v1.8 Early Access Update - Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova

Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova Edition, currently in early access on Steam, gets a major beta update.

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Version 1.8 adds hundreds of new changes, improvements, fixes and new content including:

• New Major Civilizations: The Cosmic Contaminate and The Seeing.
• Multiplayer (competitive and cooperative).
• Major combat system update: Ships automatically use weapons on the main map from a distance.
• Major starbase update: Military starbases protect areas with deadly weapon fire at nearby enemies.
• Major AI revamp making it far better both at its planetary management and war fighting capabilities.
• Major UI improvements such as being able to minimize events (click off the event window) to check on other things.
• Balance update on influence: Players (and AI) can send military ships in orbit to slow down cultural takeovers.
• Major memory improvements, especially on larger maps.
• Bigger maps.
• Tons of new story-driven events.
• Legacy Crisis events: Events that spawn classic GalCiv civs (like the Thalan, Slyne, Xendar, Snathi and others).
• Tons of new ship components for the AI and players to design into their ships.
• Revamp of planetary citizens: Population matters a lot more.
• Major performance improvements (like 25X faster) turn times.
• Lots of quality of life improvements (sensor buoys, put ships on standby. 
• Visual polish pass across the entire game. 
• Tons of minor bug fixes.
• Lots of crash fixes.
• Much much more!

 

 

v1.8 Full Changelog

Hello all!

Today we are pushing the massive v1.8 update to the Live build for everyone. This extensive update comes with a large variety of changes and features, including unlocking new civs, introducing multiplayer, a full difficulty rebalance, enemy A.I improvements, improving game balance, introducing new “Crisis” events involving classic civs, improving AlienGPT and a variety of improvements to both gameplay and planetary improvements.

Below, you’ll find the full changelog.

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09/07/23 | v1.8 Changelog

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AlienGPT

• Ensure AlienGPT requests 9 images every time.   

• Moved templates to be in language folder so that we can use translated text if ChatGPT fails. 

• Image generation is faster.  

• Greatly improved the time it takes to save generated factions. 

• Added a "Re-Roll Selections" get more images like the currently selected one. 

• Fixed a bug with finding the correct alien image 

• Fixed a bug that caused images to not always match your keywords. 

Audio

• Updated the intro music to be louder. 

• Implement Sound Cues for Event notifications. 

• Updated Torian theme. 

• Added sfx for adding opponents during game setup. 

• New music added. 

• Added a lot more UI SFX.

Art

• A lot of new/higher resolution images for ship components, events.

• Added former gladiator icon.

• Egalitarianism now uses its own icon.

• Fixed other missing icons.

• Updated planetary improvement icons. 

• Galaxy zoom out view improved (prettier we hope). 

• Slight lighting changes to ships on the main map. 

• Added compressed versions of icon art. 

• New civ logos. 

Battle Viewer

• Ensure that a tooltip with an attack preview does not show on hover over of allied ships. 

• Make battle prediction tooltips valid and reliable. 

• Improved lighting. 

• Created a pop-up warning when trying to attack an allied ship. 

• You can now click or mouse over a ship in the battle log and get its info. 

• Cruisers on up to get into a firing range for all weapons and then hold the position. 

Core 

• Fixed a crash in the influence system. 

• Firing on a space monster trapped in a slipstream no longer crashes the universe.  

• Major refactors of pathfinding code that should greatly improve the late-game performance of this system.   

• Fixed a soft lock related to Achievements. 

• Improved culling of graphics and audio objects.   

• Reduced the delay when placing Planetary Improvements.   

• Improved the particle and visual trail perf, especially late game. 

• Fixed a crash when spawning a new faction.

• Fixed various crashes in the VFX system.

• Fixed a crash in the AI system where the Scouts were given invalid target destinations.

Factions

Cosmic Contaminant (New) 

The Cosmic Contaminant is a toxic faction that thrives in pollution. They can use their love of pollution to maximize manufacturing. They excel in wars of attrition. 

• Comes with Adaptable and new Radiated abilities. 

