Ironclad Games and Stardock are happy to announce the release of v1.95 for Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion today. This is a minor update with the following changes:

Change Log:

• Fixed accidental double damage on weapon defense structures and hangar defense structures.
  
  
• AI squad owners (e.g., hangar defense, carriers, etc.) now autodock their squadrons when there are no enemy units in the gravity well.
  
  
• Fixed Pacifist Society planet bonuses on PlanetBarren and PlanetBarrenFair.

Galactic Civilizations III 5th Anniversary Update
and Worlds in Crisis DLC are Now Available
Experience new world crises, planet types and traits, plus visual and balance improvements with v4.0

Every world has a story, and it’s up to you to decide how it ends. 

In Worlds in Crisis, you will encounter a host of new world events with ideological choices that you will have to resolve. Several new planet types and over a dozen new planet features also await you, breathing new life into the game for old-time Galactic Civilizations players while offering exciting options for people picking up the game for the first time.

The free v4.0 update adds huge performance increases and makes vast visual improvements to the game’s planets, both on the surface and from orbit. Thanks to the numerous feedback we've received from fans, a lengthy list of balance and AI improvements are also in v4.0. To see what's new, check out the complete changelog for the update at the bottom of the post!

Worlds in Crisis Features

New Planetary Crises

Ruling a galaxy is tough work, full of perilous and precarious decisions that must be made on a regular basis. As you explore and expand, you may encounter worlds struggling with crises from planetary mutations, to raging pandemics, to murderers on the loose, and much more. 

Some of the troubles you might encounter are:

• Native intelligent primates - We’re not monkeying around here. A newly terraformed continent reveals quite a surprise.
• Mad Governor - Just what is going on here? Mass hallucinations, city-wide parties, and people disappearing off the streets make for an unusual adventure.
• Notorious Smugglers - Will this smuggler have a change of heart, or go back to his old ways? That’s entirely up to you.
• And more! - A host of new choices await you. Will you handle them benevolently, pragmatically, or malevolently?

New Planet Types

Explore worlds sterilized by mad scientists, landscapes littered with ancient battlefields, and tranquil planets overflowing with milk, honey - and whatever that blue stuff is that the Altarians drink.

• Sterile World: This planet isn’t meant for housing life, but it’s perfect for running certain “controlled” experiments… 
• Fertile World: Abundant with life and foliage, it’s the perfect planet for feeding an entire empire.
• Tranquil World: Beautiful and serene, this place is just waiting to  be overrun by retirees.
• Volcanic World: Abundant power is nice, but boy do the earthquakes get old.
• Fissured World: Deep and abundant fissures may hide secrets within the planet’s core. Dive deep and uncover them.  
• Bombarded World: Boiling calderas and abundant geothermal energy are all that remain here after the Precursors’ ancient wars.

New Planet Features

New islands, continents, and landmasses leave you with more options as you explore and colonize planets. You’ll enjoy beautiful shorelines, vibrant color, and careful detail on each planet that you visit. There are also several new worlds to explore which offer new and exciting bonuses for those brave enough to colonize them.

Some of the new planet features you’ll find in Worlds in Crisis are:  

• Volcanic Rifts: If you can’t handle the heat, then get off the planet! Mine below the surface to extract heat to use in power production. 
• Thriving Reef: Dive into a world of abundant reefs and wide oceans. Truly a magical sight to behold.
• Floating Mountains: Mountains in the sky - well, that’s new. Studying this bizarre land feature could bolster your research.
• Permanent Rainbow: We’ve finally found the rainbow connection! The beauty of this world improves the mood of the local populace.
• Giant Mushrooms: Exploring this world should be fun...gi. These freakishly large mushrooms present a generous food source.
• Gold Fields: It’s so shiny! Fields on this world are rich with precious gold.
• And more: It’s a vast galaxy. Over a dozen other planetary types are out there, so start exploring!

Owners, the v4.0 update is ready and waiting for you in your Steam client. 
Don't forget to check out the changelog below!

v4.0 Changelog

Better Looking Worlds

• Both from the surface and from orbit, planets received a facelift (or continent lift).  We've introduced many new islands, continents, and landmasses used by the planet generation system.  We've also improved our material system to improve shorelines, add more color, and add more detail to planets.

