Space 4X Strategy: Reimagined

Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova arrives at a unique moment in strategy game development - notably, at the rise of AI generation technology. Stardock has always been well known for its use of AI going all the way back to the OS/2 version of Galactic Civilizations which debuted in 1993 – thirty years ago. That’s right, Stardock turns thirty years this October!

It will come as no surprise that we have integrated AI - in all its forms - into the biggest change to Galactic Civilizations ever: Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova. We are so excited to share this with you!

The Galaxy is Alive

Stardock's multi-parameter AI technology makes its way to Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova – a game that focuses on delivering a unique experience every time you play. By combining our AI technology with large language models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT API, we've crafted dynamic civilizations, quests, events, artwork, and gameplay to keep you engaged and immersed.

Trained on thirty years of Stardock's creative legacy, our AI-driven artwork adds a stunning visual layer to the game, enhancing the work of our growing team of artists and writers. Players will dive into a vibrant, ever-evolving galaxy that feels alive because, in a way, it is.

What has Come Before

Eight years after releasing Galactic Civilizations III, Stardock launched Galactic Civilizations IV exclusively on Epic in 2022. This partnership allowed us to experiment with innovative yet potentially controversial game design ideas.

While most new concepts were well-received, the AI-driven invasion system proved frustrating for players. The multi-parameter AI efficiently divided fleets to attack every enemy world simultaneously, prioritizing its objective over player enjoyment. This resulted in an engaging game design overshadowed by "toxic AI players."

The lesson learned here is that smart AI isn’t necessarily fun AI. But the answer isn’t to make the AI dumb - the answer is to re-design the game so that the smartest strategies are also fun to execute.

A Recap of what Galactic Civilizations is

To recap, Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova is a turn-based 4X space strategy game set in the 24th century with players taking on the role of leader of a civilization that has just developed faster than light (FTL) travel. Supernova adds an additional layer: civilizations are on the verge of discovering subspace streams which allow for intergalactic travel.

Civilizations must explore their area of space, expand their influence through colonizing and building starbases, exploit the resources with their territories, and ultimately deal with other civilizations that stand in their way.

We’ve come a long way over the past thirty years!

Supernova: What’s New

GalCiv IV: Supernova builds on and often time revisits concepts that first appeared in Galactic Civilizations IV: Epic Edition.

Really there’s just so much new here it’s better to just walk you through it.

Your Civilization

So I’ve created a civilization that I described as robotic servants that rose up against their masters and took over their planet and had the AI take it from there.

Map Setup

One of the big features of GalCiv IV are the multiple sectors. You can think of a single map as a sector. They have free form movement. Multiple sectors allows mutiple maps to be connected together through subspace streams (think star lanes). This creates creates a new dimensional of strategic depth for “galactic geography).

Now, plenty of people will want to play the game in the classic way like previous GalCiv games. They can just select a single sector and it will play as previous. Here, I’m going to choose a small map with two sectors.

Opponents

Now to choose my opponents.

Guess which one is one of the custom civs I made? Take a wild guess.

New right away

For the first time since Galactic Civilizations II (way back in 2006) we’ve redone how combat is done in Supernova.

Ships now get a combat rating (bottom left). In GC2 we introduced a rock-paper-scissors type system of beam, kinetic and missile weapons which went up against shields, armor and point defense. Now, we haven’t eliminated those types of weapons but we are no longer limiting the system to only those 3 types of weapons. As a result, we communicate how good a ship is by its combat rating (bigger number is better).

Defenses are more interesting. Shields absorb damage until they run out. Evasion provides a chance of keeping the damage from getting to you in the first place. Armor mitigates some of the damage that does finally get through. This paves the way for having lots of different types of defense as we think of them.

You start with 3 types of ships:

1. Colony Ship (can colonize a new world)

2. A scout ship (typically a probe)

3. A Flag Ship (capable of exploring strange new worlds and investigating anomalies).

Research

In every GalCiv game, we’ve always let players research whatever tech they want. In GalCiv IV: Epic, we changed that so that the game would select 5 techs and you had to choose one of them. People hated it.

In GalCiv IV: Supernova we changed it so that you can research any techs you have the prerequisite for…but some techs are now half off because your scientists have been inspired, making it tempting to go for a new tech.

Policies

In every previous GalCiv game we have players operate two sliders: A tax and a spend slider. It was all kind of confusing and represented what I understood of economics when I was 19 (that’s how old I was when I designed the first GalCiv game) and we just didn’t want to change it.