• Radiated lets civilizations use an Executive Order that raises a target planet's pollution. 

• Comes with the new Ammonia Based Biology. 

• As Ammonia-based lifeforms, they receive a growth bonus based on a planet's pollution. 

• Comes with the new Irradiated Citizens. 

• Irradiated Citizens evolve through multiple stages. 

• As Irradiated Citizens evolve, their skills increase, and their growth rate decreases. 

Intueri Aggregate (New) 

The Intueri Aggregate is a hive mind with little capability for complex thought. All significant technological advancements have come from observing and copying the improvements of others. A balanced faction with high diligence and loyalty, they can easily mimic and counter other playstyles. 

• Comes with the Ancient and new Watcher Ability. 

• Watcher lets civilizations use an Executive Order that grants a research bonus or new tech when used on other civilizations' planets. 

• Comes with the new Intueri Citizens. 

• Intueri Citizens have high Loyalty and diligence but low intelligence.  

Other 

• Xendar gets a different color. 

• Drengin expectations lowered. 

• Thalan now has Phasors. 

• Slyne, given many more ships to start with (but won't spawn until much later if they do), moved further away. 

• Thalan will only potentially spawn much later, given much more powerful ships moved further away. 

• Snathi, nerfed, moved further away. 

• Re-cropped video to keep Luxar leader better centered and more predominant in the frame.

• Human undefended penalty reduced from 10% to 5%.

• Other species have more varied undefended penalties based on their lore.

• Yor no longer have an undefended penalty.

• Silicon based lifeforms should ignore food requirement for growth. 

• Added " Ammonia" biology type increases population growth in polluted environments. 

• Drengi wealth decreased, Tech increased. 

• Iconia influence decreased but given more tiles. 

• Ensure that Humans are default Citizens when creating new civilization. 

• Ensure Phalenoids boost from Season of Dreaming is reflected in UI. 

Galaxy

• Reduced star visual radius.

• Map generation is updated in general.

• Map generation re-design for distant starting positions so players are more evenly spread out across the galaxy.

• Players will now generally start further away from one another.

• Fixed bug that spawned asteroids too close to their star (prevented mining).

• Fixed a bug that caused long galaxy generation time 

• Red giant stars no longer consume nearby planets and asteroids.

• Tweaks to sector size dispersion. 

• Further balancing on map base size for prestige victory pacing. 

• The tiny sector size shrunk in size to be really tiny. 

• The largest sector size increased from 240x240 to 300x300 (MUCH bigger). 

Gameplay

AI  

• Encouraged AI to attack with unfair odds if it has a massive military power advantage. 

• The AI is better and smarter about trading. 

• Fixed bug that caused the AI to think its combat ships were supply ships. 

• AI keeps better track of its money. 

• AI will use frigates to defend planets. 

• AI is much much better at protecting siege and transports (escorting them). 

• AI much better at taking out targets of opportunity. 

• AI is better about interrupting its plans to deal with someone attacking its capital world (note this is expensive CPU-wise).

• AI is better about interrupting its plans to deal with incoming significant fleets. 

• AI is better at mixing fleets with various ship classes to create doom fleets. 

• AI will have unarmed transports and siege ships retreat when their escorts are destroyed. 

• AI Survey ships will switch to being attackers if they run out of anomalies. 

• AI will really try to avoid laying siege to minor colonies unless it has no other targets. 

• AI will become more wasteful with fleets (i.e., wear enemies down) if it has a huge military power advantage. 

• AI is much better at building scout ships to explore the FOW faster. 

• In the early game, AI will store up colony ships even if no good targets are in preparation. 

• AI significantly adjusts its ship-building strategy if the enemy is stronger. 

• AI will prioritize treasure-hunting missions if it gets low on money, is in a deficit, and is not at war. 

• AI will prioritize building much more expensive ships if it can build them quickly. 

• AI will abort building supply ships if there are enemies near. 

• Fixed bug where AI couldn't use the Steal tech artifact. 

• Update of AI defense of planets to make the AI defend planets better. 

• Fixed a bug where AI was not removing targets from its list when they were on the overkill list.