Fixes

• Fixed various bugs that caused autoskip not to, you know, bloody auto skip!
• Fixed an issue where Prototype Hyperdrive said it needed Promethion, but it actually needed Anti-matter (it now requires Promethion correctly).
• Fixed an issue where the Thullium Hull Reinforcement required Durantium.
• Fixed an issue where the United Earth faction wasn't using the correct Map Color, UI Color or Appearance.
• Fixed an issue where some events weren't changing population correctly (thanks to Old Spider for the fix!)
• Fixed a crash when using debug commands to trigger events out of order.
• Fixed a typo in the Nanite Fabricator description.
• Fixed the Illegal Cloning event Pragmatic growth bonus.
• Fixed the Illegal Cloning event Malevolent Population bonus.
• Fixed the UP Resolution War Fine to have a duration.
• Fixed the Mowling duplicate intro screen text.
• Updated the Cultural Beacon description to state that it allows the training of celebrities.
• Fixed an issue keeping the Nanite Transmitter Complex from being buildable.
• Fixed an issue where Space Monsters might not appear on some events if you don't have Crusade installed.
• Fixed an issue where players wouldn't receive credits in trades
• Fixed a stuck turn if you continued playing after winning the game.

Balance

• Occasional planet frequency increased from 1 to 1.2
• Occasional habitable planets increased from 20 to 30
• Occasional minable planets change increased from 0.15 to 0.2
• Occasional Durantium asteroid increased from 0.2 to 0.3
• Common planet frequency increased from 1.25 to 1.5
• Common Habitable planets increased from 30 to 50
• Common Asteroids increased from 0.08 to 0.10
• Common Min asteroids in a field increased from 2 to 3
• Common Blackholes increased from 5% to 7%
• Common minable planet chance increased from 0.25 to 0.33
• Common Durantium asteroid increased from 0.3 to 0.4
• Abundant blackholes increased from 10% to 12%
• Abundant Minable planet chance increased from 0.4 to 0.6
• Abundant Durantium increased from 0.4 to 0.5
• Non-Aggression treaty minimum relation requirement reduced from 4 to 3.
• Asteroid base production reduced from 1 to 0.5
• Computer Core cost increased from 32 to 40
• Industrial Center cost increased from 30 to 40
• Colonization Center cost increased from 30 to 40
• Administrative Center now available at the start of the game
• Administrative Center admins provided increased from 1 to 2
• Administrative Center influence increased from 1 to 5
• Administrative Center now provides adjacency bonuses for Research, Manufacturing and Tourism
• Substantially more fertile tiles added to planets.
• Ministry of Alien Affairs now awards an administrator.
• Xeno Commerce tech now provides 5 trade routes (instead of 3)
• Cultural exchange increases global influence per turn by 2 (instead of 1)
• Galactic Trade now provides 5 more trade routes (instead of 2)
• Updated score system to differentiate scoring more between victory types.
• Player scores are higher so that we can have more nuance between performance in the future.

AI

• Adjusted AI players that have sufficient resources to focus more on larger ship construction.
• AI wakes up to ascension victory faster.
• AI weighs trade with target player more so when deciding who to attack.
• Reduced AI bonuses at higher difficulties.
• New AI evaluator for handling ships that have destinations.
• Civs that want to conquer the galaxy will more aggressively increase their diplomatic stance to do so.
• AI is more flexible in what weapons it will research.
• AI takes more account of what resources it has when deciding what to focus on.
• Constructor won't ask for new orders if destination is blocked.
• Assault ships will ask for new orders if destination becomes defenseless.
• AI more circumspect about attacking if the enemy fleets / planet / starbase is substantially stronger.
• Default AI difficulty lowered from Gifted to Beginner.

