The hours are passing by in a fever-pitch at the moment. The amount of polish that has gone into the game since we sent out press-keys is AMAZING. On one hand, I’m sad that the reviewers didn’t get to see all those wonderful updates, but on the other hand, it’s far more important that you – the community – get a game that looks amazing on May 30th.
I spent all weekend playing through it and let me tell you: If your RPG tastes are like mine, you’re in for a treat. So in other words: you better smash that “buy” button once we go live!
We’re keeping it safe and saying the game has a core path of about 15 hours but in reality, every single first run I’ve seen has taken 25+ hours and that’s not mentioning replayability.
Rogue's Gallery
Today I’ll do a short feature of the six pre-made recruitable characters in the game. There was originally going to be more of them but I landed on the choice of giving maximum attention to fleshing out a handful of them instead of spreading it too thin.
The upside, of course, is that you can also recruit fully customizable characters if you want a bit of variation, allowing for endless mixing and matching.
Roland
Roland is a sell-sword veteran of countless bloody campaigns. He carries many a scar both without and within. Mercenary work is cruel and unglamorous it would seem.
Roland is a dangerous and brutal man . He’s also laconic and prone to bouts of melancholy but unerringly loyal.
Roland is an Armsmaster. A class that excels in straight-forward and brutal combat.
Kat
Kat is an indentured guild-sailor who was part of the crew of the ‘Zephyr’. She hails from the Imperial mainland where her cut-throat brother sold her into servitude after their parents died. Needless to say they did not part on good terms.
Kat is outspoken and exuberant with a foul mouth that stands in stark contrast to her fair appearance.
Kat is a Thief and excels in stealth and lock-picking. She also employs her deadly Backstab ability in combat to deal large amounts of damage and crippling injury conditions.
Driina
Driina is a cleric of the Sepulchite order, bringing the light of the Golden Dead to the Outer Isles. Imperial religion places great significance upon the dead and the mummified corpses of long dead Magi and Emperors are the Empire’s most prized relics.
The Sepulchites are the custodians of the Dead. This makes a somber and austere lot but they are also experts of the flesh and great healers.
Driina is a Hospitaller: A front line healer combining the sacred magic of the flesh with a robust combat presence.
Iben
Iben is a quiet man with a sharp wit and sharper eye. He’s traveled the Empire far and wide and eventually ended up in the Outer Isles where he found happiness – for a short while. Though he can be humorous and warm when he so wishes, it is clear that he prefers the stillness that only the wilderness can offer.
When pressed about his background, Iben tends to grow distant while he thoughtfully chews his pipe.
Iben is a Ranger. A warrior that combines an unmatched skill in ranged combat with the magic of the natural world.
Iago
Iago is a swashbuckling smuggler hailing from the Ombarian city-states to the south. A man of the world, he’ll tell anyone who will listen (and most who won’t listen) that he owes his legendary good luck to being the favored son of the Blind Maidens.
Iago prefers to never stay in port for long. Something about ‘wronged husbands’ and ‘little misunderstandings’.
Iago is an Officer: A warrior who boosts the fighting prowess of their comrades by issuing orders across the battlefield.
Embla
Running bare-foot through the hedge-maze on the grounds of the Berryn estate. Both of you children: Embla in-front, just out of sight.
That’s how it’s always been.
All is not well in the house of Berryn and you must venture once more to follow her into the maze. Perhaps this time you’ll finally catch up to her.
In Closing…
We’ve been sending keys to content creators and press and word is seeping in that they’re having a lot of fun with it. Are YOU a content creator or a Press person? Get in touch for a key to the game:
We’ve recently released a large update to Galactic Civilizations: IV Supernova called v2.6 “Reinforcements”, and for more information you can read the patch notes linked.
This update focused mostly on bugfixes, balance, options to allow you to further customize the user-interface and some awesome new ship designs for the Terran Alliance and Terran Resistance, which we covered last week. This was one of the bigger patches we’ve released in a while and should improve the overall experience of playing Supernova.
Instead of regurgitating patch notes, this week we’re going to look at one of the more interesting nuances of Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova diplomacy system.
There was one small mechanic that came in back with v2.3 War & Peace that I suspect many people missed in the patch notes, but has significantly changed how each game of Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova will play out, and it’s a system that can be used by both the player and the AI alike.
I’m talking about Trade Routes and their affect on diplomacy. It’s worth a second look because there’s a lot more to it now than just sending off a freighter and watching the money roll in afterwards.
We updated the Trade Route screen in v2.5 “Ares”, shown above.
