Well there was a system like that in Stellaris, the problem is that non-core worlds within sectors were unable to grow and develop properly, which meant stacking core world limit was the best way to grow in power
@@maxpont8989 Yep, stellaris suffers from incompetent AI in general and additionally seems to suffer from the same thing every other game suffers from in that player-aligned AI is particularly incompetent. The idea of letting the AI develop some worlds for you is great, but it's not when it's barely functional and makes completely random building choices.
GalCiv was the benchmark for space 4x games, even early versions of Stellaris were heavily based on it. I really wish they update Endless Space 2, my love/hate game.
I loved playing Endless Space 2, but i ran into a bug i could not find a fix for anywhere on the internet and basically had to stop playing it. Really sad, so enjoyed it when i could.
I really hate that they have flagships as the research ships. The only place that had that was Star Trek (and it was solely for the Federation) and they are pretty unique as they were multi-roll because they were barred from making full on warships.
I'm in a similar boat to you, I got GalCiv 3 for free on Epic Games a couple of years ago, and it was my first strategy game. I would spend at least 8 hours a day on that game for a few weeks, but I was hungry for something better, something more. I spent days searching for the best out there, but there was one that kept showing up and really catching my interest. Stellaris. That was in 2020 and now I have 3,108 hours in the game.
The AI-generated flavor text and portrait for custom civs is a pretty cool concept. I wonder if this will cause issues with Steam's "No AI" policy. Personally I think it's a neat feature and I look forward to more high profile games taking advantage of the opportunities that AI content generation can offer.
looking at Steam's policy... the answer should be no issues as AlienGPT has been trained specifically on the Devs' own work and besides.... if they rejected the idea... the game would have been cancelled from Steam release over 3 months ago as it's been in Early Access since then AND they did allow their AlienGPT back then.
@@ShamanKish oh no, AI is a thing... in multiple forms although you are right that AIs are just offshoots of programs. What you can however 100% claim is that there currently isn't such a thing as an AGI
My first GalCiv was actually the first installment that appeared on PC, somewhere in 2003(?). I remember ordering the CD and it being held by the customs office. I didn't care really to go there, since Stardock was one of the first companies that actually offered digital download and maintenance of their products.
i played a lot of gal civ 3, with all the dlc.. the best things i thought were how much you could craft your species, by making them bad at one thing to get more points to be really good at something else.. but also the traits, or abilities. i also really liked that you could download ships that others designed, so you could have you ships all look like Romulan (or klingon, or federation or star wars) ships without having to design them yourself. not sure if that is in GC4 yet, i haven't played it, i'm waiting on a good deal.
~14 years ago I bought a game called Space Empires 5 published in 2006 for about 1,50 euro. It was ridiciously detailed, you could literally do anything in this game. This game shares so much with it, I am halfway convinced it's made by the same guy.
I was pretty disappointed by the AI generated portraits. I wasn't able to get it to actually create anything related to what I'd written... I even just typed "space dwarves" or "frog robots" and both times it gave me similar random assortment of unrelated portraits. I think they might be having technical issues or there might have been some severe user error going on.
I haven't seen quite the same issues as some people have reported in the Steam Reviews. For example; I have seen a lot of starbase building activity by the AI. Don't forget this game was in early access for a while and has had constant updates during that process, it's a better game now than it was a few months ago!
well, massive starbase build should not be issue, its great for resources, defense and offense, if you can afford it. My only issue after 100+ hours (still Epic since beta), was too much specialized AI acting on certain empires. For example like Mimots almost 80% of time expanding, while Navigators barely, only upgrading their tech, while doing it very slowly because no expand and no industry for faster build.
Honestly the Ai is very simple, there is no overall strategy, they build ships and focus attack on your capital and harass your ships. In my games insted of the Ai focus its 100+ ships into a join attack, or call its allies to all declare war and attack me, they just send 1 fleet at a time and by the time the 2 fleet shows up i already defeated the first fleet, rince and repeat. The only game were it was different was when i fought a custom race i made with the perk of Proliferation, that makes all ships you make spawn an extra one, due to maintance they would often have almost no money, but massive fleets, all i had to do to beat them is loan them credits in exchange for credits per turn, then in a few turn i would see several of their ships been sold to other empires. How did i beat them? I sended 2 Transport ships with a few combat ships to every core world of them and declared war and strike, in 3 turns i beat them.
