The key point for me is that an "expansion pack" has to live up to its name and actually expand the gameplay. Dark Avatar certainly did this and Twilight of the Arnor looks promising.

If there are ways to keep successfully expanding the gameplay then I'm all for expansion packs. However, if the focus of an expansion pack is just going to be rebalancing and/or new content that doesn't add to the gameplay, then it is probably time to start on the sequel.

I'd definitely go for some more expansion packs. I enjoy galciv II a lot, but with some attention in certain areas it could make the leap from enjoyable to ridiculously fun.

The area that comes to mind for me is the combat system. In a sequel I'd love to see interactive combat, but for an expansion I think it'd really help to just have a slightly more involved system. Not a lot, not too complicated, but small changes, like a variable for miss-chance so that the giant space guns aren't hosing tiny hulls that are smaller than the bullets being fired. Things like support ships for extending fleet range, etc.

I really like the small tweaks to the combat system made in the latest expansion, as well as asteroid mining, hostile world colonization and the like. Things like that go a long way to enhancing the overall experience.

If they expand the gameplay as much as DA, absolutely .



As long as they don't go crazy with the idea, I might be open to it. One thing I don't want is to have to buy hundreds of things to get the game to where I like it. Quite frankly, though, I'm one of those people who really doesn't want one or two things - I want to get everything I can. Quite often, when things are split into lots of pieces, it gets very expensive to buy everything. I guess I'm opposed to such a system.

And I definitely do not want to have any "subscription" items where you have to keep paying for it to use it. I've played a MMORPG called "Silkroad" where you have to keep re-buying a very useful "pet" every month to keep using it. It's pretty annoying and a drain on the wallet. Eventually I just stopped paying to renew the pet - it wasn't worth the hassle and eternal money drain.


As far as good vs evil, I think it should generally go like this:

Good:
+Greater long term benefits
+Large benefit on the civilization as a whole
-Lesser short term benefits, maybe even short term drawbacks
-Lesser benefit on individual planets or ships

Evil:
+Greater short term benefits
+Greater benefits on individual planets or ships
-Lesser long term benefits, maybe even long term drawbacks
-Lesser benefits on the civilization as a whole

Neutral would, of course, be somewhere in the middle of all of the positives and negatives.

. . . and that's generally how good vs evil works, even in real life - evil things may produce short term benefits that usually affect the individual, but always hurt society (and even the individual) in the long run, especially if repeated.

For example, stealing stuff from a store may produce short term benefits for a single person, but take into account that a lot of people are stealing and that it is often repeated: It eats into the costs of running the business, inflates prices for honest consumers, and ultimately hurts society as a whole.

Obviously "good" wouldn't be good if there weren't any benefits. There are both benefits to society and to the individual. In my stealing example: If stealing is lessened, it will mean lower prices and produce long term financial benefits for both the business and consumer. Also, there's a clear but often overlooked benefit to the individual: There's no risk in getting "caught" if you never did anything wrong in the first place. People who are good are very unlikely to have the law breathing down their backs. Sound pretty trivial to me, but I'm surprised how many people forget that.


Anyways, yes, I'd be very interested in future expansions . So far, it's been a great game and I definitely look forward to future developments.

I want more expansions rather than waiting until 2010! Just do this:

"For example, I would be open to revamping the whole economic system in a future expansion pack to help streamline it. I'd also like to expand the United Planets to allow civilizations to submit "bills" to the UP to vote on. I'd also like to see more types of ship components, more diplomatic options, and so on."

And I will keep paying to "upgrade" my game.

GalCiv2 is the only game I ever bought an expansion for. In general, I don't really like expansions. Mostly, they are purely commercial crap that sucks life out of the original titles.

There are 2 reasons I did buy DA. One, StarDock does extremely good job at patching, so it didn't feel like buying a patch. Two, GalCiv2 is an objectively good game, which defies the horrible trends in modern gaming.

So, would it make sense to develop expansions past TotA? I'd say only if developers have really new ideas that could be implemented this way. And by "new" I mean new to the games in general, something that would be interesting design-wise.

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My personal preferences.

I would not buy (or recommend to buy) a multilayer expansion or something that merely adds combat nuances to the game. On the other hand, I would definitely buy an expansion that works with diplomacy, spying, local elections and galactic council. Anything that would spice up the winning conditions (especially tech victory) would also be appreciated.

- Passing bills to GC sounds great.
- It would be interesting to actively seek re-election by acting on the whims of your empire under democratic types of governments, and to have your popularity change depending on what you do.
- Spying is kind of meh right now. Would be good to make the player more involved in the process, and to add more options.
- The economy and various buildings (morale, for example) could be better balanced.
- Tech victory is downright boring right now. AI does not seem to pursue it, and it does not really involve anything complex, you just research stuff. Would be great if the process became more involved. One way to achieve this would be if the pre-requisite techs would not be just boring stub technologies, but would produce major changes in the galaxy. Someone also proposed here that the technology that allows you to win could be "built" after research.

You keep producing expansion packs, I'll keep buying them. I love GA2 and would love to see future additions.

I too would buy them no matter what.

