Galactic Civlizations 4 will be arriving in a “very early” Early Access test phase this coming Summer.

New Galactic Civilizations game coming soon in Early Access

Stardock dropped the Galactic Civilizations 4 announcement trailer earlier today, and it's looking sweet. The 4X space strategy game will be coming out this Summer in Early Access. According to Stardock CEO Brad Wardell, by early, they really do mean Early. The game will be out in an alpha testing phase, so players will have to lower their expectations a bit.

Still, based on what we've seen so far, Galactic Civilizations 4 will have a lot of new content. It will be building upon the foundations of GalCiv 3, which makes the game less jarring for long-time fans. It'll still have a very high skill floor for those new to the series. But since the game will be launching in Early Access first, players will have a lot of time to adapt. It's also great for the game to have a long testing period, seeing that there are going to be a lot of new features.

One of the most significant changes for the series will be the way governors and worlds work. Before, players get to colonize worlds and have direct control over them immediately. Once the empire becomes big enough to become unwieldy, players can assign governors to automate their governance. Things switch around in Galactic Civilizations 4. Introducing the new concept Core Worlds, only a handful of worlds will be directly governed by the player. The rest will be colonies that work autonomously. To gain direct control over them, players will have to assign governors to turn these colonies into Core Worlds. However, governors will have their own personalities, posing new challenges for the player.

The game will also not have a campaign mode. Instead, the story will instead be triggered by certain events in-game, which will lead players to unique scenarios that will spice up their gameplay.