Furthermore, in the interest of honesty and transparency, I’ve also waited a bit in hopes of seeing signs of post-release support that might address some of the issues I take with Galactic Civilizations 4 (GalCiv 4). But frankly, the game hasn’t seen the type of post-release support that it needs and is usually the status quo for Stardock games. More on that later in the review, though.
My concerns here are two-fold. First, the game is rough in areas that I thought would be addressed before release. In fact, I was very surprised when Stardock announced an April release date, as the game did not feel ready. Unfortunately, that release date didn’t give them time to fully realize GalCiv 4‘s potential and nearly all the concerns I had leading into the final months of the beta were not addressed.
Also, why hasn’t Stardock supported the game like they usually do? Is it because the Epic exclusivity money wasn’t enough to offset the lack of sales on the Epic Games platform? Or are there other issues, such as being spread too thin, that are at play here?
I am concerned.
So, I’m going to look at the game for what it is right now. For better or worse…
Epic Games’ Money (Somewhat) Well Spent
Before we begin, let’s address the angry elephant in the room: GalCiv 4 is currently an Epic Games Store exclusive. As we all know by now, Epic pays developers a decent sum for exclusive storefront rights. There’s no doubt that Stardock used these funds to invest in an almost-AAA level of presentation, possibly at the expense of other aspects of the game, which we’ll get to later.
However, it’s pretty clear that Stardock has learned a thing or two about animation and graphical fidelity from their experience with Star Control: Origins. Galactic Civilizations 4 is positively beautiful, and its character animations are easily among the best in any 4X game ever. Just starting a new game offers a clear showcase of how Stardock’s collective animation skills have improved:
Beyond that, even your starting system and setup look wonderful:
At this zoom level you can see individual asteroids, objects orbiting planets, solar flares, and more. Space is pretty amazing to behold in GalCiv 4. You can also hear the dull thrum of your ships while an epic-sounding soundtrack plays to your nostalgic Star Trek or Babylon 5 memories (although I’d love to see more music tracks). It’s an immersive start, both visually and audibly.
But Gameplay Trumps Visuals
GalCiv 4 really leans into a few new gameplay mechanics, namely its focus on core worlds and colonies. Core worlds are very much like every colonized planet in previous iterations of the Galactic Civilizations series. Once colonized, you’ll manually place improvement structures as you work to improve their output.
As with GalCiv 3, you gain adjacency bonuses from proper improvement placement and you’ll see higher outputs from certain tiles that are more geared toward different types of production.
It’s a strong case of “if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it”, as the system worked well in GalCiv 3 and it’s fun enough here. I never feel overwhelmed by choice and the Tetris-like desire to fit those industrial districts and banks in their proper places leaves me feeling satisfied as I make a planet that adequately takes advantage of all of its hexes.
However, the vast majority of planets you’ll acquire will remain colonies, which are settled planets that simply – and quite intelligently – feed into the closest core world. So instead of having to micromanage every planet that you add to your empire, you only have to really pay attention to your core worlds. Every other world simply imports its resources to the core. The resource quantity degrades over distance, however, as a simulation of crime and piracy.
This system really works well to help your galactic empires feel more expansive without bogging you down in the turn-to-turn time sink of having to manually place buildings on dozens of planets.
Frankly, it’s one of my favorite aspects of GalCiv 4.
As you explore your galaxy, you quickly realize that each planet is given a quantitative class number, the higher the better. Those planets with a class of 20 or better are usually prime candidates for core worlds, though you need a governor to make a core world.
Speaking of governors…
Characters Play a Supporting Role, Without Soul
As I’ve mentioned a few times now, Galactic Civilizations 4 features player characters called Leaders. Each of these leaders can be recruited using credits and assigned to a variety of different responsibilities: Ministers, Governors, Diplomats, Commanders, and Factions.
Ministers provide bonuses to various aspects of your faction, like the aforementioned Minister of Technology that boosts your research capabilities and gives you more tech choices. A Minister of Colonization boosts approval rates, while a Minister of Defense increases ship hit points and your planets’ defensive capabilities. There are ten in total, and they’re all completely optional.
Governors are assigned to core worlds and act as I explained above.
