14 DAY TRIAL // Stardock, the studio behind the critically-acclaimed space 4X strategy franchise Galactic Civilizations, has just announced the fourth major installment in the series. Galactic Civilization IV is supposed to be bigger than any of the previous titles and promises to bring many new features to both newcomers and veterans of the series.
“The focus in Galactic Civilizations IV is the player actually dealing with AI characters. In previous versions, the computer AI meant other civilizations. Now, every civilization is made up of hundreds of characters who have their own agendas. In 4X terms, it’s like dealing with Civs of Civs,” said Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock.
Just like in the previous games, Galactic Civilizations IV puts players in the role of a powerful leader of a spacefaring civilization, as they are seeking out new start systems and discover the potential of the subspace realm.
Since Galactic Civilizations IV is much bigger than the previous games, it deals with a much greater number of stars and planets, so developers have replaced the so-called “AI governors” gameplay mechanic with the Core world / Colony World metaphor.
Basically, instead of encumbering players with micro-managing dozens of stars and worlds, all planets are now colonies, worlds that output raw resources to their associated core world. Players will be able to assign one of their leaders to a world in order to turn it into a core world. These core worlds are the ones the player directly manages, with the leader character providing various bonuses and unlocking various features based on their attributes.
There are a lot of new gameplay features and concepts in Galactic Civilization IV, and because of that, Stardock announced that the early access program for this game will start at the Alpha phase rather than the more typical Beta phase, which will allow the developer to implement player feedback as early as possible.
Finally, Galactic Civilizations IV doesn't have a release date yet, but Stardock confirmed that the game will go into early access later this Spring, so stick around for more details on the matter.