I've yet to see Gal Civ II topped, but I'm hopeful IV will at least get close. I like III but, there's something about it that doesn't always sit right with me, and I can never really put my finger on it. I could play it for a day and enjoy it, but next day can't be arsed.
@@ener11454 Stellaris is a lot deeper, I'll admit, but I honestly find Gal Civ 2 more enjoyable. As for Masters of Orion (which I assume you mean), then they were a bit before my time so haven't played them. Might be worth checking out though.
yea I feel you there, one thing that really annoyed me from 2 to 3 was the ground battles I loved watching those as a kid, I also adored building my own ships in 2 and managing the planets it just felt better.
@@ener11454 stellaris is kinda a different beast, Gal Civ 2 had more enjoyable ship designing and planet management, along with I feel a more realistic way to capture territory, but stellaris works in multiplayer better by far and more lore stellaris also had easier to hold choke points and more events. Honestly the main thing that I feel puts the two apart is the real time vs turn based and design aspect if you want more control and dont mind turn gal civ 2 is better.
@ener11454 Stellaris and Gal Civ 2 are very different games. Stellaris is infinitely customizable and quite huge, but that comes at the price of a lot of the empires lacking personality and the later game playing similarly for a lot of empires. Gal Civ 2 excels in its simplicity. There is a limited number of empires, each with clear identities, histories, and play styles, and an enjoyable and easy-to-use ship customizer. Both games are great, but they scratch different itches. So saying one is better than the other is comparing two games with very different goals and target audiences and the illusion of similarity offered by a space setting.
From Master of Orion 2 until Stellaris 2.0, Gal Civ was the Space Opera series for me. Don't know why 3 didn't work as well for me. It looked better, but lost some of the charm. What I do think GalCiv did well was internal politics. Managing your empire was as important, and as difficult, as expanding it. But it accomplished that without the level of micro Stellaris has. Definitely believe there's enough room for both games. If they can hook me again.
Gal civ 1 was very different to contemporaries and then Gal civ 2 eventually got a cool campaign. Not sure what Gal civ 3 was supposed to be bringing to the table.
yea I feel like most people really prefer 2 or 3, 3 got ride of some components I really loved from 2 such as ground battles and the diplomacy seemed lacking.
Thank you, Montu, for playing attention to this game. I think that it is well worth the money. I think it's better tha. Star Trek Infinite, which is set too late in the Star Trek timeline. I think that there should be feature like in MOO2 where you can determine development levels. That would allow for more replayablity in these kinds of games.
i guess it depends if the ai is a cheaty as it used to be in part 3, but if i learned one thing over the last years it is not to buy new games when they come out
Loving it.. my fixes. Fleet names... when i name a fleet, i want to keep it, but every time a fleet lands on a planet, starbase, ect it changes the name. Ship swaping - its clunky. Population pictures- after you load them up, it does not show them on the lobby screen, it shows them in game, its an annoying bug. Etherium & own fleets are hard to see when zoomed out. Its a fun game, needs another dimension.
You know when ai was mentioned here I was worried a bunch of people would go nuts and recreate the Salem witch trials in the comment section. Glad to see that that’s not the case, ai is a wonderful tool capable of many things-but at the same time is so primitive to what conspiracy theorists say it is that the idea they could replace humanity at this point is laughable.
Been playing GalCiv since the first game. But once Stellaris came out, especially together with its DLCs, i fully migrated to Stellaris. GalCiv has some nifty micro level systems & encompassing empire mgmt mechanics as well as the ship designer that i wish were in Stellaris. Stellaris still triumphs the 4x & Grand strategy genre though. Stellaris combines 4x, grand strategy & RPG all in one. Its next level. Though i wish it had the combat, ships & ship customization like Sword of the Stars 2. The detail, sense of scale & epicness of the ships & the battles there is phenomenal.
