GalCiv4 Forums
The fastest way to improve balance and make changes is when we can directly play with your saved games. That's because you guys do things we'd never think to do.
Please post your late game saves in this thread. Tell us what is happening along with what you think should be happening.
Thanks!
My last game had a few custom races and ships for those races. Will you still be able to play a save from that game?
I think so.
For those that don't know save files are located in Users\USERNAME\Documents\My Games\GalCiv4\Saves
Here's mine, largest galaxy size, all civs, turn 248.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UhfG3cn8sgDdb_qTVL7q4ERJU62lsKtZ/view?usp=share_link
This game was started before the new patch so there are a few oddities.
Research costs have skyrocketed.
Prestige score was reset.
Here is a save in my current game. It is Turn 141. It's named the way it is for a reason that will be obvious soon. I don't know if it is as late as you would like. I'm the Arcean. All the races in Supernova are in the game. I also have 4 custom races I made in the game. The game was started after the last update but before the recent hotfix.
There are some things about the game that I think need to be checked.
1. Everybody I've met is at peace. In the base game there would always be a war or many by now. I wonder if the new invasion procedure is making it harder for the AI to invade, they realize it, so they don't declare war.
2a. The Mimot settled a lot of planets near me before I could. I've gradually increased my influence and now have them in my influence. They are in rebellion, but it's only 0%. Why not higher?
2b. I've been building up my military so I could take their colonies in my influence and take their home system to cause them trouble. I then remembered the Individualism Ideology and the Enticing choice at the end of that line that allows me to take all the foreign planets and starbases in my influence. I have now acquired enough culture points to get Enticing. That's when I made this save.
2c. I used the Enticing choice right after I made the save so I could "Stick it to the Mimot". I have reached turn 150 in the game. The Mimot didn't care about what I did that I could tell. I expected that to make them mad. Maybe there is something wrong with their reaction.
Playing Epic version 1.50374227.1 Custom Game turn 329.
1. Also seeing a total lack of aggression from other Civs. In previous versions anyone with a stronger Military would be a candidate for declaring war. I checked the Diplomacy Graphs and nobody's at war. Again, by now, the stronger Civs should be picking off the weaker ones. Not sure if I like this new AI twist, but since I play conquest only mode, they'll all be there when I decide to roll my fleets 
2. Changing the Anomaly rewards has certainly changed the game dynamics. Since Yellow no longer give ships of any kind, fleets of tiny ships with overwhelming buffs on multiple survey ships, are gone. A good thing because this was OP and the AI had no clue how to do this. Reds also seem to be much more scarce. Not having constructors spawn with Yellows forced me to look for another way to get them. Unfortunately it's an exploit that you should fix. I steal them from the other Civs as fast as they make them. The AI is still making horribly one sided trades, especially if I'm willing to throw Tech at the lower ranked Civs. See this screen shot Bad Trade for AI
3. The other issue we've discussed before is Relics. Maybe you didn't get a chance to have their frequency upped for this version because I still don't have one in my home Galaxy and I can only see 1 in the parts of all the other Sectors I can see. I play the biggest map settings.
4. Artifacts seem to be nerfed. I have only gotten 1 and it was from my home planet. What am I missing here. Normally I would have tons by now. I use the Ancients Civ trait to maximize their benefit, but it's useless if I don't find any.
Assuming you still want saves, so here's a save of my first game at game end (turn 253), cultural victory. Played on the current steam build 1.50. Link
May as well give game description and feedback while I'm at it making a post. It might be a bit disjointed, just adding thoughts as I have them.
Played as Drath, who're still the same as always. Ancient is very good, war profiteers is pretty bad, it all evens out. Normal difficulty to have a chill first game. Default galaxy size seemed a bit small, so increased size to medium and sectors to a few. This caused the game to recommend putting all 17 other civs in as opponents, which is more than I'd usually prefer but decided to go with it.
Start was cramped, had a lot of AIs appear near me while the far away ones had more room. Some of the nearby AI got stuck as one core world wonders.
The lower sensor range caused me to miss a core world or two early on in tiny pockets of unexplored space.
As others have said, AIs are pretty inert right now, none of them ever fought a war against each other. Closest thing to that was a late game attempt by the Mimot to bribe me to attack someone, and that only happened once.
