Galactic Civilizations II v1.1 is here!  This free update to Stardock's award-winning PC strategy game includes tons of new features, updates to the computer AI, gameplay tweaks, bug fixes, and more!

Here are some of the major new features:

• New Option: No tech trading.
• New Option: Blind exploration (players can't see the spheres of influence on the mini map)
• New Option: Random intelligence (Players select a general difficulty level and the game can randomize the indvidiaul intelligences of each player.
• New Option: Random number of players (Players can elect to have the game decide how many players they're going up against)
• New Option: Random opponents (Players can elect to have the game choose which players they are up against)
• New OPtion: Random galaxy size (Players can elect to have the game randomly pick a galaxy size)
• Computer AI *significantly* enhanced.
• Computer AI updated to work together with other players (including human player) to thwart a common foe.
• New Alien dialog: (ex: Drengin: "You complete me." ack!). Another Ex: Computer players grovel dialog more satisfying.
• Fleet Manager Screen added to manage stacks of ships and fleets that are on the same tile more easily
• Rally points can be moved
• Lots of UI tweaks
• Game will tell you when someone else is paying off, manipulating things behind the scenes to go to war with you (but won't tell you precisely who is doing it).
• Players can choose to upgrade ships and either have the functional components removed by default or have them stay.
• Unused Social Production now transferred automatically to military production rather than "wasted".
• Economic System overhauled to be more transparent and intuitive.
• Production that is the result of abililities is only charged at 50%. (that is, if player is getting 10 more industrial units of production per turn because of starbases, player abilities, etc. they only have to pay for 5 of it).
• Population growth revamped to put more emphasis on population growth ability and morale.
• Lots of new hot keys.
• Metaverse Scoring revamped.
• Ship Designer revamped to be easier to use, more powerful.
• Ship Designer now allows players to rotate ship pieces on the fly.
• Ship Destination markers also display how many weeks until ship arrives there.
• Selected ship displays an animated line showing where its destination is.
• Constructors will display what area of effect a starbase would have it one were built in the constructor's current position.
• Lots of new balancing of technologies, planetary improvements, starbase modules, etc. based on the feedback from players.
• Lots of new options added to the options screen
• Better support for modding (full-blown mod UI coming in v1.2).
• Soundtrack changes
• Lots of tweaks to improve pacing, balance, etc.
• Removed a lot of player discovered "exploits"
• Performance and memory optimizations
• New hot keys
• Lots of bug and glitch fixes

Full list of changes here..

Existing customers can upgrade to v1.1 in the Downloads area.  You can also get it via Stardock Central.