• Improvements to the AI mean that it can queue up more tasks at a time.  

• AI is much better at taking out targets of opportunity. 

• AI is slightly less likely to build siege ships.

• AI is slightly more likely to surrender when it's losing a war. 

• AI preferences are now hooked up to improvements to help the AI intelligently pick what to build on its planets and when. 

Difficulty 

Because of the major AI improvements recently, difficulty levels have been rebalanced: 

• Beginner: 

  • AI fleet weapons compared to player reduced from 75% to 67%. 

  • Human trades are valued 3X as much by the AI. 

  • AI research hobbled by 66%. 

• Easy: 

  • Human trades are valued 2X as much by the AI. 

  • AI researched hobbled by 33%. 

• Normal: No changes, this is where the AI is playing ostensibly the same game. 

• Bright: 

  • Bright has been changed to be barely an advantage (a lot less than being able to load from a saved game). 

  • Bright AI no longer gets a logistics, moves, or research bonus. 

  • Bright AI no longer gets a break on Maintenance. 

• Genius: 

  • Genius has been substantially made easier for players. 

  • Logistics bonus reduced from 4 to 3. 

  • Genius AI no longer devalues human trade. 

  • Genius AI 33% movement bonus removed. 

  • Genius AI maintenance forgiveness removed. 

  • Genius AI ship HP bonus removed. 

• Incredible: 

  • Incredible has been made a bit easier for players. 

  • Incredible AI no longer devalues human trade offers. 

  • Incredible AI Logistics bonus removed. 

  • Incredible AI +3 moves bonus eliminated. 

  • Incredible AI Maintenance forgiveness removed. 

  • Incredible AI HP bonus reduced from 30% to 25%. 

• Godlike: 

  • Players winning at this level have found a trick. This level has been changed to counter some of these strategies while other advantages have been removed. 

  • Godlike AI is gifted 100k in money. 

  • Human trades are valued at 50% of normal value (to reduce the odds that humans will talk AI into giving away that money). 

  • Godlike AI no longer gets maintenance forgiveness. 

  • Godlike AI 300% Manufacturing bonus eliminated. 

  • Godlike Starbases and shipyards are now much tougher. 

Events

• New early-game events.

• Min turns before an event reduced from 8 to 6 turns.

• Early-game crisis events pushed up in probability.

• Crisis event cooldown max reduced from 16 turns to 12 turns.

• Various events that provide a temporary boost or penalty have had their turns of effect reduced from 50 turns to 25 turns.

• Fixed time traveler event.

• Disabled "Break away colony" 

• Fixed a race condition that would sometimes crash during events that created new factions.

• Added crisis events that spawn the legacy factions (Thalan, Slyne, Xendar, and Snathi).  

• Missionary Event reduced in likelihood. 

• New event image for war-related events. 

• More events are given story counters. 

• Updated Event Choices to have more diverse & narratively accurate ideology implications. 

• Added a lot more Event images.

• Famine planetary event where we give food to the leaders increases their Loyalty by 5. 

• Fixed some hilariously bad ideology bonuses for events (i.e., murdering people isn't a pacifist thing). 

• Events can now give movements to specific ships rather than your entire fleet.   

Misc.

• Leader Traits no longer mysteriously change over time. 

• Prevent dead players from doing stuff. 

• Add "auto-fire" to Starbase and Fleets.  At the end of a player's move phase, all fleets and Starbases with long-range weapons and first them at enemy targets in range.  Requires a tech.

• Adds a "Standby" option to ship UI, allowing the ship to remain dormant even if enemy ships are nearby. 

• Pick the best unit profession updated so they aren't quite so deterministic on what job they'll take.   

• Resource Extraction Techs for Durantium, Promethium, etc., now properly unlock respective Starbase Modules. 

• Spawned units will now mostly spawn citizens (non-specialists) but will still occasionally spawn specialists but now balanced to be of multiple types (instead of all farmers and entrepreneurs). 

• Number of clusters doesn't affect scoring quite as much as before. 