Performance

• Block some unneeded planet screen UI calls.
• New function created for AI movement that is more efficient on large maps.
• Improved the performance of recalculation when improvements are place.
• Blocked AI treasury evaluation checks if the AI doesn't have any money (a small improvement but it adds up).
• Optimized player calculation.
• Added a new timer threshold for updates occurring more than once per second.
• Updated AI to be able to "see" planets and asteroids if the FOW is exposed to it already rather than recalculating (just like humans). It still can't see if it's under FOW or if it's a ship that is in exposed FOW.
• Reduced the frequency at which map objects are updated.
• Optomization for systems with more than 4 logical threads.
• Game Timer added to control how often we update Human awareness level drawing.
• Removed hidden (but CPU intensive) UI calls when soaking is on.
• Disabled UI screen calc updates if soak is on.
• AI doesn't need to recalcuate its virtual UI.
• Dramatically reduced the distance before the pathfinder starts requiring way points.
• Fixed bug where passing an invalid ID would simply crash the Object Finder rather than, you know, returning a NULL pointer.
• AI players don't need to update their virtual UI for removing and adding things to their build queue.
• Citizen units when they arrive at a destination planet now set a dirty flag to recalc rather than force recalculating all stats right then and there.
• Game update threshold lowered from 30ms to 10ms for better visual fidelity.
• Made Galaxy Destruction faster (most noticeable when you go to load a save from within a game).

UI

• Fixed typos.
• Clearer description of some planetary improvements.

Galactic Civilizations III: Worlds in Crisis and Major v4.0 Update Announced
Experience new world crises, planet types and traits, plus visual and balance improvements with v4.0

Stardock announced the new Worlds in Crisis DLC and free v4.0 update for its massive space sandbox 4X strategy game, Galactic Civilizations® III today. 

Worlds in Crisis introduces several new world events with ideological choices, new planet types, and over a dozen new planet features. Long-time players will find many new strategic options while players picking up the game for the very first time will also encounter exciting new experiences.

The free v4.0 update adds huge performance increases and makes vast visual improvements to the game’s planets, both on the surface and from orbit. A massive list of additional balance and AI improvements also accompany v4.0, which is already in opt-in. The current changelog is available here. 

In Worlds in Crisis, players may encounter worlds struggling with crises from planetary mutations, to raging pandemics, to murderers on the loose, and much more. Each crisis tells a planet’s story and the player’s decisions on how to handle them will determine how it resolves in the end.

There are also several new planet types to explore, offering new and exciting bonuses for those brave enough to colonize them. Players might encounter a sterile planet that isn’t meant for housing life, but is suited for the experiments of a mad scientist, or a beautiful and serene tranquil type world, perfect for retirement and tourism. New islands, continents, and landmasses provide many new options.

“Our community provided most of the feedback that shaped v4.0,” said Stardock CEO Brad Wardell. “Thanks to them, we were able to review and optimize everything in order to make things run faster. We also worked in some performance improvements while still making the game look better than ever.”

The Worlds in Crisis DLC is coming soon to Steam and Stardock for $4.99. Galactic Civilizations III is available on Steam or through Stardock for $39.99. To learn more, visit www.galciv3.com.   

Don't Own Galactic Civilizations III? Get it today! 
Buy from Steam  |  Buy from GOG

www.galciv3.com 

Coronavirus

We hope everyone is keeping safe during the current pandemic and uncertain future. Here at Stardock we have been shifted to a Work From Home situation ever since the pandemic started and are doing all we can to keep our people safe.

Whilst we are not medical professionals we want to make sure our fans are safe and not taking unnecessary risks with their own health or that of their family and friends.

Below are some links to official information and guidelines from the World Health Organization, CDC, NHS and European Commission. Please read them for clear information on the pandemic and what you can do to help slow its spread.

Stay safe out there everyone!

WHO

https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public

CDC

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nCoV/index.html

NHS

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/

EU

https://ec.europa.eu/health/coronavirus_en

The Horizon

Earth Rising Part 4: "Earth Rises"

Star Control: Origins - Earth Rising, Pt. 4 Earth Rises Release Trailer

We released the final installment of the Earth Rising expansion for Star Control: Origins in March.

Key features of this final part include:

• New Missions & Quests - Search for the missing Commander Magara, keep an eye on the humans developing a deadly Terran Battlecruiser, and stop the Measured from harvesting a sun and killing an entire civilization.
• New Location - Visit Kapteyn’s Bar to hear the latest gossip, triumph in a bar fight, and pick up bounty hunting quests
• New Battles - Lead your fleet into epic battles against massive space stations.
• New Weapons - Take on enemies with an arsenal of new weapons like the Black Hole Array or the Charged Warhead.

Continue Reading...

