Tales of the Arnor is Stardock’s latest exciting DLC for Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova, focusing on events that occurred way back in the history of the Galactic Civilizations universe. Over the past few weeks, Frogboy has posted several developer journals teasing the extensive lore he has written surrounding the birth of the Nyx so I won’t cover that again.
Instead, I’ll be going over a quick gameplay overview to show what content this adds to your Galactic Civilizations games!
The Nyx are the original series of a synthetic species that went on to become known collectively as the Yor. These were designed and built by the Iconians as robotic servants and later given sentience by the Dread Lords during their war with the Arnor.
They start on their own planet of course, the rather modest Nyx Prime. With little space to build the booming industry required to pump out a steady stream of murderous xenophobic death-bots, the Nyx will want to expand out quickly and find a more… suitable target for a homeworld.
This early Yor precursor Civilization is not only available to play in its own unique Mission named Tales of the Arnor but also in the standard Galactic Civilizations IV game mode too, where the Nyx can be made available as a computer controlled Civilization, if you fancy taking them on as a rival.
The Nyx have three Civilization Abilities: Adaptable is shared with subsequent the Yor species and gives them access to some of the most hospitable worlds to be found out in the galaxy, and great strategic flexibility as a result. Adaptable grants access to certain specialized Improvements and other effects as the game progresses too. Finally, it grants access to the incredibly strong Draft Colonist Executive Order, allowing Control to be spent on very rapid expansion efforts.
The new Iron Born Trait fortifies the Armor Rating of all newly built ships by 25%, meaning the Nyx are going to be one tough cookie to crack when engaged in fleet combat.
Efficient further supports these warships by packing in more weapons, armour and other components than their rivals by up to a fifth of the total Ship Capacity. In tandem with the Iron Born Trait, the Nyx could forgo extra armour entirely, relying on that natural toughness, and cram in more offensive components instead. Or, they could go full tank-mode, and stack up on more armour, shielding and Evasion components, making them incredibly difficult to damage and defeat in combat.
The next set of new content added in Tales of the Arnor is tied to a brand new and unique Synthetic tech tree available exclusively for the Nyx alone.
This tech tree adds new nearly 40 new Ship Components to give those super-tanky, densely packed Nyx warships some unique flavor and bite! Here’s a nasty piece of technology to help break enemy lines with.
The Nyx have a unique advantage over their opponents, one that arrives relatively early in the game and helps shape their playstyle in a big way: the Drone Carrier.
This rather fragile ship deploys deadly interceptor drones into combat, and the Nyx get access to this capability long before their rivals get anything remotely similar.
With the Drone Carrier tech available as early as it is, you may well want to make the most of this military advantage and strike before your foes can counter such devastating technology.
There are also some unique advanced Starbase modules to unlock later on in the tech tree, such as the Cyber Infiltration Module here which pumps out a huge amount of Influence compared to the other Civilizations Influence boosting modules, and that isn’t even it’s final form!
The Nyx also have their own set of Planetary Improvements to construct on your Core Worlds. This Social Matrix boosts the Social Skills of your Citizens while simultaneously supporting your Culture push too.
The Nyx weren’t too impressed to be rejected by the Iconians, leaving them with a lasting hatred of all living life. To assist in their plans to quickly spread their own special kind of lovin' across the galaxy, a Core World can assist in the production of a Shipyard’s target with Aid Ship Production.
It’s inevitable that such an unusual species would have their own way of running their affairs, and so you’ll not be surprised to hear that the Nyx not only have their own Civilization Policies, but they even have their own take on a government too, with Leaders being assigned as Primes, not the Ministers you’d see in other Civilizations.
These are the guys who’ll be running the Nyx’s day-to-day business.
The Policies have some features we’ve not seen before, such as the ability to expand your Fleet Logistics!
As you’d expect, Tales of the Arnor comes packed with new Anomaly Events and Artifacts, further boosting the already sizeable library of cool random stuff that you can find floating out there in space!
Finally, we must talk about the titular Mission campaign of the DLC: Tales of the Arnor!
This Mission pits the Nyx against the Iconians, the ancient race that created and then subsequently tried to destroy them, driving them away from Iconia and out into the far depths of the sector. The Nyx are back, and out for revenge! Playing Tales of the Arnor will fill you in on some of the backstory of Galactic Civilizations and flesh out (if that’s the right term) the lore for one of GalCiv’s most iconic villains, the Yor Singularity!
These Missions are fun because they provide a stable map that can be played over and over, allowing you to try different strategies against a fixed set of conditions and improve your game.
So all this new stuff is really cool, but how do the Nyx actually play?
The Nyx are an unusual Civilization in that they have earlier access to some of the better warfare focused technologies, which is balanced out by finding it more difficult to gain access to certain high-tech solutions that come towards the end of the game. The Nyx will likely have to trade for the techs that they can’t naturally access, which requires someone friendly enough to trade with and a situation that often runs contrary to the goals of a militaristic, xenophobic Civilization.
The Nyx aren’t just powerful in conventional military term though: they have one of the most powerful sets of tools for Cultural push in the entire game. Even the Altarians are going to struggle against a well developed Nyx empire if they’re left alone for too long.
This gives the Nyx more options than just focusing solely on warfare, while still fitting their highly aggressive theme. Perusing their tech tree will show a rather unconventional collection of tools to experiment with, and their various strengths and weaknesses should provide a solid challenge to more experienced players who enjoy ramping the difficulty up and trying out weird and wonderful tactics!
Let us know what you think so far! There’ll be more information on Tales of the Arnor coming soon.
Cheers!