Diplomats are assigned to foreign factions to increase relations and gather intelligence. Sometimes the right leader will also covertly steal from factions they’re assigned to.
Commanders, possibly my favorite leader type, take charge of a variety of ships that, for the most part, each have unique abilities and strengths. The Baratak Grove, the sapient plant people, are focused on “seeding” other planets and their command vessels spawn colony ships to spawn and boost local planets. These ships really lean into the Grove’s strengths and focus.
However, some of the other factions’ commander ships don’t feel quite as unique. For instance, the Drath have some really barebones commander ships, as do many other factions.
The leaders mechanic is a mixed bag. The idea of using leaders to provide bonuses, powerful ships, and more is fun, if not a bit overused nowadays. However, their implementation feels a bit half-hearted here.
First, they each have a “back story” summary assigned to them that doesn’t have any obvious gameplay effects and sometimes doesn’t even make sense. Furthermore, the backstories are not that numerous so sometimes you see three of the same characters in the leader pool with the exact same “back story”.
It definitely breaks immersion and I’m not even sure why they’re there.
Beyond that, the asymmetry wand hasn’t been waved over all the factions yet with regards to commander ships, which is to be expected when you’re still in beta, but GalCiv4 is not in beta anymore.
It’s a replayability aspect that should not have been overlooked and I spoke of it in my preview article. However, some of the factions’ ships are just plain ol’ boring and offer very little creativity or variety.
The Baratak Grove has some great ships, some of them allowing population growth at a colony while in their range of influence, but about half of the game’s factions don’t have this level of creativity or asymmetry and that’s a shame.
I know I’m beating a dead horse at this point, but it’s important to me.
Anyway, back to the other leaders…
Finally, leaders can also be assigned to Factions. Factions are unique to each race and provide the player with different play possibilities. The Drengin have a Slavers faction, so when the player assigns leaders to this faction the Drengin are able to increase manufacturing and reduce maintenance on their colonies. Meanwhile, the Corporate Sector has a faction called the “Banking Clan” which allows leaders to increase gross money income, but at the expense of diplomatic prowess.
It’s in these mechanics that GalCiv 4 begins to shine. Almost as if building a character in an RPG, your choices in how you allocate your leaders will either make your race a jack-of-all-trades or allow it to focus on its inherent strengths and boost them to god-like heights.
I just wish this sort of creativity was shown across other leader mechanics as well.
A Tech Tree for Controversy
Another radically new system for the Galactic Civilizations series is GalCiv 4‘s tech tree. Taking a page from the Stellaris or Old World playbook, GalCiv 4 has adopted the tech card system. Instead of working down a linear technology tree, randomly drawn technology cards are presented to the player which adds interesting decisions to make. Do I take Space Elevators to bolster my core worlds’ industrial efforts or do I take Agricultural Districts to grow more food for my people? You’re initially given a choice between four technologies but a Minister of Technology, who boosts your research rate, also adds an additional choice to the mix.
It’s also important to consider that whichever one I don’t choose may not be there the next time I’m ready to take on a research project, so I need to think ahead.
There will be those of you that don’t like the “RNG factor” of this system but I, for one, appreciate it since it mitigates the feeling that there’s an optimal way to navigate the tech tree in every game, which is the same trap that many, many other 4X games fall into.
It does make navigating your technology strategy a bit more difficult, though. I wish that each faction had certain technologies more heavily weighted toward them. The money-loving Drath Freehold should see more options that could bolster their coffers. The Manti Cluster should see more propulsion tech or exploration tech options, right? They are GalCiv4‘s explorers, after all.
Furthermore, I would like to see more “rare” technologies that have a lower chance of being drawn but can add a fun advantage when that research appears. This would go a long way toward making each campaign feel more unique. Again, I’m thinking of Stellaris here but that’s because it works.
And while I’m being picky, I’d love to see unique tech trees for each of the races. Particularly ones that are aquatic, plant-based, or otherwise biologically different from the average humanoid. It makes little sense that they’re all researching the same technologies despite radical biological differences. Galactic Civilizations 2 did it, so I’m not necessarily reaching for the stars (ahem).
