Galactic Civilizations IV Beta 2 brings Multiplayer, Battle Viewer, New Events and Galactic Achievements
Published on Thursday, March 10, 2022 By
Galactic Civilizations IV Enters Beta 2
Challenge your friends in multiplayer, view epic ship combats
in the Battle Viewer, and much more!
Seek out new star systems and discover the exciting potential of the subspace realm in Galactic Civilizations IV. You are the all-powerful leader of a spacefaring civilizations and will discover thousands of worlds and dozens of civilizations - both old and new - as you explore the galaxy and try to build a civilization that will withstand the tests of time.
Beta 2 adds a bunch of the features you've all be asking for, including 3 multiplayer modes, the cinematic battle viewer, new events, and new galactic achievements. Take a look below for the full changelog and a summary of the exciting new features and experiences that await you in Beta 2 for Galactic Civilizations IV!
The newly implemented battle viewer lets you enjoy cinematic explosions as you take command of your fleet.
Multiplayer Modes
Arena
The stand-offs are tense Arena mode, where two players enter and only one will come out alive. Locked into a fierce battle from which there is no escape, you'll have to employ your wits and your weapons to win.
Agenda
You'll need to be ready for anything in the Agenda multiplayer mode, where the goal changes with each game. Whether you need to conquer and hold precursor relics or defeat select enemies, care decisions are required in order to beat your opponents to the punch. Build when you have to, fight when you have to, but never lose sight of the overall goal: victory.
Survival
Trust - or backstab, we won't judge - your friends in a fierce war against AI opponents who continue to grow in strength and strategy as the game progresses. There is no doubt that eventually the humans will fall, but the real question here is: who will be the one who dies last?
Build improvements on your planets and strive to keep your people happy. You might not like what happens if you don't...
Battle Viewer
The new Battle Viewer adds an exciting visual spark to the game and lets you see ship battles in all of their cinematic glory. Feel the power of your command as you watch your fleets take on your civilization's enemies and send their vessels into the endless depths of space.
New Commanders
New commanders have been added for several civilizations, including the Krynn, Iconians, Onyx Hive, and Altarians. Recruited citizens can become commanders of one of seven vessels that are unique to their civilization, granting you an edge over your enemies if you plan it right. While some grant bonuses to stats like influence and attack, others allow unique access to things like Promethion chambers or grant other special abilities.
New Galactic Achievements
Several new Galactic Achievements are waiting to challenge you in Beta 2! Galactic Achievements can be challenging to complete, but can also claim certain victory for you when executed well. Are you brave enough to challenge the Dread Fleet? Your advisors warn that you should leave it alone, but what fun is backing away from a challenge...
And Much More
New policies and executive orders like exploiting natural resources or reduced regulations give you more control over how you govern your civilization. Newly added map markers that are placed at the site where one of your vessels is destroyed will also ensure you never take a wrong turn at that galactic fork in the road again. Several other updates and fixes ensure that the beta is running smoothly as we move toward launch later this year.
Zoom out for a full view of the sector, making strategic planning that much easier.
To learn more about how Galactic Civilizations IV is developing, please check out our Dev Journals! Want to know more about what's in Beta 2? Check out the changelog below!
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Beta 2 Changelog (v.80 + v.81)
v.80
Features
- Multiplayer- You can now play against your friends, or former friends (if they play Mimots) in Multiplayer. Players can choose to play in several game modes.
- Arena- This is the preferred method for MP. Two human players, locked at war with each other. Only one survives.
- Agenda- The goal of the game is randomly determined. It could be to be the first person to claim and hold 5 Precursor Relics. Build when you have to, fight when you have to, but keep your eye on the goal of the game if you want to win.
- Survival- In this mode the Humans can work together (or backstab if they prefer). But they are both locked at war with the AI and the AI gets more powerful as the game goes on. The humans will die. The winner is the one who dies last.
- Battle Viewer- Now see your battle in full cinematic glory.
- New Galactic Achievements
- There have been five new Galactic Achievements added (Halls of Unity, Infinite Archive, Astrolab of the Arnor, Grand Menagerie, New Eden) that all require the player to spend a lot of resources to construct a galactic wonder. But once the challenge is begun other players will attempt it as well, and only the first person to complete it will earn the Prestige for having it.
- Dread Fleet- There are strange readings coming from a point in space where dimensions intersect. Your advisors warn that you should leave it alone. But you have never backed away from a challenge before...
- New Events
- Ambassadors Ship- The ship of another civilizations ambassador has been destroyed while orbiting one of your worlds. They are accusing you of being behind it. How will you respond?
- Fragile Rift- Another civilization is at risk of bringing something horrible into this dimension and they are asking for your help to stop it.
