Stardock Launches "Tales of the Terran Alliance" DLC for Galactic Civilizations IV, Kicking Off Expansion Pass 2

The first of five new packs in the Expansion Pass 2 is now available, featuring exciting new campaigns, civilizations, and gameplay enhancements for the acclaimed 4X space grand strategy game.

Stardock Entertainment announced that "Tales of the Terran Alliance," the first DLC of Expansion Pass 2 for the acclaimed space 4X strategy game Galactic Civilizations IV, is now available for purchase. This expansion delves into humanity's tumultuous 23rd century, showcasing the formative conflicts that shaped the Terran Alliance into a galactic power. “Tales of the Terran Alliance” is now available for $14.99 USD individually, or as part of Expansion Pass 2 which includes all 5 packs at a discounted price, on Steam, Epic Games Store, and directly from Stardock.

“Tales of the Terran Alliance” takes players deep into Earth's pivotal era of interstellar expansion, exploring the political intrigue, technological breakthroughs, and military conflicts that forged humanity's place among the stars. Players will experience firsthand the events that transformed Earth from a single-world civilization into a formidable galactic presence, starting with the infamous Xendar War, which is included in the DLC as a fully playable civilization.

"This DLC serves as a tribute to our dedicated Galactic Civilizations fans who have long sought a more profound exploration of human lore," said Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock Entertainment. "Tales of the Terran Alliance not only introduces new gameplay mechanics but also offers an immersive narrative experience that delves into the essence of humanity amidst a galaxy teeming with ancient and formidable civilizations."

Tales of the Terran Alliance Key Features:

• Play as the Xendar: Experience the civilization that shaped humanity's first interstellar war.
• New Human Technology Tree: A unique tech progression designed specifically for the Terran Alliance.
• Expanded Human Story Events: Encounter new narrative events that explore the origins, politics, and ambitions of humanity’s interstellar expansion.
• New Planetary Improvements, Weapons, and Defenses: Build and equip your worlds and fleets with Human-focused advancements.
• Additional Ship Components: Enhance your ships with new modules tailored to Human strategies.

 

Expansion Pass 2: Years of Galactic Adventure

"Tales of the Terran Alliance" is just the start. Expansion Pass 2 will feature five significant content releases from now through 2027, each designed to further enrich the expansive universe of Galactic Civilizations IV: 

• Tales of the Terran Alliance (December 4, 2025) – Explore humanity's defining era and the rise of the Terran Alliance.
• Federations & Empires (2026) – Formation of governments, elections, agents, and more.
• Ascension (2026) – Uplift minor civilizations, genetically modify your own species, build breeding programs.
• Hegemon (2027) – Client states, United Planets, several new major civilizations uplifted from minor status.
• Underworld (2027) – Navigate the shadowy realm of criminal syndicates and black markets.

Each pack in Expansion Pass 2 will continue to enhance the deep strategic gameplay of Galactic Civilizations IV while introducing new lore, civilizations, mechanics, and content for both veteran players and newcomers alike.

 

Free v3.1 Update

In conjunction with the release of “Tales of the Terran Alliance” and Expansion Pass 2, Stardock is also launching a free v3.1 update. This update introduces several gameplay enhancements, including Strategic Resource Generation, which allows resources to cluster during map generation for more strategic specializations; upgraded AI behaviors that improve the management of resources, starbase upgrades, and research selections; and enhanced customizable modding capabilities, featuring better hot loading, tech tree branch modifications, and new planet improvement icons.

 

Purchase Options

Tales of the Terran Alliance: Steam, Epic Games Store, and directly from Stardock.

Expansion Pass 2: Steam, Epic Games Store, and directly from Stardock. Players can also purchase the DLC as part of Expansion Pass 2, which grants access to all five upcoming packs at a discounted price. 

Galactic Civilizations IV: On Steam, Epic Games Store, or directly at galciv4.com.

 

Tales of the Terran Alliance Screenshots

 

v3.1 Changelog

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 13th, 2026 Changelog

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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

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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

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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

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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)