Whether you like this system or not, I still think it’s a step in the right direction to shake up 4X research. Games like the aforementioned Stellaris and even the classic Sword of the Stars have done some unique things to make research feel more random and interesting, so seeing the GalCiv series adopt a new system to feel more random is great. Even if I still feel like Sword of the Stars 1 did this better.
Forging Your Ideology
Throughout a typical game of Galactic Civilizations 4 you’ll run into numerous events (quick note: I’d still like to see many more for variety’s sake) that will allow the player to make a choice that will affect their ideology, along with possible other bonuses or maluses. Here, we’re met with a precursor ship and given the choice between sharing the spoils of the ship among your ship’s crew, or giving the engineer all of the spoils, in hopes that he may discover something important to you.
Each comes with its own benefit but also, and just as importantly, pushes you down an ideological path that may or may not benefit your empire’s goals. Sure, sharing the booty increases your coffers by 500 credits, but is your empire really interested in exploring the Equality Ideology path?
Once you’ve increased your awareness of an ideology, and you’ve accumulated a culture point (you’ll find those in a variety of different events, too, among other methods), you can start to “purchase” ideology tree perks.
Throwing your first culture point into Tradition (Sacred History) increases your homeworld’s influence by 1000! It also unlocks the Heritage project. Meanwhile, allocating a point into the Transparency tree’s “Amiable” node will increase your diplomacy capabilities by 1 and improve your trade values, too.
In many ways, these skill trees, er… um, ideology trees feel a lot like an RPG and how that genre approaches character progression. I think it’s great and the potential to really expand on this system could really help shape different “builds” of the same races, thus providing moderate replayability.
I would have liked to see this system fleshed out more and the rewards become more influential and asymmetric. As they stand, they’re just decent little upgrades that don’t feel nearly as powerful or influential in your play style as, say, Stellaris‘s Traditions.
Executive Privilege
Another new gameplay mechanic added to Galactic Civilizations 4 is the Executive Action system. These actions are active skills that allow the player to instantly acquire various resources using accumulated Control Points. You can “Draft Colonists” using 20 control points, thus instantly granting a colony ship with a citizen already on board, or you can use a telescope action for 10 control points to uncover areas of the map that haven’t already been discovered.
A lot of these actions can dramatically change your capabilities. Say you’re short on cash for one of those aforementioned leaders that you just need to hire. Well, you can use an executive action that will add 1000 credits to your coffers, but hits your approval rating by 10%. But now you can afford that excellent leader that just popped up and you won’t have to worry that they’ll leave before you can save up enough dough.
Likewise, the ability to purchase a colony ship right away is essential to being able to keep up with the AI when there’s a newly found level 33 world that’s ripe for the taking.
There are cooldown periods for these actions, so you can’t just spam a bunch of colony ships with all of your remaining Control Points, but it does give you a bit more flexibility on how you might take advantage of a new opportunity.
That being said, I’d love to see race-specific Executive Actions added. Stardock has no problem ripping great gameplay ideas away from other 4X games, so they should take a look at Ascendancy, where each race had a unique active skill that made them play very differently. Take Ascendancy’s Frutmaka race: they could expel enemy ships from their territory every so often, or the Dubtaks who could steal any technologies that were known by at least two other races.
With that inspiration, imagine playing as the Festron and having an “action” that would allow you to feast on an alien population within your empire, providing a food bonus for a ten-turn period. As the Drengin, an action that would allow you to draft slaves into your war, thus doubling the amount of time it takes to siege your planets. Or as the Arceans, using an action that fortifies your ships, providing a 50% bonus to their hit points for a short period.
I could go on, but you get my point. It’s another talking point for the asymmetry soapbox that I get on all too often. The point is that this system can and should be taken a bit further to feel truly unique.
Policies, Because We Can
Policies act as another way to further hone in on how you want your empire to run and what its focus will be.
As you progress through the tech tree, more and more policies will be at your disposal. They range from small boosts to your resource generation, to a moderate trade of outputs, which leaves a bit more to consider. Do you want to give up 20% of your ships’ durability for higher attack power? Or do you really want to drop your population’s morale by 15% for a 10% boost in production?
