Major free update for players of the Dark Avatar and Twilight expansion packs
Published on November 5, 2008 By Island Dog In GalCiv II News

Stardock has released a major free update to its award-winning PC strategy game, Galactic Civilizations II. The update adds a host of new features to its latest expansion pack Twilight of the Arnor as well as expands on features found in the Dark Avatar expansion pack.

Galactic Civilizations II was originally released in 2006 and won numerous PC game awards including “Turn-based Strategy Game of the Year from GameSpy”. In 2007 the first expansion pack, Dark Avatar was released and became the highest-rated expansion pack of all time according to Metacritic. This year, the second expansion pack, Twilight of the Arnor was released and surpassed Dark Avatar in ratings and sales.

Version 2.0 has been developed as a major free update, primarily for Twilight of the Arnor, to help integrate the expansion packs together with the original into a single consolidated experience.

New features include but are not limited to:

  • Players can now design new starships from the main game menu
  • All game campaigns have been updated to be playable within Twilight of the Arnor
  • New user manual
  • Numerous new game setup options
  • Updated diplomatic options
  • New planetary governors for automating the building of planets
  • Revamped espionage system
  • Auto-building for starbases
  • Balance updating
  • Improved graphics

Since its release, Galactic Civilizations II has sold over 300,000 copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling PC turn-based strategy games of all time and has built a significant player base amongst strategy gamers, modders and sci-fi fans.

Players can download the update via Impulse (www.impulsedriven.com), Stardock’s digital distribution platform that enables users to purchase, download and update hundreds of different PC games and applications.

Players can get the entire Galactic Civilizations II saga at their local retail outlet or direct from Stardock at www.galciv2.com.

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Comments (Page 1)
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on Nov 05, 2008

Are we still going to be able to get 2.0 via Stardock Central? I don't see it there as of 14:29 Eastern.

on Nov 05, 2008

Just checked impulse to get the 2.0 as of 14:52 pm eastern and was not showing for me.

on Nov 05, 2008

Yay!

 

A question though: I have TA 1.99 installed, DA updated to 2.0. Why is it that Impulse wants to uninstall the 1.99 beta before update TA? I'd rather avoid that if possible.

on Nov 05, 2008

 hrrm  just tried using impulse as of 16:00 eastern and still giving me no updates to be installed for either DA or TA 

  da is at 1.8 something and ta is 1.99

   anyone else getting this problem or is it just me ?

on Nov 05, 2008

Awesome!    But shouldn't this be posted to the GC2 front page as well? 

 

 

on Nov 05, 2008

IT's showing, but it's asking me to uninstall TA before installing the patch.

 

on Nov 05, 2008

I own the EU version which cannot be registered on Impulse so I cannot get this shiny looking update.

 

I'm sure I'm not the only one in this position ... any chance of this being resolved soon?

on Nov 05, 2008

WOW! Where's the full change log?

Oh.. Impulse has it... why not posted here?

Duh, why i don't copy it...

Ain't "full" really though.

WAIT, they didn't make Ascension any better? No ability to adjust the time required or anything? Does the AI now actually care about that victory condition at least?

 

Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor
___________________________________

Version 2.00
----------------
+ NEW: Ship design screen available from the main menu
+ NEW: Old Campaigns now available in Twilight using new Tech trees
+ NEW: Campaign mods will now show up in the screen from the mods folder
+ NEW: Updated Twilight Manual
+ NEW: Galaxy setup options
+ Frequency of Extreme Planets
+ Frequency of Random Events
+ Option to disable tech brokering
+ Option to disable surrenders

+ NEW: Can now trade entire fleets
+ NEW: Planetary Govenors allow you to queue improvements and automate contruction of improvements
+ Accessible from the civilization manager's planetary governor tab.
+ Queues auto-update when a better version of an improvement is unlocked
+ Hotkey for bringing up the planetary governor popup for a selected planet (ctrl+P).

+ NEW: Can now place spies to gather information without needing to sabotage
You should only be able to reach the level of spy that you have placed on a race, where, once that level is reached, no more 'spying' is being done on that race.
1 spy: Low Espionage
2 spies: Medium
3 Spies: High
4 Spies: Advanced

+ NEW: Can now spy on minor races
+ NEW: Can now prioritize types of modules to build first (per-Starbase)
+ As constructors arrive to a starbase with auto build option set to ON, they will automatically add modules according to the priority
+ If your treasury is negative and the next module has a cost to build, it will skip that module until there is money in the treasury.

+ NEW: Launching a ship in orbit will select it

+ TWEAK: AI demonstrates more variance in techs
+ TWEAK: Tourism revenue doubled
+ TWEAK: Constructor Maintenance increased
+ TWEAK: Military ship maintenance decreased
+ TWEAK: Weapon technologies are more expensive
+ TWEAK: Overall technology expenses decreased over time

+ FIXED: Crash bug that caused crash in fleet battles (rare)
+ FIXED: Bug where AI did not build starbases correctly from a constructor in a fleet, which eventually caused a crash
+ FIXED: Bug where victory by wiping out all remaining (multiple) races with a single terror star attack was not calculated as a military victory

on Nov 05, 2008

IT's showing, but it's asking me to uninstall TA before installing the patch.

Same here. I was wondering if it was asking everyone to uninstall first. I wonder if this will kill my 1.99 Meta game in progress.

on Nov 05, 2008

My TA version was 1.96 and I do not get the chance to update the game. De-installed the game and now I can see (and re-install) the 2.00.028. Lucky that I do not have any games running.

DA is 2.00.104? Is this correct?

on Nov 05, 2008

DethAdder

IT's showing, but it's asking me to uninstall TA before installing the patch.


Same here. I was wondering if it was asking everyone to uninstall first. I wonder if this will kill my 1.99 Meta game in progress.

Always assume patching mid-game will ruin a save. It may not always be true, but why take the chance?

on Nov 05, 2008

Always assume patching mid-game will ruin a save. It may not always be true, but why take the chance?

Yea, I usually assume the same. I wasn't particularly deep into the game so I went ahead and updated. Good news is the game loaded up fine and I checked the debug for cheat flags. Seems everything's a go

on Nov 05, 2008

Y_E_A_H!!

It all showed up alright in Impulse and i'm just about ready to go there too.

Thanks all at SD for the wonderful work.

 

**

EDIT... that was fast; logged on - updated both DL & DA (smallest files) - complied with the "un-install first" process - swiftly got the entire 2.00.xxx TA version at about 750kbs for a long but worth it 350+MBs - looped into a small first tryout game - the waving Robot came back (but, that's okay it is a personal correction to default DL folders) --- and, to my surprise i've got an absolutely free colony ship from my nearest neighbor (bug?)!

Otherwise, CoSH mod & its numerous files are still working and all the new DDS cursors look great.

Now, onto the Minors multiple set(s).

**

on Nov 05, 2008

infinity387squared
I own the EU version which cannot be registered on Impulse so I cannot get this shiny looking update.

I'm sure I'm not the only one in this position ... any chance of this being resolved soon?

Install TA from Stardock Central, and then update it to 2.0 from Impulse.

 

Yeah, this is really irritating. If I didn't have a fast broadband I would have become really angry. Here's what I did:

1. Tried updating TA 1.99 to 2.0 from Impulse, but it needed uninstalling.

2. Uninstalled TA from Impulse.

3. Installed the full TA 2.0 from Impulse, but then couldn't activate / register it.

4. Uninstalled TA again from Impulse.

5. Installed the full TA 1.96 from Stardock Central.

6. Installed TA 2.0 update from Impulse.

7. Play

on Nov 06, 2008

I'm happy ... can't wait to test all the new features.

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