How Do You Make Other Civs Like You Again in Civ 5

Never the same milky way twice

Welcome to Galactic Civilizations 4! You are in for a treat. If you've never played a space "4X" strategy game before, so good news: this is a great one to showtime with. If yous are coming from Galactic Civilizations III or one of the strategy games made by our friends at Paradox, or Mohawk, or Firaxis, so you lot are probably going to similar Galactic Civilizations IV.

Since Galactic Civilizations III, nosotros take had the opportunity to talk with fans, review feedback fabricated about other games, and apply the lessons learned to Galactic Civilizations IV. For us at Stardock, GalCiv IV is a flake of a reunion as it brings dorsum the GalCiv II squad who were working on other things during the development of GalCiv Iii. We are very excited for you to play the game. Hopefully this guide will make information technology a bit easier.

What's new:

Here's a loftier level summary of the new features and what they are meant to exercise:

Sectors. These are maps that connect to other maps. This feature dramatically improves pacing, letting us have much bigger maps (because permit's face up it, 200 tiles of dead infinite is not fun to traverse).
Characters. This will exist the virtually obvious first turn change for players. Less spreadsheety, more than nuance.
Policies. Our stats bear witness that the vast bulk of people play as the Terran Brotherhood. Not even a custom civ. Sigh. So we need a way to let players to customize their civ during the game. Once y'all employ this feature, yous'll never want to become back.
Prestige Victory. 4X games are notorious for knowing you lot're going to win long before you actually win. The Prestige counter - combined with the new Galactic Achievements feature - allows you to move the game to the endgame quickly.
Executive Orders. GalCiv IV introduces a new resources called "Control" that allows players to perform directly actions on the game. These deportment can take consequences, simply allow players more directly ways to intervene.
Core worlds. A large issue in 4X games is the micro-management in the late game. In every GalCiv playthrough, after in the game the role player might accept dozens of planets to manage (just like in other 4X games where you might accept dozens of cities or stars or whatever). GalCiv Iv has cadre worlds, which are high quality worlds that matter. Those are fed past colonies, which require no management. So belatedly game, the thespian might have 50 worlds in their civilization, simply only 9 of them are core worlds.
Combat. Battles (and invasions) are no longer always over in a single turn. An invasion might take several turns to occur. Transports are only required for core worlds, whereas colonies tin be taken by whatsoever ship with weapons. Battles tin too take identify across multiple tiles, allowing for ships with extreme range weapons to soften up targets from multiple tiles away.
Missions. We eliminated "the campaign" and instead took the content and made it and so that every game can feel like a campaign with "missions," which are story driven quests based on who y'all are playing as, who y'all are playing against, and what characters are in your civilization.
Ideology. Gone is the old "good" vs. "neutral" vs. "evil". Now there are 7 categories of ideology, each with 2 trees. The choices players face are no longer "I'grand a skilful person vs. I'm a terrible existence," but instead are things like cooperation vs. creativity, or innovation vs. tradition, or compassion vs. pragmatism.
New Economical System. In the new system, resources are brought in from the worlds themselves and then multiplied (as a %) past the population who are empowered (again by a %) by the improvements on the planet. The approving rating on a planet straight affects production (which makes approval affair a lot) with new elements such as crime (which affects planetary income) and pollution (which affects food production) as boosted potential casualties of player decisions. Finally, approving is now extremely nuanced and explained in great particular.

Getting Started

When you load upwards the game, yous will see a number of options:

For those of yous interested in modding, bank check out the bottom row of buttons. The extra focus on modders for GalCiv Iv will come every bit no surprise when y'all larn that the gamer'southward lead designer is Derek "Kael" Paxton, the mind behind the Civilization IV modernistic, "Fall from Sky". But for this walkthrough, we're going to stick a fresh new regular game.

Who are you?

This time around non only practice nosotros include more than twice every bit many default civilizations to choose from (with differences betwixt them that are bigger than ever before), just we also included updated content that originally appears in in DLC for previous GalCiv games:

Only, for today: Cull the Terrans.

Go ahead and leave the defaults in for the side by side screens:

Your opponents

In that location is no perfect setup here. Pick a bunch of peace loving space hippies if you want a peaceful game. You tin mouse over to see what their personalities are like and pick based on what yous want. Or, you can roll the dice and go with random players.

