War & Peace Update Brings Peace Negotiations, AI Enhancements, and Expanded Accessibility in v2.3

Stardock released another big update for its popular space 4X strategy game today.  Galactic Civilizations IV v2.3, dubbed the "War & Peace” update introduces new lore based diplomatic features, enhances gameplay balance, and broadens accessibility.  

New features include: 

• New Peace Negotiation Events: Players can now engage in a variety of events that allow for nuanced peace or harsh peace terms with warring civilizations, adding a new layer of diplomatic strategy. 
• AI War Perception Overhaul: The AI's approach to war has been fundamentally updated. The longer a conflict persists, the more inclined AI factions are to consider peace, effectively reducing the occurrence of never-ending wars. 
• 720p Low Resolution Support: To accommodate players on various platforms, including Steamdeck and laptops, Galactic Civilizations IV now supports 720p resolution, ensuring a smoother and more accessible gaming experience. 
• Balance Improvements and Bug Fixes: A host of balance tweaks and bug resolutions enhance the overall stability and fairness of gameplay. 
• Enhanced Multiplayer Features: With improved performance and a new option to view battles, multiplayer sessions are now more dynamic and engaging. 
• Improved Localization: The update brings refined localization, making the game more immersive for a global audience. 
• Epic Game Store Synchronization: The base game of GalCiv IV on the Epic Game Store is updated to version 2.3, aligning it with the Supernova edition, minus the exclusive new content. 

This update not only enriches the existing gameplay but also aligns with Stardock's commitment to enhancing player experience and accessibility. 

Get Galactic Civilizations IV on Steam, Epic Games Store, or directly at galciv4.com.

 

v2.3 War & Peace Screenshots

 

 

01/24/24 | v2.3 HOT PATCH 3 Changelog

Localization 

• German text is longer too small. 

MP 

• Fixed multiple desync related to trade routes, conversations, and executive actions. 

• The Krynniac Temple is no longer always placed on the Host's homeworld (regardless of who placed it). 

UI 

• Treaties no longer overflow the data bank screen. 

01/19/24 | v2.3 HOT PATCH 2 Changelog

• Added a check to make sure AI isn't bothering the human player about a message it wants to send to another AI Player. This change should result in less needless conversation spam. 

01/19/24 | v2.3 HOT PATCH 1 Changelog

• Events that include trading resources for both parties are now clearly marked who gets what.

• Fixed a Terror Star Crash (hat tip to Losatu for discovering)

01/18/24 | v2.3 War & Peace Changelog

AlienGPT

• Fixed a problem generating Citizen types in non-English languages.

• Fixed a race condition that incorrectly disabled the generate button. 

Battle Viewer

• Reduced point light flickering.

• Fixed missing explosion particles when ships blow up.

• Fixed missing clouds (they were overly transparent).

Core

• Fixed several crashes.

• Fixed a problem that caused the ZOC borders to stop drawing.

• Fixed a graphics-related memory leak.

• Fixed a rare Executive Order crash in the UI   

• Fixed a crash if the player is running an old mod that has custom battle behaviors. 

Galaxy

• Adjustments to map sizes.

• Slightly fewer nebula but with more Elerium in them.

Gameplay

AI difficulty changes:

Beginner

• AI gets a 50% influence generation penalty.

Easy

• AI gets a 33% influence generation penalty.

Bright

• Bright AI no longer gets a production bonus.

• AI wealth bonus reduced.

Genius

• AI no longer gets an HP boost for ships.

• AI Starbase HP boost reduced.

• AI no longer gets a Moves boost.

Incredible

• AI ship moves speed bonus reduced from 33% to 25%

Godlike

• AI ship moves speed bonus reduced from 100% to 25%

Culture

• "Secret Policy" now reduces Crime by 10% on all worlds.

• "Shared Purpose" now increases the Population Cap of Colonies by 2.

• The "Eureka" approval effect was reduced from 6 turns to 3 turns.

• "Independent" now increases Colony Supply Attrition by 15%.

• "Moral Relativism" ideology awareness benefit reduced from 1 to 0.1.

• "Moral Relativism" intelligent boost of Nihilists reduced from 300% to 100%.

• "Purges" now reduce Crime by 10%.

• Ideology cost tweak (slight decrease in cost for next cultural)  

Diplomacy

• AI players will ask for peace or at least a cease-fire and offer loot, depending on their situation. Lots of different options and lots of different types of bribes.

