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GalCiv2 expansion delayed

To add more stuff.

Stardock has delayed the release of Galactic Civlizations II expansion Dark Avatar until February in order to cram in a bunch of additional features.

To make up for this, the developer plans to run a beta programme for gamers who pre-order the expansion, and that should start in the middle of next month.

Both the beta programme and the full expansion pack will be handled exclusively through GalCiv2.com.

New features on the way since Dark Avatar was conceived include a streamlined tech tree, "Mega Events", super abilities unique to each civilisation and improved AI. That's on top of a content-base that already included new units, maps, a new story-based campaign, user-created enemies, an epic generator, spies, asteroid fields and enhanced diplomacy options.

"As our players submitted suggestions for new features, we realised that we didn't want to have to wait until some future sequel to implement these awesome ideas," said Brad Wardell, GalCiv2's project manager.

"So you could say that this expansion - while not quite a sequel - goes far beyond what a usual expansion pack would provide."

We'll see what we say in February 2007.