v2.5 and the Warlords Expansion is now available, and we're excited to share the ins and outs. Check out my guided tour below:

Our prior dev journal gave a preview of what to expect from the Warlords Expansion. This week’s dev journal is a guided tour what is new for both the v2.5 ‘Ares’ update and Warlords, including an improved tech tree, QOL improvements to in-game lighting, an upgraded battle viewer, and much, much, more…

Updated Visuals

We have adjusted lighting and added point light effects to things to get them to “pop”. The prettiness is more of a side effect of the desire to make the galaxy more readable.

Expanded Technology Tree

We have greatly expanded the tech tree for both Warlords users who get new technologies like Cloaking Devices and Biological Targeting as well as 2.5 users looking for new ship components instead of merely a stat bump.

Improved Battle Viewer

You can now click on any ship and see how it’s performing in the battle. The log now clearly shows how different weapons and defenses work.

Resource Clumping

We have improved the map generation so that resources will tend to “clump” a bit together. This should result in some areas of space being particularly more valuable than others (relative to previous versions).

In this example, 3 Durantium nodes are found within a single alien system.

Specialized Defense Systems

GalCiv IV gets rid of the rock-paper-scissors way of weapons vs. defenses.

Instead, in GalCiv IV when an enemy attack reaches your ship, it first checks to see if its accuracy is better than your evasion in order to tell if it hits at all. Then, if it hits, the shields will see if they absorb the damage. And then any remaining damage goes to the armor which mitigates a % of it.

However, with v2.5 we have made it so specific ship components can do special things. Some weapons can ignore shields for instance. Some defenses can thwart missiles. And so on. This allows players to counter enemy strategies that have focused too much on a particular area of weaponry or defense.

We plan to do a lot more with this in the future. We also suspect modders will do a lot more in the future.

Invasion Tactics

New to the Warlords expansion are various invasion tactics. Invasion Tactics allow you more control over the nature of Planetary Invasions. They allow the player to make interesting choices at the start of an invasion that affects casualties, planetary destruction, and the duration of the Invasion.

Each tactic has its own pros and cons.

Doctrines

The Doctrines feature completely revolutionizes how players design, build, and utilize their ships in Galactic Civilizations IV. Combat Doctrines are composed of Operational Abilities and Targeting Priorities, which can be combined with Ship Type to create the perfect combat solution for even the most specific of warfare situations. 

New Ship Components

We’ve added a host of new ship components into the game for both Warlords users and 2.5 users, many of which have unique capabilities to change the field of battle in your favor.

War Aims

New with the Warlords expansion, the War Aims feature allows for limitations on conflict depending on the War Aim selected, but beware the diplomatic consequences of over aggression and war weariness.

Capturing Starbases

Warlords players can now capture enemy starbases, provided that they have powerful enough fleets to do so.

Updated Trade Breakdown Screen

The trade breakdown screen now allows players to clearly understand at a glance which planets are trading with your civilization and which of your planets is being traded with.

Updated Fleet Wide Command UI

The Fleet Wide Command UI has seen an upgrade as well.