Which game engine is used for gal civ 3?

I found an old bookmark that goes to an article that will answer your first question.  I'm not sure about the second one.  Here is the link.

This is very useful bookmark, thank you so much for sharing!

The comparison of engine generations is good starting information to estimate the worth and quality of a game,

the link does point out stardock uses their own engine, although only information about it is that it's 4th generation and nothing else.

Probably nothing new since hardware utilization can be seen by setting up huge maps and playing game, so that's one big plus.

It also seems to suggest that next gal civ game is going to be based on nitrous engine for which I found info here:

Nitrous – Oxide Interactive (oxidegames.com)

Yea, I need to update that doc.

GalCiv III (And in the future IV) use the "Galactic" engine.  It's specially made for "massive scale" 4X games.  The focus is on doing as much in parallel as possible so that we can have big galaxies with lots of players.

The main limitation on GalCiv is that the player turns are sequential (player 1, player 2, etc.).  I am hoping we can come up with a way for players to be able to move simultaneously provided that they aren't in the same general location which would greatly speed things up.

Nitrous is the basis of all our new titles.  For the way we use Nitrous, it could almost be described as a technology as Stardock, during the development of Star Control, created a game engine on it called Cider.  

Nitrous handles the rendering, I/O, and task scheduling while Cider handles everything else (UI, Audio, Data management, scripting, physics, animation, etc.).  

So an updated chart would have Nitrous-->Cider.  Cider is based on Nitrous.  Since Nitrous is made by our partner, Oxide, we can't very well call our work Nitrous v2.0 hence the name "Cider".

Sounds like good setup you have, since very very few companies have modern game engines that are focused on 4X games. (which is ofc. sad)

The trend is changing but very slowly, I'm only sad that no 4X focused engine is available to public without upfront payment. (ex. for people who just want to learn or boost their skills and pay according to earnings)

back to topic, I want to say I'm happy with world size vs game performance which is absolutely desired due to accelerating hardware capacity these days, right now there is one more game company (beside stardock) that pays attention to this important detail (I'll refrain from naming anyone) so you guys deserve more reputation just for that!

The main limitation on GalCiv is that the player turns are sequential (player 1, player 2, etc.).

I am hoping we can come up with a way for players to be able to move simultaneously.

This is an interesting (and desired) feature I've already seen in other games, probably more relevant for multiplayer since AI could always be faster than human player giving them an implicit edge (if not time handicapped), IMO should always be optionally enabled by the player otherwise it could ruin the original sense of turn based gameplay (due to uncertain turn start).

Thank you for response, I'll definitely point out gal civ as one of the competitive 4x games whenever involved in discussions.

My pleasure.  

Back in 1992, I started working on GalCiv for OS/2 because I wanted a game where the AI could think while the player took their turns.  OS/2 was multithreaded (Windows was not back then) and hence the game was born.