Galactic Civilizations IV Strategy Guide
Seilore's Strategy Guide
GalCiv4 Forums
Galactic Civilizations IV – A Journey to the Unknown
Seilore’s Strategy Guide to Rule the Galaxy. (Beta 0.81.280177) Full disclaimer prior to version .81 I’ve only been playing on normal. I just started playing on bright, and you must be careful to not get too far behind in military after turn 50 or chances are AI will declare war too early. However, this strategy has worked for me on bright taking a commanding lead by turn 100.
Chapter 1: Starting the Game.
We’re going to start like everyone else. New Game.
For my purpose I enjoy playing as a custom civilization, however, as of Beta 0.80.279796, true custom civilizations are not currently present in the game. So I will start the game as the Torian Regime, and modify them from there. I choose them as my custom faction I’ll be creating is Aquatic based. So we’ll customize them.
The great thing about the game to this point, is even though true custom civilizations are not yet present, the game will remember your customizations to the factions as your last settings.
Now I’ll go through my customizations. Please note my faction logo is custom designed by me. The faction background and portrait I have to thank the Internet.
We’ll start with ‘Abilities’. I focus strongly on research, so for that ‘Xenophobic’ is perfect. Research is doubled, but I do take a 75% influence penalty, however, one can make up the influence quickly in the game. Next I don’t want my leaders to hate me, as I want to quickly expand. For this I go with ‘Loyal’. My leaders will have a +10 loyalty bonus and cost 25% less to recruit.
From there I go to ‘Ideology’. I can’t speak to all the benefits of the ideology at this point, but for even play I chose ‘Equality’.
For the ‘Civilization Traits’ I work on the traits to my strengths. ‘Clever’ +10%, a nice bonus to research, strengthening my ‘Xenophobic’ ability. ‘Productive’ +10% manufacturing, helps me build improvements faster on my planets. This will come in handy building my empire quickly. ‘Influential’ +10% will help make up some of the game ‘Xenophobic’ took away. ‘Veteran’ should be giving my ships +40% experience. This will help my flagship or other survey ships gain experience. Allowing me to quickly strengthen my ships. ‘Courageous’ I don’t worry about invasions, as with my research ability, I should be dominating by the time we get to that point in the game. ‘Intimidating’ same. So both of them are reduced to the minimum. ‘Rich’, I need my money, +10%. ‘Militant’, I need +40 control to start the game. This will help jump to a quick start. ‘Fast’, the faster I move, helps get me places as fast as possible +2. All the others I’ll sacrifice to the minimum level to get the above bonus’s.
From here we’ll customize the Galaxy.
For this guide I’ll be playing on ‘Bright’. This is a little more difficult than normal, giving the AI a slight advantage. I don’t like other civilizations near me so they will be ‘Far’ away. I also am all about the long game, so game pacing and research rate are both ‘Very Slow’.
As far as the actual ‘Galaxy’, let’s go with the biggest possible. This means ‘Sectors’ set to ‘Galactic’, ‘Sector Size’ set to ‘Huge’ and ‘Stars’ set to ‘Abundant. Next we go to ‘Worlds’, I like my worlds so this is easy. ‘Planets’ abundant, ‘Habitable Planets’ abundant, and I like extreme planets, but I don’t like all my planets being extreme, so ‘Extreme Planets’ to ‘Rare’.
I continue to like to meet new civilizations, so moving on to ‘Encounters’. ‘Minor Races’ are set to ‘Abundant’, but I very much dislike space monsters and pirates, so ‘Hostile Entities’ are set to ‘None’.
Anomalies, I need a lot of, so they are all set to abundant, except ‘Ascension Crystals’ as when these are set high there are way too many of them. So I place them at ‘Occational’. Resources, one needs, so they are ‘Abundant, with all the others set to ‘Occasional’ to not overwhelm that map.
Advanced Settings, I dislike the trading of traded techs, so brokering is disabled, but I may need to trade techs from time to time, so they are left on. (I have not traded any techs so far in any of my games.) FOW is also turned off in my Territory.
‘Victory Options’, I only include Conquest, Influence, Alliance (although, I don’t ally), and Prestige.
‘Opponents’ are all of the core civilizations in the game. The more for the taking.
Chapter 2: The First Turn
I begin my journey on my home world. I will look for a home world that has at minimum a +3 manufacturing next to the capital. This will allow me to get a nice manufacturing boost right off the gate. I will then rush the ‘Industrial Center’. I will queue the ‘Capital Mainframe’ to build, with the plan to rush this the next turn to aide my research goal. I will then queue all the others to fill in with artifacts queued last.
Research I always start by researching ‘Space Elevators’. This allows the possibility of researching more research options.
I will then purchase a couple citizens. Looking in specific for loyal citizens or citizens 10 or higher in a specific category. If a citizen is higher in a specific category, specifically research or social, I’ll then assign that citizen as a minister right away to get that boost.
From there I will go to policies and choose ‘Heart of the Empire’ to receive my +10% influence, and +10% gross income. I then reduce my tax rate to ‘Normal’, from ‘Medium’, to give myself more boost on production and research.
My colony ship will colonize the nearest planet in my home system, unless I’m able to see a class 20+ planet in the galaxy. If I’m able to see a higher class planet it will go there instead. I will choose two executive orders right away, ‘Print Money’, and ‘Draft Colonists’. I will then use my extra colony ship to colonize the other planet in my home system.
My explorer ship will explore the galaxy, set to explore. My flag ship T.C.S Eel will survey the nearest anomaly.
Chapter 4: Turn 20 – 100 (Expanding and hopeful for no war.)
By this point I have explored several nearby star systems. I maybe have found a subspace stream, but haven’t researched the option to use these, as I don’t have any intention to use them until sometime well into the 100’s. At this point I will be last in ‘Military Power’, but I should be 1st in research, high in economic and near the middle at worst for production.
During this time I’ll get my first ‘Culture Point’. I always choose ‘Self-Governance’ assuming the ‘Liberty’ tree is open. This will allow me to get an extra leader and make another planet a core world.
Chapter 5: Turn 100+ (A huge head start.)
Now that I’ve been top of research for most of the game, I’ve taken a nice lead. I’m still ranked 9th in military, but I’m in the top 2 for manufacturing, income, and approval.
From here I run away with the game. My key is to avoid an early war. If I avoid an early war, victory is almost given every game.
