The first review of Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor has arrived and it's from GameSpy.  Mega reviewer Allen Rausch has taken an extremely in-depth look at the game and put together a very detailed review.

Here's a quote:

The technology trees alone make it impossible for someone who's sampled Twilight of the Arnor to ever go back to just playing Dark Avatar. Add to that impressive customization tools, new gameplay dynamics, better AI, graphic upgrades, new ship-builder components and completely re-done flavor text and hundreds and hundreds of smaller tweaks, fixes and changes and what you have is an absolute triumph and a new standard for turn-based-strategy games. Bravo, Stardock. This is how expansion packs should be done.

Please check out the review for yourself!

 Click here to view link.

The final expansion pack for Galactic Civilizations II has been released! And we're very happy with how much people like it.

At the same time, we're not done. Let me share with you some of our plans:

• Right now, we're finishing up The Political Machine. Once that is finished, part of the team will be shifted to the SDE-2 team which is working on the "fantasy strategy game" and the other part will return to GalCiv.
   
• The plan is to release a v1.92 in early June.  v1.92 will be mostly bug fixing and balancing. There's two particularly annoying issues that have cropped up. The first one is that on some Vista systems, some "string now found" issues come up. No idea yet. The work around is to run the game as administrator but we have no idea why that fixes it as none of us do that.  The other annoying one is the Alt-esc issue - it doesn't always come back when you try to return to the game.  On top of that, there's various balancing and house cleaning that we will want to do.
   
• Then, probably in July or maybe early August we will be releasing Galactic Civilizations II v2.0. This update will affect all versions of GalCiv II but mostly Dark Avatar and Twilight. The biggest change will be the enhanced espionage system for DA and ToA users. There will also be additional graphical improvements in ToA to continue "future proofing" the game. The Metaverse will also be getting some much needed love with v2.0.

After that, it'll depend on you. Our budget post 2.0 is largely based on sales at that stage. Most people will be transferred to working on the fantasy strategy game so that we can announce it later this year. Other parts of the team will be working with Gas Powered Games on Demigod.

So that's where we're at. Cheers!

Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor has been released!

Stardock is pleased to announce the general availability of the second (and final) expansion pack to Galactic Civilizations II.  The new expansion pack, Twilight of the Arnor, adds hundreds of new features, gives each civilization a unique technology tree, a unique set of planetary improvements, star base modules, ship parts, and more. 

Moreover, with Twilight of the Arnor, Stardock went back and revamped the graphics for the game to bring them up to the state of the art.  A new sound track has also been added along with updates to the computer AI.  It also reintroduces the Terror Star, the ultimate weapon last seen in the original Galactic Civilizations as well as a new victory condition called Ascension. Online tournaments have also been added to allow people to compete at playing the same map and scenario and submit their scores to the GalCiv metaverse.

The expansion also includes the conclusion to the Dread Lords saga in the form of the Twilight of the Arnor campaign. 

And finally, to keep the game evolving for years to come, Stardock includes a half dozen newly developed editors that will help modders and end users alike such as a map editor, scenario editor, campaign editor, tech editor, ship component editor, and much more.

The expansion pack is $29.95.  It requires the previous expansion (Dark Avatar) to also be installed. New players can purchase the integrated "Ultimate Bundle" for $59.95 and get the entire Galactic Civilizations II saga.

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So what's new in Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor? Check out the in-depth info guide to get the details on what may be the most comprehensive expansion pack in PC gaming history. You can get just the expansion pack or get the entire GalCiv II saga at a discount here at galciv2.com.

[Twilight of the Arnor Info Guide]

 

 

I-Mod Productions, one of the top community sites for Galactic Civilizations II mods and modding recently launched a brand new modding wiki.  The goal of the I-Mod Wiki is to create a central knowledgebase for modders of virtually any game to come and share their knowledge, or benefit from the knowledge and experience of others.

To start things off with a bang, they've launched the wiki with a huge modding guide for Galactic Civilizations II, with contributions from the I-Mod development team. 

Here are a few of the main topics covered in the modding guide:

• Importing Ship Models
• Adding a ship to GalCiv2
• Editing the User Interface
• Converting video for use in GalCiv2

There's also a handy XML reference sheet for folks looking to hack apart the text files on their own.

Since this is, after all, a wiki you can join in and add to the guide with your own knowledge and experience.  The more people that contribute to the guide, the better it will be.

Thanks to Terraner05 and his team for the hard work on this great community resource!

 Click here to view link.

Recently Joystiq sat down with Brad Wardell (Stardock CEO) and Chris Taylor (Gas Powered Games Founder) recently to talk a bit about Demigod, a little bit about Sins & Gal Civ 2, and of course about copy protection and where the PC games market is headed. 

The result?  It looks like PC Gaming isn't dead afterall, and that Stardock/Gas Powered Games have some interesting ideas on where the future lies.

Click to read the full interview, it's definitely worth a little bit of your time, and should give you a bit of a glimpse into what the future may hold.

 

 Click here to view link.

Twilight of the Arnor is just about gold. Check out the journal entry for a gallery of images from the release candidate!

Seriously, the number of new things in this expansion pack is immense. If you've been in the beta for it, now would be a good time to go back and play some Dark Avatar or original Dread Lords so you can really feel the difference.

A lot of improvements have been made this week to gameplay, AI, pacing, and more.  We're very excited (and nervous) for next week. We hope you like what we've wrought. :)

[Screenshots]

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Stardock is pleased to announce that Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor has gone into final gamma testing. The expansion pack to the critically acclaimed space strategy game, Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords, completes the Dread Lord saga with the return of the powerful Precursor civilization, the Arnor. 

Arguably the most comprehensive expansion pack in strategy game history, Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor has more new features and content than Galactic Civilizations II had over the original.

A labor of love, Twilight of the Arnor is nearly complete.  This week, we are putting it through final gamma testing as lots of content and goodies that were held back during the public beta are integrated in, tested, polished, etc. 

Amongst the new features includes unique technology trees for each of the 12 major civilizations. This also means unique weapons, ships, planetary improvements, and much more for each civilization.  This has allowed us to greatly expand the story of each civilization.  Moreover, a new victory condition has been added called Ascension in which players can take control of the Ascension crystals (introduced in the campaign) for victory.  The graphics of Twilight of the Arnor have been completely revamped to bring the game's visuals to 2008 standards. Check out the screenshot below to get an idea.

We have set the launch date to be April 30th (late afternoon Eastern Standard Time) for the digital release. Twilight of the Arnor does require the first expansion pack (Dark Avatar) to run.  A bundle of the entire saga is available at a discount.  The final expansion pack to the most highly rated space-strategy game of all time is nearly here...

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The Graphics Difference:

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