The Megastructures expansion has two new resources for you to play with: Energy and Gigamass. We briefly covered both back in developer journal #84, but today I’d like to focus on Gigamass.
Gigamass is a limited, somewhat scarce and very valuable resource, being tied to the Dead Worlds found orbiting the various stars on the game map. Aside from a very small amount that can be gained from Events here and there, once the galaxy’s supply is used up, there’ll be no more.
The race to harvest Gigamass is important, and once you have laid your hands on some, the choices you make on what to spend it on is a key part of the gameplay. You’ll not usually own enough to build everything you could hope for in a single playthrough and that is by design, as the gameplay features that Gigamass offer are very powerful in their effect of boosting each of the core mechanics of GalCiv.
Whether that’s allowing you to field incredibly powerful warships to conquer your more peaceful neighbours, apply a huge boost to your economic or industrial output with Stellar Nexus, linking together distant parts of your civilization’s territory with Stellar Gateways and many more, the intention is for you to pick the aspect of your civilization that you want to enhance and then wisely spend your available Gigamass to achieve that purpose.
One of the challenges in making a space 4X game fun is ensuring that each playthrough is unique, even if you’re playing with the same faction or game settings each time. Procedurally generated content does the heavy lifting there but are some other tools to achieve a similar effect.
The various Strategic Resources in GalCiv IV, with their many uses and random distribution, is one way to ensure this: for example, a Civilization with naturally weak research can enjoy access to a plentiful supply of Promethium by spending it on Research Missions. That Promethium can further shape their ship-building program too, encouraging the construction of Cloaking Devices, Promethium Drives and so on.
If Elerium is more abundant, you’ll have great access to the very best Beam and Shielding technologies instead.
With Gigamass however, we wanted to add an even more scarce resource into the game that gave the player much greater power, but would require them to make tough choices on exactly how to spend it. Promethium and Elerium can be purchased from the bazaar, and so even a player without any mines of their own can build their economy up and often still buy those resources in smaller amounts, and it can often be traded with another Civilization who does have access to it.
Gigamass is deliberately more difficult to get: you can trade it with the other Civilizations but it is valued much higher than the other Strategic Resources in the base-game. We’re hoping that the fight to reach the Gigamass, and then control who owns or has access to it afterwards, will make compelling gameplay that not only gives you some very powerful tools to utilise in your playthroughs, but also provide a new, optional focal point to encourage you to really get engaged with the core mechanics in new and exciting ways.
You’re playing the Korath Clan and don’t quite have the Gigamass available to build one of those big, shiny Megastructure baubles the other Civilizations are showing off? Then spend yours on building some of the smaller, cheaper Civilization Achievements that require Gigamass and Energy to turbocharge your industry, and then spend the rest on a set of nearly invulnerable ships to go take those hi-tech treasures off them instead. That way you get the fruits of their labours too!
If you’re trying to play more peacefully, perhaps a short war to grab a Purple Star could be well worth the effort: a Stellar Nexus here could provide a huge boost to Influence, Tourism, Trade Routes or Diplomacy, depending on the Augment you pick for it.
In most games on medium maps with more standard settings, you’ll have to pick and choose which Megastructures you want, as you’ll be unlikely to be able to afford them all.
However, GalCiv is a sandbox-like 4X, meaning that it is highly customisable and gameplay can vary quite significantly depending on the game options you set. This affects Gigamass too: larger maps with less AI player populating it will generally mean you’ve got more Gigamass (and Stars to build your Megastructures around) than you would with a smaller, more densely populated one.
So, if you’re excited to play a game with the new expansion and you’d like the option to build more of those titanic, powerful construction projects, playing on a larger map, and/or reducing the amount of AI opponents is one way to guarantee more Gigamass for an epic playthrough with many powerful Megastructures available in your game!
Let us know how you get on with your own Megastructure projects, we’re excited to hear how you are incorporating them into your own playstyle.
Cheers!