It’s time to join an intergalactic damn fool idealistic crusade.
Stardock today announced Crusade, its second expansion for the 4X turn-based strategy game (the 4X means explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate) set among the stars. It comes out this spring. Galactic Civilizations is a long-lived franchise from the studio, and the third installment launched in 2015, and GamesBeat gave it a 87/100, highlighting its campaign and more sandboxy elements, such as tools to create your ships. It’s also among a wave of strong strategy games releases from the last several years (and especially 2016) from dev houses like Amplitude Studios and Mohawk’s Offworld Trading Company, another Stardock release.
The expansion brings a number of new features, such as a new campaign (as the expansion’s title alludes to), espionage (something that wasn’t in the game at launch but wanted by players), galactic citizens, and new civilizations. The diplomacy system and graphics engine also received updates. In-depth details are available here. You can also check out how it works during a livestream today at 11 a.m. Pacific on Stardock’s Twitch channel.
“Our focus with Crusade has been to create a much deeper yet more approachable space strategy game,” said Paul Boyer, the lead designer of Galactic Civilizations III. “At the heart of your civilization are your citizens. What you do with your citizens, whether that be training them to be scientists, engineers, farmers, soldiers, diplomats, merchants and where you send them will determine how your civilization evolves.”