- Krynn Commanders- All Krynn Commanders are sacred to the Way and dramatically boost the influence of worlds they are near. The higher their level, the more Influence is boosted.
- Missionary- Infinite range allows this ship to spread the message of the way to the farthest edge of the galaxy.
- Monitor- A strong survey ship.
- Crusader- A warship for engaging in early battles.
- Sword of the Way- A powerful warship that generates control for every victorious battle.
- Shield of the Way- A defensive ship that repairs all nearby allies.
- Memory of Rosalind- Not only does this ship boost Influence based on level but provides an additional huge base Influence bonus as well.
- Divine Judgement- A powerful missile ship that is able to destroy enemy fleets from far away.
- Iconian Commanders- All Iconian commanders get huge attack bonuses when they are within their own borders, making them formidable at home, and vulnerable in deep space.
- Demodae- A fast warship whose moves increase with level.
- Eclipse- A survey ship that generates bonus Research when surveying anomalies.
- Watcher- A warship with a big sensor range that gets even larger as it levels.
- Iso's Shadow- A powerful beam warship.
- Ringvault- A kinetic warship that boosts the research of nearby worlds.
- Maranna- A defensive ship that boosts both the Approval and the Growth of nearby worlds.
- Dustbringer- A powerful missile ship.
- Onyx Hive Commanders- Unlike other Onyx Hive ships their commanders have access to Promethion Chambers, which allow them to sacrifice Promethion to fully repair their fleet (though this is a costly endeavor as the Hive's growth rate is based on their stored Promethion). All of the Hive Commanders are formidable but slow, making them tough to defeat, but weak to finesse (ie: be careful getting them too far from your core worlds).
- Arkose- A powerful Missile ship
- Jaspillite- A powerful Kinetic ship.
- Breccia- A powerful Beam ship.
- Lamprophye- A powerful missile warship that provides Point Defense for its entire fleet.
- Nephelinite- A powerful kinetic warship that converts defeated enemies into Promethion.
- Hornfels- A beam ship that boosts the production of nearby worlds.
- Blueschist- A missile ship that boosts the Approval and Influence of nearby worlds.
- Altarian Commanders- Altarian Commanders have a wide variety of abilities, making them versatile, but likely to lose in direct battle against more warlike civilizations.
- Sojourner- A decent ship that significantly reduces decay of nearby colonies. Making it a perfect guard for promising, but remote, colonies.
- Scry- A survey ship that generates additional research when it surveys an anomaly.
- Sindarian- A warship that receives a significant hit point bonus when it is within its own borders. A great defender, but weak attacker.
- Decalon- A much more powerful version of Scry. With Scry's survey and bonuses research abilities, and powerful weapons to back them up.
- Magesta- A strong carrier that booth repairs nearby fleets and boosts the approval of nearby worlds.
- Amarian Soul- A warship that boosts the Influence and Income of nearby worlds.
- Shattered Tower- The Altarians might not be the best warriors, but this warship makes up for it. But be careful, if it is lost the Altarians are unlikely to field anything as powerful.
- Map Markers- A map marker is left at the site of the defeat so players can investigate what happened and where it happened.
- New Executive Orders
- Exploit Natural Resources- Earn some quick credits, and some pollution on your worlds.
- New Policies
- Reproductive Imperative- Unrelenting civilizations can boost their Growth rate substantially.
- Reduced Regulations- Increase your income, but at a significant loss of Control.
Fixes
- Fixed the Culture point from the Eyes of the Universe wonder.
- Fixed an issue where the "Normal" tax rate button was showing the wrong value.
- Fixed an issue with the terraforming tile glow.
- Fixed a broken event image (most noticeable with the Everwar event).
- Fixed all the ships so that the normal version won't be obsoleted when advanced versions become available.
- Crash fixes.
- Fixed an issue where planets were appearing in front of the selection cursor, even if they were behind it.
- Fixed a particle issue when zooming out that could cause the particle to scale up and fill the whole screen.
- Fixed an issue where sectors could fail to generate.
- Fixed an issue where the AI would try to load the same unit on two different ships.
- Fixed a memory leak in nebulas.
- Fixed an issue where the stats of a planet wouldn't update after using the Spore ability.
- Fixed some places where Months were still being referred to as Weeks.
- Fixed an issue that was keeping the defended icon from showing up in the planet list.
- Fixed an issue when getting the Universal tech for free that the tech tree didn't update.
- Fixed an issue where leader cost modifies were showing as ints instead of percentages
- Fixed an issue where players couldn't unlock the most advanced command ships.
- Fixed the Seized Goods event to no longer require a governor action (which dont exist anymore).