Same thing with their building, they just built tons of starbase modules and tiny ships. Mimot obviously the most ridiculous, with 1647 ships at game end.
No idea if the ranged beam/missile attacks are any good since the AIs rarely made fleets or even defended planets with more than one or two ships. Killing one of the eighty-nine single fighter fleets sitting outside their planet from range is pretty meaningless.
Winning an early game war or two is huge, each capital is a control point and a culture point per turn.
A few of the culture trees didn't increase their cost properly (I remember benevolence and compassion being two of them) letting me buy every upgrade for 5 points each. Malevolence let me buy every upgrade for only 1 or 2 points each!
The rule where no range can extend more than one sector away isn't explained. I kept stacking range bonuses trying to get freighters two sectors away but couldn't until I realized this and conquered a minor civ one sector away for the range waypoint. (Was made particularly clear with the +1000 influence Throne planet galactic challenge, that filled up the small sectors quickly but couldn't reach the big sector that was two jumps away.)
Corrupt leaders have a +3% global crime modifier. I assume that's global (empire-wide) and not global (planet this leader is governor of), but global might not be a great word to use in a game where you can have multiple planets.
The Hull Reinforcing policy is ridiculous. Can't figure out what tech gave it to me, but it was early and +25 health in a galaxy where only 3 HP fighters and 5 HP frigates exists means that civ running it wins every war against a civ that isn't.
Big fan of the command ship that steals the ships it destroys. Hunting down unique enemy ships to capture them is fun.
Enemy minor planets going pirate after capturing their last core world + the secrecy perk where you're allied with pirates combining to mean you can never capture those planets was an annoying surprise. Probably still a worthwhile trade-off to not have to deal with their leftover fleets as you can just save a core world for last. Maybe the perk should be on a split choice so you can skip it and still get later secrecy perks if you also want to attack pirate planets?
Culture flips basically don't exist right now, +1000 influence per turn throne planet aside. (And even that takes quite a few turns to flip anything.) I can see X citizens rebelling on the galaxy screen when a planet is in opponent culture, but nothing about rebellions (or even any hint of negative effects) on the planet view.
Not being able to destroy orbital planet improvements is an annoyance, especially when the AI puts a sensor improvement on every single planet they control.
You can get repeat events from ship graveyards that give you prototype ships. But you can't have a second copy of a prototype, so these events give literally nothing.
Rush build costs are way lower than the money you can make, same as in galciv3.
Lots of issues with citizen hovertext saying they're the wrong species and stuff. Can be difficult to get it to actually expand the approval modifiers sometimes.
Don't know how far you can look back into saves (if at all), but I acquired the Xeloxi core planet Chmmri IV... somehow? (This was long before I eventually conquered them.) Wasn't in my culture so it didn't flip, and I didn't declare war on them for probably 100 turns. Getting a planet without knowing how probably isn't the intended user experience.
I usually overwrite saves, but I just noticed a save I accidentally made on turn 142, so here's that one as well in case you want a picture of 100 turns earlier. Looks like I'd only recently got Chmmri IV.
Thanks for the save.
When we get 1.51 out this week we'll be looking for more.
A lot of the improvements this week were specifically because of the saves people are posting.
Also, the feedback -> Improvement of the game loop will keep getting faster and faster I suspect. To be honest, I am chomping at the bit to get you the new build.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/pj75xw5mupo74rq/Auto-Save.GC4Sav?dl=0
v1.51 Playing as the terran resistance, the krynn declared war on me first and then some time later the mimot declared war as well. Mimot appear to have a trade relationship with the krynn that is giving them an opinion malice against me. They also have a "you are no threat" opinion bonus even though i have a fleet near one of their core worlds.
More importantly, neither faction is building large fleets. They throw lone fighters (and the occasional larger ship) at me and somtimes the krynn send a fleet of 2 transports with 1 fighter escort. The mimot always have 2 ship fleets bbut dont seem to know how to build fleets larger than that. So far none of my starbases or fleets have been in any real danger (I've destroyed multiple influence starbases using my survey ship + fighters) and I have been turtling my way toward the krynn homeworld. It seems like the krynn are prioritizing transports over actual combat ships even though their transports keep getting intercepted.
