The new SF strategy game Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova is for MeinMMO author Schuhmann the strategy game of the year 2023 on Steam. With 23 pre-made alien races, you can build huge space empires. He explains how he made a race of sentient trees the rulers of the galaxy.
What kind of game is it?
- Galactic Civilizations 4: Supernova is quite new on Steam. It was released on October 19 and currently has 76% positive reviews. For me, it is already the strategy game of the year and pretty much exactly what I expected from the new Star Trek game. I have already spent 75 hours playing the game on Steam, but I was able to play it a week before the release.
- It is a classic 4x game: The player colonizes or conquers planets, trades with alien races, explores the galaxy, researches, and goes where no human (or alien) has gone before. He can play peacefully, “convert” other races through his culture, and bind them to him, or he conquers enemy planets militarily.
- The game is so fascinating because it offers a huge variety of species that differ greatly in gameplay. In any case, one can customize Galactic Civilizations IV significantly, not only determining the shape and texture of the galaxy but also designing their own species and ships.
With each species, the way you play Galactic Civilizations changes
For me, this is the great uniqueness of the game: The game offers me the choice of 23 different races, many of which pursue typical but also unusual sci-fi ideas and strongly influence gameplay.
The Mimots can actually do nothing, except multiply rapidly and look cute. The idea is that they seem so harmless that other aliens would rather cuddle them than eat them. The Mimots colonize all worlds within paw reach, build houses there, create fields, and multiply like space bunnies until they finally overwhelm the galaxy as furry wool ball avalanches.
The robot species “Yor” are the exact opposite. They do not reproduce naturally at all; rather, every new inhabitant must be painstakingly built. This leads to disadvantages in the early game when you only have one planet, but the race scales strongly throughout the game.
Because normally it is hard to populate worlds beyond a certain value: But new robots are built faster and faster.
Another species is clearly based on the Predator from the action movies: Here it is already rewarded early on if you take over enemy planets and hunt and eat the native population.
With the stone people Onyx, ships do not heal by themselves but need a leader and the resource promethium, but for this, the spaceships have double the hit points and win every battle against similarly sized fleets at the beginning of a game.
It started on Tuesday with an article by Benedict Grothaus:
In my hidden gem on Steam, I constantly have to rebuild a village because a storm destroys it
The ultimate greens
How do the trees play? “Bartrak Grove” are so to speak the ultimate “greens”: This is a race of sentient trees that somehow set out for the stars.
The special feature of the race: Through an ability, they can bring dead planets back to life with a certain regularity, which are otherwise completely useless in the game.
The planets thus become “Class 5” colonies that can be colonized and serve as resource suppliers for the core worlds.
This ability leads the tree people to utilize their part of the universe much more sustainably and efficiently than the rest of the galaxy because they can build many more supporting colonies. This is a quiet, slowly increasing advantage. Through further bonuses in their preferred philosophy of collectivism, they use the colonized space even more effectively.
The disadvantage of the race is that they are particularly vulnerable to pollution; therefore, one should build “atmospheric cleaners” on the colonies.
What gameplay do you have with the aliens? The Bartak Grove uses a calm, thoughtful play style: They maintain good trade relations with aliens, build a defensive fleet that primarily serves as a deterrent, and establish strong trade, research, and cultural centers on their planets.
By colonizing dead planets, you gradually gain access to the coveted luxury resources and thus have an advantage when it comes to building wonders.
Now it is also important to keep an eye on initial pitfalls: Such as revolution herds in the immediate vicinity or particularly warlike ones like the Yor and an ecologically sustainable conquest of the galaxy is not far away.
If you play your cards right as a living tree, you will gradually win the galaxy without major conflicts. Then you can really take root.
More about the game:
A new strategy game on Steam fulfills all your alien power fantasies
