- GENERAL
- Q: What is Galactic Civilizations?
- A: Galactic Civilizations is a 4X space strategy game set in the 23rd century. Humans compete with alien
civilizations for control of the galaxy. Galactic Civilizations is created by Stardock Entertainment and has won
numerous awards, including being recently listed as #75 in PC Gamer's Top 100 Greatest PC Games of all time. Galactic
Civilizations remains one of the highest-rated strategy franchises ever.
- Q: How much does Galactic Civilizations III cost?
- A: . The new Galactic Civilizations III: Core Edition includes the base game, Retribution expansion, Crusade expansion, Map Pack DLC, Mega Events DLC, and Builder's Kit DLC.
- Q: How do I get it?
- A: Click here!
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- GAMEPLAY
- Q: What are some of the big differences between Galactic Civilizations II and III?
- A: Strategic resources unlock powerful weapons and improvements. Rebuilt ship designer lets you build anything from totally
inappropriate starships to giant transforming robots. Adjacency and planetary resources make colony management a minigame of its own.
Insane maps are more insanely huge than ever. In-game cinematics and dramatic event art join the massive improvements to graphics and
overall presentation. And that’s just off the top of our heads.
- Q: Do I need to have played Galactic Civilizations I or II?
- A: No. The campaign part will fill the player in on the backstory before it starts. It doesn't matter if you've played those games or not.
- Q: Turn-based or real time?
- A: Turn-based.
- Q: Is there a campaign?
- A: Yes. The campaign begins 10 years after the events of Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor.
- Q: Hexes or squares?
- A: Hexes.
- Q: Any new aliens?
- A: Yes. The Iridium are a brand-new race of space-faring supercapitalists. You can also create your own race from the ground up!
- Q: Where can I learn more about Galactic Civilizations III?
- A: We stream live on Twitch.tv every Friday at 3pm -- swing by,
or check out the archives on YouTube.
Try the Game and Databanks
sections of this website – we've put a lot of stuff up there. You can also check out our forums
or the Steam community hub for lots of discussion about the game.
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- MULTIPLAYER
- Q: Is there multiplayer?
- A: Yes, there is online multiplayer! Internet play is a first for the series, and we're thrilled to have gotten it
into Galactic Civilizations III.
- Q: What about hotseat?
- A: Very few players in 2015 have shown any interest in hotseat multiplayer, so we chose to forgo developing the
feature in order to instead work on features that more people use.
- Q: Play-by-email?
- A: We don’t have an explicit PBEM function, but you can save your multiplayer games and restart them at a later
time. You could simply email the save file around, or share it on your file-sharing platform of choice.
- Q: Do you have anything to speed up multiplayer play? Turn-based games can take forever.
- A: We use what we call "simultaneous planning, sequential execution." So you can queue up all your orders, from
colony management to research direction, ideological choices to fleet movement, and they'll execute as soon as your turn comes
up and you hit the button. Crucially, you always have a chance to re-evaluate the situation before any of your orders are
carried out.
You can also set options when you create a game to have research, production, etc. happen at a faster pace.
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- SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
- Q: What are the requirements to run Galactic Civilizations III?
- A: It will require a 64-bit version of Windows 10 / 8.1 / 8 / 7 along with a DirectX 10 or 11 compatible video card. There will
be no 32-bit version. Most PC gamers in 2015 have this kind of hardware, and it allows us to create the best game possible for the
majority of our customers.
- Q: Why are you requiring 64-bit?
- A: To fulfill our vision for Galactic Civilizations III and future expansions, the game engine must handle extremely
large galaxies with a very high resolution graphics and large data sets for the computer AI to make use of. 64-bit allows us to
design the best game possible without being constrained by the limitations of older hardware.
- Q: Why don't you support DirectX 9?
- A: DirectX 10 and 11 allow us to easily have multiple threads touch the graphics card simultaneously. This results in
much higher-quality font rendering, HDR lighting, makes it a lot easier to support advanced UI scaling, and makes the game less
CPU-bound which will be important for giving the artificial intelligence engine more processing power to execute VCSS's (Very
Complex Strategy Simulations). As with the decision to be 64-bit, it allows us to create a better game for the majority of players
that already meet the requirements.
- Q: Will the game require a network connection to play?
- A: No. However, some of the AI learning mechanisms will require access to the Metaverse in order to perform analysis
on player strategies. This will be optional and able to be disabled by the player but does require an Internet connection.
- Q: Will it have any copy protection?
- A: No. Unless you consider requiring a user account copy protection (which we do require as it's necessary to allow
users to be able to re-download the entire game and receive updates and support).
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