I just now bought Galciv4

I've been a Stardock supporter out in the bleachers since Galciv1 (and critic...but always supporter), but this time around I definitely waited and finally got Galciv4 on a Steam sale. It was between Stellaris for $12 vs. Galciv4 Supernova for $40. I chose Galciv4 for $40. Trying to save a few $$$ on a game is like burning through a quarter-gallon of gas driving to a different gas station so you can save a few pennies. Both Stellaris and Galciv4 have all these expansions which cost more, but I passed on them both.

I download the game, play through the tutorial and my first Quick Game (as Terrans) and...I was right to wait on the expansions. Supernova is already soooo full of...just...stuff...that I need to wrap my head around that already as it is. I definitely don't understand the economy, which...knowing GC1-GC3, is nothing new. Galciv economy has always been famously weird.

So I look for some strategy guides, to try and understand it. Not very helpful. Not for a game that has been around for years. I see nothing which really breaks down how the economy works. And actually, I do get it: Galciv4 has been changing a lot, which means somebody has to maintain the strategy guides. e.g. I see one guide which says you have to beeline for Interstellar Tourism in order to get tourism. Hello, like, I'm pretty sure I got tourism when I researched Universal Translator. And even when I did, it only added a couple credits-per-turn to my bottom line. So...I try and piece together what I can, for myself. Which is surprising, for a game that has been around for awhile.

2 am comes and goes by, and... J1MT is definitely alive and well with GC4. I think what's killing me are the anomalies. I gladly endure all this effort planning my core world layouts, just so I can click Turn and find out what these anomalies are going to give me. Supernova has so many "easter eggs"...which are not really easter eggs, but simply nifty little features. Levelling up districts, for example: that took me awhile to figure out (because again, no strategy guide), but tying together adjacency bonus and levelling up a district is pretty nifty. For the life of me, however, I still cannot figure out what Military adjacency bonus does. Soldiering has never been all that great in Galciv. Balancing all these features has got to be a lot of work for the devs (let alone AI), and even more for QA.

There are still some obvious bugs, even after all this time. I haven't crashed, but I did get the Yor, who had a colony ship but never settled...who gladly gave me all their money for Xeno Medicine (I'm sure Yor can put that to good use...). Whom, apparently, the Drengin really hate, so the Drengin gave me all their money to Declare war on the Yor. Well, the Yor have 6 probes and a colony ship. That was easy.... This is all good, because my income is pretty trash. I'm not getting much income from the anomalies, because I want to keep all the artifacts and see what they do. Orbital markets don't earn squat, and it's hard to buy other orbital upgrades, because I have no money. Still, I buy a couple recruiting stations, because just a couple of those singlehandedly grow my entire empire. And...Earth is my farm world. That's a first. I'm spending a lot of time micromanaging my citizens, farming them on my recruiting station worlds, and transporting them. And it was a learning exercise when Earth got my Mithrilar event, but suddenly all my citizens lost a lot of intelligence as soon as I transported them elsewhere. Oops. Didn't know that...evidently Mithrilar artifact needs to be used on your research world, and not your high-pop citizen world. And...no Minister of Agriculture in the game? Surprising. This is also interesting how you want to stick your Core Capital next to a bunch of farms; and it's not for the food, but for the population. If I wanted a +1 to all, I will build the Manor or a house. Being able to immediately relocate the capital, however, is nifty.

Supply ships. What...is...this? You mean, for 65 production, I can add 100 production to social? Forget about ferrying social production to another world: at that price, it makes sense to just send supply ships directly from the shipyard to its own sponsor planet. Of course, that's going to have a side effect later: in the late game, you will deplete all your available core world tiles, because you went all Social. Bleh, who cares. I will buy more governors later. Make more core worlds. Shipyards get rally points set to...whatever core world it is that needs supply ships. That's cool. I still don't understand 65 production for 100 production, but...cool feature. And the shipyard rally points erase all the micromanagement, which could have been a lot worse.

Shipyards can do Research mission. What's that? I remember those from GC3. But--they require Promethion, which I don't have enough of. And even if I did, that goes for a good price on the Bazaar, and I need money so much more. So...Treasure hunters instead? Since it is, after all, money that I need. Nope--supply ships are too good. So...the whole mechanic of spamming Treasure Hunters...so I can lower taxes...which raise my approval...which raise my manufacturing...I just do not do. Why? Supply ships raise your manufacturing directly. In early versions of GC3, this was slightly different: I used to spam Treasure Hunters...so I could lower taxes...which low taxes boost population growth+grow your tax base...only so I could later turn around and raise taxes on my now BIG tax base.... That doesn't happen now. MHO, freighters are what should be spammed. Trade routes should be teeming with these auto-managed freighters, which pirates and enemies can raid and rob. Treasure hunters just don't follow "routes". And you already have treasure hunters: they're called flag ships. BUT--what would be a really cool enhancement is if you had a technology and/or trait (namely: Individualist) where your own race spawned private enterprise armed ships to protect your trade routes. i.e. You are Terran, Individualist, and you pick Armed Interstellar Trade as a Cultural Progression. The computer spawns Tiny, armed ships which you can neither control nor attack, but they benefit from your military starbases. And they will attack Pirates and anybody who attacks you (unless they're Korath superdreadnoughts and out of their league). They don't fight your wars for you, but you have some shared interests.

