Stellaris
Explore a galaxy full of wonders in this sci-fi grand strategy game from Paradox Development Studios. Interact with diverse alien races, discover strange new worlds with unexpected events and expand the reach of your empire. Each new adventure holds almost limitless possibilities.
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Galactic Civilizations IV on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
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Take command of a civilization that has just achieved faster-than-light travel in Galactic Civilizations IV, the newest entry in the award-winning space 4X strategy game series. Explore the galaxy, colonize worlds, shape cultures, make alliances, fight wars and pioneer new technologies.
Galactic Civilizations IV is a space, grand strategy and simulation game
developed and published by Stardock Entertainment.
Released on October 19th 2023 is available only on Windows
in 12 languages: English, German, French, Russian, Spanish - Spain, Polish, Spanish - Latin America, Portuguese - Brazil, Portuguese - Portugal, Italian, Simplified Chinese and Korean.
It has received 1,887 reviews of which 1,378 were positive and 509 were negative resulting in a rating of 7.1 out of 10. 😊
The game is currently priced at 13.52€ on Steam with a 67% discount.
The Steam community has classified Galactic Civilizations IV into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
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System requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows 10 64-bit
- Processor: Quad-Core Processor (Intel Core i5 / AMD Ryzen 2x00)
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: 1GB VRAM Video Card
- DirectX: Version 11
- Network: Broadband Internet connection
- Storage: 22 GB available space
- Sound Card: Any
- Additional Notes: 720p Minimum Screen Resolution Required
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User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
Although I've played the previous games in the series, and I particularly liked 2 and 3, this one could one day be my favourite. A few things have been streamlined compared to earlier games in the series. Even in the late game, it feels like it's quick and painless to get through a turn, with prompt buttons in the bottom right taking you to the unit or screen which needs your attention. The game runs pretty well. It does demand a lot of RAM if you want to play on larger maps. The ship designer can take some time to fully load the first time I use it after the game loads up, not sure if it's just my older PC or an unavoidable loading delay. There are a few quirks with the ship designer which need fixing. For example, if you do scaling of the first part you place onto a starter block, it can result in the ship design being unexpectedly stretched. The workaround is to choose a part which is small and can be concealed or works as-is, but, you know, fixing the ship designer so this isn't an issue any more is also a thing that can be done. Another little thing about ships which could be fixed - if you specifically hide a part like an engine in a ship design, it shouldn't have particle trails coming out the back when you see it in the battle viewer. I'm not enthused about AI being an option to write the story of my custom race. I don't have to use it, no, but I'd rather it just wasn't there to begin with, or replaced with a guide on how to write a custom race. I tried it out anyway to check if it works, and it does. Diplomacy in GalCiv 4 is... okay. There's no diplomatic way to persuade another empire to stop warring with their neighbours. After watching the Torians gobble up other empires one by one, I finally put my foot down when they declared war on the Baratak Grove. They're currently regretting their life decisions, but don't worry, I'll go easy on them. The diplomacy modifiers aren't all well explained. For some reason the Corporate Sector and I "share the same values" but I still have the "cultural differences" modifier with them. The trade offers which the other Civs come up with are often unnecessarily convoluted. They seem to come up with a shopping list with random resources on both sides when treaties are more important and easier to explain the reasoning of. I'm already tired of rejecting these deals so that I can put my meaningful offer on the table instead. Speaking of resources, wow is it still annoying to have so many resources as requirements to use certain ship components in ship designs! It makes progressing through the tech tree unsatisfying. Yeah, you unlocked this super cool advanced technology, but you still need Nvidiam or something (I made that one up) to use it in your ship. It's been done to death in Civ. Let's come up with a new mechanic instead of using the same old tired one. The battle viewer is okay. The camera views could honestly use the touch of someone who knows what they want to see in a battle sequence. Quite often I will flick through to find a good angle and then mousewheel to enter Free Cam mode and reposition using the keys to find a satisfying vantage point to watch the battle unfold. If only the game would save my selected angle for later use, I could spend less time fussing and more time actually enjoying the results. The sound design... is bad. I'm joking here, but it's like someone played Master of Orion 3 and thought, "Neat! When I