Yeah I need grid at closer zoom most of all. Thankfully Brad posted a fix for it on Discord..
Look for the following lines in Data\Core folder for the game..
[code]<StrategicIconDistanceThresholdLow>4500</StrategicIconDistanceThresholdLow>
<StrategicIconDistanceThresholdHigh>3500</StrategicIconDistanceThresholdHigh>[/code]
And swap the values 4500 and 3500 around.
After doing this I had to remove my Documents\My Games\GalCiv4 for the change to take affect. Not sure if there's a more elegant way but make sure to rename the folder if you want to keep save games etc.
This makes the grid visibile at close zooms and fades out for far zooms which I prefer.
I also found you can adjust the intensity of the grid by changing GridIntensity in the same file. I think it's 0 (transparent) to 1 (opaque), I'm trying it at 0.75 to make the grid a bit more blended with the background.