As the all-powerful leader of a spacefaring civilization, the player must seek out new star systems and discover the exciting potential of the subspace realm. There are thousands of worlds to colonize and dozens of civilizations - both old and new - to encounter.

The new game, scheduled to go into early access later this Spring, aims to vastly increase the game’s scope and depth by introducing AI characters, star sectors, ministers, central control, a much bigger technology tree, and more.

“The focus in Galactic Civilizations IV is the player actually dealing with AI characters,” said Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock. “In previous versions, the computer AI meant other civilizations. Now, every civilization is made up of hundreds of characters who have their own agendas. In 4X terms, it’s like dealing with Civs of Civs.”

To go along with the greater depth in the way civilizations are handled, the game’s galactic scale has been vastly increased. Free-form ship movement is one of the features that has made Galactic Civilizations stand out from other space strategy games. In previous games, players set up the map size and it would generate the stars and planets for the player to explore and colonize. Now, each of these maps becomes a sector which is connected to other sectors through what Stardock calls “Subspace Streams”. These streams are unknown by the player until the proper technology is researched. As a result, the exploration phase of the game continues throughout the game.

“In previous games, players would pick a map size and the game would generate a cluster of stars with planets. This time, those same clusters of stars and planets will be connected to other clusters via a new concept called Subspace Streams,” said Wardell. “Each cluster is known as a sector. It’s like having a map of maps.”

To deal with the much greater number of stars and planets from previous games, the concept of “AI governors” has been thrown out and replaced by the Core world / Colony World metaphor.

“There’s no point expecting players to micro-manage dozens, let alone hundreds of worlds,” said Wardell. “Instead, virtually all planets are simply colonies – worlds that simply output raw resources to their associated core world. The player assigns one of their precious leaders to a particularly good world in order to turn it into a core world. The core worlds are the ones the player directly manages, with the leader character providing various bonuses and unlocking various features based on the attributes of that character.”

Much of the game deals with the player carefully balancing their personal power versus that of the leader characters they’ve recruited. Leader characters are what unlock many features of the game - from research, to planet management, to diplomacy - but they also have their own agendas and individual stats that can lead them to do things to the player (or to each other).  Moreover, the player can bypass their leaders and issue executive orders using control points.

“Executive orders work a little bit like say a ‘spell’ would in a fantasy game,” said Wardell. “One executive order might be to fast build a ship on a target planet, and another might be to draft armies to invading planets. But these orders are paid for via the new ‘control’ resource.”

Acquiring control points typically involves actions that result in reducing the loyalty of various leaders. Thus, the player has to carefully balance their desire for control with getting along with their leader characters.

“We are a long way away from the old raising and lowering taxes to affect approval,” said Wardell. “Our goal here is to make use of AI to give players the experience of foes not just being foreign, but potentially domestic as well.  It’s been interesting to see how much insolence play testers have taken from an AI leader if that character provides really good perks to their civilization.”

With the entire galaxy now being part of the game, Galactic Civilizations IV includes several new canon alien civilizations to play as or against each with their own unique abilities, lore, and features.

Popular features from the previous versions of the game have also been greatly improved, including ship designs, planetary invasions, combat, diplomacy, research, planetary improvements, and more.

The Galactic Civilizations games have traditionally included a campaign that introduced players to the lore surrounding 23rd century Earth. Players could play the campaign, or they could play the sandbox game that was relatively devoid of story-driven elements. Galactic Civilizations IV won’t include a campaign. Instead, the lore is brought to the sandbox game via a quest-like “Missions” feature that players can choose to take. What missions come up depends on the specific conditions of that particular game. For example, many of the missions are the result of the individual backstories of the leaders. Since each civilization has their own set of leaders and what leaders appear changes from game to game, each play-through should feel like its own epic.

“We eliminated the ideology tree we had in previous games,” said Wardell. “Now, players will find themselves choosing between personal liberty and collectivism, authoritarianism and anarchy and seeing what kind of civilization they want to create.  These choices not only unlock additional gameplay features, but determine what kinds of ‘missions’ will spawn.”

Because of the dramatic changes from previous Galactic Civilizations games, the early access program for Galactic Civilizations IV will start at the Alpha phase rather than the more typical Beta phase, so that player feedback can be incorporated early.

Galactic Civilizations IV is currently scheduled for release in 2022.