Galactic Civilizations 4 aims to bring a grand scale to the space strategy series | OC3D News (overclock3d.net)
 
Galactic Civilizations is a staple of the 4X genre, and Stardock is ready to take the franchise to the next level with larger maps, more in-depth systems and brand new mechanics. 

The 4X Genre is based on four concepts,  eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate. With Galactic Civilizations 4, Stardock plans to offer map sizes that appear to rival Stellaris in scale, offering gamers a bigger playing field to explore, colonise, conquer, and control. 

One of the largest changes to the series is its move to a "clusters" map system, connecting clusters with "Subspace Streams" to create "Maps within Maps". This change allows Galactic Civilizations 4 to offer a much larger scale than its predecessors while allowing the game to remain manageable. 

With Galactic Civilizations 4, the game's AI elements will see a significant overhaul, adding AI characters to player factions to help manage the game's newfound scale. These AI characters will have their own agendas, and players will have to manage their characters to keep their empires afloat. Instead of controlling thousands of planets individually, Galactic Civilizations 4 will allow players to control core worlds within each star cluster, allowing AI characters to control their collection of colony worlds.  

Galactic Civilizations 4 is designed to simplify the management of large-scale empires, with the internal politics and other mechanics adding a new form of complexity into the Galactic Civilizations formula. If players do not manage their empires well, they could easily set a civil war into motion. Control will be a new currency in Galactic Civilizations 4, and that currency must be spent wisely. 

More Scale, More Depth and More Options

Stardock plans to release Galactic Civilizations 4 with new civilizations, a larger technology tree and enhancements to many of the series' popular features. Players will have more ship design options, a revamped combat system, new diplomacy options and new planetary improvements. 

Unlike Galactic Civilizations 3, its sequel will not feature separate sandbox and campaign modes, as Stardock will instead be adding a new "Missions" feature to the game's sandbox campaigns. These story elements are designed to add extra flavour to every campaign, adding new narratives to drive every game in new directions. 

Below are some of Galactic Civilization's core features;


- Turn-based
- Tile based (hexes) based movement
- Ship design
- Strong-AI for opponents
- Deep gameplay customization
- Free-form movement (as opposed to starlanes)
- Player controlled cultural evolution (are you good, evil or a shade of gray?)
- Planetary invasion requires actually invading a planet
- Mixture of deep lore (a handful of carefully crafted civilizations and histories) mixed with game-to-game generation of new lore and species
- Big technology trees
 
With Galactic Civilizations 4 bring such large changes to the series, Stardock has decided to release the game in Alpha this summer to allow the series' fanbase to help influence the game's development. At this time, Galactic Civilizations 4 has no firm release date. Right now, Stardock has not committed to a PC storefront for Galactic Civilizations' launch. 
 
I personally believe this game won't launch until next year. 

Sounds great, I think there are far too few alternatives in this segment anyway

Aw man nice. Hope they get it right.

Definitely interested. I tried 3 for a bit and enjoyed it, but the combat seemed a bit unsatisfying. I wished you had more control over your ships. Kind of like Total War game where it was cross between real time and turn based. But that's probably so different it wouldn't real by a Gal Civ game anymore.