The feature list boasts "updated Planetary Invasions". What was wrong with the old ones and what has been changed?

The current planetary invasions are really ugly and distracting. Players have been asking us to update this to conform to the level of visual quality of the rest of the game.

Could you describe some of the new ships and ship components?

A lot of the new ships and corresponding ship components have to do with empowering fleets. In the current game, players can add things to ships that make that ship better. But there are no components that affect other ships in the fleet. Now players will be able to make ships that make a given fleet travel faster or have better defenses, and so forth.

Will any of the mechanics from the previous iterations of the game (spying, trade, research, diplomacy) get an overhaul?

Not really. We’re providing updates to those mechanics in free updates instead. Our view is that players already paid for those overhauls and shouldn’t be charged again. So the upcoming Galactic Civilizations II v1.7 provides improvements to diplomacy and trade, and next year’s Galactic Civilizations II v2.0 (which will be free to existing players) will provide improvements to spying and other elements.

How immense is an "Immense" galaxy?

It’s insane. 22x22 sectors. The current largest galaxy is 16x16 and typically takes over a month to play. We have no idea how long it will take to play a 22x22 galaxy, but players have been requesting ever larger galaxies.

Was there any one thing that persuaded Stardock that a second expansion was not only viable, but desirable?

Terror Stars. The star-system-destroying unit was something that players were really clamoring for and we knew we couldn’t move away from Galactic Civilizations II without bringing them back (they were in GalCiv I).

We'd like to thank Brad for taking the time to chat with us. You can learn more about GalCiv II at the Stardock website .