• AI updated to be more loyal when it comes to declaring war (i.e., when bribed to go to war, will reject bribe now if they've had a long, good relationship with the other civ rather than just looking at the current diplomatic status).

• AI is much more reasonable about ending wars. The longer the war, the easier it is to make peace with the AI (and with each other). This change should reduce Forever wars.

• Civs no longer get a diplomacy skill bonus when calculating their relations if they don't have the "Universal Translator "tech.

• AI-player-generated events that result in talking to the player now count as contact with that AI.

• Further balance on negotiating peace with an enemy that is winning.

• If I declare war on another civilization, my ships are automatically moved out of their ZOC.

• The "Covet Worlds" Diplomatic Penalty is reduced, but it slowly grows over time.

• The "We want to conquer the galaxy" Diplomatic Penalty is reduced, but it grows more slowly.

• Trade routes improve relations more than before.

• Diplomatic civs no longer covet other people's worlds.

Executive Orders

• The "Print Money" Approval penalty was reduced from 52 to 12.

• The "Pressure Scientists" order's Control Cost was reduced from 40 to 30, and the Cooldown was increased from 5 to 10.

Events

• "Spector's Graph" event now has a 100-turn cooldown.

• Lots of new events created.

• The event system is now integrated with the "Who started it" system of knowing who started a given war and who is winning.

• The "Core Tap" disaster event made it much more rare.

• Balance pass on event spawn frequency.

• The "Slum" event now has a 200-turn cooldown.

• Fixed “Lazy Genius” event outcomes 

Factions

• Ancient Ability no longer provides extra research for every Precursor relic. Instead, it increases the benefit that the relic provides in its category, except for Approval relics, which still provide research.

• Iridium species now care a tiny bit about pollution.

Improvements

• Homeworld capital now gets a small tourism benefit.

• "Infinite Garden" now requires Aurorus Arboretum to construct, moved to Exotic World Colonization.

• "Planetary Mainframe Research" reduced from 25% to 20%

• Razar's Lift cost increased from 300 to 500 and now provides an adjacent Military +3 bonus.

• "Research Districts" now have 1 Maintenance.

• "Influence Districts" now default to having a 10% influence bonus, but the level effect is reduced from 5% per level to 3%.

• New Improvement: “Early Visitor Center” -- tourism improvement one per civ.

• “Beacon of Babylon” per level bonus changed from +5 per level to 5% per level.

• “Core Tap” improvement provides a bonus to all adjacent tiles.

• “Supply Depot” lowers Crime slightly.

• Certain improvements that used to provide 1 culture point for building now provide 10.

• “Colonial Leadership Council” provides 2 to population cap 

Leader Traits

• "Dread Weaver" now provides +3 influence per turn to the colony but reduces colony growth by -1 (was -2).

• Governors with traits that affect approval are modified to provide less of a penalty (-10 to -5)

Ministers

• Minister of Tourism is now unlocked by Universal Translator.

• Minister of Culture is now unlocked by Cultural Influence tech.

• Minister of Health is now unlocked by Xeno Medicine.

• Minister of Production is now unlocked by Manufacturing Capitals.

• Minister of Finance is now unlocked by Interstellar Trade Tech.

• Minister of Defense is now unlocked by Planetary Mobilization tech.

Policies

• Free Trade no longer increases Crime but does reduce domestic manufacturing by 5%.

• Free Trade now also provides a 10% boost to colony income.

• New Policy: Economic Development, player planets get +2 to their base wealth.

• Updating policies now triggers a global update to the stats.

• Fixed a rare stuck turn related when the number of available policies changes.

Planet Traits

• Balance pass on planet traits so that there are more colony planet candidates and fewer core planet candidates.

Ships

• Slight buff to various weapons to increase the magnitude of effectiveness between generations of weapon types.

• Armor degrades over time in battle.

• Fighters will now target Fighters before bombers if both are in range.

• AI-provided ship designs for players now require that the ship be able to be built now.

• Shields now lose strength based on the sqrt of the enemy's attack rather than a 1 to 1 ratio.

• Kinetic base accuracy reduced from 67% to 50%.

• Missile base accuracy increased from 50% to 67%.

• Kinetic cooldown increased from 1 to 2.

• Missile range increased from 5000 to 6000.

• Starbase spacing distance increased from 4 tiles to 5 tiles.