You can access it from the button furthest to the right on the bottom bar.
The same screen can still be accessed from the Civilization screen too as you can see above.
I want to illustrate this system with a game I’m playing as the Baratak Grove. You can see my position here at the top centre of the map in a very light yellow colour. Note how many civilizations there are in this one big sector, and how squashed in we all are. These games can become notoriously difficult if you don’t prepare yourself to deal with the problems they throw at you.
You’ll note too that I have some rather dangerous neighbors close to me, with the powerfully developed Navigators to my west, the Cosmic Contaminant just south of them. With their polluting ways, the CC are the Baratak Grove’s nemesis and I’ve been fighting them all game.
I’m close to the ever-menacing Yor who’re looking to eliminate the Iconians to their south, and the Drengin Empire just south of the CC too. The Intueri to my east are less aggressive and the Xeloxi further south of that still can sometimes be reasoned with, so there is some hope of avoiding a dog-piling here.
With the game difficulty on Genius here, I’ve got my work cut out to keep the wolves from the door. Any one of these neighbors, if freed up from its own external pressure long enough to build a military fleet, could become a threat. Don’t be fooled by the small size of some of these Civilizations, you can take a lot of territory very quickly with a well protected fleet full of transports.
I want to show how important Trade Routes can be now in helping shape the diplomatic situation around you, in tense, crowded situations like this where deadly, potentially game-ending wars can suddenly flare up at any moment.
We’re likely to have to fight the Cosmic Contaminant again eventually, and we can handle a single war, but we need to avoid being dragged into any other conflicts until that one is concluded properly.
You may or may not remember, but establishing Trade Routes now gives you a diplomatic boost with that Civilization, a bonus that increases with the profitability and age of those routes. This means that early trading with your neighbors can be a critical factor in determining the shape of the game’s diplomatic situation as the game develops into the mid and late-game.
As a quick reminder, to set up a Trade Route, you build a Freighter at a Shipyard, preferably one orbiting a Core World with a high Income value, and you pilot it to a Core World owned by another Civilization, preferably as far away from your starting world as you can manage, picking a destination with a high strong Income too.
Let’s take a look at the Navigators, likely the biggest single threat bordering the Baratak Grove’s empire.
Here you can see that the Navigators have a stronger military than I do, and they probably would quite like to be at war with me as they’re not currently engaged with anybody else. At this point of the game, they’ll be looking to expand if they detect weakness. It didn’t help that I went to war with the Cosmic Contaminant early and we’ve got an Aggressive Neighbour penalty that will persist for some months, but the Trade Routes we share have helped to counter that.
Note that their other neighbors, just like me, are trading with them too. Trade Routes do become an important source of income, particularly in games where the Civilizations each have less planets to each colonize between one another and as such get less tax revenue.
Here’s a very quick reminder about how Trade Routes generate income.
In this Trade Route set up between the Navigators world of Luaphcal IV and our homeworld, the Trade Route Value is determined by a few factors: most notably, the income of the Core Worlds in question, the Route Age and the physical distance between the two (it’s presumed your freighters make stops to trade with other ships and other smaller entities as they go).
If you initiate the trade route yourself, you’ll get a 33% bonus, and there’s a penalty for instability and hostiles in the region too. Receiving a freighter from a neighbour is still better than no trade at all though.
This is a really cool system a few reasons: firstly it encourages each player to actively engage in trade as soon as possible as that 33% bonus to Trade Route Value for being the first to get your freighter to your neighbour’s Core Worlds is very attractive.
Secondly, the longer a Trade Route exists, the more money it makes and the bigger the diplomatic bonus you’ll get from trading with them. The longer you maintain the route and your relations with your trade partner, when it comes time to start throwing their fleets and Soldiers into the meat grinder, they’re a lot less likely to pick you as their target. They like that juicy trade income and since GalCiv is not just a war-game, and you can win economically as well as by map-painting, it’s a viable strategy for you, and the AI, to sit around and power up your economy, accumulating Prestige Points.
Playing one of the Trade focused Civilizations doesn’t just give you more money, as it would with other space 4X games. They get the extra cash for sure, but trade is not just a financial system. It’s a diplomatic one too and getting early Trade Routes out shows the other Galactic Civilizations that you’re worth more to them alive than you are dead.
This demonstrates one of the reasons why I think Galactic Civilization’s IV: Supernova has an edge over other contemporary space 4X games, in terms of providing ways for the player to engage in meaningful non-combat interactions to help them win that don’t feel “gamey” or contrived, and fit with the way that real-life diplomacy works out there in the real world.
