One of the things that probably won't get much mention in the "marketing" of Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar (the upcoming expansion pack to GalCiv II) is that we've gone back and updated the graphics throughout the game to be at a new level. But it's more than just eye candy, it's better performance.  What used to require several textures to be done is now being done with a single texture -- reducing memory while increasing the quality (this ship uses about 1/4th the memory that the constructor in GalCiv II uses despite looking a lot better).

The Star bases are an even better example:

Bear in mind, this is very zoomed in at high resolution with anti-aliasing OFF.

Picture all this rotating gently with the lighting changes as it faces a star (the screenshots really don't do justice to how they look animated).  But you can compare the graphics here to what's in the game today (i.e. load up 1.3 or whatever and compare).

Which makes things all the more interesting when we start looking at the specifications of different ships.

Or when we create templates designs to use for future games.

Another little touch is that clouds move independently of the planet's surface so as you see planets rotate, you can see the weather on the planets cycle around (though a screenshot won't really show much new on that since it's in the animation). 

Now, I'm sure there's a good business reason to go back and re-do the graphics for an expansion pack so feel free to, um, let us know what it is so that we can be sure to tout it!