Finally, you won’t have to hear me complain about a lack of race-specific options this time, as there are some policies that are only available to the race you’ve selected. These are great! And while I’ll admit that the policy screen isn’t exactly unique or new, it’s a solid take on this type of mechanic and it can really help you shape your empire.
I’m just not convinced that this system really adds anything to gameplay, though.
Cosmic Scale
Stardock has gone the way of Paradox or Distant Worlds and has really increased the size of what’s possible with their maps. Not only do you have sectors, which are roughly the size of the maps found in a game of Galactic Civilizations 2 or 3, but you can add multiple sectors to your game, thus increasing the potential of your game size to, quite frankly, unreasonable scales.
I’m sure there will be those players out there that play with multiple large sectors (god help you) but, personally, I prefer to play on smaller maps with an additional sector (or two, if I’m feeling masochistic), as I appreciate playing games that feel manageable. Despite everything that Galactic Civilizations 4 does to reduce micromanagement large maps, now multiplied by the number of sectors, feel overwhelming to a player like me.
Thankfully, the map settings allow each player to customize their games thus catering to the needs of every type of gamer.
Finally, the sectors’ slipstream links themselves are often a point of contention and are hard to defend. In fact, the whole sector-to-sector aspect of the game feels undercooked. After about 60 hours with the game, I turned them off and will very likely never turn them on again. Ships can actually clog up the slipstreams and get stuck, too. That’s fun.
So I have to wonder who actually wanted this. It’s one of GalCiv 4‘s “flagship” features, yet the size of these games becomes unmanageable for me and I can’t imagine that I’m alone in thinking that. I would give anything to have seen Stardock ditch this mechanic altogether to focus on other aspects of GalCiv 4, returning GalCiv to its one-sector past.
Complaints
I hate to say this, especially as a long-time fan of Stardock, but I have a lot of complaints about the “final” result of GalCiv 4.
My first complaint is probably true across all the series’ iterations, but the combat system in GalCiv 4 is even more incoherent than usual. Between the three weapon types, three defense types, four ship sizes, multiple ship roles, a multitude of ship parts, planetary sieges, military starbases, and command ships no one truly knows how combat even works, much less if it is buggy or not or how to balance it. There are just too many degrees of freedom in one of the most important mechanics in the game.
As of the time of writing, it appears that Stardock is planning to address this. I look forward to seeing this new system in place, but I regret having to wait for it to be addressed.
Another bugbear of mine is the inconsistency in bonuses that you acquire. Some are in percentages, some are units, and some are fractions. It’s confusing, to say the least.
I also feel like there may be too many systems for the sake of having more stuff. So much so that it starts to feel too complex with too little payoff. Between the ideology system, the policy system, the leader system, the Galactic Challenges, artifacts, the Galactic Bazaar, and more, it starts to feel like there are too many gameplay elements with very little actual meaning behind most of them.
For instance, the Galactic Challenges are something I almost never participate in. They’re self-initiated events that feel a lot like the mid-game and late-game crisis events in Stellaris (yeah, I get it, but it’s pretty clear that GalCiv 4 was influenced by that juggernaut). Instead of leading to some really cool outcomes, like perhaps granting you special weapons, ships, colony buildings, or something else rewarding, they plainly provide “prestige points”. Prestige points are simply a number that you can eventually shove in the face of all your enemies and claim that makes you better than everyone else and win the game.
Imagine how much more fun the game would be if these were actually triggered dynamically, like Stellaris or most other 4X games, and/or if they provided actual gameplay bonuses, like quests in an RPG. I could get behind this system if they were quests I could embark on, with loot at the end of the quest line. Hell, Stardock isn’t a stranger to such gameplay (see the Fallen Enchantress series). That would be unique. Instead, its point-based rewards are bland and, without any other fanfare, be it cut scenes or quest dialogue, or anything else that would encourage players to complete them, boring.
Put bluntly, Stardock seemed to have rushed this out the door. There is the foundation of a good game here but so many aspects of gameplay have been only partially fleshed out or never revisited after their initial version.
For example, wars can quickly devolve into a whack-a-mole scenario where you’re constantly trying to nail down that one pesky, sneaky fleet that starts invading a colony, only to run away when you bring your forces down on it.