So we are on the road to v4.0.  It's hard to believe that GalCiv III was released five years ago.  We've made a lot of changes since then.

Version 4.0 is designed to do a lot of different things.  I won't go over all the changes here but instead will take you on a bit of a guided tour.

Most of the changes are for users of Retribution which is the latest expansion.  If you don't have that, I highly recommend getting it.

Turn 1

On your first turn you're going to likely notice some subtle but important changes.

First, more food.  There are a lot more fertile tiles in general that you can use either for farming or plow away to build other things.

There is also an Administrative Center that you can have 1 per planet with.  It gives you 2 admin points but it's also useful because it enhances adjacent structures.

There has also been a slight tweak to the costs of planetary improvements (on Retribution).  You also end up with a fuller set of choices.  

Not only have asteroid fields been made bigger but Durantium is more common as well.

Technologies have been tweaked so that more administrative points are handed out and a lot more trade routes are handed out.  For instance (Retribution), Xeno Commerce now provides 5 trade routes instead of 2.

Early game changes

Resources like Promethion are somewhat more common as well.

On the other hand, while we've added more asteroids, we've reduced the amount of raw resources mining bases give from 1.0 to 0.50.  As many know, by late game, a disproportionate amount of raw resources ends up coming from the asteroids which was not the intent.  

Instead, because food is so much more common, players will tend to have much larger populations which do provide, over time, more production.

Planets themselves have gotten a bit of a make-over.  More interesting layouts and more interesting cosmetics.

Even Mars.

And this is all in the first 20 turns or so.   We will discuss more as we get closer.

Highlighted feature

A lot of users have asked for the ability to turn OFF the colonies auto-upgrading structures.

Coming in v4.0 in May!

v1.1 is Now Available
Featuring Steam Workshop Support and New Candidates

Steam Workshop support and new candidates have been added in this major update for the Political Machine 2020. Bernie may be out of the race, but he is still available as a candidate in The Political Machine 2020 to play with or against. If you're looking to recapture the glory of former elections, grab Ronald Reagan or Al Gore and try to win in 2020.

Top Updates

Steam Workshop: Upload and download new Ideology Trees to use with custom candidates!

New Candidates:

• Ronald Reagan
• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
• Mitch McConnell
• Al Gore
• Barry Goldwater

Election Night Speed Controls: Whether you want a long, drawn out reveal or a quick conclusion, you now have full control over the speed of the election night camera.

End of Game Scorecard: The Election Night polls now calculate and show you the score of you and your opponent.

Balance / Additions

• New Issue: Public Option for Insurance
• Establishment Democrat Ideology uses Public Option instead of Medicare for All
• Increased Hillary Clinton's Experience from 6 to 7
• Increased Catherine Cortez Masto Intelligence from 5 to 6
• Reduced Donald Trump's Minority Appeal from 6 to 5
• Score now uses Electoral Votes, not Popular Votes
• Thumbs up / down thresholds lowered so you see more granularity & fewer 'neutral' thumbs

Haven't started your campaign yet?
Get The Political Machine 2020 today and join the race.

I found a magic planet.

It’s not that it is a class 20 planet – it only started as a class 14 and I’ve upgraded it since.  It is that it had 6 fertile tiles with 5 of them ready to have something amazing placed in the middle.  In this case, Kimberly’s Refuge.  Combined with the planet being a fertile world the result is that this one planet produces 34 food. 

Of course, having the time to build this up required relative peace to be the norm which is the subject of this dev journal.

Leave me alone

One of the most common questions we get is how do you keep everyone from going to war with you? Can you play the game without having to build up a huge military.  The answer is, yes and…maybe. 

I’m playing as a benevolent civilization.  This means my polar opposite civilizations (malevolent) will be inclined to go to war with me.  If I were playing as pragmatic, they would also not like me but they are somewhat less likely to pull the trigger on going to war with a pragmatic civilization versus one that is their opposite.

So what’s the key to getting them to leave me alone?

Relationship factors

Here is the Drengin.  The biggest two things helping me with them are the fact we’re trading with them and they are relatively far away.

Tip #1: Trade with them  

When I play as a peaceful civ, I am careful to trade as much as I can.  You do take a hit due to trading with their enemies but it’s still a big benefit.

Trade helps in so many other areas too.  For example, the more you trade, the less easy of a target you are since they really want your money.