I’ve had GalCiv 3 for over a year now. Started playing it last week and after seeing this review I’ll be picking up GalCiv4 in a heart beat. Stellaris meets Civ… a match made in heaven!
Only thing that I was a touch disappointed about was having to choose an additional race that all the actual leaders are pulled from for the ai race to rule over. Feels like a slight let down to what overall is a great feature. Pulls you out of the immersion a bit to run an elven empire run by humans.
I've been enjoying this game a lot but man does the fleet management suck. You have to organize each ship manually 1 by 1 to put them in or out of a fleet, and end game when you can easily have like 200+ ships it can take an hour just to get your individual ships into the fleets you want them to be in. I wish it had even Stellaris' fleet management and I think that's saying something. That's my only real complaint about the game besides influence/culture being overpewered and the artifacts being boring (both mentioned in the video). It's really fun otherwise.
I love these types of games. Stellaris is my favorite of the bunch. I tried Galactic Civ 3 once, but It just made me play regular Civ 5. Combat is really underwhelming in these games. Stellaris does the best job IMO, but even then, let's face it, you are more or less stuck in the observer role. For Paradox titles these automatic combats are standard - so it's in line with their other games. But for GalCiv 4 my biggest wish was better combat - this would IMO make this game stand out. At least to the point of Civ 6 - so that the player actually gets some control in the outcome of the battle. Or similar than AoW 4 does. That would be the best case scenario.
i rember getting galciv 2 saw it in target and got it. was some fo the most fun i had played civ3 was fun and i been holding off on 4 cause i heard there was alot of problems with it but once they are fixed atleast the major ones ill pick it up to
Do they let you build new flag ships from game start? I know that was one of my biggest gripes in GalCiv II; exploration ships couldn't be replaced until mid game, so if you hit an anomaly early that destroyed (or more often, launched it across the known universe, requiring a 75 turn trip home in sleep mode) you're entire play through was basically screwed.
wish they would bring back the ground battle cut scenes from 2, loved watching my army of thousands upon thousands get destroyed by like 3 dread lords.
gotta say the planetery screen is a massive downgrade from Gal Civ 3. not only it is downgraded from an isometric 3d view of the planet, with the landmasses representing the majority of the building to a 2D virew with just a generic planet picture behind them, but the district/building pictures also seem to be rather lowrres ... i am not impressed
I've run into few issues in customizing the racial descriptions, like being unable to put in line breaks, and sometimes having spacebar arbitrarily not work, so they hopefully fix that. I'd also like to make custom citizen pops, though maybe I just don't know how to do that yet. That said, I do love that the weapons are no longer just different things doing the same thing. Missiles have the longest range, so they fire first, lasers are middle, and kinetics have the shortest range, but kinetics fire the fastest, so ships that can close in for kinetics, if they can survive, can do extremely high damage in the latter half of an engagement. It's a real interesting step up from from the previous Galciv games.
This game is good, but very inconsistent, i get auto resolves that say no casualities (My side) vs total loss (enemy side) and still i lose 2-3 ships. Trade routes and montly payments dont give the full amount (ex if you get 150 credits from trade routes you get aboth 20 actual credits per turn). When loading a save custom ships change costs, stats and sometimes even models...
Galactic Civ 3 Was a race to occupy as many worlds as possible right at the start that was the path to winning no matter what else happened. Is Galactic Civ 4 more of the same?
I'm inclined to purchase it. There are 2 aspects that haunt me though (stellaris syndrome) - how good\interesting is endgame (compared to, let's say, stellaris) and how good is performance late into the game ? Also, does AI simply cheat on higher difficulties or plays smarter ?
In GalCiv3 it cheat. Cheat a lot. Cheat blatant. He know from start all planets for colonization. He see you ships in fog of war. He increased range of ship can reach (their ships have more fuel). His ship module have smaller size (miniaturization) so AI ships can have them more ( 40% of free miniaturization for hardest AI bonus if i remember exactly) and so on. Im think bcoz GalCiv 4 has same engine and same peoples work on that game...Looks like thing from GalCiv 3 can be applied to GalCiv 4. If i wrong - this is the best for GalCiv 4.