And and so it begins

The year is 2307. Earth is united. The humans have recently discovered a engineering chosen Hyperdrive, which allows for faster than light (FTL) travel by individual ships and have rushed to build iii starships:

The first ship, the T.A.S. (Terran Brotherhood Starship) Discovery is a survey transport designed to explore the various anomalies that are quickly existence discovered.

The second ship, the T.A.S. Endeavour, is a colony ship that was congenital with Mars in mind merely, you know, information technology's your call.

Lastly, there is the Theia, a probe with unlimited range that you tin send out to explore.

Giving orders

Selecting something on the map will bring up its gild card. To order the Discovery to go survey, merely click on the Survey button and it volition automatically become do that.

You can also typically double click on objects to get to their details.

For example, if y'all double click on the Discovery you can not simply meet what components are on the ship, only sometimes the company that manufactured the technology being used.

Your start move

Go ahead and send the Endeavour to Mars.

The shipyard screen

Orbiting Earth is the largest manmade object in history: a shipyard called "The Forge". This game doesn't get into the scandals and controversy of its making (well, it might via events). Suffice to say, there was a lot of graft. Anyway, the shipyard makes ships.

At first there are really simply ii types of ships yous can make: colony ships and probes. Which ane y'all start with is really a tough call. I'thousand glad I'one thousand not you lot. I don't want to be hauled in forepart of the Senate to respond why I chose a colony ship over a probe. My hands are clean.

Colony ships require a citizen (population) which ways that if y'all choose that, your production will go downwards. On the other mitt, colony ships tin colonize planets.

Probes are good for chop-chop finding the good planets. It is, afterward all, a space race out there and finding the good planets rapidly matters.

I am going to choose a probe.

I am also going to choose to "rush purchase it"

Rushing costs money - a lot of money. But, you become the probe on the next plow instead of having to wait.

Your starting time policy

You can set the overall priorities for your entire civilisation from the policy screen. It is shocking to believe that we didn't think of this idea until GalCiv 4. Before, nosotros had a few sliders and that was it.

Here, you can set your tax rate. The college the taxes, the angrier people get. Happy people are productive people. Your civilization'south production is literally multiplied by your approval rating, so endeavor not to make them too unhappy.

Now, which policy to option? Again, senate hearings, apathetic blah. It's tough. Different civilizations take dissimilar policies to cull from. I'm going to choose Fast exploration:

Getting 2 more moves is groovy, and who cares if my ships get a 50% HP striking? The galaxy is a peaceful utopia with no danger.

Researching Engineering science

Technology choices are the expression of the role player's strategy.

The game gives yous up to 5 (starting with 4) techs that your civilization already has an thought on. The cost of these techs to enquiry is discounted. But you don't have to choose these:

You can choose a new set in a particular area. Notwithstanding, if you do this, you lot lose the 10% discount on tech.

In this game, I'm going to choose Starbases:

This tech not only unlocks the power to construct starbases (of form), just information technology as well gives you two free Constructors to start with. Techs giving you "free samples" is new to GalCiv Four and greatly helps with pacing.

Meanwhile on World

As planets go, Globe isn't the worst one I've been on…

You can almost make out the shapes of the continents. Every planet has a "form". The bigger the number, the ameliorate. Earth is a class 28. This ways information technology has 28 tiles you lot tin use to customize.

World is a Cadre world which ways you lot directly manage information technology.

CORE WORLDS vs. COLONIES

Unlike in previous GalCiv games where yous would end upwardly micro-managing 100+ planets, we instead split the concept between CORE WORLDS and COLONIES. We also fabricated it so that core worlds were a lot more impactful. So late game, you might "but" accept a dozen core worlds, but they're interesting. Colonies, you don't bother to manage. They only feed their closest cadre world with minerals, tech, wealth, food, and civilisation.

This is who is governing the planet. Since this is World, that'south you. You lot are, we promise, 100% loyal to yourself. That'southward what the 100 ways.

The lower the loyalty, the more likely you're going to become an ugly dice curl with that governor doing something you don't desire (like rebelling, taking all that core world'southward colonies with them, and forming a new empire).

Governors besides have stories. Each story has a tiny (but non-zero) run a risk of triggering an outcome in the game that relates to it.

