Before we headed out for Christmas break, we wanted to get a new Dark Avatar update out there since there were a couple of bugs introduced in the last update that were annoying us all. 1.8G fixes a Metaverse submission bug, a pathfinding bug, a typo, and a possible memory leak.

We also updated the beta of Twilight of the Arnor this week. We didn't add the Thalan or the Altarians as they are simply much more ambitious in some respects than what we've done so far. Over the holidays the AI and balancing we start being implemented to a much higher degree along with more fleshing out of all the civilizations.

Also, we've got some good news.  GameSpy rated Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar as the 6th best game released last year (all platforms).  It was also a finalist for strategy game of the year from G4's XPlay TV show and is a finalist for user choice "strategy game of the year" over at Gamespot (though user vote things tend to reflect sales and turn based 4X strategy games don't tend to have the user base as RPGs and such).

We hope you all have a great Christmas and happy New Year.  I'll be around if anyone has any questions and will be writing journal entries as I work on the AI.

Cheers

-Brad Wardell (aka Frogboy & Draginol)