Galactic Civilizations III: Crusade Expansion Pack DLC

I'm dissapointed that so many features of these expansions are things that were in galactic civ 2's base game. That being said, this expansion does add several unique features, but I still wish that stardock would stop wasting time and resources on things that were already in the previous game instead of adding more new features.

This is the best 4x game I've played and this is the worse 4X game Ive played. I have held off reviewing this until now as quite simply I dont think it was finished until now. With the 2.6 (beta) patch the game appears much more stable. There are still issues but nothing as game breaking as before. The devs are committed to ironing out the balance issues & bugs and I'm happy to say that I'm now happy to play, whereas before it was hugely frustrating as the game had great potential but was let down by bugs (there is nothing more annoying in a 4X spending a lot of time researching a new tech that will shore up a defense that your lacking or give you a leg up on the competition only to find that it does nothing). I still personally think that the weaponry & defense of ships is over elaborate & for me is a barrier to designing my own ships but I appreciate that others may like this feature. Overall, I now enjoy the game a lot more with the balance changes (especially the fix to population).

I ignored the bad reviews and gave the game a try. I like it a lot. It is a very rich game. I like lots of detail and this game has it. Very fun. I'm over 300 turns into a ludicrous size universe with 20 oppoenents and I'm super impressed. This game is better than Stellaris and Endless Space when it comes to richness of game play. No doubt about it.

This is an awesome DLC! Crusade really change the original GC III gameplay. Citizens These are great! Every 10 turns you get a Citizen. You can then choose a role for them. The roles available are based on some of your techs, so new roles will become available as you play. There are quite a few roles. Engineers can boost your shipbuild, Celebrities can improve morale. The Citizens really open up a great play time. Invasions You know need Legions to make invasions. Or defend against them. Very nice. Legions are expensive to build but there are ways to get free Legions. A General citizen comes with 5, and there is now a planet structure to build more. First Turn Things are a little different. You start with no Shipyard. There are a few new buildings to build early on that are special. It is still possible to get colony ships built early on but this has slowed somewaht. I think the early game has more strategy now. Tech Tree Lots of changes. Techs are now more based on your racial strtaing traits, like the Hyperion items. I like the changes although some fine tuning of the tree may be needed in the near future. Starbases No constuctors needed after the first one! Once built, you just add the modules you want as you research them by paying credits and resources. Very nice! Administration points Needed to colonize and add starbases. You start with the capability to promote a citizen to an Administrator to get more Admin points. Resources! Huge change! First, a starbase automatically claims all minerals in range. Then the resources collect over time. You will need mineral resouces to build many of the tech items, like advanced weaponry. Also, planet resources have changed! They still provide the planet they are located on with a minor bonus, but like minerals the planet resources also accumulate over time! Very cool! You will need certain planetary resources to do certain things. Nice. Espionage I really dislike all Espionage in 4X games, but Crusade seems to get this right. I usually defend with my Spies, but again citizens can be promoted to spies to help defend. (Or mess with the AI empires!) Overall I think Crusade is great! I really like the changes to the game now. Yes, I played GC and GC II, but Crusade really makes GC III very interesting. I always thought GC III was better than I and II, and now, with Crusade, it brings new life to a great game. EDIT: Asteroids are really neat now! You can click on them and mine them for Raw production. They have to be in your influence range.

It is sad to wait 2 years for the game to be nearly complete.This is the first meaningful DLC that presents solid game features that was already present in GalCiv2 Ultimate Edition. I hope Stardock does not stray from this path and make this one of the best 4x games out there.

Galactic Civilizations 3: Crusade fixes pacing issues in the base game and refocuses the player's time back into empire management rather than micromanagement. The expansion shifts the gameplay back to exploration, research, and empire-building, leaving behind much of the onerous tax balancing and late-game slog. The new Citizens mechanic is a breath of fresh air in the 4x space that gives the player greater control over the direction of their civilization, while adding incentives for progress. A small empire-wide bonus, or a significant planetary boost? Yes, please! It's a neat way to give the player tension between immediate rewards versus something that they need to build towards. Removing the need for a constant flow of construction ships to upgrade starbases is genius. Let's face it. No one liked this aspect of GalCiv3 anyway. It's best to just streamline that right out of the design. The new options for custom race creation are terrific. You could already do a lot of custom race stuff previously, but Crusade opens it all up for modding right in the game menus. Finally, it's a small thing, but the return of a mini-map on the game screen is heartily welcome!