Tip #2: Treaties

Make sure you are setting up treaties with them.

Tip #3: Financial Aid / Tribute

You can give tribute to civilizations (give them money) which will make them happy. 

Tip #4: Don’t be an easy target

If a bear is chasing after you and your friends, you only need to be faster than the slowest friend.   You don’t need a big military to keep from being attacked.  But if you are absolutely defenseless then you are inviting conquest.

Tip #5: Use Diplomats

If you have trained any diplomats, you can use them on the powerful civilizations that you want to leave you alone.  You don’t need them to love you, you just need them to hate someone else more.

Tip #6: Build up your diplomatic skills

There are certain planetary improvements and technologies that give your civilization more diplomatic points.  Your increased skills will cause other civilizations to like you more.

Tip #7: Spy with Freighters

A lot of players will try to keep an eye on what other civilizations are doing by building starbases and sensor ships.  But these can sometimes cause other civilizations to consider them trespassers.  But freighters don’t have that issue.

Instead, design freighters that have great sensor ranges.  Make sure you get an open borders treaty with them.

Hopefully these tips will help you maintain a galactic peace…or at least long enough to either ascend or get a diplomatic victory!

Stardock Releases Earth Rising - Part 4: Earth Rises
for Star Control: Origins

Get the Earth Rising Expansion Now
The complete expansion with parts 1-4 is fully available and ready to play today!

The final installment of our 4-part expansion for Star Control: Origins is now available! Earth Rising - Part 4: Earth Rises will introduce you to exciting new adventures, including bar fights at Kapteyn’s Bar, the reluctant return of a God, a search for a missing Commander, and more.  

Humans have finally proven that they may be worthy custodians to the Spur, but they must still prove themselves to allies and enemies alike. Meanwhile, Commander Magara is missing, a faction of humanity is developing a dangerous battlecruiser, and the Mowlings’ God has reluctantly returned and asked you to help save them from destruction. Perhaps a stop at Kapteyn’s bar will give you some more information - if you can avoid getting into a brawl long enough to talk to someone, that is.

Earth Rising is a 4-part season pass that contains new quests, ships, rewards, and story that is tied to humanity’s quest for establishing themselves as a major galactic power. Explore new stars, solve newly discovered mysteries, and form relationships with new alien races and their leaders. 

Set in the late 21st century, Star Control: Origins places you as the captain of Earth's first interstellar starship. Your mission is to explore the galaxy, find allies to help protect Earth from hostile aliens, and find the resources necessary to help Earth expand out into the stars.

What mark will you leave on the galaxy? Will it be for good, or for ill? Answer that question and much more in Star Control: Origins and the Earth Rising expansion!

Highlights in Earth Rises include:

• New Missions & Quests - Search for the missing Commander Magara, keep an eye on the humans developing a deadly Terran Battlecruiser, and stop the Measured from harvesting a sun and killing an entire civilization.
• New Location - Visit Kapteyn’s Bar to hear the latest gossip, triumph in a bar fight, and pick up bounty hunting quests
• New Battles - Lead your fleet into epic battles against massive space stations.
  
• New Weapons - Take on enemies with an arsenal of new weapons like the Black Hole Array or the Charged Warhead.

Get the Earth Rising Expansion Now

The complete expansion is fully released and ready for you to play!

Set in the late 21st century, Star Control: Origins places you as the captain of Earth's first interstellar starship. Your mission is to explore the galaxy, find allies to help protect Earth from hostile aliens, and find the resources necessary to help Earth expand out into the stars.

Don't have Star Control: Origins? Get it now for for $29.99 on Steam, GOG, or at www.starcontrol.com

The Political Machine 2020 is Here
It's time to enter the race!
Buy on Steam    |    Buy at Stardock

Win the hearts and minds of America’s voters and take the 2020 presidential election by storm in Stardock’s popular political strategy game. Choose a candidate and run against a computer opponent or a candidate controlled by another person over the Internet.

Candidates include current Democratic front-runners like Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders, as well as Internet favorites such as Andrew Yang and Tulsi Gabbard. Republican candidates include Donald Trump, George W. Bush and Mitt Romney. 

