Good evening,
I’ve always had an affinity for space games and came across GalCiv and bought the Alpha Access and immediately loved it. However, being in Alpha I understand all the mechanics aren’t fully explained or tutorials aren’t completely built out yet. I did some forum searching but wasn’t able to find anything other than reading through the dev blogs, so my question is - is there a Wiki or guide for IV somewhere, or is the game similar enough to it’s predecessors that I could use those for reference?
I love reading into game mechanics and fully understanding how they’re all related and there are a lot of different stats etc Id really like to understand.
Thanks in advance
Our official wikis are here. However, since the game is still in development we haven't focused on adding any kind of guides etc. yet.But, there is someone by name of SSStreetFighter who has been making video tutorials based on the alpha.
Awesome thank you! I will check those out for sure. It’s so great to see devs so interactive and attentive even to a simple question like mine. I’m going to lose many many hours to this game, and it’s still getting better!
I plan to do a newbie guide once the game is complete. I do have some good GC3 guides on Steam in the GC3 section. Alot of the information is still good for GC4. Ignore ship building Devs made it easier for you and the AI in GC4.. My ships from GC3 were unkillable to the AI so I got nerfed in GC4...
Great to know! I will check those guides out this evening!
Thanks for recommending me.
My first tutorial playlist is set in order for a total nub to learn from scratch. More experienced players can scroll to specific information they need fast. Every video has clearly labeled time stamps too. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ8Q47fNmJQxzCWTAjejiDMcbJN6xew4H
If anyone wants a specific Tutorial, just send me a message and I will make it.
I am up to gifted difficulty. So I will be making an intermediate playlist that might be more appealing to veterans of GalCiv3 soon.
Custom ship building was super popular and it even generates a small market. Perhaps the Gal Civ 4 ship builder will be expounded in later versions. I think GalCiv4 should have more options. The developers might just not want to implement them while they are still balancing the basics of the game. I would like to hear a reply from a developer on that.
I really appreciate the recommendation SchismNavigator. Just so you know the Wiki is not working right now. I went to the link and clicked on the game but nothing happened. Nothing happens when you click on any of the games.
@SSStreetFighter - you have more tutorials than I realized. I'll take a look. Glad you have plans for more.
Thanks. I am editing one on ideology right now.
I went through and watched all the tutorial videos which was a great help. I'm ~100 turns into a game currently and find myself with many other questions.
Thank you all in advance! I'm loving this game!
I am not sure about XP distribution from surveys. I only use fleets on the defendant anomaly so the XPS actually come from the battle. Those regular survey ships are vulnerable what I do is clear and entire sector militarily first then send all my surveys ships at once using the commands menu.
I think the research does affect everything in the last game people got real tired of all those individual upgrades.
I'm still not sure about your third question but I'll look into it
Each ship has a number of options for upgrade and you can find all of them in the commands menu. Most lateral upgrades to other ships of the same size are available.
Planetary invasion can be found faster. Clicking The hourglass in the upper right of the research menu will bring up four options click military to get military specific tech offers. Read the leads to at the bottom of every tech. The one before planetary invasions is something weird that you wouldn't expect can't quite remember.
Basically every world would be slightly more efficient with a governor. But governors are expensive so it may not pay off. I never put a governor on below class 3. When I was playing the giant map I only did class 10. It's a player preference based on how annoying you consider micromanaging too many worlds to be, and how many governors your society can afford.
Spreading quickly has a lot of advantages. Just make sure you don't spread so quickly that you can't defend your own terrain. Also make sure not to cripple your food management or economy in the process of spreading. Every time you colonize a planet that's one food spent, it could also bring food back just pay attention to the details.
XP from fleets with a survey ship do go to all ships in the fleet (not split, each gets the full amount). Though, I think the survey choices for +10xp go only to the survey ship itself (not 100% sure on that).The game auto-designs new ships when appropriate new techs are researched. I generally go in and design my own anyway.
I like to do a quick surge of expansion and then settle in with both military and resources (food/cash), and then repeat. I think this version of the game should be better for "tall" players than older versions.
Great thank you both for the input. I wasn’t able to play today but I’m around 150 or so turns and just unlocked planetary invasion so about to dive into that. I’m trying to get a scope on this game; considering normal speed, how long can these last? Hundreds of turns? Given the size of the maps you can do now, is 1000+ A reality? I’m about 3 hours into mine now and though the ultimate idea of gaming is ensuring YOU enjoy it, I am curious as to what the norm is. I’d like to advance past beginner difficulty one day. 👍🏻
The games I've played on the alpha so far have ranged from 200 to about 600 turns. I've been playing on large or huge map sizes. The shortest wins were with the new Prestige victory, which I think has to be rebalanced some more so that it doesn't happen so soon. Then longest were Ascension victories. I'm sure if I'd gone for a military conquest victory they would have been much much longer, considering that even in my longest games I've never been able to completely explore the map or meet all the AI civs.
Ok that makes me feel better. I’m playing on the largest map available and only have explored 6 sectors and fully colonized 3. I know I’m not doing well my first time through and I’m at about 50% prestige so I could see that being a little quick. Hoping to play tonight and explore a bunch of the answers you’ve all helped with!
Games can go a long time. the default turn limit is 1,000 turns you can actually disable that if you want to play forever. the largest possible map can play 64 civilizations which we don't even have yet I tried playing on a big maps and I couldn't get it to work right now the game seems to crash on larger maps but it never crashes on the smallest size. later updates might fix that. Also you need to have more RAM than whatever the minimum RAM says. They're actually under reporting the minimum RAM requirements I guess because they're afraid that people won't buy the game if they don't have enough RAM. I think they should just be honest. But if it says you require x amount of ram to play that size of map then when you get that much RAM it'll show up in yellow and when you try to play after a couple hundred turns the game will move slow as molasses. I only bought 32 gigs because they said that's what the biggest map needed I would have been happy to buy 64 gigs if I had known it would be useful but yeah right now I can't play the biggest style map because the minimum RAM requirement isn't actually the minimum RAM requirement.
I found All terrain on the biggest map because I built 50 probes. But 12 hrs I the game ran so slow it was unplayable. I only have 32gb ram. How much ram do you have?
I currently have 32gb RAM and am about 4.25 hours into the game. So 12+ then isn’t unheard of!
I have 32G RAM also, and the game does slow down on me late game, but not yet to a point where it's unplayable or crashes. If I recall correctly, both GC2 and 3 used more memory in alpha and early beta until the developers made an optimization pass through the code and brought it back down (I was a beta tester on both).
Well hopefully I'll be able to play it on a Big Map later then. As long as it works by the end I won't complain. But whatever they recommend should be the amount for it to be green not yellow.
Does anyone know from a computer science perspective if there are other factors that affect a big map? I have struggled with big maps in civ games since I was a kid. I just learned ram has something to do with it last month. It makes sense now that I think of it. Does anyone know any other factors that a big map might have on a computer?
I’m curious about this as well. As I just built my PC I’m still in the how much I spent denial state so I would gladly throw another $250 for 32gb more of ram only though if it’s truly worth it.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
