This Fall Stardock will be releasing the Dark Avatar expansion pack for Galactic Civilizations II.

Dark Avatar is the first official expansion pack to Stardock's award-winning PC strategy game, Galactic Civiliations II.

The expansion pack goes far beyond the typical expansion. Not only does it add new units, new races, new maps, and a new campaign as is expected in an expansion pack, it greatly expands the feature set of the base game in very significant ways.

Here are some of the features that will be in the expansion pack:

• Custom Opponents.  Just as players can design their own civilizations; in Dark Avatar they can design their own opponents to play against. This isn't just cosmetic either, players will be able to set up their intelligence, personality, playing style as well as what they look like, what ships they use, what dialog they use, etc.  These opponents are then saved for later use.
• Agents. Players will be able to hire agents via espionage to wreak havoc on their opponents or to counter enemy agents operating in their own empire.
• Special Worlds.  Worlds in Galactic Civilizations II will have an additional classification -- environment type. Different races will start with the ability to colonize only certain environment types.  Through research and technology, additional planet types can be colonized and conquered but it will totally change the way the initial colonization phase of the game plays out.
• The Epic Generator.  One of the things Stardock has put out that people seem to like are epic stories of game play examples.  Dark Avatar will generate such stories automatically and export them as HTML so that players can share their stories with others and look back at a good game as the epic saga they imagined.
• Asteroid Fields. The economics in Dark Avatar will be altered to make strategic control of additional kinds of resources important. Amongst those will be the asteroid fields which, when utilized, can help the closest colonized planet. In additional, asteroid fields act as a natural barrier slowing down incoming ships.
• New Treaties. Diplomacy will get beefed up with the additional of new diplomatic treaties. These treaties not only provide mutual benefit but give players more tools to forge their relations with other players.
• New Races. Two new civilizations will be introduced to the mix including the evil Korath who are bent on genocide at the galactic scale.
• New hulls and ship components. A ton of hulls and ship components are going to be added. This really can't be overstated enough because not only are there going to be a lot of these components but the quality is far superior to what we've done before thanks to having mastered the art of making ship hulls and components.
• The New Campaign: Dark Avatar. This time, the Drengin Empire are the good guys. You must make the galaxy safe for oppression and tyranny...because the alternative is worse.

The expansion pack will list for $29.95 but users will be able to pre-order it for $24.95.  The expansion will be initally released digital only via TotalGaming.net (and the store on GalCiv2.com). though players can also have a CD sent to them as well. 

The release date is this Fall.