Galactic Civilizations II was one of the best games of 2006. Stardock’s turn-based strategy space epic was a throw back to PC gaming days gone by, but it was also a fresh approach to the old “4X” style strategy game. The company could have easily taken the easy road with its Dark Avatar expansion – throw in a few more races, maybe a few techs, and a campaign and slap a price tag on it. Thankfully, Dark Avatar is much more than that. It’s almost a required purchase for fans of the original, which is perhaps the best compliment you can give to an add-on.

The meat of Dark Avatar remains the custom scenarios, but the campaign takes an interesting approach; it starts at the end of the GalCiv II campaign where the Drengin have basically taken over, chasing down the last remnants of resistance after the defeat of the Dread Lords. A faction of the Drengin known as the Korath Clan has different ideas as to how to rule the galaxy. They want to exterminate everyone whereas the base Drengin want to enslave the populace (talk about the lesser of two evils…) As you’d expect tempers flare and a struggle ensues that brings in the other races, which leads to yet another full on war.

Dark Avatar makes a lot of subtle changes and additions to the base game, but there are a handful of new goodies that really shape it into something special: Planetary environments, espionage, asteroids mining, mega events, and racial super abilities.

The new planetary system reworks the entire early portion of the game because in order to colonize most planets, you need to research the proper technology, which forces you to make some critical decisions in the first several turns. It also helps to tone down the mass rush to build colony ships right off the bat simply because there are fewer planets you can colonize at the start of a game. There’s also a new premium on scouting because before you invest a lot of time and research into developing tech to colonize a particular planet type, it’s a good idea to find out if there are more planets of the same type on the map. Dark Avatar forces you to balance this all out.

Asteroid mining is a fairly simple addition which helps boost production on worlds that need a kick in the pants, resource wise. The new spy mechanic is a bit more ruthless. Espionage and counter espionage plays a huge role in how each game plays out. Spies have the ability to completely wreck a planet’s production or morale. Spies are now a purchased unit and not just an abstract idea…and they’re also quick to die, but they play the role of Kamikaze or rabble rouser by either causing complete chaos before capture or luring others to your side.

The Mega Events are more or less random events that can turn a game on its head. It’s basically a random luck element that players cannot truly prepare for – there’s not much you can do to brace your empire for a mass plague, or a space pirate infestation. Just when you think you have a game locked up, a mega event can bring you back down to earth, so to speak. The new Super Abilities help separate each race even more than before and also have the power to turn a game inside out as they are stunningly powerful. Take the Drath’s Super Manipulator ability as an example. This ability allows the Drath to play each race off of one another in an attempt to start a war. There are a lot of different mega powers from Super Breeders (populations gone wild!) to Super Spies (free spies and great at preventing being spied upon). Yes, these are extremely powerful abilities but they add teeth to each race – and like everything else in the game, they can be turned off if you’d rather not use them. .

In addition to these key components, the expansion also brings enhanced AI, improved graphics, and an unprecedented level of user customization options to the table. The AI in GalCiv II was by no means a slouch, in fact it was perhaps the best CPU AI of any game last year, but Dark Avatar makes it even more cunning. From ruthless diplomacy (no longer you can swindle the AI out of anything) to a better grasp of managing its empire, the AI puts up an exceptional fight even on the Normal difficulty setting. The game still lacks multiplayer support which isn’t a really big deal as a game like this just isn’t as practical as a multiplayer game, but the AI should keep you plenty busy all on its own.