Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords is arguably the best turn-based “4X” game ever made. Stardock’s epic strategy game proved that there’s still room for a great turn-based design within an industry full of real-time instant gratification. With stellar AI, sharp visuals, and excellent gameplay, GalCiv II was the complete sequel. Now, the company is trying to add even goodies to the package with the upcoming expansion: Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar.
The story picks up after the destruction of the Dread Lords by the warlike Drengin and a compilation of other allies. The Drengin, to no one’s real surprise, turn on the other races and enslave them in an attempt to take over the known universe (with friends like these…)
The problem is that a civil war within the Drengin Empire breaks out between the “Korath” clan and the rest of the empire. The Korath are even more insane as they seek the utter annihilation of every non-Drengin race whereas the rest of the empire simply wishes to enslave everyone to do their bidding – the lesser of two evils. Naturally, the Korath is one of the new playable races in the game, and if you ever wanted to play an even more military oriented faction than the base Drengin – here’s your chance. Be warned: The Korath are the death squads – there is no enslaving, no bleeding an empire of money, no, the Korath are all about the utter destruction of other planets.
The other new race isn’t as hell-bent on killing everything that moves. The Krynn Consulate are more about earning cash, spying on other races (they even start with better espionage techs), and being diplomatic all in the name of their religion. The two provide a very nice contrast to one another.
Each race in the game, both the old and new, now have one new “Superpower” that reflects the spirit of a particular race. The Korath have “Super Annihilators” which grant them access to a ‘spore ship’ which can destroy planets. Of course not all of these powers are combat oriented as it all depends on the nature of the race. The Krynn are “Super Spies”, for example, and the Humans are now truly master diplomats. (Hopefully these won’t throw balance out of whack, we’ll just have to wait and see.)
Aside from the new mini-campaign and the new races, the mantra of this add-on is one of user customization. Dark Avatar is really all about adding the obligatory new features but also allowing the users to really delve into making the galaxy their own. Not only can you create your own playable race, but now you can design your opponents as well. You can toss in colors, picture files, names, whatever you need to make the game your own. Want to turn the game into a Star Trek, Star Wars, or Warhammer 40K style showdown? Now’s your chance. With the enhanced ship design tool you can even customize the ships so that you can freelance some new design ideas or copy designs from books and movies – licensing be damned!
Going a step further with the level of customization, each race now has a Personality Tab which allows you to tweak exactly how each race makes decisions and views the universe from how it handles money to how long the AI takes to make a move each turn. The idea is to truly let each race stand on its own in terms of behavior, and this seems to be a big step in the right direction in allowing players to take the game that is presented to them and make it their own from top to bottom. Finally, there is the new “Epic Generator” which, at least on paper, is an excellent idea. Most long, drawn out games, be it GalCiv II or Civilization, ends up telling a story of some sort. Each race, nation, faction, or tribe has a story to tell and the Epic Generator is how Dark Avatar helps you relive it. After each game, the generator spits out a “story” in HTML format complete with pictures in an attempt to take the hours of gameplay that you just enjoyed and give it a real narrative.