How about a subscription $5 per month (WoW style), that way stardock can allocate resource that are paid for on an ongoing basis to bridge the gap between now and GC3 (would like to see this as infinately moddable). Why not put forward a series of polls where the players get to vote for what they want.

I personally would like to see :-

Nebula that span say 20-30 parsecs, cannot go through
Permanent wormholes
Blackholes/Quasars/Pulsars (just for show)
Passing traders from other galaxies where you can buy alien artifacts/technologies.
Stealth modules (opposite of scanning)
Shipyard starbase
100x100 maps or customisable to any size.(memory dependant)
or multi galaxy maps (use wormholes)
Configurable no of Stars 20-2000 or memory dependant.
Configurable min distance between Stars 5 to 20 parsecs.
Ship model editor
Death Stars (planet destroyers)
Spys given options of destroying/sabotage/stealing/assasination of planetary leader
Minor races to work as major races except be one or two intelligence levels lower. (with no goal other than to be as big and strong as possible, never declare war first)
Lots of exotic icons/tiles pics for modding (planetary improvements)
Ongoing AI development
Lay mine fields.
Stargates
MMOSG (Massively Multiplayer Online Strategy Game) Billions of stars ...{pinch} .... have I been talking in my sleep?

Anyway keep up the good work, best Galactic Strategy game thus far. IMHO

I'd definitely look forward to more expansions, especially if a GCIII wouldn't be until 2010 at the earliest. Enhancing the diplomatic and UP options, the economy, invasions... to put it another way, every expansion so far hasn't been just "ok, here's a new unit X to play with" but has changed gameplay in significant, thoughtful and - to me - 'happy' ways. So yes, I would buy another couple expansions while waiting for GCIII. I can't say I'm interesting in multiplayer for GC2. I like playing against the AI when and would be happier to have the AI's intelligence improved over the tremendous development work for MP.

I would also love some revamps to how combat (especially ship to ship) is handled, but I wouldn't want to see it getting into much (if any) micromanagement. As has been mentioned, after awhile you just want combat to work and be logical On the other hand, part of why I rarely watch the combat video any more is not for speed but because it is pretty anti-climactic and feels like the ships are just milling about. Fixing that up to have more logical, interesting-to-watch fleet battles would get me to buy an expansion all by itself

I don't want ToA to be the last new GC content for 2+ years

I would be interested in new exp packs. They don't need to be so huge as TA or DA though.
Their price could also be half of TA's.

What i wish they'd contain are radical changes to some aspects. Ground combat; add religions that have negative and positive effects; better, A LOT better UP, similar to SMAC's UN but even more advanced with much more advanced diplomacy with ability to ask what would the other one want IE trade techs or buy something; Goverment changes and AI controlled sub-civilizations within your Civ; the dead horse, carriers {idea: make a module named hangar, it would be big, so big that it would require a large hull at least. The hangar would then provide range around the ship (9 squares, around the ship) so that way you could build a "carrier" that would help small ships, which don't have space for the life support modules, after you cross the range border but it would only affect to tiny and small hulls, not medium or bigger}; ability to switch beetween low-to-high rez graphics (ATM all textures are same rez right?) and help text for each button (explanation when you hover mouse over something after few seconds I.E. what does "disable Bumb mapping" do);
the space combat could also be improved.

There are some suggestion, dunno if they're very radical.

But personally, i'd like rather radical changes, but only in some areas.

it should always be an expansion pack, otherwise, why bother?

For the love of arnor, please make UP better. Alpha Centauri did it better and that game was reated in the 90's.

Make UP something that is important, make it so we can submit things, so that we can pressue or buy votes inside the UP meetings right before the vote.

This is what I am hoping for in TOTA even thouh i hasnt been said.

First off, let me say that I really like Stardock, and I'm sure I'd buy any expansion that you guys release, but the main features I'd look for:

- Tactical combat (this would be a big change though, as I don't think the games current weapon/defense system would lend itself to tactical combat.... making this basically an entire expansion by itself)

- Overhauled economy

- Overhauled espionage (needs to be a bit more interesting/powerful for me to use it for anything other than countering enemy agents)

- More Diplomatic/UP options

- More meaningful ship component choices

- More exciting/interesting planetary invasions

I would like to see 2 more expansions if there is going to be a GC 3 in 2010 2011.

Screw Galactic Civ III... Keep adding expansions and just evolve the game into better states of itself. As time goes on update key components of the game (graphics, animations, interface, sound, game engine, etc.), add new races, new game play elements, new storylines.

The thing I don't like about full sequels sometimes is you get used to all the wonderful stuff that the original game had or stuff expansions have introduced and then a sequel comes out and a lot of that is stripped from the game and either appears in new expansions or doesn't appear at all in the new incarnation.

If Stardock keeps up the great revamps and updates (like TOA) I really see no reason to have a GalCivIII. They can keep improving this game indefinitely as time goes on and keep up with the times technologically.

Basically what I am saying, is rather than make GalCivIII... Just eventually evolve GalCiv2 into what GalCivIII would potentially be. This way we don't have to reset to everything back to square one again and keep building on this incredible masterpiece.

I am for Exp Packs.