Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova Galactic Civilizations IV

(LIVE) v3.1 Update Changelog

Published on Monday, December 1, 2025 By RammaStardock In GalCiv IV Support

Key Features

  • Strategic Resource Generation. Resources clump together during map generation creating more strategic specializations

  • Upgraded AI behaviors. AI players are smarter at managing resources, upgrading starbases and selecting what to research

  • Customizable Modding. Modding now has better hot loading, tech tree branch modifications and new planet improvement icons.

January 29th, 2026 Hot Fix


  • Fixed a bug regarding pathing for "windows\system32" affecting some players.

January 13th, 2026 Changelog


DLC

  • Players cannot select tech trees from DLC they do not own when creating custom civilizations

Map Generation

  • Improved the stability of map generation

Pathfinding

  • Fixed pathfinding issues in gigantic sectors. Ships will now correctly follow their path without randomly teleporting

January 12th, 2026 Changelog


AI

  • Added a global cooldown system to prevent multiple AI civilizations from sending trade requests on the same turn

Custom Civilizations

  • Fixed criminal and ideology generation for custom civilizations

Gameplay

  • Fixed a bug where the Colony Capital improvement was being automatically placed on core worlds for races that should not receive it (Ravenous, Spore-based, and Silicon-based races)

Ship Abilities

  • Simplified Missile Volley and Beam Volley abilities to automatically work with any missile or beam weapon components

Tech Tree

  • Fixed an issue where tech tree category icons would not reset properly when switching between civilizations with different tech trees

  • Added support for technologies that require specific citizen races as prerequisites


January 6th, 2026 Hot Fix


Pathfinding

  • Fixed issues where players were experiencing broken ship pathfinding, ships will now correctly draw and follow a path without randomly deviating


Change Log v3.1


Audio

  • Added in new soundtracks

Gameplay

  • General game pacing updated

  • Colony Capitals are now placed by default but can be destroyed and moved somewhere else

  • People that eat other people on planets do so less frequently

  • Standalone galactic resources: Thulium, Anti-matter, Elerium no longer are dependent on dead planets, black holes, and nebula for their existence

  • Hyperlanes confer 10% faster speed than before

  • New Tech: Deepspace Exploration

  • Can Detect Hyperlanes is now a separate underlying ability than seeing subspace streams

  • Optimized hyperlane route calculation

  • Colony Capital: Maintenance 3 BC per turn to 1 BC per turn

  • Simplified the way awarded improvements get fixed so that they try to show up on a good tile rather than a random one

  • Fixed bug where capstone techs only lasted 1 turn for the buff effects

  • New type of Modifier Action: Create Hyperlane to Random Star

AI

  • AI is much better at upgrading its starbases and selecting starbase modules

  • AI now can have ships in a dual role; an example is a survey ship can be switched from exploring anomalies to acting as cruisers if they are at war

  • AI is much better at managing what improvements to build and where

  • AI is better at choosing what and when to research

  • AI better at building relic based starbases

  • AI is better at checking ship designs for system and ship upgrades

  • AI has improved selection for considering existing colony buildings to avoid redundancy

  • AI better at colony management

  • AI will intelligently replace improvements with better ones on its worlds

  • Fixed issue where the AI was too quick to use its survey shops for military use

Events

  • Reduced the odds of the first contact event from coming up so that it's not every single game

  • Reduced frequency of crisis events

  • Made adjustments to event frequency making some events less frequent

Map Generation

  • Resources tend to clump together during map generation and repel the others

  • Stellar phenomenon still does randomly get placed and will still occasionally generate their associated resource but is much less common

  • Resources are no longer randomly placed across the galaxy meaning that what weapons and defenses one specializes on is based on stellar geography

  • Planets will frequently spawn more than before

  • Precursor worlds are spawn more rarely

  • Star Cluster Size Reductions:

    • Small clusters: 120 radius to 84 radius (30% smaller)

    • Medium clusters: 200 radius to 150 radius (25% smaller)

    • Large clusters: 320 radius to 240 radius (25% smaller)

    • Huge clusters: No change

  • Star Density:

    • Map star density: 0.09 to 0.12 (33% more stars)

  • Dynamic Sector Scaling:

    • Sectors now dynamically scale based on player density to prevent overcrowding

    • Smaller maps with many players get larger sectors automatically

Ships

  • Ship Templates (like Transports, Freighters) will show their base component in the ship design screen

  • Carrier Modules that provide bombers now changed to Bomber Bay Module

  • List of ships in the shipyard now show the manufacturing cost of the ship

  • Ship Range Buffs (+4 range added) to these techs:

    • Deep Space Exploration

    • Warp Theory

    • Deep Field Sensors

  • Ship Range Buff to these techs:

    • Subspace Streaming - now grants +8 ship range

Starbase Modules

  • Maintenance Cost Reductions:

    • Slipstream Generator Module (Military): 5 maintenance to 1 maintenance

    • Orbital Replicator Module (Economic): 3 BC maintenance to 1 BC maintenance

    • Advanced Orbital Replicator (Economic): 3 BC maintenance to 1 BC maintenance

  • Maintenance Removed:

    • Sensor Network Module: Removed +1 BC/turn maintenance cost (now free to operate)

Modding

  • Better hot loading for modders

  • Tech trees no longer require 6 branches. Modders can make as few as 1 category and as much as 6

UI & Text

  • Civilization Setup screen tweaked for better spacing control

  • Stars stay as a model for longer when zooming out and turn into icons later

  • Colonies (as opposed to core worlds) no longer show pollution in their tooltips

  • Executive Order icon resolution increased to support higher resolutions

  • Things that are missing a resource now have a hotspot that explains what the missing thing is and where it comes from

  • Capstone techs are now clearly labeled

  • Starting year for v3.1 moved up to 2329, it previously was 2307

  • 180 new planet improvement icons

  • Added scroll bars for the Bazaar list Artifacts list since they were cutting off visibility to abilities

Tech

  • Tech Navigator modified to show more rows of techs

  • Tech Tree categories can be organized by icon

  • Tech in the Tech Navigator are closers together

Megastructures

Gameplay

  • Nexi can be set to be 1 per civilization (which is now on by default but can be modded back)

  • Subspace Lens Influence per turn reduced from 25 to 5 (upgrades follow suit)

  • Galactic Resource tourism bonus reduced from 25% to 5% (upgrades follow similar path)

  • Eclipse Engine Military production reduced from 50% to 20% (upgrades follow suit)

  • Neoteric Spire random offer discount increased from 0.02 to 0.05

  • Neoteric Spire Relic benefit increased from 2% to 10 (flat) (upgrades follow suit)