The built in AI integration where it can make custom art and descriptions for you is amazing. This is exactly the sort of thing i've been waiting for to be integrated into games for a long time. It's still early yet, but I hope to see a world one day where AI is good enough to just create a whole game for you to your specifications. I just hate that AI created things are treated with such disdain simply because people feel their income is threatened by it. It reminds me of coal miners who keep fighting and lobbying to keep using coal power because they want the money, despite how much it holds everything back.
Personal interests probably. I mean, they work coal all their lives. It's their bread and butter. We have to evolve from calling these people bad people when all they want is to live their lives. I'm sure we can come out with something that would benefit all.
The thing with AI is it can't be put back in the box, it's here to stay and as the years go by people will start having their livelihoods taken away because AI is free labor. On its own it's not evil or anything it's that it'll be abused by corporations and such to save money. It would help if people are given aid in some way instead of "too bad you're not our problem anymore good luck."
I don't think there is enough improvement to justify bying GC4 unless you don't have a copy of the previous games. The game is only so so to begin with, mostly because of the archaic interface. On the plus side the ship creator has always been kind of fun. I disagree with your assessment of land combat. There should be a more detailed system like in the old Star General game, where you had fleets and armies to contend with. I would much prefer that style of game with a little less micro management of which buildings you place where. I would say if you have never played a GC game before then yes it's worth the buy, but if you already have a previous version you aren't missing much by not picking this dog up.
I saw the ai empire generator and I was hyped. I wanted to try some aquatic sea turtles, maybe with some greek vibes..... and then i try to say him turtle or tortoise or sea turtle and it always gives me the same ugly frog .... just for testing I put woodelves and it gives me everything except of anything close to elves .... tried something with atlantis , nothing ....... maybe I made a mistake but it put me hard back to ground. Next to the fact that the citizens cannot be changed , so why is my leader a "turtle" and the citizens cannot be ? I'm sorry but without this feature it's just galactic civ 3 with a little optic polishing.
I could buy this. Had 100s of hours in GalCiv 2, but 3 felt too micro-managy in a bad sense. It just wasn't fun for me. 4 looks like what I wanted 3 to be, but 'mostly positive' on Steam doesn't convince me yet.
My issue was that the genetic civilisation setting doesn't do anything in some cases (synthetic/silicon) unless you also pick the only silicion/synthetic civiilian type along with them. So your genetics choice is restrained by civilian choices (which have pretty much no info in their selection tool tips)
Just bought the core game when it went on sale, and I have to say, I LOVE IT! The AI generated backstory was amazing! I made a race called Decedents of Godzilla, it gave me a backstory about Godzilla stomping around the earth then leaving for unexplored corners of the galaxy. Went right into it without even playing the tutorial or watching video's...DONT DO THAT...lmao. I was able to get most of it, but there were parts of the worldbuilding and governance that watching vids like this will help a ton. Enjoy!
GalCiv 3 was a mess after a while (the fact the needed RAM jumped from 4 to 32 for some reason was insane and made it unplayable for me for a while.) Hope this one is not that cray XD
I liked it, I don't know about the replayability of the game, but it's fun enough. The UI REALLY frustrated me, especially late game (some of the repetitive stuff like sending out piglrims / etc. would result in 30 pop ups at the beginning of each turn that could easily have just been a summary somewhere). There's also a fair bit that the tutorial could probably go over a little better, including the citizen and planet management. I will say that so far as I could tell leaving the planet automation on actually did pretty well, and the AI seemed to do fine with that aspect. The ship customization was a bit... wonky, I think that's just the UI though.But yeah overall I think the game itself is fine, it just could use for a lot more UI polish. I also expect things will probably get better when it has a dedicated wiki to cover a lot of the features that the game just sort of brushes over in terms of "hey what does this mean?". Like there's a late game tech "interceptors" that allows the deployment of fights (i assume) but that doesn't modify the military score of a ship? Also that military score is a bit weird too... I had fleets that were easily hundreds of times more powerful but their military score was still 50 or 60 compared to the AI's 20 or 30. Now they won flat out, but that score didn't really do a great job explaining strength. Some other minor nit picks. There are stations that you can put on minor planets that don't do anything, but the game never mentions they don't do anything. You just have to figure it out (all the growth modules / etc). Though honestly I think part of my problem is that it's been so so long since I've played Gal Civ II (never picked up 3) and I've been playing basically nothing but stellaris, that all of my sort of comparisons are between those two and I'm not sure if that's entirely fair comparison wise to Gal Civ VI It reminds me of the recent Master of Orions game... which felt a LITTLE too simple? idk. Fun not sure if super replyable.