I started this game at Genius difficulty level. Had a good start and got 4 major core worlds up and running using supply ships. I was rapidly on my way to overtaking the A.I. in research, military, and manufacturing. I increased the difficulty to Incredible and kept going. After a couple more turns I increased difficulty to Godlike to really give the A.I. a boost.
I proceeded to fight a war with the Festron. The Festron only built 1 or 2 fleets with medium logistics. Other than that they focused on single ship strategy. They managed to destroy a few of my ships, but I conquered them pretty easily. Around this time I unlocked tier 3 weapons like plasma pods and pulse cannons.
If you can compare the Aesir Class2 Cruiser to the Njorth Class Cruiser. In battles it felt as though beam weapons were extremely underpowered compared to kinetic weapons. I don't think beam weapons should be better, but they didn't feel like it was even a competition. Kinetic weapons are head and shoulders above beam weapons and probably missiles as well. I would recommend increasing the damage of beams and missiles.
After defeating the Festron I joined the Arceans in their war with the Torians. The Torians actually did much better fleeting up. They had probably around 5 large (full logistics) fleets and around 10 medium (half logistics) fleets. I actually had to go back to Incredible difficulty because they're large fleets were nearly impossible to destroy.
Unfortunately the Torians did use a lot of the single ship wack a mole strategy as well. If they had fleeted up their single ships they could've made the war much more costly for me and delayed their defeat or won the war.
A good example of this is when they used up 5 medium sized fleets to destroy one of my doomstacks (all of them attacked on the same turn). Had they combined those fleets they wouldn't have lost nearly as many ships.
I pretty much have won the war at this point. I'll probably keep playing this save, but here it is if you want to take a look:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1z32HxvYSjaWT2PqB1n_ZKNfiwq1MlEdk?usp=sharing
How do you change difficulty on the fly? I didn't think that was possible.
<Esc> , Options, Gameplay, middle bottom is "Change Difficulty" for Galaxy and Opponent. Not sure if Galaxy changes your difficulty but I always assumed that's what it meant.
Just started to play standard SuperNova build 1.51.375185.1 this morning. Received these anomaly reports first thing.
Hers is the save game https://www.dropbox.com/s/w9r8dhr73dr3n8x/Euphoria.GC4Sav?dl=0
New game on SuperNova Insider build 1.51.375185.1 on Steam. I tried using fewer Civs on an huge Galaxy with Far & I still have them starting right next door and getting into my home system. Definitely more aggressive. Have older saves if you want another.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ptaszxh6yfq3nwl/Supernova%20Insider%201.51.375185.7043.GC4Sav?dl=0
Insider 1.55376713 seems better with Civ spacing so far.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/xl7lp1cwp3u89vn/Supernova%20Insider%201.55.376713.2025.GC4Sav?dl=0
This game is from the latest 1.55 build where I played a race that focused on technology. I have the Voyager and Ancient traits for this race. I planned on this being a fairly balanced civ.
I'm currently on turn 101 and have surpassed almost every civ in tech, military, and manufacturing.
I'm playing against a mix of Normal, Genius, and Incredible A.I. I want to see the A.I. compete with the player so here's how I managed to beat these A.I.
I actually started the game off poorly only finding one suitable core world and a few colonies. The Arceans beat me to two core worlds. This put me behind my usual start which I was happy about as now I had to figure how to catch up. Coerced colonization had too much of a downside in that it slowed my manufacturing so I ended that policy and switched to fast exploration. I was searching for any anomalies I could find with my flagship. Mostly I would pick credits so I could buy leaders or rush improvements and colony ships. I rarely had more than a 50 credits in the bank. I was also mining durantium and building star base factories to further improve my core worlds manufacturing capability.
I did allow the A.I. to trade techs with me, but I only accepted trades they proposed and never used the tech trading exploit. In other words I don't think I exploited the A.I.
My production really took off for 3 reasons:
1. I got two flagships from my command tree and was able to survey triple what I was before. These survey ships found me 2 core world level planets and one spore artifact allowing me to gain more core worlds and colonies. They also found me +5 manufacturing for X turns events.
2. I finally researched supply ships and started cranking them out to improve my 2 new core worlds and bring them up to speed in only a few turns.