Your worlds have 6 stats that the governor has to deal with:

Pollution, which reduces food product.
Criminal offence, which reduces wealth.
Control per turn, which is a new resources that lets you lot do swell things galactically (we'll talk virtually that in a sec).
Approval, which is what % of your population like y'all.
Maintenance, which is the budget toll of the planet.
Resistance, which is a % price to how long it would take an enemy to invade this planet. For instance, if information technology normally would take 10 turns to invade Globe, this xx% resistance means it would take 12 turns instead, giving yous a flake more time to suspension the siege.

Planets accept inputs. These inputs come from the planet itself, colonies, and elsewhere.

The inputs are: Minerals, Tech, Wealth, Farming, Influence.

Your citizens, empowered by the improvements y'all brand to your planet, then take those inputs and increase information technology, or waste some of it.

Research output = 3 tech coming in with an 80% approval, plus an 11.viii% heave. This gets you to 2.7 research output.

Improvements

Then you have your unique improvements. Different types of terrain on the planet give differing bonuses. Go on in mind the adjacency bonuses:

I put an industrial center down in a forest which gives it a +one level bonus.

And so I queue up manufacturing districts effectually it:

These will feed each other:

Resulting in a lot more production from the planet.

Subsequently rush building that industrial center, I now have:

4.vii (instead of 4.3) industrial output per turn.

Let's talk approval and citizens

Your population is represented by citizens. Y'all gain a new citizen every N turns (months). When yous build a colony send or a constructor or a transport, you have to use one of these citizens, which reduces the output of the planet.

Each person is different.

As a practical matter, they are like plenty that most of us won't bother caring that much. Simply for min/maxers or people who are trying to win at really high difficulties where they demand every bit of production, they can go into this.

The smiley face up under them indicates their approval:

Ginny hither represents a group that only has a 74% approving for you. Each one is a little dissimilar based on what traits they might take. Some can fifty-fifty exist criminals who increase criminal offense and crusade trouble.

Practice yous know what you should do with criminals? Send them to a colony! Or exile them to a starbase - er, I hateful, give them the opportunity to manage a starbase.

Leaders

Leaders are a special type of citizen that you can recruit and give a specific job.

Leaders take stats simply like whatsoever other citizen - but, unlike with regular citizens, these stats can really affair depending on the job you requite them. They too cost money to recruit, have a loyalty stat, and some other traits to keep in heed.

Also: don't forget that a story is attached to each of these people so if someone has a actually shady past, yous may want to skip them. Remember, if someone is also practiced to exist truthful…

So, we hired Bryan. I picked him because he has a 10 intelligence.

If I brand him minister of technology, he gives me a 10% bonus to research and unlocks the 5th slot on the research screen.

I also recruited Maria. Withal, see the trivial toxic icon? Let'due south just say, don't make her a diplomat. She is, however, very diligent.

Tip: Note the color coding. Regal positions get with purple stats.

At present my ships get +1 moves and +ten more tiles.

I tin't afford any more leaders yet, so we'll come up back later.

Mars

And so the Endeavour has reached Mars. Great! This has brought up an event.

Each choice gives you a unlike bonus - and to be honest, they're all good.

But, I'm going to pick getting a leader.

Now, Mars is simply a colony. There'southward nothing to manage. Information technology sends back two minerals, ane wealth and one influence back to Earth, which now become an input.

Commanders

Later on the next turn passes, the leader I got from Mars arrives.

He's' great. Really. Like, I am going to save this game and play information technology later because whoa! But for now, I'm going to go to the commanders folio:

You lot can assign leaders to be in charge of a ship. Each civilization has their own ships and each transport uses the traits of a leader differently.

So I put Ivan in charge of the Curiosity, a powerful survey transport.

Executive Orders

Meanwhile, space Clippy is suggesting I show y'all executive orders. FINE.

Believe it or not, this is the first GalCiv game to take an in-game tutorial similar this (or fifty-fifty advisors). Yes, we are embarrassed.

Executive orders are super fun. You spend control and tin can practice some cool things. You unlock more orders as y'all gain new techs.

Here, I'thou going to lodge the civilian telescope people to allow me use the telescope to top at a nearby star.

I firmly believe that past the 24th century we volition have the power, using telescopes, to meet planets in orbit of other stars…<cough>.

So I zoomed out and selected a nearby star. I tin can see it's infested with pirates, which ways don't ship ships over in that location until they have weapons.

Starbases

Soon I have the starbase tech. So it'south time to place starbases.