Don’t like any of the current candidates? No problem, just create your own! Or, if you believe everything is going to hell in a handbasket, play as the Giant Meteor and adopt some truly wild ideologies (ban all video games - they’ll rot your brain!). 

The Political Machine 2020 features brand new unique ideology trees for candidates, which allows them to play very differently from each other. Throughout the game, you’ll visit Town Halls to gain ideology points that you will be able to spend to own certain issues. For instance, Bernie Sanders has ‘Medicare for All’ as an issue he can own, while Donald Trump can use points to purchase the ‘Build the Wall’ issue.

Do you think you have what it takes? Take to the campaign trail and show the nation why you should be the next President of the United States of America!

Spread your Ideology Participate in Town Hall events to earn ideology points and solidify your position on hot issues with your voters. Generate Enthusiasm Use your power and money to purchase ads to discredit your opponent and influence voters. The greater enthusiasm your base has for an issue, the more effective your ad campaigns will be.

Participate in Interviews Accept invitations to various talk shows across the country in order to share your opinion on issues important to the American people. Choose your Candidate Play as one of several candidates, each with their own custom stats like stamina, intelligence, charisma, media bias, and more.

Create a Candidate Customize your own front runner and race for the White House. Manage your Campaign Budget Purchase advertisements, travel across the country to campaign, and hire operatives to enhance your PR or cripple your opponent. Be wary - if you overspend and need extra cash, it might come from somewhere that will shake voters’ confidence in you!

Practice your Politics A sophisticated underlying simulation model uses census data and real issues to test your political savvy. Check your Standings With poll tracking and leaderboards, you can see how well people are playing as their candidates or what issues they are supporting over time.

Be Ready for Anything Torrid affairs, natural disasters, email scandals, and other "breaking news" events can pop up and change the direction of the campaign for better or worse.

Run for President Today!
Buy on Steam   |   Buy at Stardock

For this election cycle we have a ton of updates in store between now and election day.

Below is a tentative schedule:

## Spring 2020 ##

Steam Workshop support for creating and sharing your own political ideologies.

This year is a total, 100% rewrite of the game and while doing so we revisited everything about the game. The feature we like the most so far are the ideologies which will bring immense replayability to the game.

Most of the candidates have their own ideology with them. We also include a few alternative ones like Fascism, Lunacy and Giant Meteorism.

But we suspect other players will want to try making their own and the Steam Workshop support will make it easy to do so.

Scoring Handicap.
Some candidates are easier to to win with than others. To this end, different candidates will get score bonuses based on how hard they are to win with. This will make adding lots of historical Presidents to the game without it totally breaking things.

Spring Issue Update
Every few weeks we'll be updating the campaign issues. Even during our internal beta we've had to make a lot of changes such with "Escalation with Iran" and now with "Coronavirus". We are constantly getting new issues as well as tweaking existing issues to try to keep things as current as possible.

Really Loud Crowder & Rachael Maddox
New podcasts and TV shows are going to be added as we go through this election cycle. The game includes several already but we are looking to add more during the cycle. Two we plan to add this Spring include one based on Louder with Crowder and one inspired by Rachel Maddow.


## Summer 2020 ##

Candidate Architect
We already allow players to create custom candidates. But we also would like to expand on this feature to allow serious political wonks to architect candidates to extreme detail and share them.

State Emergencies
Not national emergencies. Instead, these would be events that affect only a single state. Maybe your campaign can ignore giving support to a tree fungus in Idaho but can you ignore a water contamination issue in Ohio? This will be a feature that players can turn off but will ensure that various states will require special attention.

Throughout this election cycle, we'll be hanging out on www.politicalmachine.com and the Steam forums to listen to ideas and suggestions and see what we can get in before the November election!

## It's a new game ##

We're incredibly excited to get this to you guys. This is the first time we've done a full rewrite since the original 2004 edition.

We added a bunch of new features. Some features in the old game we didn't include. For example, we don't have a "randomize the issues" feature or playing on an alien planet.

We also didn't bring the variable length campaigns and instead focused on 21 so that we could nail down the pacing. Players of previous versions will, we hope, really appreciate how well paced the new version is.

The biggest change you can't really see. It's the underlying simulation. It is so much better. Your actions mean so much more in the game and the game just "feels" better as your actions just make a lot more sense.

Stay tuned!