3. I took shipyard stimulus to produce supply ships even faster.
Once I had gotten all four core worlds to a reasonable amount of production I began production of military ships at all four worlds. I quickly overtook the A.I. and this is where I'm currently at. Let me know if you can't access it.
Game Save: Asgard Save
What I was hoping would happen is that the A.I. would be able to compete with me with the changes to the tech tree. They started off well, but I outpaced them pretty quickly once I got my supply ships and flagships going.
Couple of thoughts:
Godlike A.I. seem to be a huge jump in power compared to Incredible and other A.I. I would recommend evening out that disparity. I think if you gave the Incredible and Genius A.I. a large manufacturing and approval boost they would have an easier time competing. I wouldn't make their ships stronger though. I tend to find those not to be as much fun as just giving them a way to build more ships. On of the main reasons I usually don't play against Godlike A.I. I might add one to my next game though.
The A.I. needs to learn how to use supply ships, or supply ships might need a nerf. I love supply ships and they are how I build up so quickly. I would prefer the A.I. learn how to use them, but I can admit supply ships generally seem overpowered.
Finding spore artifacts and new core worlds might need to be more rare.
Here's one for you. 1.55.377081 Bet you don't enjoy it though.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/423ih89hubc9lip/Supernova%20Insider%201.55.377081.2018.GC4Sav?dl=0
Just wanted to let you know that Custom Civs are working much better with all the improvements you've made in the last couple of updates. You've really made this feature of the game fun for modders again. Here's a save to show you how it's going with 1.60.417998.
The one thing I will point out is an AI exploit I just found. You'll notice the Torians have given up our war and have declared that they're turning over their Civ to the Navigators. However if you talk to them just before that happens, where I saved the game, you can get them to agree to peace. They'll give you almost all their resources and credits to make that happen. Obviously they shouldn't do that at this point.
I also noticed that when a AI Civ resigns in a war and gives their assets to another Civ, that Civ doesn't seem to get their credits, resources, or Tech. I think those things should transfer over if you can make that happen.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3zlbt8oi0o46ihf/Supernova%20Insider%201.60.417998.1.054.GC4Sav?dl=0
I am just finishing up a game from v1.61 and thought I'd post a few of the saves here.
Link to the Saves: Gal Civ Saves
Quick rundown of the main players:
Enigmatic Fates: This is my faction, This civ has all of its points in increasing sensors and speed
SCG and Asgard Alliance: These two started the game allied and started on either side of me
G.P.R and Manti Alliance: While they didn't start allied these two became forces to be reckoned with
At the start of the game I capture two other worlds that could be made into core worlds and a build a star base that is next to 4 Durantium nodes
This actually was a pretty poor start, however I was a the edge of the sector so that helped a lot
After building up my capital and one other world I realize that I won't be able to produce ships fast enough to fight a war. I proceed to make my other world into a core world and use the previous two worlds to feed it supply ships which rapidly bring its production capabilities up. I then begin churning out frigates, cruisers, and fighters to compete with the other military powers namely the SGC and G.P.R
Save: Turn Before the War
Rapidly advanced my military to that of the SGC. The SGC had recently conquered the Alterians and held several more core worlds and colonies. If they weren't brought low they could get out of hand and become very difficult to defeat.
As an invasion force I built 3 of these fleets:
I then declared war and launched these fleets towards the enemy territory to begin my conquest. The fleet assigned to take their capital had multiple artifacts used to give it extra attack and defenses. Two of the fleets rapidly penetrated their territory taking two SGC core worlds. The fleet assigned to take the capital world lost most of its ships in a major battle and was force to turn back or risk destruction. The SGC then deployed their most powerful fleet to destroy my second invasion fleet which caused the invasion to turn into a stand still as the A.I. was doing relatively well protecting its planets.
I quickly rearmed the first invasion fleet and sent it back towards the SGC capital. At this point their main defense fleet had taken too many losses and was unable to break the new invasion fleet so they lost their capital at which point I thought I'd made a grave mistake. Every other race in the galaxy declared war on me. By all accounts this should've been the end of me however the only civs who actually wanted to attack me was the Manti and Asgard so for the next while I mostly parried attacks sent by these two and the SGC seemed uninterested in continuing the fight despite having a large military on paper. Then a large invasion fleet launched by the SGC became known as it passed one of my star bases on its way to take my home world. I had to scramble to put together enough fighters to combat this new threat. We took heavy losses, but managed to prevent the loss of our home world.