• Starting credits were reduced from 2,500 to 1,500 to balance with citizens on planets being much more powerful. 

• Monsters, pirates, and such are much more aggressive. 

• Hooking prisoners up to electrodes is part of a government policy on a planet no longer treated as a Progressive but instead a Totalitarian. 

• Survey module artifacts are less likely to occur. 

• Money reward from some artifacts is reduced. 

• Core world capitals provide +3 to the population cap by default. 

• Low-gravity world fertility is now more variable but with a higher range. 

• Citizens (default profession) provide 0.2 minerals per diligence, 0.2 research per intelligence, and 0.2 wealth per social (up from 0). 

• Reduced likelihood of planet terraforming artifacts from being found. 

• Extreme Automation policy buff to manufacturing reduced from an eye-watering 50% to 15%. 

• Starbase Defense Module now provides a 50-point shield barrier and enhanced weapons. 

• Advanced Starbase Defense Module now provides a 100-point shield barrier and enhanced weapons. 

• Barrier Field defense shield bonus increased from 50 to 100. 

• Starbases in other ZOC diplomatic penalty reduced. 

• New Executive Orders for the Drengin including "Pillage.”

• Greatly increased leash length on monsters and pirates so that they'll actually attack stuff.

• Monsters and Pirates don't care if they have big fleets. They just wanna murder stuff.

• Ensure the Player does not receive unlimited bonuses when loading into the game.

• The Rush cost multiplier increased from 5 to 7.5.

• Aid economy cost increased from 75 to 150.

• The Research Mission cost increased from 80 to 200.

• Treasure hunt mission const increased from 100 to 250.

• Treasure hunting has a greater variance in the money it brings in.

• Faction power now counts for more on the prestige victory scoring algorithm.

• Begging for help response default increased in weight.

• Eminence and other techs now give a bonus to the player's diplomacy ability.

• Citizen professions now give 10% of their relevant attribute towards all types of production and now 20% (up from 10%) towards their specialty.

• Disloyal governors now result in a negative approval penalty

• Citizens on planets represent vast swaths of the population and now provide a flat (as opposed to a %) bonus to a given type. They thus become a source of key resources on their worlds rather than simply a modifier.

• Murdering is not egalitarian; it's nihilism. 

• Precursor relic-related modules are nerfed, so they aren't over-powerful (no culture victories for capturing 2). 

• Nanite warship anomaly is now rare.

• Fixed various bugs where we don't always set target object (just the coordinates) 

• At long last, putting combat ships in orbit of a planet being culture-flipped will greatly slow down how fast they flip. 

• Spawn Overlord ability now actually spawns a good ship. 

• Minor races can attack others. 

• Aggressive civs defend their planets at half the rate. 

• Spawned civs are now given a 99% resistance (to make it much harder to influence flip them). 

• Spawned Civs get catch-up stuff. 

• Tech inflation increased from 1% per tech to 2.5% per tech (reduce tech snowballing). 

• Adjustment to base values on maps to make prestige victories on small maps harder to achieve. 

• The minimum price of a trade is reduced from 20 credits to 10 credits in the Bazaar. 

• Ban Dissent increases approval by 10%, BUT... Doubles colony maintenance (to pay for all those cops). 

• Culture flip pacing balanced more. 

• Removed the rule that you can only have one trade route pair.  This means you can if you want to put all your trade routes between Earth and Drengi.  But that is putting your eggs in one basket. 

• Dogma Trait now gives a +25% Resistance bonus to all planets.

• Consensus Trait no longer mistakenly triggers the All-Neutral Civs Declare War on victim mechanic.

• Fixed display texts for Dogma, Consensus, and Shared Belief traits.

Planetary Improvements

• “Starport” cost increased from 25 to 75.

• “Starport” given 2 maintenance. 

• “Union Center” now gives proper adjacent bonuses.

• “Heritage Center” now increases tourism to its planet by 5% per level.

• The “Economic District” cost was reduced from 100 to 75.

• The “Economic District” wealth generation per level increased from 3% to 4% per level.

• The “Governor's Manor” now increases colony income by 3% per level instead of 2%.