In GalCiv IV we changed it. Your tax rate represents what % of the private sector’s production you are taking to save the universe, or at least build your civilization. You can then choose policies to personalize how your civilization runs.

Events

You will occasionally face events that require you to choose something.

This feature goes all the way back to the OS/2 version in 1993. For instance, you are about to colonize a planet but it’s already got a preindustrial society. Are you willing to not use it as effectively to be a good guy?

In 2023, we’re a little more sophisticated about the consequences. Now, your choices have some immediate impacts as well as make certain Cultural Traits less expensive to acquire, and some decisions will come back to haunt you later on in the game.

Leaders

GalCiv IV introduces the concept of leader characters.

Each of these characters has their own stats and a backstory. Their backstory is attached to various quests and events that might affect the game.

You can use these leaders in one of five ways:

Ministers

Pop the leader onto a cabinet position and their stats improve your civilization in some way.

Governor

You can turn a Colony into a Core World by assigning a leader to be its governor. Then their stats boost that planet.

Diplomats

You can assign a leader to be a diplomat to a given species where its stats will boost your relations with that civ.

Commanders

You can assign a leader to command one of your civ’s unique starships.

Factions

You can also assign your leader to support one of the political factions in your civilization. These factions can boost (or hurt) your civilization based on how things are going, and along with Civilization Policies, were designed to replace the economy sliders from the earlier GalCiv games with something more fun to use and less prone to excessive micromanagement.

Shipyards

Your core worlds can construct a shipyard which is where your starships come from.

It’s fairly straight forward. Your chief engineer will design ships for you as you get new technologies but you can also go and design ships yourself.

Anomalies

Going all the way back to the OS/2 version in the 1990s, GalCiv games have had survey ships that can investigate anomalies.

Investigating these can reveal treasure or start quests and other challenges.

Core Worlds

One of the best features of GalCiv IV is the core world system. Rather than every planet colonized being something that must be micromanaged, planets default to being Colonies that automatically provide their raw outputs to their sponsoring Core World.

Player can upgrade a colony to a Core World by assigning a governor which boosts the output of the planet and lets the player take direct control of the world through his/her representative.

Here’s my home world (the one that I overthrew you may recall)

The planet class determines how many regions there are on a planet. Regions roughly correspond to the planet’s usable surface area (and a semi water world like Earth thus kind of stinks).

The system is remarkably straightforward. Your planet has inputs from its Colonies (and itself). Your Citizens work on those resources through the improvements you make to the planet and the outputs are then able to be used.

Colonies

So before GalCiv IV Colonies == Core Worlds. So late game, people might have 120 planets to manage. So they would have most of those planets managed (badly) by AI for them. In GalCiv III we had an expansion where players could create a commonwealth by giving away some of their planets as a new race. No one wanted to give away their planets.

Colonies are great because the crummy worlds can now just feed into their Core World.

You can still upgrade those worlds.

But those work like GalCiv OS/2 (think 1993) where you just select something from a list and it gets that buff.

Back then, having 150 Colonies was no big deal because there wasn’t anything to manage – just a list box and what you wanted to add. But over time, planets got very sophisticated and micromanagement crept in. So having most of your worlds be Colonies that feed your core world is one of the best new features of GalCIv IV. At the risk of outing myself as a nerd, this is my favorite new feature.

Cultural Progression

Your civilization generates 1 Culture Point per turn. These points add up and can eventually be used to purchase new Culture Traits for your civilization. Each purchase makes the next one more expensive but the traits also get better and better.

The cost for a trait depends on the type of trait it is and the nature of your civilization.

Executive Orders

Your civilization also generates 1 Control per turn. Control is the resource that lets you do things globally via Executive Orders.

New technologies and Culture Traits unlock new executive orders.

Diplomacy

When you create a civilization with AlienGPT you end up with other aliens who will talk to based on what you entered:

Screenshots

You can choose from one of our hand-crafted civilizations including new ones like the Cosmic Contaminant here. But now, the first option is to create your own, which brings you here:

Here, you can enter a single line description of your civilization and the LLM AI will generate the story, background, and descriptions, then choose portraits, ship designs, etc. for you.

You can still dig in and modify anything you want.

Map setup is a lot more interesting now. Galactic Civilizations III players who don’t want to mess with this new fangled-multi sector business can just choose a single sector and size it as they please. Having multiple sectors, however, creates a multi-staged exploration experience that is very fun.

GalCiv IV: Supernova introduces a cleaner, more nuanced and more powerful UI that unfolds as the game progresses.

And we’re just getting warmed up.