I LOVED GalCiv II: Twilight of the Arnor But GalCiv 3 fell completely flat for me. I tried it multiple times over the years and on the slowest settings, research was too fast I want to be able to enjoy new tech a bit, rather than have it obsolete before I can upgrade my ships
Hehe my first was Haegemony, oh my god I loved it, the research tree was huge, you could steal unique tech via spy ships, even story was very cool. Going on your first mars mission, finding aliens, and then it just expands!
I might be giving this one a try. I am burnt out on Stellaris. Been playing some endless space 2, it's a great game, altough lacks some polish I think.
Oh, so the Influence spam still works huh? Thats...a bit concerning since that was STILL OP back in Gal Civ 2. Hevk, empires back then did attack if you culture-bombed them, but usually that just meant you got a free defensive war situation. Kinda ridiculous it hasnt changed
I too have been part of this series since GalCiv II, but I think in many ways 3 was a step down rather than an improvement. That said, I still play it though not as much as say, Stellaris. I discovered GalCiv almost by accident, when I went looking for a successor to my early favorite, Ascendancy (which is begging for a remake/remaster). Eventually I discovered Galciv and Sins of a Solar Empire, both by Stardock, and the rest, as they say, was history. I'll likely pick up GC IV at some point, but I think the core world/minor world is unnecessary simplification. I wish it was an option rather than a 'feature' for those of us who actually like slogging through a list full of planets and choosing exactly what each one will build, and where. Another issue I had with the earlier games was how the difficulty seemed to be a on a very slippery slope. The lower levels are too easy at times, but the higher levels, especially if you throw in the Dread Lords, can quickly snowball and steamroll you if you don't find them early enough. That huge disparity made high level games stressful races against time rather than a rolling challenge, and low level games were like seal clubbing. There didn't seem to be a happy middle.
I’ll probably check it when it goes on sale. I’ve played galactic civ 2 and 3, and stellaris. None of which game me the same enjoyment as Spaceward Ho! From waaaaay back in the day.
I really loved that fact about Supernova. I mean it's not a shameless money grab on Stardock's part for releasing an upgraded version and charging the early backers more to get the upgrade.
@@danielkjm what a shame. Seems like some areas they have stepped forward,.but other areas they have done nothing to improve things (space combat for example), and other things like intelligence have gone backwards.
GC actually goes back to the mid-1990s, with the first iteration being released for OS/2 (which I played as an alternative to the DOS MOO, but which it never replaced). GC2 was a major upgrade to the first Windows version, GC3 less of an upgrade and more of an overall refinement of the existing systems (and the 64 bit architecture made it fly performance-wise). I give GC3 high marks for the amount of work and care that went into crafting the game, but when Stellaris and Endless Space came out, I abandoned it entirely (Steam says I played c. 123 hours). I have always had two issues that have prevented me from enjoying GC (I can set aside irreconcilable philosophical differences I have with the designer in the interest of not allowing the person to taint their otherwise good works). Issue 1 is the combat system. It has always been rock-scissors-paper and overly simplistic compared to the rest of the game systems and other games. You can spend decades in the ship designer, but the depth of the combat is about that of a Libyan mud puddle. It's boring. Issue 2 is the starbase system. The game has always required an incredible investment of time and energy into building and upgrading starbases, so much so that I began deriding it as a Starbase Construction Simulator. The starbases can be more important that colonies, which always struck me as backwards. Did GC4 address either of those two issues in a meaningful way? If so, I'd be inclined to give it a try.
