Monday, October 23, 2023
Galactic Civilizations IV
The fourth installment of the popular strategy games, developed by Stardock studio. Take on the role of the leader of a space civilization and rediscover the expanded and improved world of Galactic Civilizations IV. Galactic Civilizations IV is the next installment in the award-winning sandbox space strategy series from the 4X sub-genre. American studio Stardock is again responsible for its production. Work on the title was announced 6 years after the release of GalCiv III, with early access scheduled for June 2021.
Storyline
The action of the fourth installment of the series is set in the 24th century. Humans have discovered a faster-than-light way to travel through space, which they have dubbed Hyperdrive. The player takes on the role of the leader of a space civilization, discovering new star systems, analyzing the potential of the subspace sphere, while competing with aliens for dominance in our galaxy.
Mechanics
Galactic Civilizations IV is a turn-based game with boards divided into hexes. The player starts the game owning only his home planet. His goal is to research new technologies, explore the known galaxy, colonize new worlds while keeping his citizens happy. The game also allows for trade, diplomacy, intrigue or wars with alien civilizations. Previous games in the series had a single map of varying sizes. Players who liked to conduct gameplay on large maps had to cope with the disadvantage of not filling part of the map (empty fields without stars and planets appeared).
In Galactic Civilization IV, star sectors were introduced. Most of these sectors are similar to the small and large maps from GalCiv III, representing parts of the entire galaxy that the player was trying to conquer. The fourth edition offers between one and dozens of such sectors to explore. The early part of the gameplay introduces a traditional exploration phase, but in order to get to other star sectors, only subspace streams can be used, which again requires the right technology. Once this is acquired, the player can enter the second phase of exploration and conquest.
The Galactic Civilizations series also features extensive technology trees. The game offers the possibility to invent new technologies, some of which turn out to be easier for a particular race. Now, at a certain point in time the choice of technologies is limited to the best 5 (later this number can increase to 7). This especially affects the later phase of the game, during which the player has to make difficult choices, as each technology has an "innovation rating." The player can, incidentally, press the "inspire" button, which will select a new group of 5 technologies for him, but their cost increases with each subsequent use of the button.
Galactic Civilizations IV Hardware Requirements
- Minimum: Quad Core 8 GB RAM 1 GB GeForce GTX 460 or better graphics card 14 GB HDD Windows 10 64-bit
- Recommended: Quad Core 16 GB RAM graphics card 1 GB GeForce GTX 650 or better 14 GB HDD Windows 10 64-bit