Siege ships/planetary bombardment is pretty nifty. Raid and take an enemy's colony worlds. That's cool. But then, I take the Torians' colony worlds, only to have them flip back to the Torians. That didn't set them back much.

Next thing....Victory! Wait, what do you mean "Victory"? Prestige. What is this Prestige victory, which I just won by accident? Uh, okay. Looks like my siege ships did more good than I thought. Well that ends my first non-Tutorial game. The tutorial was good, though. It just taught me very little of the nuts-and-bolts that I really wanted to know. e.g. yes, I know Manufacturing districts boost manufacturing. Obviously. But did I know they only only boost your really low number by like 5%? And on top of that, they boost pollution by 2%...which lowers your approval...which basically cancels out that boost you think you got?

This, for now, concludes my thought process of a new guy who intentionally decided to show up late to the party. Since uh, I won (?!). Guess it's time to start a new game, up the diff, and learn some more.

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Glad you're here comrade!

luceo non uro

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Hello and welcome! Thank you for taking the time to write this out, im going through your feedback now for the team, it's always helpful for us to get some insight into the new player experience

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My second game:

This time I do "New Game," and not "Quick Start". I choose the Arceans, Tiny, two-sector, abundant. I upped the difficulty from Easy to Normal, which turns out still to be too low diff. The AI was non-existent on Easy; but that's okay for my first game. My first game was not about that. Doing "New Game," I immediately notice that choosing the race traits still has the same problem from Galciv3: that I always choose the same traits. The idea is supposed to be that you have tradeoffs and different play styles to choose from; but with these traits, that is simply not there. Some traits are just clearly far more important than others. Soldiering and Farming are still not very useful, just like in Galciv3. I automatically take a penalty to those in order to pick things like +Moves. It's a no-brainer.

When I first start the game, I immediately realize you can save scum with the Telescope, which is a total exploit. I had to start over and make myself not do that.

So I start over. This time, I have learned a lot from my first game; and it shows. Not the least of which is, the minute I appoint a Minister of Exploration (which is basically Turn 2), ship range will never be an issue all game. Maybe on some more sparse map settings it would be, but I chose abundant. For that matter, because I chose Abundant resources, none of the event choices which gave resources were useful, either. A lot of event choices which gave money were useful, however, and I learned that because I remembered a lot of the events from my first game. I was a lot better at managing money this time than my first game: I learned to make researching Universal Translator a priority, and pretty much all the money I needed, I could get by selling resources on the Bazaar (again, because I chose Abundant resources).

I did build Treasure Hunters in volume this game, unlike in my first. But supply ships are still better than Treasure Hunters--IF you have a priority build of something going on your core world. The "Industrial Goods" shipyard mission is pretty much useless--why would you spend a Durantium on that when you have Supply Ships? In the late-game when you have plenty of money (because of Treasure Hunters), I found the best use of your money is to run Inspire Leaders executive order, buy every leader you get, and fill up your factions. Your global economy just gets stronger little-by-little each time, until you win.

Like I said before, Normal difficulty was still too low. Need to go higher. I wiped out both AI's in my home sector almost immediately, with few losses. I researched zero Military at all--instead letting my flag ships do the fighting, and relying exclusively on events for ship parts, like Prototype laser, Precursor missiles, etc.. However, the AI in the other sector was a different story: at least they mounted some kind of a fight. Just not the AI in my home sector. The AI's in the other sector clearly did not like each other, though: one of them offered me a good deal to Declare War on the other. Which I did--and then, when that AI sued for peace, I turned around and offered a Declare War deal on the other guy. I got 6 techs in all, and all I paid for it was 2 DOW's (granted, I DID build some military for that--but that was after I had already conquered my home sector).

I did reverse my opinion on Siege ships, however. I liked them my first game, but now I don't. I realized I can dump off any citizens I don't like onto transports. That fact alone made me build more transports than I need (hence, why do I even need Soldiering...let alone Siege ships?).

Victory screen came unexpected a second time. This time, I was at 93% Prestige, but when I came back and loaded an Autosave, I got Victory screen and a Steam achievement (?). Simply for reloading it?? You mean...the SAME game...was just at 93% before...and now suddenly it's at 100%, simply because I reloaded the save? Whatever. Game's over.

All-in-all, I imagine giving feedback on Galciv4 itself has little point now. It's been years since Galciv4's release already. At this point, it's really more about Stardock's next generation of games. I do think I already got my money's worth ($40) of enjoyment just from playing two games of it. I'm exploring; learning something new. But unless this AI starts to prove it can play, I doubt I will keep coming back for a long time. No way I'm playing Galciv4 multiplayer--this game is way too slow for MP. Or at least have some kind of Metaverse: some kind of way to compare my gameplay versus the rest of the world, apples-to-apples. But Galciv4 is all about sandboxing and modding--I don't see the apples-to-apples, even competing against myself.

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AI is somewhat competitive on incredible difficulty and quite hard to beat on godlike. Unfortunately this is possible only because of very high bonuses to economy\science\ship strength AI gets, not because of smart playing. I heared AI in Galciv 3 was better and if this is the case I'm surprised it's become weaker in the next iteration of the game.

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