- Fixed an issue where the Executive Order list would need to scroll to show all entries late in the game.
- Fixed an issue where when customizing factions and changing abilities the new abilities will not take effect on the first game.
- Fixed an issue where leaders and citizens can get negative stats (most common with Expectations).
- Fixed an issue where some main map battle animations can simply hang for several seconds.
- Fixed Focus on Education culture trait to correctly give scientist citizens.
- Fixed Military Reverence culture trait to correctly give soldier citizens.
- Fixed Inviting culture trait to correctly give three citizens.
- Fixed the Free Trade culture trait to not give a free Entrepreneur with every culture trait unlock.
- Updated leader traits to remove references to the removed governor actions.
- Updated leader traits to the new ideology names.
- Fixed an issue where ships without weapons were showing attack values.
- Fixed the Industrial Goods mission.
- Fixed an issue where some conversation topics weren't triggering.
- Fixed an issue where some Commanders that got +1 moves/level weren't working.
- Fixed an issue where if diplomats were booted from war declarations they would still be "diplomats" and couldn't be assigned to other roles.
- Fixed the Penultimox galactic achievement.
- Fixed the Poor Housing event.
- The Robot advisor only triggers his diplomacy warning if you can establish diplomacy with someone.
- Fixed an issue where the Inviting ideology trait wasn't adding citizens.
- Fixed memory leaks.
- Fixed an issue keeping Mass Manipulation tech from boosting Kinetic attack
- Fixed an issue keeping Precision Countermeasures tech from boosting Point Defense
- Fixed the Protect the Planet policy.
- Fixed issues where music would restart after some events.
- Fixed an issue where clicking on the low approval advisor message would take you to a black planet screen.
- Fixed an issue keeping some conversations from coming up from ai players (you will see a greater variety of conversations from AI players now).
- Fixed an invalid {PLANETNAME} in the It's Alive quest.
- Improved memory use.
- Fixed an issue with the Supply ship strategic icon.
- Fixed an issue where citizens would remember their former civilization even after being consumed by the Festron. Note: this means that the Festron have a new way to deal with citizens that are angry because you are at war with their homeland... eat them. It also means that Festron spreading on your worlds while you are at war with the Festron will make things more difficult.
- Fixed an issue being unable to specialize Quantum Physicists.
- Fixed an issue being unable to specialize Entrepreneurs.
Balance
- Reduced credits from Strip mining from 250 to 100.
- Xeno Anthropolgy improvement is now one per player.
- Wildland Refuge improvement is now one per player.
- Memory Center improvement is now one per player.
- Food Distribution Network improvement is now one per player.
- There should always be a decent planet near the player's starting location so they have a good potential 2nd core world.
- Ships orders are now canceled when they get attacked, so they can reconsider if they survive the battle.
- Increased the number of hostile entities that show up if abundant hostile entities is selected.
- Carriers now require 3 slots.
- Rebalanced the Terran command ships to the new slot costs.
- Rebalanced the Drengin command ships to the new slot costs.
- Rebalanced the Mimot command ships to the new slot costs.
- Rebalanced the Yor command ships to the new slot costs.
- Rebalanced the Festron command ships to the new slot costs.
- Rebalanced the Navigator command ships to the new slot costs.
- Rebalanced the Baratak command ships to the new slot costs.
- Rebalanced the Arcean command ships to the new slot costs.
- Rebalanced the Terran Resistance command ships to the new slot costs.
- Converted the Xeloxi command ships to the new slot system.
- Converted the Retribution, Yesengard and the Nail to the new slot system.
- Prototype ships can now upgrade with level.
- Switched the free universal translator from the Corporate Sector civ to the Wealthy ability.
- Switched the default starting sector size from small to medium.
- Switched the starting sectors on a medium map from 3-5 instead of 3-6 (to provide more consistency on default player placement).
- Reduced the likelihood of anomaly events that require a decision.
- Dramatically reduced the time it takes to play main map battle animations.
- Paranoid civilization trait now gives ships +25% hit points when they are within their own borders.
- Increased the Onyx Hive hit points boost from x2 to x3.
- Reduced the Exp multiplier (so its easier to go up levels).
- Commanders can all be upgraded with levels.
- Made "Upgradedable" a ship stat so that modders can control what ships they want to make upgradeable (or if they want to make all ships upgradeable).
- Fixed an issue where faction bonuses got out of control with enough ideology awareness.
- Map generation has been updated so that smaller maps don't generate sectors in a single line. Now they have multiple intersections with each other.
- Colonization events won't happen on planets below planet class 12, but on worlds of that planet class and high they are much more likely to occur.
- Changed the techs entertainment districts unlock at.
- Atmospheric Scrubbers tech now reduces Pollution.