A constructor can transform into a starbase and catch/vitrify things within its area. When you lot click on one, y'all can come across the circle in question.

When yous become near enough to a galactic relic or resource, a faint line volition menstruation into it, indicating that information technology is in range.

There are 5 types of resources in this game:

Durantium. This is needed for elite manufacturing efforts.
Promethion. This is needed for elite research efforts.
Elerium. This powers beam weapons.
Anti-Thing. This powers missile weapons.
Thulium. This powers mass commuter weapons.

The starbase screen will let you spend starbase modules to upgrade the starbase further.

Starbase modules take to be constructed by shipyards, but various techs will give you some costless ones.

For example: Mining Drones costs 1 module but increases the mining output of the starbase by 0.ane per plow. When you inquiry plasma beams or what accept y'all, one plasma weapons module might cost i full elerium. If you don't have Elerium you accept to use the cheap, crappy budget beam weapons instead if y'all want a beam weapon on your ship.

You can besides assign a starbase where a core world is in its range. In this case, not only is a core earth (Globe) in range, but there is an Rise Crystal in range too.

Prestige Victory

Galactic Civilizations IV introduces a new blazon of victory condition: Prestige. This is, in hindsight, an obvious type of victory condition. Prestige = "Yea, you're going to win anyway so we're not going to strength yous to play 300 more turns to grind out a diplomatic victory or build the super space ship victory".

How close you are to winning appears at the summit:

Now, the skillful news is that, as a practical thing, the AI players can't really reach this particular type of victory. Neither can you without complete a Galactic Claiming. I'k not saying it's not impossible to become to 1000 prestige points otherwise - it's simply very hard. So what are Galactic Challenges?

Galactic Challenges

GalCiv IV doesn't include a entrada. Instead, nosotros put all that time and effort into the galactic challenges. These are story based "quests" that are very difficult to win unless you are already winning.

This is probably one of the game's "killer features" because they're both fun to do and they give you a bunch of prestige points.

Thus, if you already are "winning" and accept 800 prestige points, completing one of these might requite yous enough points to get you over the top instead of having to grind out hundreds of turns to end. Information technology offers the player a satisfying way to win the game.

Sending out the undesirables - er, heroic! - colonists

When you construct something that requires a citizen, you volition see this:

At present, everyone has their own strategy for this. For me, I usually put whoever is the unhappiest on the ship. World not good enough for ya? Huh? Think yous're too skillful? Well, we're going to send you here:

The frozen world of Artemis that is the 10th planet of our solar arrangement (discovered in 2055). Relish.

Ideology

In GalCiv IV, there is a deviation between KNOWING good and evil and actually DOING good and evil. You proceeds ideological awareness from various events. And then, by accomplishing quests yous get CULTURE points to spend to really adopt one of these ideologies.

The left side tells you lot how much awareness y'all take in your leading surface area.

So here I'yard going a culture point to get 60 enquiry.

And the other on Efficiency:

25% discount on rush costs is amazing early game.

Diplomacy

We're not alone in the universe. That's implied by the game'south title. Lurking in the dark forest of the milky way are many other civilizations. The game supports something like 128 dissimilar civs (you'll need to create or download boosted ones if you desire to play with more the 18 we include).

The bartering is pretty straightforward. In that location is a bar on how the other side values the trade.

You tin also persuade or threaten them.

This should mostly non be used unless it's really important.

Zooming out

Using your mouse wheel, you can zoom out:

You can tell that at that place are two actually really practiced planets over there on the bottom right. There is likewise a form ii planet adjacent to it. You will want to get expert planets like those if y'all tin can.

You tin too meet that there are various resource over on the correct: Durantium, and in that location are as well a couple of relics. Which ane you should become for first is a tough 1. I would probably grab those class 30+ planets; they are then rare that, again, I'thousand going to be saving this game to play later.

Getting Governors

Dominion of pollex: if the planet is less than, say, a grade 20, don't bother putting a governor on information technology. If you wouldn't want to personally live on that planet, don't assign a governor to it.

So here is Eridani Ii. This is a really, actually skilful planet. Only right now, it'due south just a colony. A really expert colony, mind, just still just a colony.

Y'all tin assign a leader to exist a governor. We include a handy quick hire UI here too because nosotros're lazy.

Make a annotation: If they aren't loyal leaders, don't assign them to run a powerful, super magical planet.

So we hired Maria Que and put her in charge. She is awesome.

