Galactic Civilizations 4 is an absolutely massive 4X grand strategy game, letting players truly experience what it means to lead a civilization on a cosmic scale. The flipside of this is that the game can easily overwhelm with the sheer amount of interactive systems and the crushing expansiveness of potential action. Fear not, for creating a powerful space-faring empire you must start with the humblest of actions, so here’s a primer on some tactics and strategies to help you get started in Galactic Civilizations 4 .
Manually Control Probes
Exploration is the key first component of any grand strategy, as it’s vital to get an understanding of the geography and expansion opportunities. The most common scout unit to help explore the vast expanses of space is the humble probe. They move quickly and have unlimited range to go wherever you want them to go.
In later stages of a playthrough, it may be wise to turn probes on auto-exploration, as you’ll have many more things to manage and consider. However, in the early game, manually controlling probes is far more efficient for both exploring the fog-of-war and avoiding threats. The probe’s auto-exploration AI isn’t top-notch and you can easily lose many probes to the same group of pirates or roaming raiders, so your efforts will be greatly rewarded for directing the initial scouting efforts.
Colonize Rapidly
The main purpose of scouting as early and as quickly as possible is to reveal where there are prospective planets to settle. New colonies will form the backbone of your empire’s burgeoning economy and the more worlds under your control the more your faction will be able to do.
However, there are other considerations to keep in mind aside from simply improving the economy and your production capacity. The AI is quite aggressive even on lower levels of difficulty and they’ll definitely claim worlds that are up for grabs.
You can safely assume that any world your probes discover, the AI has their eyes on. If you don’t want the AI to outpace you in the long run, then follow the expansionist mantra – colonize, colonize, colonize.
Ensure a High Growth Rate
Going hand-in-hand with the previous advice, to colonize planets you’ll need to embark your Citizens on colony ships. Essentially, players will be moving populations from one planet to another to spread their influence and control. To ensure your empire can keep up the rapid colonization efforts, it’s highly advisable to enact policies, assign political liaisons, and do anything you can to increase the population growth rate of your starting.
Focus on Manufacturing
Speed is the name of the game in Galactic Civilizations 4. A higher Manufacturing rating on your Core Worlds means your empire will be able to do more things more quickly, expand across the galaxy, and provide security to your colonies.
This means for your Core Worlds that Manufacturing Districts or improvements that directly increase the planet’s production rating will be especially useful, though don’t go too overboard as these districts also increase pollution, which will in turn reduce overall resource output levels. For prioritizing planets for colonization, worlds with higher Mineral ratings are preferable, as these Mineral Inputs will be shipped to the closest Core World and directly improve its Manufacturing rating.
Continuously Build
Core World orbital Shipyard installations will be your primary factories or production centers that will create new ships for you to command. Unlike planetary districts and improvements where there’s limited space and negative elements to consider, such as pollution and other effects, Shipyard production virtually has no downside. Make sure that all shipyards are always doing something, be it producing the latest warship model or aiding in a spaceborne project.
Survey Anomalies
Each galactic sector is littered with anomalies of various kinds, from shipwrecks to strange items floating about in space. Almost all of these anomalies will harbor some benefit, be it resources or even an event that could lead to ship upgrades or an interstellar mission.
You’ll need dedicated Survey ships to be able to explore these anomalies and obtain their benefits. Be wary, however, some anomalies have defenders assigned to them that could attack your Survey efforts, so as you move to these higher-risk missions bring along some dedicated warships with your surveyors to protect them.
Assign Ministers
One of the newest additions to Galactic Civilizations 4 is the character system where players can micromanage their population and recruit Leader figures that can take high-ranking positions to improve the empire’s performance. The most impactful position a Leader can take is a ministerial assignment. These can be incredibly useful, as they can increase the speed of your fleets, provide additional research options, or even unlock new features like the Galactic Bazaar.
Utilize Executive Orders and Artifacts
Aside from fleets and ships, most systems players utilize to manage their empire will typically increase statistics, resource output, and an overall improvement to the civilization’s strength in a more passive manner. There are a couple of systems that do give players some direct control in their empire.
Executive Orders are specialized commands that provide some kind of effect, such as spawning a colony ship, increasing resource production, or revealing parts of the map. These orders exclusively utilize the Control resource, so there’s every reason to actively sign these commands when the opportunity presents itself.
Throughout your galactic exploration, your Survey ships will bring you strange artifacts from exploring anomalies they interact with. These artifacts just like Executive Orders can provide an immediate effect, though consuming the item in the process. Artifacts are perhaps better left to a more critical or opportune moment as they’re finite and the impact is usually localized to a single ship or fleet.
Build Starbases Near Important Resources
One of the most important functions of a Starbase is to mine and harvest strategic resources found across galactic sectors. Most of these strategic resources, such as Durantium, Thulium, or Antimatter, can only be found in space, so Starbases must be included in civilization development efforts. To position Starbases, you’ll need to produce specialized Constructor vessels that will need to be positioned in such a way that the station’s radius encompasses all nearby resources.
Establish a Galactic Military Strategy
While Galactic Civilizations 4 isn’t exclusively a grand strategy game about war and conquest, military conflict is likely to happen at some point, especially given the AI’s overall aggressiveness and rapidity of action. As such, it’s critical to come up with and prepare a comprehensive galactic military strategy that encompasses the main features of interstellar warfare. In other words, it’s wise to figure out how you’ll wage a war against your neighbors.
Some important elements to consider unique to interstellar warfare are the porous nature of borders and priority targets. Since there are no zones of control or solid barriers that can block fleet movement (nebulas and gas clouds only slow down), you can expect the AI to send their forces through gaps and strike directly at colonies. Your strategy will need to account for scouting enemy movements and how to most effectively counter harassing vessels and raiding maneuvers.
The next item to consider is what are the most valuable targets you will need to protect or assault, depending on if you’re going for a defensive or offensive approach. Perhaps defending vital mining stations is more important than any given single colony, or perhaps there are some valuable planets that are nearby to an enemy shipyard and need extra protection. These are all things to consider when choosing which ships to produce and how to position them across your territory.
Space and interstellar management can certainly be a mammoth task due to the incredible amount of variables to contend with. Trying to understand all of them at the same time will lead to the mind feeling overwhelmed and paralyzed, unable to make decisions. Hopefully, this primer can help tease out some initial steps to take when stepping into grand adventures of Galactic Civilizations 4.
Galactic Civilizations 4 is available on PC.
READ NEXT: 10 Most Underrated Strategy Games Of All Time
Some of the coverage you find on Cultured Vultures contains affiliate links, which provide us with small commissions based on purchases made from visiting our site.
