Build a civilization that will stand the test of time in the largest space-based strategy game ever! Choose from dozens of unique races and make a name for yourself across the galaxy through diplomacy, espionage, technological advances, and more.
Galactic Civilizations III is a 4X space strategy game set in the 23rd century. Humans and aliens compete against each other for domination of the galaxy through war, cultural hegemony, diplomacy, and more. Customize your game experience right down to every detail: galaxy size, opponent factions, victory conditions, AI difficulty level, and frequency of galactic events and anomalies.
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Galactic Ascension Status is new in v3.8 for GalCiv III. Our VP of Entertainment, Derek Paxton, decided to sit down and have some fun with it last week - check it out here!
Galactic Civilizations III v3.8 Update Brings Major UI Changes
Set in the 23rd century, Galactic Civilizations III is a 4X space strategy game where humans and aliens compete against each other for domination of the galaxy. v3.8 brings a few exciting changes to this already massive game, which you can read more about below.
No more sneaky Ascensions! At the forefront of the update are changes to the Ascension notifications and UI. Each civilization's progress is now displayed on an easy-to-read progress bar, and anytime someone gains control of an Ascension crystal, an icon will alert you to it.
The shipyard display now shows how much production is being sent to that shipyard so that you know how fast it's able to build things. The planet list views will now also show research.
We've also made some other improvements to the UI's layout, including updating screens so that they use fonts, colors, and font sizes consistently. We've also added a feature where you can adjust the difficulty level in the middle of a game. Read the full list of changes below!
Changelog
As soon as someone controls an Ascension crystal, have an icon show up and informs you that Ascension has started. Mousing over should show you how far along each civ with Ascension is from ascending as a % bar with (turns).
UI Layout updates
Updated most screens to use fonts, colors, and font sizes consistently.Made fonts bigger wherever possible.
General cleanup of margins and list entries wherever possible.
Removed extra returns from the "word on the street" blurbs.
Move some of the drop-downs in options screens to keep them from clipping.
You can now adjust the difficulty level mid-game through the options screen (single player only).
Starting ships don't append a number to their name unless another ship of the same design has already been spawned. This is to support custom flavorful names for core starting ships from starting ship designs
Updated starting ship names of factions added to the game after Crusade.
Shipyard display now shows how much production is being sent to that shipyard, so you know how fast it can build things.
Fixed an issue causing the unit buttons from not showing up in Medium UI on the Colony List screen.
Planet view list now displays research
Aliens can now be tagged as being available or unavailable as random civilizations
Fixed Tourism exploit in Crusade version of the Consulate
The AI has been ordered top stop freezing time to keep its mission ships safe. (stuck turn fix)
Addressed "word on the street" grammar and spelling mistakes
Removed duplicate planet data in crusade and base game data folders that could potentially cause bad things(TM)
Adjusted the choose civ screen to improve text wrapping
Fixed alignment issue on the Drath starting screen
Fixed a bug that prevented commanders from being assigned to United Earth ships
We're putting the touches on v3.8. From here on out, a lot of our effort is going to be on features that improve the game experience, polish and usability. They're not sexy features but they're much needed imo.
Starting with 3.6, we began work on improving the modding experience. This is something that's been being further developed in 3.8 and will get more attention after as we try to "unify" the experience further so that people can eventually pass around mods and know they'll "just work".
We still have the general challenge in that you have Crusade and "base" GalCiv III v1.x. Crusade changes the economic system to a citizen based system so that's a big challenge in reconciling in terms of mods.
There won't be any more expansions for GalCiv III. Future gameplay improvements will be made to the Cruade base (i.e. as long as you have Crusade these will work). But we do have new DLC coming over the coming year.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask them here. Cheers!
Galactic Civilizations III v3.7 Anniversary Update Focuses Exclusively on Fan Requests
For a limited time, save 85% on Galactic Civilizations III and 70% on the Gold Edition
For the game's 4th anniversary, we've focused exclusively on a top-to-bottom series of improvements based on fan requests! These improvements are major quality of life changes that improve the overall experience of Galactic Civilizations III.
v3.7 improves ship AI, multiplayer performance, memory use, pathfinding performance, pacing, and the empire management UI, as well as addresses a host of minor bugs. It's available now as a free download for owners of the base game.