• Added "Recycling Center" improvement. 

• "AI Overseer," now a galactic wonder, reduces by 20% instead of 10%, and the level bonus decreases crime by 1% per level. 

• "Bureaucratic Offices," renamed" Office of Control," now a Galactic Wonder, provides 3 Control per turn (instead of 0.1) and an additional 0.1 control per turn per level. 

• The "Ministry of Diplomacy" buffed to provide +1 to the player's diplomacy ability but now requires "Auorrus Arboretums." 

• "Spice Market" is now a wonder, and the Tourism bonus has increased from 5% to 10%. 

• "Bob the Galactic Wonder" now requires "Precursor Nanites" to build. 

• "Augmentation Center" now increases all citizens' intelligence by 3 but now requires Precursor Nanites to build. 

• The "Prison Labor Camp" fixed. 

• Prison-based improvements have their bonuses increased from 10% to 15%. 

• New Planetary Improvement: “Holo Theater. “

• "Computer Core" raw research provided reduced from 2 to 1. 

• "Coordination Beacon" Influence per turn per level decreased from 10% to 5%. 

• "Starport Shipyard" buff decreased from 10% per level to 8% per level. 

• "Surveillance Center" now provides a +1 military (shipyard production) adjacency bonus. 

• "Trade Network" per level benefit increased from 2% to 4%. 

• "Financial Districts" per level benefit decreased from 4% to 3%. 

• “Agriculture District” per level value increased from 5% to 8%. 

• “Research Districts” per level benefit decreased from 4% to 3% (to balance with the population providing a research benefit). 

• Fixed a bug where the AI was seeing district upgrades as durational projects. 

• The “Farmer” trait is no longer needed for some of the more basic Xeno agriculture techs and improvements. 

• The “Farmer” trait is no longer needed for the first few upgrades to Agriculture districts. 

• The "Possibility Engine" base effect lowered from 200% to research to 100% but now increases research by an additional 5% per level.  

• Recycling Center given 3 maintenance. 

• Coordination beacon given 1 maintenance. 

• “Eyes of Universe” given 1 maintenance. 

• Trade network per level wealth bonus increased from 4% to 5%. 

• "Holo Theater" maintenance was reduced from 3 to 1. 

Ships

• Increased ship tactical speed/acceleration to look better in battle viewer.

• Starbase kinetic weapon cooldown reduced from 2 to 1.

• Starbase Missile Range increased from 1500 to 6000.

• Warp Drive and Slipstream starship modules added. 

• Turned off Mass Checks for Commander Ships. 

• Ship movement late game is less chunky. 

• Asteroid miner cost increased from 15 to 40. 

• Doomray cost increased from 12 to 50. 

• Doomray mass reduced from 5 to 4. 

• Doomray Elerium cost was reduced from 3 to 1. 

• Starting ships no longer have -2 moves on the first game turn. 

• Plasma Turret for Starbases moved to correct prereq., no longer has an Elerium cost. 

• Consolidation of attack ship types into a single "combat ship class." 

• Sensor Modules return. 

• New Sensor added. 

• Plasma turrets renamed Starbase plasma turrets to remove confusion. 

• More hull size differential for ships in the battle viewer and on the map. 

• Beam weapon cooldown reduced from 6 to 5. 

• Beam range increased from 1000km to 2000km. 

• Kinetic range increased from 400km to 500km. 

Techs

• New tech: Greater Anomaly detection (additional late-game anomaly respawn). 

• Engine techs and logistics tech trees are separated.  

• "Subspace" Streaming now provides +1 moves. 

• The "Precursor Souvenirs" improvement was removed. 

• The "Legal Offices" were renamed "Planetary Court." 

• Shadow Temple, renamed Temple of Whispers, is now a galactic wonder, provides +1 to Diplomacy ability, and gives +5 Diplomatic capital income per turn. 

Graphics 

• Starbase / Constructor area of effect line thickened.

• Engine lighting update for battles and ships.

• Adjusted overall lighting. 

• When zoomed out, the fleet icons now have trails. 