• The Peace Treaty Duration increased from 20 turns to 24 turns.

• Cultural Progression Trait additive cost increased from 10 to 16 to reduce # of traits chosen in a game (especially early).

• Terran Alliance Survey (Explorer) increased in size, given a weapon so that it isn't so lame.

• AI is better at choosing the best ship it can build.

• Most Defensive Ship components are now 1 per ship.

• Basic Hull Plating can be stacked, but cost is increased from 3 to 10, mass is reduced from 3 to 2, and Armor Rating is reduced from 5 to 2.

• Increase maintenance cost of ships:

  • Fighters/Bombers increased from 0.1 to 0.25 maintenance.

  • Frigate maintenance increased from 0.25 to 0.50.

  • Cruiser maintenance increased from 9.5 to 1.0.

  • Battleship maintenance increased from 1 to 2.

  • Dreadnought increased from 2 to 3.

Tech

• Synthetic races can now get Xeno Agriculture tech, which makes various other techs available to them.

• Genetic Architecture now boosts the Intelligence, Diligence, and Social stats of player citizens by +3.

• "Political Capital" now provides +1 to Diplomacy ability, provides 5000 in "Diplomatic Capital" to spend in trades.

• Trade Networks made a critical tech as far as the AI is concerned, now directly follows Xeno Hospitality.

• New Tech: “Economic Development.” This early tech improves technology and provides a more obvious path to "make money for my civ by going this way."

• New Tech: Xeno Hospitality. Requires Economic Development. Unlocks early Tourism improvements.

• "Starbase Defense Grid" now adds 4 to the player logistics cap.

• Certain techs that provided 1 culture point now provide 5.

• "Starbase Defense Grid" now adds 4 to the player logistics cap.

• Certain techs that provided 1 culture point now provide 5.

Misc

• Pirates start with more tech. They are quite a bit nastier now (move faster, build better ships).

• Faction Power calculation is balanced so that the military isn't so overrepresented.

• A revisit of the Prestige Victory calculation to better handle different-sized maps and configurations.

• Balance pass on tourism to make it matter more.

• AI is less likely to send out small fleets just because it's "winning."

• Adjustments to AI to handle the new military power calculation.

• Improvement to AI being aware if it is ready to move out with a fleet.

• Fixed a bug where the speaker wasn't looked at when determining whether a flavor text option was valid.

• Rebalance of Culture Starbases. They no longer provide raw influence on planets but instead focus on providing a % bonus to planets' influence.

• Adjustment to map data to have better tech pacing (i.e., map size will affect research costs more).

• When an invader takes control of a colony, it also gains control of its shipyard.

• Disable Influence Victory by default

• The "High Taxation" rate was lowered from 67% to 50% to make it more viable.

• AI sends fewer warnings to the player.

• Level effect from food changed to be 5% per level instead of 8% + 0.1 flat (i.e. farms don't magically conjure food from rock). 

Localization/Text

• New flavor text dealing with behavior during war.

• Updated Translation text .

• Big thanks to LevelX2 for helping with German translation.

• The "Escort" ship label changed to" Cruiser."

MP

• Fixed an “Autofire” crash 

• Fixed a desync caused by the “Think Tank” 

• Added an an option to view human vs human battles in MP.

Tutorial  

• Assigning a Governor before getting the tutorial prompt for the Governor no longer breaks the tutorial flow. 

UI

• Added support for 1280x720 screen resolution with a new "tiny" ui scale.

• Added a warning that an opponent is about to achieve an influence victory. 

• Fixed a bug that prevented a star's planets from showing on its context card, even after the star had been uncovered in the FOW.

• Workshop: Ship screenshots are no longer too big for the steam workshop.

• Fixed invisible entries in the Fleet context area.

• Custom Civilization Screen: You can now pick a custom background for your leader.

• Leader Screen no longer maxes out the GPU.

• Increase the size of the Rush Tooltip to 400.

• Tutorial: Ensure a scrollbar appears on the tutorial startup description.

• Planet Screen: Build Queue Tooltip – rounded values to whole numbers.

• GNN addressed a bug that prevented the Terraforming complete message from being displayed.

Tales of Centauron DLC:

• New component: Fleet Shield System (gives entire fleet +5 to shields).

• New Policy: Sell Surplus food.

• Centauron Emporium: Provides a Celebrity citizen, a 20% Tourism boost with a 5% Tourism boost per level.