Brad Wardell packs a universe on your hard drive with the exceptional expansion pack for Galactic Civilizations II.
gamespy
By: Allen 'Delsyn' Rausch
Brad Wardell and his Stardock team had an impossible challenge when they decided to create a second expansion pack for Galactic Civilizations II. Dark Avatar, the game's first expansion, was everything an expansion pack should be, adding an insane amount of new features and significantly deepening the basic gameplay, vaulting an already-stellar title into the realm of strategy-game classic. We loved it so much, in fact, that we placed Dark Avatar at number six on our overall Top Ten games of 2007. Fortunately for strategy-game lovers, the Stardock team seems to thrive on impossible challenges. The result of this drive for strategy game greatness is Twilight of the Arnor, a second expansion pack for Galactic Civilizations II that manages to outshine the first.
Twilight of the Arnor picks up directly after the end of Dark Avatar. The universe is still on fire with the Drengin/Korath civil war spinning out of control. Most of the other races of the galaxy, save the humans, are either beaten to exhaustion or are trying to avoid becoming collateral damage in the Drengin's destructive feud. Earth remains safely hidden behind an impenetrable force shield but the price of the Terran's security is being unable to impact galactic events. Things begin to change when a deep space Terran Alliance task force discovers the last surviving Arnor, a member of the galaxy's first sentient race, who offers the Terrans and their allies a slim chance to defeat the Korath and their unseen Dread Lord puppet masters.
The game's storyline is a cheesy pastiche of sci-fi cliches liberally borrowed from sources ranging from "Babylon 5" to "Star Trek" to the old "Star Control" games. Fortunately, the game's cornball storyline isn't the only reason to play through the well-constructed eight mission campaign. Each of the campaign's missions is built around fun strategic challenge very different from the game's main "sandbox" mode. Particular standouts include "Of the Arnor" where players must figure out how to crack the nut of a single Dread Lord planet while being continually harassed by the Korath. Players who pride themselves on their diplomatic skills will enjoy "Rock and Hard Place," a test of battlefield diplomacy that's the turn-based strategy game equivalent of yelling "Can't we all just get along?" while standing between trenches during WWI.
The true standout feature that makes Twilight of the Arnor special are the racially unique technology trees. The idea behind them is fairly simple. Alien races and alien cultures view the universe in radically different ways. These differing perspectives will dictate the ways their technology develops as each culture creates tech to complement and support their moral and cultural outlooks. The Drengin, for example, have an entire culture built around slavery and the aesthetic appreciation of other peoples' pain. The Yor, on the other hand, are a race of sentient machines determined to rid the universe of organic intelligences while the Korx are a mercantilist species willing to sell their own mothers for a decent profit. Twilight of the Arnor swaps out the fairly generic tech tree of Dark Avatar and gives each of the game's 12 pre-made races their own upgrade paths as well as race-specific discoveries.
The unique techs are a real game-changer. What was once a fairly generic upgrade path followed by every race becomes a radically different strategic experience every game. Choosing to play as the genocidal Korath will give an insanely aggressive game: the cheapness of their planet-destroying spore ships, the versatility of their weapons research tree and their host of diplomatic penalties guarantee it. On the other hand, playing as the religiously minded Krynn offers a choice of powerful cultural enhancements that can flip enemy worlds without firing a shot or a more violent path designed to create fleets of tiny suicide-bombing vessels that spread the Krynn faith by the sword
Factors change even more depending on the player's choice of rival civilizations. Playing as the Krynn against the powerful but slow-moving Arceans is very different than going up against the Korx. If there ever was a "desert island game," Twilight of the Arnor is it. It's very possible to play this game for years and never have the same experience twice. Even if it was, a powerful group of easy-to-use editing tools included with the game would take care of it.
While not quite as radical a shift as the new tech trees, Twilight of the Arnor does add a few more toys to the player's arsenal. Each race, for example, gets some great unique planetary buildings. The Drengin, for example, get "Slave Pits" rather than factories. They offer the same amount of production but also lower the race's diplomatic influence. "Ascension," a new (optional) victory condition places five randomly placed crystals on the map. Players win by building a starbase on them and holding them long enough to accrue 1,000 victory points. This, needless to say, doesn't make one popular with the galaxy's other denizens and offers a neatly thorny problem in map control and defensive warmaking. In fact, the only big-ticket feature that doesn't quite live up to expectations is the solar system-destroying Terror Stars. They're fun but incredibly resource-intensive and fragile, making them more of a gimmick or an end-game cleaner than a viable strategic path.
The expansion also sports an insane number of smaller additions and tweaks, any one of which would be welcomed by long-time GalCiv fans. A new finance management screen, for example, makes it easier to run a solid economy by collating all the information on leases and infrastructure maintenance charges. Right-clicking on a technology brings up a host of details about that tech including the bonuses it offers, the abilities it unlocks and the future advances it leads to. This is insanely valuable not only in planning research but also in negotiating with rival races. Trading technology just got a lot simpler and players no longer need to worry about giving away the keys to the kingdom because they forgot that a particular tech might give an unstoppable advantage to a particular race. There's an option for new players allowing the computer to automatically build ships for you that take advantage of new techs. The AI does only a fair job, but it's a nice way for GalCiv newbies to get a feel for the incredibly powerful (and graphically upgraded) ship-building system.
If there's one major strike against Twilight of the Arnor, it's the same criticism that's been leveled against it since the original GalCiv release back in 2003 -- no true multiplayer. While the game does have a good "metaverse" system that now includes regular tournaments, it's no substitute for a true multiplayer match-up. What makes it worse is that the game's new "immense" galaxy size, which creates games that take literally months to play, seems like an absolute natural for some sort of play-by e-mail system. Stardock has been justly praised in the past for the strength of its game AI -- and it's actually gotten better in Twilight of the Arnor -- but we still want our multiplayer.
Multiplayer quibbles aside, there's simply not that much to complain about in Twilight of the Arnor and far, far too many things to praise in this small amount of space. The technology trees alone make it impossible for someone who's sampled Twilight of the Arnor to ever go back to just playing Dark Avatar. Add to that impressive customization tools, new gameplay dynamics, better AI, graphic upgrades, new ship-builder components and completely re-done flavor text and hundreds and hundreds of smaller tweaks, fixes and changes and what you have is an absolute triumph and a new standard for turn-based-strategy games. Bravo, Stardock. This is how expansion packs should be done.
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