make my game I want to have UI sounds for all the events! And they should be loud!" That's... certainly... one way you could design the sound for a game. Here's another: UI sounds should be inobtrusive and you only need a handful of them. That, and, sounds should obey the sound setting sliders in the game options. Which, in GalCiv 4, they do not always do so. In spite of this, GalCiv 4 is actually a lot of fun to play. I've spent many a late night going, "Just... one... more... turn." There are some good and logical changes in this iteration. In particular, I like that shields and armour work as defensive systems against all types of attack so that ships can take some punishment before taking internal damage. I like that there are more than three ideologies in GalCiv 4. It's a good refresh. It encourages multiple playthroughs. As I said earlier, getting through a turn is pretty easy thanks to the button prompts. And I've never had a processing turn get stuck in GalCiv 4! Obviously some things have been tightened up and improved there. The various civs all feel a bit more fully realised and tuned in GalCiv 4. I've only played as a custom civ, but I can see the appeal of playing as one of the many spacefaring peoples in the game. I love that bureaucracy from GalCiv 3 has been replaced by leaders in GalCiv 4. Bureaucracy was a pain in the butt because starbases, colony ships and constructors used it up. It was the anti-X. In GalCiv 4 a mechanic called Fleet Supply exists to keep the game from being choked by too many ships, but it's a lot easier to live with. Modding GalCiv 4 is fairly straightforward and it's possible for multiple mods to work together with few to no issues. Good game. Would invade the Torians again (they started it).
Disclosure up front: This is my first Gal Civ game. A lot of the negative reviews I've seen seem to be centered on the experience returning/veteran players are having with this game. The consensus seems to generally follow that GC4 is not enough of an advancement on GC3 to justify paying for it if you already have previous entries in the series. I'd like to acknowledge the existence of this consensus opinion and concede that it is not mutually exclusive with anything I've written here. So, with that caveat, I will no longer bury the lede: I have immensely enjoyed my time with this game. As an avowed fan of the turn based 4X genre, Gal Civ presents a deep, satisfying mesh of interlocking systems that will largely be familiar to genre vets: you start small, you claim planets (our sci fi re skin of cities) the planets get you more stuff so you can more easily build fleets to get more resources etc Some of the more unique mechanics to this particular 4x iteration took me a game to wrap my head around. Anecdotal Example: building mining starbases early and often is crucial for securing an income of strategic resources. I built absolutely none of these until fairly late in the game, instead leveraging my civilization's advanced science to trade of technologies I'd researched to other civilizations in exchange for the resources, and since I was on an easy difficulty for my first game (with a lot of civilizations on the map) this actually worked out. I've included the full anecdote because I think it also exemplifies some of the fun ways systems can overlap in this game! My main critique is the battle layer. I feel like the 4X genre has progressed past the simple days of old where you just make the two armies smash against each other until one is gone. So many other entries in this genre have found ways to make the battle layer more interesting. For Example: Proxy studios games like Zephon or 40k Gladius have heavy combat focus and do not separate units fighting into another layer and keep one unit per tile, so that the movement layer is also simultaneously a tactical positioning layer. This can get very VERY convoluted in the late game when there are tons of units out, but it is generally engaging. But a LOOOOOOOOOT of games have a separate tactical layer for battles, like Endless Legends, Humankind, and at least one other game in my library at this very moment have similar but distinct ways of transitioning the player into a tactical positioning layer when a battle starts to add more depth to combat strategy than just "make fleet have big number smash into other fleet" And with a game with so much depth to its mechanics nearly everywhere else I find myself disappointed by the simplicity of the combat system, especially given how much emphasis is put on the ability to design your own ships. What's the point of designing my ships if it just means that when I choose to watch the generated battle video, the attack animations look slightly different? Overall though, definitely recommend for players new to the series. Vets should seek out reviews by returning players to view the aformentioned negative-leaning consensus from that group
Good game. Big tech tree. Combat is automated but the customization is insane. The ship designers is deep. Sectors and hyperlanes fixes the major issue with Gal Civ 3 and created choke points. There are a dizzying amount of civilizations that are very different from each other, different themes, tech trees, fluff and lore, etc. I'm cheap so I recommend buying on sale and only playing it when you can dedicate your neurons to it, this is not a "grab and casually try to play it" at the beginning.
