Stardock is pleased to announce that the first of many free updates to the award-winning expansion pack to Galactic Civilizations II has arrived.

Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar gets its AI updated, new play balancing tweaks, memory reduction and more.

In terms of the AI, we read through strategies posted on the forums and took notes as to how the top players were playing the game and then updated the AI to take advantage or thwart some of those strategies to various degrees.  Players should find the game significantly more challenging at higher levels (tough on up).

We reduced the memory use of the game by implementing a "garbage collection" feature in which obsolete ship designs the AI creates are removed from memory. This can reduce memory usage significantly in long games which in turn improves performance.

We also made changes to defense in that they're cheaper and use less space to encourage more usage of defense modules on ships. 

Many other minor tweaks were made based on player feedback.

If you don't already have Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar, you can get it here at GalCiv2.com or at retail in the form of Galactic Civilizations II: Gold Edition which includes (until April) a $10 rebate for people who have Galactic Civilizations II already inside the box.

To update, use Stardock Central which you can get in the downloads area here. This will update both Dark Avatar expansion pack users and users who have purchased the Gold Edition.

We hope you enjoy the updates and look forward to reading your feedback on the forums. Thanks for posting your ideas, suggestions, and requests, we hope we've been able to translate some of your AI and gameplay requests into action in this first update.

The full change log can be read here.