- Nano Recyclers tech now reduces Pollution.
- Megapolis tech now increases population cap globally.
- Biomass Resequencers tech boosts food production.
- Removed the Exotic Plant Missions tech (it didn't do anything).
- Planetary Mobilization tech no longer boosts population cap.
- Credits mission searches at least 35 distance instead of 15.
- Carrier module interceptors reduced from 6 to 4, now requires 5 Durantium.
- Assault carrierors reduced from 9 to 5, also require 5 Durantium.
- Unique improvements now generally require resources.
- Mining Starbase added (specializes on mining)
- Mining Drones module added, requires Mining Starbase
- Balance pass on starbase modules.
- Culture starbases more effective.
- Rushing won't immediately affect approval so that players can see the effect of their shiny new improvement.
- Increased the exp from gained from combat.
- Normalized weapon ranges.
AI
- Improved AI's decisions on building starbase modules.
- Fixed an issue where the AI wasn't building starbases.
- AI now uses preferences to determine policy selection.
- Genius difficulty bonuses greatly reduced now that the AI is much better.
UI
- New Galaxy View
- Relic icon colors are now easier to read.
- Core Worlds without a shipyard now have an icon in the shipyard area to build one (instead of it getting lost in the project list).
- Removed the Rename action (you can click on the name to rename).
- Relics scale adjusted to be consistent and generally smaller.
- Added a slider for when assets switch to icons.
- Updated the movie window to the current style.
- Updated the planet window to have more room for the improvements list.
- Updated the Terran Resistance colors.
- Added more event art.
- Artifacts mode button now shows a number for unused artifact powers.
- You can now set the hex grid to be displayed when you are zoomed in. And you can separately select to have it displayed when you are zoomed out (if you have both on then the hex grid is always displayed).
- There is now a marker placed where you lose a battle so you can see where the notification is from.
- Added new thumbnails for all the Mimot ships.
- Constructors now show all the resources they will collect if they are placed in their current location (to keep you from having to guess if they are in range or not).
- Influence borders now glow.
- New alert icons for Battles and invasion.
- More Lore based conversations.
- Moved unneeded notifications to Low priority (so they are displayed unless the player sets his notifications to verbose). This keeps us from having the notification spam and helps make sure that if there is a notification there, its important (colony under siege, fleet destroyed, etc).
- Fleets no longer auto-station after capturing a world.
Ships
- New Terran Resistance ships.
- Added new thumbnails for all the Mimot ships.
- Better Mimot ship materials.
Audio
- More music has been added.
- Added new music and sfx to a lot of the cinematics.
- Added even more music.
v.81
Features
- Invasion Status- You can now click on any planet that is under Siege and selected the Siege button to see a detail screen on what is happening.
- More Battle Arenas added.
Fixes
- Fixed a broken tooltip for hit points on the Factions screen.
- Fixed a broken tooltip for slavers guild on the Factions screen.
- Fixed a text overflow on the Retribution event.
- Typo fixes.
- Fixed an issue where buying Culutre Traits wasn't increasing your ideology in that area.
- Fixed an issue where some leader movies would skip on the diplomacy or trade window.
- Fixed an issue where the Ai could get to many leaders.
- Fixed an issue where the AI could assign multiple diplomats to another civilization.
- Fixed a bug where Influence rank was backwards.
- Fixed an issue keeping the Onyx Hive from getting Growth from stored Promethion.
Balance
- Reverted a change to Housing Districts level up (this change was hot patched out on 3/4/2022).
- Increased the amount of Tourism that goes into Influence from 25% to 50%.
- Rebalanced influence after an invasion.
- Planets can no longer respawn fighters and free defenders while they are under Siege.
- Increased the min time to take a Colony from 3 to 4 turns.
- The Spore Civilization ability now starts with 1 charge instead of 3.
- Those of you pairing the Spore civilization ability with the Archaeologist ability are troublemakers.
- Onyx Hive homeworld now starts with a Prometheus Stone.
- Citizens with the Way trait will try to spread it to other citizens on their planet.
UI
- The Mode Bar now stays up when you are on any screen it switches between.
- Better Siege notifications: The first turn your world is under Siege your turn button will warn you of it and take you there.
- Improved the Tourism tooltip.
- The Follow cam in Battle Viewer no longer snaps back.
- The "Queue" entry on the planet context window now switches to Siege progress if the planet is under siege.
- On the planet screen the special feature icons will remain visible even if an improvement is built on that tile.
- Battle Role is now displayed in the Ship Design tooltip.
AI
- The AI no longer uses Executive Orders at Beginner difficulty and below.
- AI is now better at putting leaders in Factions.
- Improved the AI's decision making around starbase modules.