We are putting the final touches on Galactic Civilizations III v3.7.
When we first announced the Retribution expansion pack (which if you don't have, we highly recommend you get) there were fans who really wanted to emphasize that there were a lot of quality of life features they wanted in the game (UI and gameplay balancing).
Version 3.7 is the first of a series of updates that really focuses on these elements.
Here are a few of the things we're focusing on here:
Better late game AI. We are pretty happy with the AI in GalCiv III at this stage. But the late game AI sometimes struggles with its planets late game. As the # of choices for improving colonies increases, the harder the time the AI has between deciding when to "wait" to build something versus building something, destroying it and replacing it with something else. This isn't an exciting improvement and won't be noticed by most but we hope you guys can appreciate the necessity of improving this area.
For Retribution players, we intentionally wiped out a lot of technologies that we felt were either too beneficial to a given race given their other advantages (synthetic races) or removed because they were just kind of speed bumps. We are slowly going through the techs and will be adding some back with some changes as we get more feedback from the community.
The Synthetics got excessively nerfed in recent updates and we're backtracking on some of that. Robots are still pretty powerful but we probably went too far in removing some of their colonization abilities. This has been restored.
After 3.7, we're moving straight on to v3.8 and this version is very much about UX. This benefits both existing players and new players. For new players, it makes the game more approachable. For existing players, it just makes it easier to manage your empire.
Welcoming back Sarah. So some of you long-time GalCiv players know our senior developer Sarah. She was out on leave for awhile and one of the big reasons we're making so much rapid progress is she's back. Some of you may also know her from Ashes of the Singularity where she developed the strategic zoom display for that game (designed and programmed).
Improved custom ship mod compatibility, commonwealth world adjustments, and more!
Galactic Civilizations III v3.6 Community Update improves custom ship mod compatibility, adjusts commonwealth worlds, and more
We're launching a version update today that addresses the most important feedback we get: YOURS. We've addressed several community reported issues in our continuing effort to bring you the best GalCiv game possible. We put balance and bug fix work into both the base game and the Retribution expansion with this update. Some of the biggest changes we made include:
Merging fleets no longer renames them
Custom ships work better with mods
Artificial life forms can no longer build farms because robots don't eat food
Your commonwealth worlds can no longer flip worlds in your empire (because that was treason!)
Fixed typos in "Lossless Mining" module descriptions
Updated Tourism bonus for the "Popular Race" trait to be flat 1 and 2% instead of multipliers of 10 and 20%
Updated united planet tourism board to be flat with a 10% bonus (was multiplier of 100% which was crazy)
Colonizing the Promethion Refinery precursor world now grants 5 Promethion
Set "Virtual Vacation" to be a player wonder
Changed "Influence Per Turn" from multiplier to flat on the Galactic Showcase
Fixed mismatch of description and text in the "Antimatter Weapon Colonizing" event
Tweaked pathfinding so that it doesn't attempt to find a path to the node closest to a blocked destination if the start tile is already the closest node
Silicon-based life can terraform and colonize high level extreme worlds
Removed farms for Synthetic lifeforms and enabled terraforming improvements and high end extreme world techs
Fixed "Orphaned Improvements" and techs in the Retribution tech tree
Fixed issue with Iridium tech tree failing on "Tariff Focus" specialization
UI
Changed it so that when you merge a fleet, it will keep a custom name for the resulting fleet. If both fleets being merged have custom names, it keeps the fleet name of the bigger fleet.
Adjusted "Economic Warning" flavor text to fit with new conversation popup font size.
Fixed typo in "Precursor Research Node" description.