Stellaris lite, sorry to compare but I love that game as well. This game moves along and you can avoid most micro unlike Stellaris. It has a better theme and established history than Stellaris. I truly wish these games would let you start later at start up, so you could truly enjoy the mega construction and late game tech. So I cheat and mod it to do that. The mod community is much better for Stellaris but not bad. With Stellaris I felt they played the game a lot, where as the tech tree's are really tedious in Civ. Deeper and more complex than Masters of Orion but way easier than Stellaris. I like thier interface and theme better in Civ for sure. The Star Trek mod (horizon) for stellaris made that my favorite, but I like this for a quick sci fi game. Not too many expansions like Stellaris, so save up and get a package deal.
It's good for the nostalgia factor, if you played the old games, this one is pretty much exactly the same. It's easy to jump back into, but not very deep and satisfying overall. After 100 hours it just made me want to play Stellaris. The best feature by far is the AI assisted faction creation. You just type a quick sentence describing your made up civilization, and the AI picks the traits, comes up with a play style, and writes a script to role play when you interact with them.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Galactic Civilizations IV is currently priced at 13.52€ on Steam.
Yes, Galactic Civilizations IV is currently available at a 67% discount. You can purchase it for 13.52€ on Steam.
Yes, Galactic Civilizations IV received 1,378 positive votes out of a total of 1,887 achieving a rating of 7.06.
😊
Galactic Civilizations IV was developed and published by Stardock Entertainment.
Yes, Galactic Civilizations IV is playable and fully supported on Windows.
No, Galactic Civilizations IV is not playable on MacOS.
No, Galactic Civilizations IV is not playable on Linux.
No, Galactic Civilizations IV is not playable on Steam Deck.
No, Galactic Civilizations IV is not playable on Steam Machine.
No, Galactic Civilizations IV does not support VR.
Galactic Civilizations IV offers both single-player and multi-player modes.
Galactic Civilizations IV offers both Co-op and PvP modes.
Yes, there are 13 DLCs available for Galactic Civilizations IV. Explore additional content available for Galactic Civilizations IV on Steam.
Yes, Galactic Civilizations IV is fully integrated with Steam Workshop. Visit Steam Workshop.
No, Galactic Civilizations IV does not support Steam Remote Play.
Yes, Galactic Civilizations IV is enabled for Steam Family Sharing. This means you can share the game with authorized users from your Steam Library, allowing them to play it on their own accounts. For more details on how the feature works, you can read the original Steam Family Sharing announcement or visit the Steam Family Sharing user guide and FAQ page.
You can find solutions or submit a support ticket by visiting the Steam Support page for Galactic Civilizations IV.
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Additionally, we incorporate data from the SteamSpy API, which offers insights into game sales and player statistics. This helps us present a comprehensive view of each game's popularity and performance within the gaming community.
Last Updates| Steam data | 09 September 2026 22:44 UTC |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 06 September 2026 09:00 UTC |
| Steam price | 12 September 2026 10:50 UTC |
| Steam reviews | 09 September 2026 03:55 UTC |
If you'd like to dive deeper into the details about Galactic Civilizations IV, we invite you to check out a few dedicated websites that offer extensive information and insights. These platforms provide valuable data, analysis, and user-generated reports to enhance your understanding of the game and its performance.
- SteamDB - A comprehensive database of everything on Steam about Galactic Civilizations IV
- SteamCharts - Analysis of Galactic Civilizations IV concurrent players on Steam
- ProtonDB - Crowdsourced reports on Linux and Steam Deck Galactic Civilizations IV compatibility
Game modes
Multiplayer
Features
Online players
427
Developer
Stardock Entertainment
Publisher
Stardock Entertainment
Release
19 Oct 2023
Platforms