• Enabled VFX in Starbase Details Screen.

Performance 

• Maps now generate much, much, MUCH faster. The bigger the map, the faster the benefit. 

• Updated Terran Legacy ship-style thumbnails. 

Planets

• Population has a much more significant effect on production.

• The Colony Decay rate was reduced from 2% per tile to 1.5% per tile.

• Colony Decay now starts at 6 tiles away instead of 8.

• Core world base maintenance increased from 1 to 3.

• Tile bonus for determining tourism income reduced.

Starbases

• Major Starbase defense buff.

• Starbase shield generators get a 10X buff to make Starbases more resilient late game.

• Only Mining Starbases can mine strategic resources.

Text 

• Changed "You resent you" to "We resent you" in custom faction flavor text. 

• Modified some of the English text for tone. 

• Got rid of the "You're a jerk" phrasing in the flavor text (tone). 

• Alien civ language about what it wants tweaked to be clearer. "Your Starbase is now in my territory," for instance. 

• Shortened the diplomatic explanation for refusing to remove a Starbase (text clipping). 

• Weak AI renamed "Artificial General Intelligence." 

• Spelling fixes, formatting fixes.

• Removed extra line breaks for space savings.

• Renamed Galactic Mainframe to Planetary Mainframe.

• Removed the doubled line breaks in the text.   

• Control per month is now Control Per Month. 

• Starbase modules typo fix. 

• Collectivism Header text fix. 

• Updated UI text for greater clarity. 

• Updated Terran Alliance ship names. 

• Drengin Pillage text added. 

• Slaves were renamed Thralls. 

• Improved flavor text. 

• Minor text edits. 

UI

Custom Civ Creator 

• Ensure tooltips appear to the left of the control. 

• Fixed edit button offsets on the Civilization Setup window. 

• Increased window and font sizes, and improved layout consistency. 

• Ensure tooltips appear to the left of the control.

Events

• The tooltip for explaining an event choice's details is much larger, with larger text and a friendlier

• Ensure the scroll bar utilizes the mouse wheel. 

• Adjusted the Crisis popup text to fit one more line of text before clipping. 

Misc. 

• Make the Stats list entry larger to fix longer translations. 

• Update Alignment and sizing of stats on the Diplomacy List window. 

• Planet Upgrade scroll bar no longer resets its position. 

• Fixed a problem on the Trade screen that prevented the trade of resources under some circumstances. 

• Tech Tree screen: removed the sidebar list to reduce visual clutter. 

• Remove the "Done" button from all Cut Scenes. 

• Fixed the size discrepancy in the civ description text boxes. 

• Update all tooltips to say "Hold shift to lock tooltip" if they have more information to show. 

• Fix the clipping issue with the description text on the Prestige tooltip. 

• Add Tooltip to Show/Hide buttons for the summary panel in the upper right. 

• Add requirements to policy tooltips.

• Editing pass on leader backgrounds (made more succinct).

• Frowny face on citizen threshold reduced to 33% approval.

• Adjusted font size to reduce the amount of text getting clipped due to inline images.

• Highlighted Start Mission text.

• Update the Unit Trait ToolTip to ensure tiles fit longer strings are forced single lines. 

• Fix clipping of the resource icons on the resource bar. 

• Executive Orders: Added Cooldown information.

• Added Crime and Pollution sort buttons to the Planet List. 

• Added a new Game Option to show the planetary grid. 

• Executive Orders: Added Cooldown information. 

• Updated "Shift to Lock Hint Tooltip" to appear only on tooltips that have "Hotspot Text." 

• Fix for objective icons not showing up. 

• Updated Precursor orbital upgrades. 

Ships / Ship Designer 

• Fixed display issue with ship class modules showing up in the tooltip.

• Made hull size visual differentiation greater (visually).

• Fix ship graphics symmetry. 

• Ensure Ships show all types of weapons and defenses on Infocard. 

• Removed collapsible partitions for components in the Equip Mode of the Ship Designer. 

• Added Resource cost icons on ship component entries in Ship Designer. 

 

 

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