Introduction

Galactic War is a roguelite campaign for Planetary Annihilation. Starting with only a small amount of tech you battle your away across the galaxy to uncover more, fighting increasingly tough and numerous opponents until you defeat the three enemy factions. Defeat bosses in specific systems and you’ll unlock new starting loadouts which you can use in future campaigns.

This guide will help you pick the right difficulty, explain the factions and unlocks, and also guide you through adding more maps.

Difficulty

The higher you set the AI difficulty the greater its eco modifier, economy handling and general intelligence will be. Normal uses a different set of maps from the other difficulty levels, with far less multi-planet systems.

Easy Normal Hard Relentless Absurd Threat assessments Terrible Terrible Bad Best Best Micro None OK OK Best Best Scouting OK Best Best Best Best Factory build delay Long Some Tiny None None Expansion delay Extreme Long None None None Avoids eco float No No Yes Yes Yes Commander retreats No Yes Yes Yes Yes Maps Simple Standard Standard Standard Standard Difficulty ramp* +0.01 +0.01 +0.01 +0.01 +0.02 Turtles Yes Yes No No No Targets weakest Commander No Yes Yes Yes Yes T2 delay Yes No No No No More commanders No Unlikely Unlikely Possibly Likely Base eco modifier x0.4 x0.5 x0.5 x0.7 x0.8

*The increase applied to the AI’s base eco modifier for each planet you travel from the starting point

System Size

Size Number of Planets Small 18 Medium 24 Large 36 Epic 54 Uber 78 Vast* 108 Gigantic* 144 Ridiculous* 186 Marathon* 234

*added by the Bigger Galactic War mod

Factions

Legonis Machina

Foundation

Synchronous

Revenants

By choosing a colour in the lobby you are choosing a faction. The faction you select will not appear in your war. The only difference between the factions are their boss systems and loadouts, so choose a faction whose boss you wish to avoid, or whose loadouts you have already unlocked.

Loadouts

Your starting loadout determines what units you have access to from the start of the war. You start with one loadout unlocked: the Vehicle Commander. Seven loadouts remain locked. You will unlock them by defeating particular faction bosses.

Each faction has multiple possible boss systems. At the start of a war, one system is selected for each faction. You may not always encounter a boss tied to a locked loadout.

Faction System Loadout Unlocked Legonis Machina Kohr Artillery Commander Entara Bionic Augmentation Commander of Neutralizing Agoge Tau Leporis Poseidon’s Wrath Foundation Atlas Air Commander Patagonia Assault Commander Xylcor Blogar’s Fist Zeta Draconis Synchronous Cupru Bot Commander Platina Fier Safir Apa Revenants Alenquer Orbital Commander Xianyao General Commander Epiphany Varthema Chernykh

Adding More Maps

Once you’ve played a lot of Galactic War you will have seen all the built-in systems more than once. You might fancy a change, have particular systems you’d like to see, or just want more multi-planet than you get out-of-the-box. To achieve this we will use Shared Systems for Galactic War, a mod which lets you load in TITANS systems, your systems, and systems out of any map pack you lay your hands on.

Installing

Go into Community Mods from the main menu. Click the Available tab and search for “gw”. Select Shared Systems for Galactic War and choose to install it.

Using the Mod

When you go into Galactic War you’ll notice something different.

In the bottom left you now choose what systems to load into Galactic War. By default, it has selected the PA category, which are the systems that ship with TITANS. Below that is My Systems, which would load any systems you have created or imported. Default Systems and onwards are categories on the Shared Systems server. These are areas which anyone can upload to (default systems) or are restricted to specific individuals (everything else). I recommend against using these categories for two reasons:

Many of the systems are old and out-of-date The Shared Systems server is often offline, or when online is slow to load the systems

In the screenshot above we see a 0 next to Default Systems and the Go To War button is greyed out. This is because the systems from Default Systems have not completed loading. Given the count of 0, I would assume the server is offline, but even if it were online you wouldn’t be able to play until hundreds of random systems had been loaded.

So how do we add more systems? Simple. Map packs.

Adding Map Packs

Return to Community Mods on the main menu and this time search for “map”. Select the ones you want and click install for each.

