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Milky Way

This is an attempt at a realistic Milky Way galaxy. It is an insane sized map that has been edited using all the information that I could gather about the galaxy we live in. Star names are not accurate to real life, but the galactic geography is done with a great deal of attention placed upon what we know in real life. I hope this will result in a more immersive map for people to play in.

For gameplay's sake, the number of arms have been reduced to 2 that wrap around and around instead of attempting to make four. Early attempts at this resulted in thin star trains, one star after another in a series of four lines that wrapped around the core, so the standard (for Stardock) two arm spiral was settled upon.

In real life, our galaxy's core is a supermassive black hole surrounded by many old, large stars. Everything is tightly packed with the sky seen from there a vision of stars that look the size of our brightest stars here filling the entire night sky. As such, the center of the galaxy is tightly packed, resource rich, and largely uninhabitable. There are a few barely habitable worlds there but not enough for a strong manufacturing base. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the outskirts of the galaxy is barely habitable as well, but for a different reason. There's very little material out there and not enough gravitational pull to start things off. Expect spread out planets and few resources.

The middle parts of the galaxy are where most factions start off. The player starts on Earth in a Solar System with all 8 planets. Venus is terraformed and ready for colonization, bringing the total usable planets in the system to 3.

Black Holes have received a special bit of attention in this map. Almost every black hole as a surrounding cloud of gas storms due to the black holes sucking things in. As a result of this, expect to find Elerium in those clouds as well as the normal loadout of antimatter in the gravity wells themselves. The goal was to make black holes a more strategic location than merely the navigational pain they were before.

Finally, those two little blobs on the top right and bottom left are intentional. Astronomers have said they know that the Milky Way currently has two small galaxies colliding with it right now. I thought it'd be better to put these on the outskirts than to just put blobs into the middle of arms.

The map is insane size, so I recommend you play it with at least 15 races, if not the recommended 20. Each of the unique systems that host a major faction in the GalCiv universe has been placed and slotted for an AI to start there.

Enjoy!

This map utilizes content from DLC. The following DLC is required to play:
Precursor Worlds DLC