Or the fact that none of the leaders in the game are memorable which would seem to run contrary to why they were added, to begin with.
An aspect of Galactic Civilizations 4 that I really enjoy is the flavor text that appears during alien interactions. It adds a lot to the immersion of a play-through to see the Festron talk to you about how well your cute, furry bodies will hold their eggs, or the Drengin speaking to you about your former enslavement to them.
However, that flavor text is curiously absent from other random interactions in the game, like when a race warns you of the pirates in the sector or the space monsters near your colonies, but I feel like that’s something that can and should be added and wouldn’t require too much production time. I once saw Brad Wardell himself add a ton of new flavor text in a matter of a weekend, so adding some more unique messages to these types of interactions shouldn’t be too hard.
What’s worse is that it’s exactly the same dialogue that would pop up in GalCiv 3, so it’s pretty clearly a copy/paste job which is disappointing, to say the least.
Furthermore, I often turn off trading with AI empires since enabling it always leads to frequent, awful proposals. Like this one:
Or this one. This one made me laugh, to be fair, but what the hell?
I’ll add that the current state of the game has too few leader names so many of them are recycled. It’s not uncommon to see two of the three presented leaders with the same name. That’s pretty immersion-breaking if you ask me.
Beyond that, some frustrations have been aired within the community about the process by which Galactic Wonders are built. Many have said that queueing a wonder to be built, only to have someone else beat you to the punch at the very last minute often felt unfair. The suggestion to allow players to claim wonders much like Humankind allows, basically using a resource (influence in Humankind) to purchase that claim, would give the player more agency and control.
I proposed that the player be allowed to use Control to purchase those claims. Brad seemed to like it. However, it was never addressed before the game was released.
Bugs, Typos, and Balance
In some ways, it feels like Stardock is punching above its weight with Galactic Civilizations 4. Stardock is a solid AA studio, but GalCiv 4 feels like a AAA product in its presentation and scope. That’s where it stops, unfortunately.
Its roots as a smaller studio start to show through when you really look deeply.
That is to say that the game is still riddled with many grammar and spelling issues and a general lack of polish with its text elements. Sure, the flavor text mentioned above is usually pretty good but it won’t take long to find a few typos.
Second, you’ll find your fair share of bugs, too. Numbers that don’t add up as they should, events that don’t trigger the rewards that they promise, and more.
Those are just a few examples of the many, many small to moderate bugs I’ve encountered in my time with GalCiv 4 so far.
And finally, balance. I hate the word, honestly. I don’t think that a 4X game should be too worried about balance, as heavy-handed balance starts to make a game feel boring and stale most of the time. However, I should be able to play a game of GalCiv 4 and expect that elements like rankings are actually balanced correctly. Right now, if you have a lot of money and military, your power rankings are going to be sky-high. Even if someone has an equally powerful industrial capability, the game really seems to favor money and the military as the primary indicators of strength.
Also, as the game stands today, there are races that are just more fun to play than others thanks to their unique commander ships and gameplay focuses. The Mimots, while cute and new, don’t feel very fun to play with compared to the Baratak Grove, the plant people. That’s because the Grove has those great commander ships that I mentioned earlier, whereas the Mimots feel very vanilla in their current form. Their ships spawn a probe or gunboat, but they don’t really feel uniquely Mimot.
Could most of this be fixed? Abso-fricken-lutely, but I’ve gotta be honest here: I’m not going to bet my next paycheck. Stardock has a knack for getting **really** close to shoring up weaknesses in their games, only to drop the ball and leave major bugs or exploits in them for far too long.
4X fans will remember GalCiv 3’s sensor exploit (their ranges stacked) and immediately know what I’m talking about. They’ll also probably remember how this exploit was defended by Stardock on their forums for a long, long time, only for them to finally address it after many of their fans complained long and vehemently enough.
The Best GalCiv?
Nope. Not yet. But I’ll keep up hope. For now.
I wasn’t kidding or being hyperbolic when I said that Galactic Civilizations 4 has the potential to be Stardock’s best game ever. It combines the solid gameplay of the GalCiv series with fresh, new ideas that look to minimize micromanagement and subvert the longstanding issues surrounding the 4X genre while coating it with a triple-a paint that looks fantastic.