Checking the Contents

If you haven’t used these map packs before you might want to check out what you just installed. The easiest way to do this is to go into the System Editor from the main menu.

Each map pack consists of one or more categories which are displayed as tabs. In addition, you will see My Systems, which are ones you’ve created or imported, and PA, which are the systems that come with the game. Shared should be ignored.

If you want to get an idea of what you’ve added just browse through the selection here and click on a system to get an overview. You’ll be able to see the number of planets, the number of starting locations, planet size, etc. You can always load them in the editor if you want to go in-depth, but this overview should give you an idea of which categories you want to add into your war.

Adding Your Maps to Galactic War

Now everything is loaded all you have to do is pick which ones to use. On the Galactic War screen, you’ll see that it’s not a list of map packs, rather it’s a list of the categories you saw in System Editor.

Each category displays a system count, in addition, once you select a category the number of multi-planet systems in that category will appear in brackets.

You are free to mix and match the system categories as you wish to get whatever Galactic War experience you want. The important thing is that you should now have a wide variety of exciting systems to play on.

Galactic War AI Overhaul

Once you’ve played enough Galactic War you might want to increase the challenge, or simply inject more variety into your game. The Galactic War AI Overhaul mod adds the following:

Faction personalities

Customised enemy/sub-commanders Unique model Unique personality Unique colour Fight according to their faction’s preferred style

Eight new difficulties suitable for anyone from a new player to a veteran of the game

Reduced sub-commander power so they won’t carry the game for you anymore

Adds the possibility of multiple factions in a system and an FFA occurring

Add support for shared army enemies

Bosses are distinctly more difficult than surrounding systems

Added planetary intelligence to allow you to make meaningful decisions on the galactic map

Randomised spawns so maps remain fresh on replay

Uses all game modes: Bounty mode Land anywhere Sudden death

You can give the enemy tougher commander units

Option to give yourself more starting neutral systems

The AI uses tech card buffs

Guaranteed loadout to unlock every war

New loadouts

Unlocks Galactic War’s biggest planetary systems

Adds a new faction

Unique Commander colours make it easy to identify everyone

Intelligence reports allow for meaningful decisions on the strategy layer

Installing

Go into Community Mods from the main menu. Click the Available tab and search for “gw”. Select Galactic War AI Overhaul and choose to install it.

Using the Mod

In the Galactic War lobby you’ll find you have new difficulties available to you:

Difficulties

Where an item is greyed out it means the setting is specific to each Commander, not the difficulty level.

The difficulty in Galactic War AI Overhaul is higher than the base game and higher difficulties assume you have unlocked better loadouts. The number of enemy Commanders will scale much higher than in the base game, so if you select a large galaxy make sure your PC is up to the task.

This mod introduces an option called Easier Start, which allows you to add more neutral systems at the beginning of the war to increase the amount of free tech you receive.

Casual Iron Bronze Silver Gold Platinum Diamond Uber Threat assessments Micro None OK Best Best Best Best Best Best Scouting OK Best Best Best Best Best Best Best Factory build delay Small None None None None None None None Expansion delay None None None None None None None None Avoids eco float No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Commander retreats No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Maps Simple Standard Standard Standard Standard Standard Standard Standard Difficulty ramp* 0.05 0.075 0.1 0.1 0.15 0.175 0.2 N/A Turtles Yes Yes No No No No No No Targets weakest Commander No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes T2 delay More commanders Unlikely Possibly Possibly Likely Some Several Plenty Plenty Base eco modifier x0.4 x0.5 x0.6 x0.7 x0.85 x1.0 x1.2 x10

*The increase applied to the AI’s base eco modifier for each planet you travel from the starting point

Factions

Play as whichever faction you find hardest to beat so that you don’t have to face them. Remember that your sub-commanders will play according to faction preference, so make sure to provide them with the necessary tech.

While each faction has a preference in how it plays, each Commander within that faction will play slightly differently.

Legonis Machina

Focuses on land units

The closest faction to the skirmish AI

Foundation

Focuses on air and naval units

Can often be the easiest faction to face early

Synchronous

Uses a balance of all unit types

A jack of all-trades but a master of none

Revenants

Focuses on orbital units

Harder to beat on multi-planet systems

Cluster