This is an example: a mutually beneficial interaction like trade can also be used as a way to protect yourself diplomatically, without that mechanic feeling like an artificially imposed rule or system, placed there specifically to band-aid over the inherent imbalance you get when a human interacts with a game AI.
Diplomacy in space 4X has long been accused of being a system that exists merely for the player to exploit and delay being attacked until they are ready to win a war, and there’s some truth to that I’m sure, especially in games where the diplomatic system was tacked on to tick the “has diplomacy” box.
Of course, Sun Tzu might smile upon such a strategy, but whether that issue feels like an accurate depiction of the Art of War or a weakness of a game’s core design largely depends on how natural that system feels in the context of the rest of the player’s interactions with the game itself. If you’re sat there happily immersed and suddenly something happens to throw you out of that immersion, that can be jarring.
Nobody likes being thrown out of a war they are winning when an arbitrary alarm goes off and says “Nope! Time’s up buddy, hand back all those planets you just worked to take!”
GalCiv has always strived to be a game where we balance fun with the suspension of disbelief, but by trying smaller game elements, like Trade Routes, in with the way an alien Civ feels about you and opens it up to being an active game element that can be used to build a strategy around, the game feels tighter as a whole and does a lot to encourage you to experiment with different playstyles.
And with this, there’s no need to add in rules that limit you in some way to mask for the AI not being able to keep up, because the AI can use this system just like you can.
To go back to my situation in-game, it’s not too late to begin leveraging this system with other neighbors I’m hoping to keep sweet. The Baratak Grove aren’t necessarily a trade focused Civ, but with so many dangerous and warlike Civilizations around me, one strategy would be to build my defences very strongly, trade with the friendliest neighbours and let everybody else fight.
Once my economy is in a strong state, enough to either support a large war or to make a serious dent on the Prestige Victory condition enough that I’ll attract one anyway, then I can pick a new target and take some new territory.
Slow and steady wins the race, said Sun Tzu, probably.
I hope you enjoyed this quick look at how Trade Routes can be used to protect yourself in dangerous situations, and how small updates to the game that sometimes go unnoticed in patch notes can drastically improve gameplay!
We're thrilled to announce that the alpha playtest for our mystery-horror game, "Six Days," will be available in one to two weeks! Experience the most challenging game of the year as you use cameras to avoid a demon while solving intricate puzzles. 🧩👹
Key Features:
Full Playable Game: Dive into the complete, yet unfinished, alpha version. 🕹️ Intense Difficulty: Prepare for an unparalleled challenge. 💪 Mystery-Horror Atmosphere: Unravel eerie mysteries and survive horrifying encounters. 🕵️♂️🔍
-- Note: The playtest will open in one to two weeks after some final adjustments. Selection is automated through Steam Playtest, and players can join immediately once it's live. 🚀
Stay tuned for the exact start date and more details. Can you survive the Six Days? 👀
SQUIRMISH: The Videogame of Brawling Beasties - FaustLogic
Changes:
Added new HYPERSPAZ button. While this button is held down, the game runs at 2X speed. Use this button to fast-forward quickly through parts of the turn.
HYPERSPAZ is also engaged by holding Right Trigger on game controller or Spacebar on keyboard.
HYPERSPAZ is for SOLO play only, not PvP.
Keyboard shortcut for big paper card view moved from Spacebar to B.
Fixed a PvP bug with STEALER GRABBER's HITPOINT HEIST ability. If a player activated HITPOINT HEIST but then immediately clicked DONE without moving any damage, the game would get stuck.
We are thrilled to announce Until Then will release next month, on June 25. That's just five short weeks to go until you can embark on your journey with Mark and the crew!
Thank you for your patience and understanding as the team works diligently to create the best version of the Until Then experience possible!
We cannot wait for you all to get your hands on the full game. Be sure to stay tuned later today for some additional fun news regarding AAPI Heritage Month!
Thanks for testing out our latest beta multiplayer patches!
We've fixed the most occurring desyncs and have pushed it to Beta. If you're playing multiplayer, we'd love for you to update/try out the beta and hopefully it should be a better experience.
If you haven't tried swapping to the new branch and want to try it:
The changes shouldn't break your save but you should keep a backup of your saves just in case. You can find your Oddsparks save files at:
%LOCALAPPDATA%/Oddsparks/Game
You can access the beta branch by:
Right clicking the game in your Steam Library
Selecting "Properties"
Going to "Betas"
Opting in to the "Beta" branch in the drop-down. (You may need to update the game and restart Steam.)
