In Galactic Civilizations 4 I conquer the galaxy with furious cuddly monsters

Lots of comparisons to Stellaris where Gal Civ IV performs poorly

What will criticize about the game? Testers who deal with Galactic Civilization 4 ultimately say: The game is technically okay, but does not do enough radically new things. It is ultimately just “bigger, smoother and prettier” than its predecessors.

The game somehow lacks a kick to make it more exciting and innovative.

GameStar uses Galactic Civilization IV to underline how insanely good Stellaris is from Paradox after what feels like 98 DLCs now (via gamestar).

This is generally a problem that all new strategy games are currently suffering from: the “last generation” of strategy games has received so many DLCs over the years that new games look too simple and somehow lame. This is how it works, for example, in Total Warhammer 3:

Every strategy player has at least one weird quirk – this is mine

I have this tick with 4X games: I played the predecessor, Galactic Civilization 3, intensively, and at first I had the feeling that the 4th part didn’t offer me much that was new.

But I have a typical strategy player tick. I tend to play strategy games with a race that radically changes the game:

• In Civilization 6, I’m playing China exclusively and my goal is basically to build every single wonder that even exists. As soon as anyone else builds a miracle, I’m mortally offended and end the campaign.
• In Stellaris I play a crazy Borg race that ignores conquest mechanics and diplomacy and only wants to subjugate and assimilate all other races – resistance is futile
• In Crusader Kings 3 I’m trying to breed the superman in Ireland
• In Galactic Civilization 3, I played the weird silicon-based Slyne race that doesn’t need food but feeds on minerals – so I didn’t have an important game mechanic on screen at all, which I didn’t realize until much later

Intelligent Trees Revive Dead Planets – Or Do You Rather Serve Space Jesus?

This is what makes Galactic Civization 4 so appealing to me: Clicking through the new game’s playable races on the Epic Game Store, I saw the usual suspects:

• A warrior race like the Klingons
• crazy traders á la Ferengis
• strange stone monsters, the Onyx Hive, were also back.

Plus an all-consuming spider race, of course cyborgs and two lame human races that make me really wonder who the hell is playing them. One even starts on “Earth” and has “Mars” right next to it. How lame is that please?

Ultimately, my eyes settled on the Krynn: They are a kind of religious sect whose strength is in conquering other worlds “peacefully” by expanding their influence to the point where they “flip culture” and take over their planets.

I had found my way of playing, I thought!

Ultimately, however, the purely passive expansion of my worlds was too lame for me. Especially since certain races explicitly refuse to join my cool new religion. Apparently cyborgs don’t need my Space Jesus. Those fools!

After the Krynn, I tried and even won with Baratak Grove: This is a race of intelligent trees that are the only ones in the game that can revive “dead planets” with a seed. Absolute OP mechanics.

Because these actually useless dead planets are now becoming fertile colonies that support and relieve their own main planets. This created such a strong advantage that I marched to victory simply because I was getting more out of my patch of space than anyone else.

The Mimot Brotherhood are hugging the galaxy dead

In the end, this people did it to me: The “Mimot Brotherhood” actually looks like a joke and resembles miniature Ewoks. Other alien races like to greet them with: “Don’t underestimate us, we are not only cuddly but also incredibly cute.”

But somehow there must be something to the people, because it is said that they developed on a planet together with 4 other intelligent species, but are the only survivors today. When a mimot wants to be really mean, it says, “You remind me of one of the breeds that evolved with us.”

In the lore it says: A race is known for its uncanny urge to reproduce and for its nutty taste, but they are apparently suitable for aggressive alien races as emergency rations in bad times.

When I first started the Mimot Brotherhood, I thought the breed just had to be buggy. Because every ship I built was suddenly there twice. The mate-crazed furry monsters have as a racial ability that every ship they build spawns twice, but with 25% less life points.

In general, the Mimot are a strange people, because you can put leaders in their factions for special bonuses, which ensure that the people multiply insanely quickly, but also eat like crazy.

The breed is apparently totally gluttonous and addicted to sex. Where other races struggle to find population units to establish new colonies or outposts, new huggers abound with the Mimots.

In addition, the class has a diplomacy bonus and also has relatively high “social values”, which makes it easy to turn Mimot into ambassadors to lull opponents.

First cuddle and then eat everything

This leads to an exciting strategy:

• Instead of building up slowly and taking your time,
• you knock out massive colonies early on while trying to get along cuddly with other aliens and act harmless to avoid being eaten,
• because you expand twice as fast as everyone else, the sector is quickly filled with Mimots
• and then you think about turning the tables and eating the neighbors who think they’re safe.

This leads to a totally expansive strategy, with the cuddliest of people constantly needing more room to expand.

The exact opposite of the Mimot are the Cyborgs Yor – they don’t reproduce at all. Each new population unit must be built from scratch.

Here’s what I like about 4X games: What I like about Galactic Civilization 4, even if it is frowned upon because of “little innovation”, is exactly what I like about other games:

Many 4X games have races so unique that choosing them changes the entire game. Some mechanics are not used at all, others become incredibly important.

Even if Galactic Civilization 4 only gets moderate reviews, the cuddly monsters have done it to me.

In addition to MMORPGs, MeinMMO author Schuhmann is particularly into strategy games:

In my Game of the Year I have 14 children, 4 wives and I am the Emperor of Ireland