Improved the text alignment on the UP Resolutions window
Bugs
Fixed custom ship style sets having the wrong strategic icons. Players will have to re-save their ship style sets (and change the effect ships classes to what they want along with their text, since that is info that is saved off). Prevents players from having to remake the ship style sets and only deal with what was changed
You can no longer assign commanders to planets
Ships with "one per player" components can upgrade to ships with the same components
Cleaned up code that clears/applies rebellion status to prevent edge cases where planets can flip when they shouldn't (like when the tile is owned by a commonwealth of the planet owner)
Addressed a MP crash related to mismatched DLC
Fixed mismatched strategic icons on some ship classes
Fixed typos in "Plasma Arc" event
Mod fixes
Ships created with mods now show up correctly
Prevents crash if a tech unlocks more than 12 things at once (modders -- you know who you are!)
Retribution
Fixed issue where Hypergates didn't fire any shots during battle because they didn't have range
Changed the Hyperlane tool tip to account for the minimum move cost, so it will now show the max bonus as 900% instead of +-100%
Removed extra space in the Korath faction description
Added "lossless life support" back into the Retribution tech tree
Updated Thalan conversation text to reflect that they bring in multiple ships now in mission 4
Galactic Civilizations III: Retribution adds Hypergates, Precursor Artifacts, new major civilizations, and much more.
Across the galaxy, you and your rivals are discovering ancient alien artifacts that grant powerful new capabilities. Meanwhile, as civilizations try to carefully balance building an economy, funding an ever growing war machine, and engaging in diplomacy, the humans of Sol III have invented a game-changing new technology - Hypergates - which, when connected, allow for rapid transit across the galaxy.
With two new major civilizations and the concluding campaign to the Galactic Civilizations III backstory that serves this massive space 4X sandbox game, Retribution asks the question: How will you rule your galaxy?
The new features in Galactic Civilizations III: Retribution include:
Artifacts - Powerful items buried on planets across the galaxy will give your civilization instant-access to new abilities.
Hypergates - Construct powerful gateways that, when linked, allow your fleets to travel rapidly across hyperspace.
Major Civilizations: Drath and Korath - The manipulative Drath pull the strings across the galaxy while the Korath rely on extermination. Each has its own set of special abilities, bonuses, and ship parts.
Supply Ships - Supply ships can be constructed to deliver goods and services to your other planets to aid in their development.
New Technology Tree - A top to bottom overhaul of the technology tree adds depth and sharpens the strategic choices in your research options.
Retribution Campaign -The malevolent Drengin Empire made a terrible mistake underestimating humanity’s strength, and the climactic battle that will follow may end in their extinction.
*Sale ends 2/27/19 at 1PM EST. Steam and Galactic Civilizations III is required to play this expansion. **Sale ends 2/23/19 at 1PM EST on Steam and 2/27/19 at 1PM EST direct from Stardock. Steam required to play.
Start with a single world and expand across the galaxy through diplomacy, trade, cultural hegemony, or military conquest in this single or multiplayer 4X strategy game. How will you rule your galaxy?
The new features in Galactic Civilizations III: Retribution include:
Artifacts - Powerful items buried on planets across the galaxy will give your civilization instant-access to new abilities.
Hypergates - Construct powerful gateways that, when linked, allow your fleets to travel rapidly across hyperspace.
Major Civilizations: Drath and Korath - The manipulative Drath pull the strings across the galaxy while the Korath rely on extermination. Each has its own set of special abilities, bonuses, and ship parts.
Supply ships - Supply ships can be constructed to deliver goods and services to your other planets to aid in their development.
New Technology Trees - A top to bottom overhaul of the technology tree adds depth and sharpens the strategic choices in your research options.
Retribution Campaign - The malevolent Drengin Empire made a terrible mistake underestimating humanity’s strength, and the climactic battle that will follow may end in their extinction.
Galactic Civilizations III: Retribution is coming February 21!
We are working on the next free update to Galactic Civilizations III right now. Mostly it's quality of life improvements as recommended by players.
A few highlights include a repeat-button for planetary projects, additional tooltips, a new campaign screen, more music and sound effects, new multiplayer work, AI work (new starbase evaluation), and more.
It's been a blast to be able to focus a little time on reading your suggestions. The game has changed so much since it was initially released and we are grateful to have such an amazing community.