But they’ve fallen well short of a complete game here and it pains me to say that.
I have often loved Stardock, despite itself, as it’s felt like an indie studio that really cares about its games, even if they seem to be constantly chasing great and not quite getting there. They won me over in a big way when I purchased the Collector’s Edition of Elemental: War of Magic. Many of you know the tale of what happened there but, if you don’t, watch this. They gave me two free games as an “apology” and they made me a forever fan with that gesture.
Which is why I feel so disappointed with the current state of things. We’ve hardly seen an update worth talking about since its release in April. Sure, they hit v1.1, but the changelog and fixes are nothing noteworthy.
As I’m finishing this review, Brad Wardell posted this update on Galactic Civilizations 4:
So this Spring will mark the one year anniversary of the release of Galactic Civilizations IV. And we have some really big plans for it. We’ve been working hard on a major revamp of the entire game.
Here are some of the areas we are making big changes:
- Totally new combat system. Beam vs. Kinetic vs. Missile as a rock paper scissors mechanic against shields, armor, and point defense is going away. Instead, various types of weapons will have their own pros and cons in areas like costs, sizes, effectiveness, and on map benefits. This will give us a lot more nuance and open the door to having a lot of new types of weapons and defenses in the future.
- New ship design system. You won’t be choosing Hulls anymore. You will choose a general class of ship which will determine how much mass you have available. This will eventually let us have many types of classes (Frigates, Cruisers, Battleships, Dreadnoughts, and other types) rather than be limited to a number of types based on what words we can think of to describe sizes (uh, so um super gigantic mega hull?).
- New invasion system. We are going to move a bit away from the binary “you need a transport” system of invading plants that I’ve had in GalCiv since I was in college. Instead, the time it takes to invade a system will be affected based on the conquest rating of your fleet. So having an invasion transport with you would greatly increase that obviously. But you won’t need one to conquer some piddly little world just because of “the rules”.
- New ideology system. Your choices will no longer give you points in a particular ideology. They will simply make certain ideological choices less expensive to acquire. So if you always play as an evil bastard, the evil bastard ideology choices will be cheaper to get but you can still go against the grain and live a life of self-deception.
- Updated research system. So instead of only having N techs you can research, you instead will be able to research any tech you want. HOWEVER, you will be presented with N techs that scientists are on the verge of breakthroughs of which will be 50% cheaper to research than other techs. So while you can choose any tech, it’ll be very tempting to go with the ones that are on the verge of breakthroughs.
This is only a small list of changes that we think players will really like. We’re also doing things like adding a tutorial, improving the graphics further, making performance improvements, new map setup changes, etc. We’ll have more news soon.
– Brad Wardell on GalCiv4.com
What changes would you like to see?
Amazingly enough, that list addresses a lot of my major concerns. I’m not sure that the invasion system changes will help with the frustrating “whack-a-mole” experience I explained above but I still think that issue can be resolved with more options regarding planet defenses or an inability for smaller fleets to invade.
However, I can’t judge the current game on what may come and it adds further credence to my assertion that this game simply launched too early. I still want to see the leader system further fleshed out, I still want those leader background blurbs to mean something, I still want each of the races to feel more distinct, and I still want this foundation of a 4X game to feel fully realized.
Sadly, I doubt it will ever be the game it could be, or that I wanted it to be, until its Epic Games Store exclusivity expires – if – there’s an end date to that. That will make Galactic Civilizations 4 yet another example of a game not reaching its full potential in this weird exclusivity period that Epic insists on paying developers for.
If, at the end of it, we get a great fourth iteration of Galactic Civilizations, then I won’t complain too much. But I’m not a fan of the long, hard road that we’ll have taken to get there.
Until we see what happens around the one-year anniversary of GalCiv 4‘s release, I don’t feel right recommending it to space 4X fans just yet.
Instead, I think Galactic Civilizations 3 is the better bet. Especially since it just received a big update in v4.5. I’ll circle back around next year and report on GalCiv 4 and whether it will ever become worth your time and money. But until then…
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