Megastructures is Stardock’s latest expansion for Galactic Civlizations IV: Supernova and boy is there a lot to cover! I have to keep things brief in these developer journals so today so I’ll be providing an overview of the core features that Megastructures brings to the game, with the intention to further deep dive into its various components later on.
Megastructures adds a new branch to the Engineering Tech tree, with a sequence of new Techs unlocking access to a new resource called Gigamass and all that can be made from it.
Gigamass is harvested from Dead Worlds (those with a Class of 0), by the new Planet Harvester ship.
One crucial point to note: Gigamass is a highly limited resource and once all the Dead Worlds on the map have been harvested, aside from some very small amounts generated through Events, that’s all there is. Gigamass is valuable but the AI may be willing to trade their own stocks if you have something they want in return, but generally speaking, it would be wise to carefully examine your own Gigamass stocks and the costs of each Megastructure (or other feature) when planning what you want to spend it on.
Gigamass isn’t the only new resource added: the enormous Megastructures and a whole host of new Civilization Achievements will require a constant power supply to run, which we’ve simply called Energy.
The maximum value here represents how many Energy points worth of Megastructure and Improvement can be run on a turn-by-turn basis. Exceeding this has maximum has severe consequences, so ensure you have enough Energy before you build Energy-sucking construction projects!
So how do you generate Energy? The first is with the new Solar Farm Improvement.
This requires a small amount of Gigamass to build and provides a small amount of Energy: perhaps best used for powering the other new Civilization Achievements requiring Gigamass to construct, such as this Precious Gem Synthesiser, an example of the new Civilization Achievements added with this expansion.
These might be helpful for civilizations that don’t want or need to build the Megastructures themselves, and to give players some powerful tools and fun tools to help kickstart their campaign a little earlier.
For greater power generation, you’ll need the first of our titular Megastructures: the Dyson Sphere!
First though we need a new type of construction ship to build Megastructures: the Stellar Architect.
Wrapped neatly around a star, the Dyson Sphere is a titanic construction that harnesses enough energy from its host to power your other Megastructure projects. Different star types will generate different levels of power.
Later on, the mighty Stellar Nexus become available for construction too. On their own these provide an impressive boost Civilization-wide boost to Approval, Manufacturing and Research, and this alone is worthy of the Gigamass investment.
That’s just the start though! They can be further extended with Augments, which require further Gigamass and Energy investment, and are available in three tiers, with later tiers unlocked later in the Tech tree. The type of Augments available for each Stellar Nexus is dependent upon the colour of its hosting star.
Above you can see the Cosmic Mirror Augment, which grants a huge +3 Technology to all your Core Worlds and Colonies, which will dramatically improve your overall Research.
For those more war-focused players, the Daybreak Engine provides a huge permanent boost to your Military output, speeding the creation of fleets, and providing every ship with increased Armor Rating and Shield Strength too. This makes smaller ships like Fighters, Bombers and Frigates very dangerous, and is perfect for when you need a lot of deadly ships constructed in a short space of time.
The current Augment can be upgraded for even better performance with later tier unlocks, or they can swapped out for a different Augment type completely whenever you like, although you will pay the Gigamass and Energy upkeep costs for this. Here we see the third tier Eclipse Engine and the improvement it gives to your Military, Armor Rating and Shield Strength. This is powerful stuff!
With the star classification affecting both Energy output for Dyson Spheres, and the kind of Augments available for a Stellar Nexus, and considering Dead Worlds are a source of the most precious resource in the game, there’s now more excitement in the discovery of star systems in the early phase of the game. We encourage you to carefully plan which stars to use for which Megastructures to achieve your goals of galactic domination!
Stellar Gateways are the next Megastructure type and must be constructed on the hexes surrounding a Black Hole.
When paired together, these epic-scale portals allow instantaneous travel from one to another, with the ability to link and unlink Stellar Gateways as needed, in the case that you’ve got an odd number of Gates, or you want to alter the destination of one of them.
The final Megastructure is the mighty Ringworld, the culmination of all the research you’ve put into these technological marvels. A gigantic ring is constructed to circle a star, with the inner edge made available for colonisation and the construction of many planetary Districts and Improvements.
This creates a perfect artificial Core World large enough to house many Citizens. It provides the very best tiles with space enough to construct your dream world. Fill it with factories, credit generating districts or farms, or build something even more exotic and specialised. Your imagination is the limit, and this Megastructure is perfect for Civilizations looking to peacefully expand the size of their empire in the mid and late game.
There are also some very powerful Ship Components for players to spend their precious Gigamass on too, and it may be that a war-like Civilizations such as the Korath Clan might prefer to direct this precious resource into their most favoured pastime instead of messing around with all that Megastructure stuff.
As you’d expect from a GalCiv expansion, Megastructures adds new in-game Events too.
This is just a very quick overview of the main features of Megastructures, and I hope this gives you some ideas for incorporating them into your playstyle!
Cheers!