They sent a second large invasion fleet that I managed to repel with much fewer losses as I had recently unlocked graviton guns and more logistic points. I bribed most other civs out of the war by giving them access to all of my unlocked weapons tech. One of the civs that took this offer was the G.P.R. whose combat rating skyrocketed after the trade. What I didn't know was the G.P.R. and the SGC where at war with one another. With their newfound tech advantage the G.P.R. quickly turned many of the SGC fleets to ash. This led to a total collapse of the SGC as the G.P.R. and I picked off what was left of the their planets and fleets. The Asgard wisely stayed out of it. After this my military power just exploded and I am far ahead of the closest contender the G.P.R. So now I just started the Against the Tide event and plan to finish once I get Dreadnoughts.
Save: Cleaning Up
A couple things I noticed from this last playthrough:
1. Fighters tear through larger ships a little too quickly in my opinion. I like fighters being useful, but I would like larger ships to have a bit more health and last longer in the fight.
2. During a hotly contested war the player will focus on researching weapon or manufacturing techs. Conversely A.I. does not seem to prioritize these techs leading to an eventual disparity between player and A.I. that the player is winning. A.I. should prioritize military tech during war to keep up with the player.
3. A.I. still needs help with planet production.
4. The A.I. is much better at defending planets.
5. In the late game some of the A.I. go back to the single ship fleets strategy especially if they can't compete with more powerful militaries.
Overall this was the most fun I've had in GC4 and I'm excited to get into another game in the near future.
Here are my save links and related Youtube videos if you want to see the actual decision making.
Save: Drath Series
Build: 1.6 Insiders build
Victory Condition: Prestige
Youtube Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ6cMI_FhPVWWWksEJ1LbMDe9tFg3Hugw
I started a war with the Onyx because my starting sector was severly lacking stars. This was a very long drawn out war because the Onyx's Promethion born ability but the whole play through allowed me to experiement with different ship designs. Next, was the Kyrnn and the Manti. Manti had these very deadly beam fighters so was another difficult war. After this I finished the Challenges needed to complete the Prestige Victory.
Save: Terran Resistance Series
Build: 1.6 Live Build
Victory Condition: Conquest
Youtube Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ6cMI_FhPVXnLdNZfPqmS0Q1UMSZYCBb
Early game both Yor and Kyrnn declared war on me on turn 37. After that I took a 20 round breather until the Torians gave me a ton of Money to declare war on the Drengin. I used this money to negotiate with other factions to declare war on the Torians who were pretty strong at the time. The rest of the play through is mostly war against two factions. Late game turned into a slog until I figured out how to prevent the AI from attacking in all directions. Despite being at constant war there was no danger. The AI doesn't build defenses so using the designs I came up with on my Drath game I was able to chew through the AI with ease. I lost about 161 ships and destroyed over 3000. I didn't do a whole lot with economy. I cannot fully explain how the Altarians hit the research numbers that I saw in this play through.
Save:
Build: 1.61 Live Purrfect Unity
Victory Condition: Alliance
Youtube Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ6cMI_FhPVXq8XVsc35IaJ2SMB8oNAT0
Diplomancy focused game and playing with the new game mechanics. This is a current progress. I started next to the Drengin am trying to take as much advantage of the system while limiting how much I can engage with war. I'm also trying to play tall-ish. My influence is growth is very high despite not actually selecting any influence buffs at the start of the game and my house rule of no more than 3 starbases affecting the same colony. Now by the end of the game I nixed the house rule after I had one it but due to technicality had to eliminate the Navigators. I did manage to eliminate the Drath, Terran Resistance, Drengin and Navigators without delcaring a war. Had to had the Mimot finish them off.
I'm really disappointed in the map. It works for civs with 15 worlds or so. Anything more and it hides fleet and starbases behind name banners. I can't zoom out to kill the banners and do basic empire maintenance. A lot of functions from GalCiv3 are missing which really helped managing large empires - 100+ planets. Just more frustrating than interesting. I don't bother saving games anymore because they aren't worth my time and effort. Nothing to see anymore. Just a bunch of name tags ...
Welcome Guest! Please take the time to register with us.
