Galactic Civilizations 3 Receives Free AI Update

A free update for 4X turn-based strategy game Galactic Civilizations 3, titled update 1.4, has been released by developer Stardock.

The update does a lot to improve the game’s AI, which developer Stardock called “pretty good” when the game launched. Naturally, players ended up learning how the AI in Galactic Civilizations 3 worked and, more importantly, how they could easily best it in competition.

“So how did we solve it? Data mining,” a Stardock employee wrote in a forum thread about the update.

“We started looking at how these experts were playing the game,” the post continued. “Sure, stalking YouTube players may seem wrong but then again, people openly posting their strategies are fair game right? And with GalCiv III being a 64-bit multi-core game, we can toss a lot of computing power at the problem. So we did.”

The developer notes that due to “all of our budget” going into the creation of update 1.4, there is no DLC being released in conjunction with this update.

Update 1.4 also brings with it some changes to multiplayer, overall game balance, and more. The full changelog can be read here.

In past updates to Galactic Civilizations 3, Stardock has also added Steam Workshop support and other free updates.