A great expansion to an already fantastic game.
The game starts you off at the character screen where you choose the race you want to be, ranging from the standard Terrans (humans), to the Altarians, all the way to the Drengin empire, each with there own personalities, and unique race trees. After you choose your empire, you decide what traits you want to upgrade through the bonus points system which lets you enhance your civilizations ability, for example, if I gave four points to the economy, then my economy will be 40% stronger then before.
Gameplay is pretty basic, you start off has a lone civilization who is ready to expand through the cosmos, at start, you are the Imperial, guiding your race into the universe. You have to be smart with every move you do, speeding your way through this game won't help, this is no real-time strategy, you have to plan what you want and what your strategies are going to be, rushing in isn't smart unless you have every race on your side. You have to worry about 5 things in this game, economy (which is huge part of the game, and by far the most difficult to stabalize), culture (also hard unless you are smart with your research), social order in your planets, diplomacy, and war.
Planets in the game are broken down into separate catagories, there are the Terrain Planets, then there are the unique planets, the Terrain planets are the normal ones, earth-like planets that anyone can occupy without doing research. Unique planets are the planets that have research attached to colonize them, for example, Radioactive planets need to be countered with radioactive reflectors. Each planet has a number, so Planet X has 10 beside it, meaning there are 10 slots that can be used for your empire, may it be a bank to help your economy, social centers for your approval, or a culture exchange center to spread your influence. There are unique buildings that can be used to stimulate your whole empire, but these mine as well be like the Tower of Giza in Civilizations.
Economy is the biggest part of the game, earning x amount of credits (in the billions) every turn, now every planet you colonize takes up a certain amount of maintenance, bigger planets require more money, but its hard to maintain unless you done the appropriate research to get the economy stimulated. Economy has to be managed effectively to run an empire well, applying it to the right things such as military and social, or research networks, depending on your empires needs.
Social plays out like your happiness in Civilizations, the lower this is, the less likely that your people will stay with you. This meter is shown on every planet, for example, if it says 40% approval, that means soon there will be a revolt if you do not act quickly to the epidemic, to counter this, entertainment networks, stadiums may be built to entertain your people, this mechanic plays off of the economy, so again, if this thing is low, then your tax income rate from your people will come to a halt.
Research and War play out exactly how Civilization did it, but a couple of tricks keep it refreshing and tidy. Research is broken to the social, diplomatic, military, logistics, and culture sections, each with its long list of items to research, but every race has its own unique tree of research, making the races unique to one another, making it a different play through everytime your play the game. War is almost exactly like Civilization but 3 things make it completely different, one being that you can create fleets with multiple ships of different types with in them, making them more lethal combat, one other being that you can completely customize your stats and your ships to make a versatile war machine, and the invasion mechinic. The invasion is like rolling dice, you have to roll at the right moment to get the highest number, this number stops both you and the AI's, and its a chance of who will win the invasion, this mechinic is hard to master, so don't worry if you loose alot, because I did to.
The AI is anything but bad, they are the smartest things in the game, they will make smart decisions, they know there way around, they taunt you, they will do anything they want, and they will do it smart, almost better then you most of the time. The only problem is that I found them to be too good, even on Beginner, so I would start on low difficulties before escalating to normal.
Graphics and sound are nothing special, nothing to talk about, the music however makes the game feel great, its both relaxing, and triumphant at the same time, suiting the situation in both cases, if this game has a downfall, it will both keep you up all night, and that it has no multiplayer, but if it did, games would take days.
This expansion fixed most of the problems that persisted in Dread Lords, although they were small, they were somewhat noticable. The Graphics have had a noticable enhancement, memory fixes, interface has had some upgrades, but the most noticable enhancement to the game is the fact that the research options have been overhauled. When I mean overhaul, they redid some of the descriptions, and took out a couple of the technologies.
Overall, this expansion is worth a buy, if you are both patient with the game, and don't mind spending every waking minute in the games universe, its definately a thinking mans game so be prepared for a challenge when you walk into this game.