Aboth combat, its worst now, due to ship behaviors (Get as close to other ships even if you only have long range weapons) Kinectic Guns are 3x times better then all others. Ships can have multiple guns of the same type, but they will only attack a single target and the more damage only means how big is your damage dice, soo even if you have +15 attack, you will still do 1 or 2 damage or miss, then take a long time to reload. While the kinectic will attack much faster and with the same damage. Tech is much more simple and has almost no unique techs, and ground combat is now just a bar that you have to wait X turns to win, no strategies just click next turn.
Had another game, bigger map, easy difficulty, planets more common etc, 1st save, the north ai war'd me, my ships werent advanced enough nor had rushed logistics. 2nd save scumming (i think the game knew i did that), the south ai decced me (reminds me of stellaris dog piling proxy wars) this time the ai got more war econ and spammed out more ships then i could output and even beat me in a defensive tug of war. I knew the errors I made, I didnt buff my planets quick enough with tile upgrades. A couple of fleet fights I forgot about the strategic fleet weapons, then logi and econ war. Its very samey samey to GalCiv 3. Comfy but very frustrating, i'll likely give up on it after a couple more plays.
Well,personaly i have the impression that since GalCiv II little was done to deepen the experience but the focus is rather to pimp it up with better gfx. Like for example they never realy expanded on the space and ground combat. Which makes the game fall in specific aspects flat compared to way,way older games like Space Empires IV or Emperor of the Fading Suns. It also has rather limited modding support that turned out to be the lifeline for games like HOI IV which enabled them to cash in on DLC`s pretty nicely over time. For me GalCiv II is still the best game in the franchise so far. Galciv III added features,but lacked progression to make it a better experience. And the same is true with IV so far. But dont get me wrong, Im not saying its a bad game. Just that there is a lack of development in core gameplay to make it stand out among the crowd.
imagine ya'll talking about this genre and not even mentioning birth of the federation which in my eyes mastered the genre at the time completely overtaking masters of orion
Honestly, it sounds exactly like Endless Space and every other 4x game ive played. Im not intrigued in the least. I had this on my wishlist and now i took it off. Im glad if it makes other people happy but after seeing this review it just seems like more of the same, only with better graphics.
Technically, Stellaris is turn based as well. It is just that the turns are automated. However, you have the power to pause the automated progression of those turns, issue commands, make decisions, and then can unpause that automation of turns and let your decisions unfold. That, btw, is also how Diablo I, the ORIGINAL Diablo game, was turned into a real time game as well. It was originally a turn based game. During a progress update with Blizzard, who were outside investors at the time and not the owners of the studio nor IP, they asked the team making Diablo to make it real time. That was on a Friday. Everyone else went home, but the guy who came up with the entire concept of the Diablo franchise stayed at work to puzzle over how to take a turn based game and make it run in real time. Then he had an epiphany... He tied the turn control to the system clock. After a number of pulses from the system clock, the game's turn mechanism would automatically run. Thus, because a computer's clock is so fast, it would appear to the user to be running in real time. Turned out to be super easy for him to implement too. He had expected to be agonizing over the problem for weeks going forward, but had solved the problem in under an hour after sitting down to it. Then he tried playing the new real time Diablo and found it so addicting, before he knew it, it was 2am Saturday. He called the rest of the team and they spent the rest of the following week doing nothing but playing the game that was still in development instead of developing it further lol. Then they showed it to Blizzard, who loved it, and joined them in playing it all hours. That is pretty much what Stellaris is. We can just interrupt that turn automation. I think anyone who likes Stellaris, but doesn't like turn based games, realizes this, they might find the GalCiv is a much better franchise than they give it credit for. My favorite thing was/is, planetary management. I loved to edit the games files to slow down the progress of tech, by increasing costs, and making it so the later stages of tile terraforming could be used to greater degrees. I always found, and still do, it funny and strange that a space faring civilization wouldn't not be able to find ways to use every last inch of space a planet has to offer. Hell, just play KOTOR (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic) and visit Manaan. It is an ocean world with a giant floating, ultra modern, city. No reason any space faring civ couldn't do the same. GalCiv III was the first game I actually tried to create my own mods for. Sure I had played with mods with other games, but always other people's work. GalCiv III modding though, was all my own work.
