombers (so Armed Shuttles don't obsolete).
• Reduced the Breakthrough culture trait to +50 research instead of +150.
• Increased the max time sieges can take.
• Increased the bonus/penalty to resistance/Soldiering from the Warforged/Pacifist citizen traits.
• A world cant have more than 1 trade resource.
• Starbase Engineers boost HP by 1 per diligence rather than a %.
• Increase the amount of food that is likely to be found on Terrestrial, Jungle, Arboreal and Tropical worlds.
• Decreased the amount of food found on Frozen worlds.
• Increased the amount of food bonus Farmers provide.
• Reduced anomaly frequency slightly.
• Prestige victory rebalanced. 

Fixes

• Performance Improvements- Thank you to all the players that sent in late-game saves. It was great to see where the game was having performance. Multiple changes were made to dramatically speed up late-game turn time and general time performing any action.
• Lots of typo fixes.
• Fixed an issue where population capacity was being constricted by the planet-class.
• Fixed an issue keeping Pirates, Space Monsters, and Precursor Sentinels from building new ships.
• Fixed the Pirate Scrap event which could not offer an option if the player didn't have 100 credits.
• The Anomaly Detection technology now correctly spawns new anomalies.
• Fixed an issue with the Core Command ship not having a survey module.
• Fixed an issue with Approval not being given by elections.
• Fixed an issue where the Spores ability wasn't giving additional charges when a Culture Trait was learned.
• Fixed an issue where the Minor Civilization setting didn't fit in some resolutions on the galaxy setup screen.
• Fixed the Kaxx Cryptography mission.
• Fixed the Terran Legacy shipyard graphics.
• Fixed an issue allowing you to accept minor civilization quests multiple times.
• Fixed a bug with starvation.
• Crash fixes.

UI

• Nested Tooltips- When you are displaying a tooltip with information you can mouse over that tooltip to bet more information about what it is describing.
• Updated Planet HUDs- They now size based on the name of the planet, they shrink sooner, they only show the resources the planet and they are transparent.
• New Corporate Sector leader art.
• Planet size is now based don't on the planet class (higher class worlds are now larger on the map).
• More variety in planet thumbnails.
• Added tooltips to the ideology bars on the ideology screen to better describe what is happening there (we will be doing more work on this screen, we know it's a mess).
• Ships more clearly list the special abilities from their components.
• If you click on the Executive Orders advisor recommendation it will open the Executive Orders mode.
• Added new art for all of the Relics.
• New Onyx Hive leader art.
• UISize changes automatically when you switch resolution.
• Clicking the Advisor recommendation to upgrade your ship will take you to the ship in question.
• References to "Turns" switched to "Weeks".
• Added Approval to the Policy Screen (so you can see the effect of tax rate changes).
• You can now drag and drop Policies on the Policy screen.
• Improved the tooltips on the Policy screen.
• Added tooltips to the buttons on the shipyard screen. 
• Added a power bar to the Prestige tooltip. 

AI

• Improved the AI evaluation of Diplomatic Capital in trades.
• The AI does a better job of fleeting its ships.
• The AI now uses missile battle actions (you have been warned).

Ships

• Added 35 new terran ship parts.
• Updated terran ships.
• Updated Xeloxi appearance and materials.
• Added new thumbnails for the Xeloxi ships.
• Added new thumbnails for the Navigator ships.