Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar delayed, but expanded

Our very own Brad Wardell aka Frogboy announced on the official GalCiv II website that Dark Avatar, the expansion for the highly acclaimed (and still Starforce and copy protection free! ) Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords was now to be delayed until early next year. But wait! It may be delayed until next year, but they are expanding the expansion! Stardock will take the extra time to add tons of new stuff, to the already ton of new stuff previously announced.

Originally the expansion would include new maps, new units, a new story-based campaign, user-created civilization opponents, and lots of other goodies. But now Stardock will add even more to the expansion (hence the expanding expansion thingie) such as a new stream-lined tech tree, "Mega events", super duper abilities that are unique to each playable civilization, a visual once over (tweaks and such), a more advanced opponent design feature set, and of course "tons" more!

If you pre-order the expansion, you can take part in the scheduled public beta for the game which you can do here. The beta will take place sometime in November and the release for Dark Avatar is now February 2007. Which is about the same time as the release of Dread Lords itself.