One of the most essential changes we’ve made to the user interface comes in the form of a much improved Civilization Data Tab. There’s been some major reorganisation to make better use of this essential screen, and we’ve partitioned the whole lower half of the window for a new Civilization Wide Bonuses display interface.
It’s pretty useful to be able to see Civilization Wide Bonuses when you’re making decisions in-game, and having to hunt for it slowed things down. Previously, much of this information was a little difficult to get at: for example, if you wanted to know what your overall Beam Attack bonus was, you’d have to find and select a ship, then bring up several cascading tooltips, searching for the right bonus from a potentially long list.
Now all this information is available at a glance, all in one place. Bonuses are organised into what is being affected, and then where the bonus originates from. In the screenshot above, you can see that the Cosmic Contaminant's Gross Income bonus comes both from Techs (at 10% here) and also by Civilization Policy, which is adding another +5 Credits.
As the game develops there can be a lot in here, and there’s a handy scroll-bar at the bottom of this window so you can access extra columns as they’re needed.
Next up we’ve got a new Graphs tab. 4X games are data heavy and the sharper your tools for processing it, the better the experience will be. Part of the fun in any strategy game is in the planning, and planning is much more fun if you’ve got interesting and useful tools to help you out.
The Torians here are looking like they might want to go to war with us, the Cosmic Contaminant, and so it can be handy to figure out how we match up together. The new Graphs tab allows us to pick a Civilization and compare them to ours over a series of player-selectable metrics.
Here, I’ve picked some crucial information you might want to know if you need to size someone up for a war at a glance (or two), and I noticed something interesting: they’ve got a really low Food supply. This is something the CC could exploit during a limited war: by taking Core Worlds or Colonies that provide the Torians with Food, we could severely weaken them and force them to readjust their economy to make up for those losses.
This is another useful feature that will help you find and formulate strategies as you play.
If you want to compare your progress to multiple Civilizations, the Timeline is still there too, and this serves a different function in showing you each Civ’s overall progress over time.
We’ve already talked about Fleet Supply, but as a reminder, here’s where the new indicator on the main UI is.
Also on the top bar of the UI, we’ve encapsulated the lesser used Trade Resources into their own UI element on the right.
With this change, top bar shows all your most commonly used resources at a glance, with the Trade Resources tucked away for when you need them, and is a little less busy as a result.
Remember the Civilization Focus selector? Here’s where it’s located at the bottom of the Civilization Overview screen.
We’ve also made a significant change to the War Aims user interface, ensuring critical information on the progress of a war is always available as you play.
Here the Manti are engaged in two wars, with the Festron and the Korath Clan. We’re looking at the War of Conquest with the Festron, and you can see here that we’ve achieved several important War Aims: we’ve captured a Core World and two Colonies, although the Festron have so far given our mighty Fleets the slip and we’ve not destroyed a Starbase yet either.
As you complete these goals, the Progress bar will fill up, clearly seen near the bottom of War Aims UI element. Whoever fills the progress bar first will be the first to claim victory and the war ending Events will start. You can also see how many Months (or Turns) you’ve been at war, and how many Months remain before the “end the war already” Events start kicking off.
Finally, we’ve added a Mod Manager button to the main menu, which links you directly to the GalCiv IV website’s Workshop, where you can browse and add many community made mods for the game. GalCiv is a huge and expansive game and people love to mod stuff to better suit their tastes, and now it’s easier to find those mods.
Hope you enjoy the changes to the UI, let us know if you find these features useful in the comments below!
Cheers!