Unfortunately, our approval is low. We can do a number of things about that, including, - sigh - lowering taxes. This is why we can't take dainty things. But this planet, once it is built upwards, will be very important.

You volition also desire to build a shipyard in one case you get it producing at a decent clip:

Getting to know the galaxy

Now, each culture has its ain story as well.

They will hint at it during the course of the game, which may (simply probably won't) trigger an event that relates to it. The Yor, for instance, are very concerned virtually the Bootes void.

Subspace Streams

Probably the most obvious big new feature of this game are the Subspace Streams.

Historically, at that place'due south been two types of games: the games that navigate like Master of Orion where ships move between star systems…and Civ style, where there's a single gratis-course map.

Galactic Civilizations 4 does both. Information technology has a series of costless form maps called SECTORS. A given sector tin past tiny or huge depending on how the histrion prepare upwards the game.

It requires a decent amount of enquiry to get the tech to go to other sectors. This creates an additional exploration stage for the game.

Other sectors will be filled with friendly, crawly, and generous aliens who clearly desire nothing but the best for you.

If yous zoom out far enough, yous can see which sectors you've explored:

The color bar indicates how much influence each civ has in that sector. Decision-making a sector gives the player a lot of prestige points.

The nice affair about sectors is that they create an extra dimension of distance. Whereas before there was only an 10,Y distance, now there is, in outcome, a Z distance because a sector might be "close" from a pure X,Y indicate of view, they could exist very far away if information technology takes v sector jumps to become there.

Players can fix up the game with simply a single sector, or lots of sectors of varying sizes.

Warfare

Combat in Galactic Civilizations games are fairly straightforward. However, for GalCiv IV we've introduced the AAR study which is designed to give a bit more detail than previous games. In addition, ships tin be upgraded to shoot from multiple tiles abroad.

Combat also no longer necessarily ends in a single turn. Only a handful of rounds occur in a single engagement, significant that if there are surviving ships afterward a given round, they can try to retreat or continue the boxing.

Players can also view the combat to see how their ships did against the enemy's defenses.

So in this case I was defeated:

That's because the pirate fleet was a single ship with eight HP where as my fleet was two ships each with only 4 HP. Even if the weapons were equal (and they weren't), a single ship with more HP will win out confronting two weaker ships since they'll each die quicker as long equally the bigger ship has enough weapon pods to burn at both at the same time.

Ship Design

My armada was destroyed. That made me mad.

On the map I tin see the marker where the battle happened.

Run across those beam weapons? Now that it's time to research tech, I'm going to pick:

Then, I'm going to issue an executive club:

Pressure scientists.

And then, I'grand going to be reminded almost my policy of fast travel for 50% HP reduction…Oh, yeah. That didn't aid that battle.

And then I'm going to put in brainstorming instead.

And one time I have that tech I'm going to pattern a ship from the Shipyard screen.

Let'due south see if I can blueprint a better ship than my Armed forces Advisor. Here'south the one he provided:

And then on the transport designer screen I selection a template and equip 4 slots.

At present you can, if you want, make any cosmetic adjustments y'all like. But most people volition just pick modules for their ships and get out corrective changes to others and then use the Metaverse feature to download those designs.

So I made a ship with 3 attack and a lot of defence force.

Then did I do a meliorate job? My ship costs 1 Elerium to build, merely equally yous may recollect, I take Elerium. So it is a superior - admitting resource expensive - send.

Then permit's get to round ii.

Those 3 missile launchers, even if terrible, still means 3 attacks per round.

This is what I'm interested in:

So the Pirate Sniper had an assault of iii with their beam, but my ship's shields deflected 2 of it.

In huge battles, these advantages accumulate. At present I will spotter my ship in this area to keep it free from pirates so I can move colony ships and constructors safely through.

Biting me in the rear

Remember Maria? She was the one who had made and lost a fortune multiple times? Well..

And so now I can either let the Torians "collect" on her gambling debts OR I can risk a diplomatic trouble with them. I have really no pick but to side with her because she is in charge of the super powerful magical planet, and I can't afford to have her plough against me.

Conclusions

Heed you, we have only scratched the surface of the game. But hopefully this enough to get you started. I volition be updating this mail with answers to questions from the comments.

Good luck!

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Source: https://www.stardock.com/press/games/galciv4/guides/galciviv_walkthroughguide.html