V4.0

Better Looking Worlds

• Both from the surface and from orbit, planets received a facelift (or continent lift). We've introduced many new islands, continents, and landmasses used by the planet generation system. We've also improved our material system to improve shorelines, add more color, and add more detail to planets.

Fixes

• Fixed various bugs that caused autoskip not to, you know, bloody auto skip!
• Fixed an issue where Prototype Hyperdrive said it needed Promethion, but it actually needed Anti-matter (it now requires Promethion correctly).
• Fixed an issue where the Thullium Hull Reinforcement required Durantium.
• Fixed an issue where the United Earth faction wasn't using the correct Map Color, UI Color or Appearance.
• Fixed an issue where some events weren't changing population correctly (thanks to Old Spider for the fix!)
• Fixed a crash when using debug commands to trigger events out of order.
• Fixed a typo in the Nanite Fabricator description.
• Fixed the Illegal Cloning event Pragmatic growth bonus.
• Fixed the Illegal Cloning event Malevolent Population bonus.
• Fixed the UP Resolution War Fine to have a duration.
• Fixed the Mowling duplicate intro screen text.
• Updated the Cultural Beacon description to state that it allows the training of celebrities.
• Fixed an issue keeping the Nanite Transmitter Complex from being buildable.
• Fixed an issue where Space Monsters might not appear on some events if you don't have Crusade installed.
• Fixed an issue where players wouldn't receive credits in trades
• Fixed a stuck turn if you continued playing after winning the game.

Balance

• Occasional planet frequency increased from 1 to 1.2
• Occasional habitable planets increased from 20 to 30
• Occasional minable planets change increased from 0.15 to 0.2
• Occasional Durantium asteroid increased from 0.2 to 0.3
• Common planet frequency increased from 1.25 to 1.5
• Common Habitable planets increased from 30 to 50
• Common Asteroids increased from 0.08 to 0.10
• Common Min asteroids in a field increased from 2 to 3
• Common Blackholes increased from 5% to 7%
• Common minable planet chance increased from 0.25 to 0.33
• Common Durantium asteroid increased from 0.3 to 0.4
• Abundant blackholes increased from 10% to 12%
• Abundant Minable planet chance increased from 0.4 to 0.6
• Abundant Durantium increased from 0.4 to 0.5
• Non-Aggression treaty minimum relation requirement reduced from 4 to 3.
• Asteroid base production reduced from 1 to 0.5
• Computer Core cost increased from 32 to 40
• Industrial Center cost increased from 30 to 40
• Colonization Center cost increased from 30 to 40
• Administrative Center now available at the start of the game
• Administrative Center admins provided increased from 1 to 2
• Administrative Center influence increased from 1 to 5
• Administrative Center now provides adjacency bonuses for Research, Manufacturing and Tourism
• Substantially more fertile tiles added to planets.
• Ministry of Alien Affairs now awards an administrator.
• Xeno Commerce tech now provides 5 trade routes (instead of 3)
• Cultural exchange increases global influence per turn by 2 (instead of 1)
• Galactic Trade now provides 5 more trade routes (instead of 2)
• Updated score system to differentiate scoring more between victory types.
• Player scores are higher so that we can have more nuance between performance in the future.

AI

• Adjusted AI players that have sufficient resources to focus more on larger ship construction.
• AI wakes up to ascension victory faster.
• AI weighs trade with target player more so when deciding who to attack.
• Reduced AI bonuses at higher difficulties.
• New AI evaluator for handling ships that have destinations.
• Civs that want to conquer the galaxy will more aggressively increase their diplomatic stance to do so.
• AI is more flexible in what weapons it will research.
• AI takes more account of what resources it has when deciding what to focus on.
• Constructor won't ask for new orders if destination is blocked.
• Assault ships will ask for new orders if destination becomes defenseless.
• AI more circumspect about attacking if the enemy fleets / planet / starbase is substantially stronger.
• Default Ai difficulty lowered form Gifted to Beginner.

Performance

• Block some unneeded planet screen UI calls.
• New function created for AI movement that is more efficient on large maps.
• Improved the performance of recalculation when improvements are place.
• Blocked AI treasury evaluation checks if the AI doesn't have any money (a small improvement but it adds up).
• Optimized player calculation.
• Added a new timer threshold for updates occurring more than once per second.
• Updated AI to be able to "see" planets and asteroids if the FOW is exposed to it already rather than recalculating (just like humans). It still can't see if it's under FOW or if it's a ship that is in exposed FOW.
• Reduced the frequency at which map objects are updated.
• Optomization for systems with more than 4 logical threads.
• Game Timer added to control how often we update Human awareness level drawing.
• Removed hidden (but CPU intensive) UI calls when soaking is on.
• Disabled UI screen calc updates if soak is on.
• AI doesn't need to recalcuate its virtual UI.
• Dramatically reduced the distance before the pathfinder starts requiring way points.
• Fixed bug where passing an invalid ID would simply crash the Object Finder rather than, you know, returning a NULL pointer.
• AI players don't need to update their virtual UI for removing and adding things to their build queue.
• Citizen units when they arrive at a destination planet now set a dirty flag to recalc rather than force recalculating all stats right then and there.
• Game update threshold lowered from 30ms to 10ms for better visual fidelity.
• Made Galaxy Destruction faster (most noticeable when you go to load a save from within a game).

UI

• Fixed typos.
• Clearer description of some planetary improvements.

Other Resources

V4.0 Forum Post