Stardock Releases Huge "Crusade" Expansion for Galactic Civilizations III

From Stardock:
Today, Stardock released Crusade, the long awaited expansion to its popular space 4X strategy game Galactic Civilizations III. Featuring a brand new "Civilization Builder" on Steam workshop, a new Galactic Citizens mechanic, interactive invasions, espionage, and much more, Crusade is a robust addition to the base game that brings a host of changes and updates.

The expansion adds many other anticipated features, such as new playable civilizations, custom fleets, an improved diplomacy system, and an updated graphics engine.

"Crusade is huge," said Stardock CEO Brad Wardell. "We've increased the game's depth so that it's morphed into something really cool. We've changed more than just the game mechanics, too - our new civilization builder on Steam Workshop is going to let modders go crazy. It's more than just creating a faction now - you can customize absolutely everything about your civilization, right down to diplomacy dialogue and ship fleets."

Some of the feature highlights of Crusade include:

• Civilization Builder: Create a faction with a custom leader, ideology, and abilities. Customize your civilization's galactic fleet and define custom conversation dialog for your friends and enemies.
• Galactic Citizens: Citizens are created every ten turns and can choose numerous specializations to help boost their civilization globally or to enhance a specific planet. The unique promotions system will allow players to "spend" a citizen to make them into something like a saboteur or a martyr in order to gain large bonuses.
• Invasions: Conquering an entire planet is no small feat. Now, players will send their legions to battle it out across the planet's surface. Invaders choose where they will land and defenders will choose where they will resist, both decisions requiring considerable strategic thinking.
• Espionage: Citizens trained as spies can now be used to to take down adversaries from behind the scenes. Players can use spies to destroy planetary improvements, steal technology or assassinate enemy agents.
• New Civilizations: The Terran Resistance, Onyx Hive, and the Slyne appear as new playable factions in Crusade. Existing civilizations have also received an overhaul to make each one more unique.
• Missions: Subsidize ventures to the depths of the galaxy to search for resources, abandoned ships, or ancient technologies.
• Ship Designer: This feature is now easily accessible from the main menu and allows users to choose from hundreds of ship parts to build an entirely custom ship. Easily browse available parts, create your ship, and upload it to the Steam Workshop to share with the world. Animated, organic ships are possible with the Ship Designer, too.
• Updated Economy, Diplomacy, and Alliance Systems: Provides more depth to gameplay and weighs choices more heavily than before.
• Adjusted economy, diplomacy, and alliance systems add depth, variety, and weight to players' choices. Violating an alliance now causes other civilizations to react negatively, which could have huge consequences on diplomatic relations. The new economic system encourages more frequent trading and provides bonuses and penalties based on your approval ratings, what you've researched, and more.