Note review is written at launch after the first hotfix. The game is still buggy as a roach motel. There is at least one major possible game ending bug and a tonne of little annoying oversights and grievances. None of this is unusual and knowing this company they will be addressed rapidly and comprehensively.  I do not recommend playing now if you are playing for the first time and will be learning the game, as all the tooltip inconsistencies will just leave you even more confused as to why things don't work as you expect. Otherwise, unless you get the stuck end of turn/combat bug (it seems to be pretty rare) the game is totally playable and the little annoyances while frustrating are tolerable. Think late beta level of playability. So that addresses the matter of the companies quality assurance problem... Let's talk about the actual intended product as it will likely stand a month from now. "The Crusade Expansion"... Or as the people on the forums seem to call it: "Help! Everything is different and I don't understand!". It is almost pointless reviewing this product to new players anyway as this DLC is not so much new content as a complete overhaul and change to how things previously worked. Crusade is fundamentally a different game to vanilla Galactic Civ 3. But is it better?  Off the bat there are some nice quality of life improvements like adding the civilisation editor to the main menu alongside the ship editor. But let's talk about the meatier mechanical gameplay changes. Forget the concept of tax sliders. Specialisation is now handled by micromanaging Galactic Citizens. Need more wealth? Train and move about some economists. Close borders sparking tension? Training some diplomats could help. Everything is a trade of though. Your citizens are finite in number and deploying them in one area means you can't use them somewhere else. It's slower, less intuitive and much more complex than the simple and familiar tax slider of olde... But it's also much more powerful and interesting. A good strategy game is a game that makes to think about choices. This change does that. At time of writing there are still balance and flavour issues to be addressed but mechanically you still have some immediate short-term control over your various economy, but those adjustments have gravity. All in all, a good change. Forget the old tech trees. Each race used to have their own unique tech tree. Certainly added a lot of the flavour to the game but a nightmare to keep track of. Kind of limiting to custom races too. No more. The new tech tree is modular. Everyone starts on a common trunk but branches out into unique techs based on the combination of their races lifeform type (carbon, silicon, synthetic or aquatic) and their selected abilities. At time of writing there are balancing and flavour issues still to be addressed but mechanically this means you have all existing races with most of their unique functionality intact but with the ability to create an endless array of new races that take only parts from other existing species rather than the whole package. More flexibility is always a good thing and this also vastly opens the door for modders. All in all, a good change. Forget what you know about the AI The rules have all changed. The are new obstacles to overcomes and bounties to be claimed. The AI has new motivations and ways of interacting with each other and the player with a whole new interface for interacting with them. Espionage means you will be stealing tech and sabotaging each other. Privateer fleets let everyone play the aggressor without going to war. Can you trust your allies are really your allies? Probably but don't forget they have their own agendas. This mostly serves to give you another consideration to weigh up your decision on how to spend your Galactic Citizens. Diplomats and spies increase your flexibility when it comes to trade and manipulation with your opponents. You can spend them to create ship captains that level and boost ship stats. But do you have them lead your army and sit idle or at the helm of a privateer ship an opponent can freely attack and destroy without risk of retaliation? At time of writing there are still balance and flavour issues to be addressed but mechanically it means the galaxy is a more vibrant and interactive space full of weightier decisions. All in all, a good change. Forget the old economy. The game now has countless new resource types to stockpile, trade and consume. Place your mining starbase on the edge of a black hole to collect precious antimatter which is essential for building more powerful missile weapons. Durantium asteroids will give you a defensive edge to your ship armour. Don't forget all the special resources needed for powerful planet side improvements to keep your people happy. You will want to dedicate a lot of your production resources to setting up efficient mines for the resources most useful to your unique race and strategy... And don't forget, you'll have to defend the rarer resources to. At time of writing there are still balance and flavour issues to be addressed but mechanically you now have resources limiting the production of high tier militaries, culture warriors and aggressive ecconomist. So you need infrastructure to back up your chosen front line. You are still largely flexible in this but you will need to adapt more to the lay of the land and come up with new strategies to deal with shortages in key resources. Which makes things more interesting. All in all, a good change. There are many more subtle adjustments and additions to the game in this expansion but those are the major ones that come to mind when I think of my experience with it so far. How does it stack up against the vanilla game? It certainly makes for a different play experience. You have a lot more to consider in your grand strategy which keeps things interesting. At time of writing there are still balance and flavour issues to be addressed but design wise everything seems to be pointing towards giving the player more flexibility, control and diversity in playstyles. All in all, a good change.

This is NOT a DLC, it is the culmination of GalCiv3, and the vindication of all of us who have held on to what seemed like a lackluster sequel. Crusade makes GalCiv3 a NEW GAME! The difference are striking, and the improvements are dramatic! My review is BUY BUY BUY! Do not buy GC3 without this DLC, you will not get the full game! Does that sound like a problem? Yes, and no. It does mean you will pay more. However, what you get is not a DLC, it is an old-fashioned expansion, the kind that Civ5 had wherein gameplay really changed in dramatic and good ways. The game is astronomically (heh heh) better for this expansion! I have been highly critical of the DLC for this game before, but this one is so worthwhile, it justifies buying all the others. New players: get the bundle! Gone is the problem of not having enough factions to fill the galaxy, thanks to a proper crowdsourcing system. Anyone can make a decent civ without knowing .xml! Full civilizations are postable on Steam, and you will only have to go to third-party sites for the really really in-depth civs and (still) mods. Ships and civs can be designed without starting a game. There are some glitches here, but they will be resolved, I am sure. The new economic system is easy to understand, and there is much less micromanaging of your empire. New players will find it much more simple to play a competitive game early. The new "citizen" system is not the same as the 'great people' in the Civlization series, it is more fun! The resource system is a new model unlike that of the Civ series, and makes more sense. Managing starbases is easier than ever. The new interface makes large empire management easier (I only play big games). There are now more options than the old 'rush out and grab planets' strategy. I am still exploring this aspect of the game, but a lot of thought went into it. Modding support continues, and with the new civilization and fleet design system, everyone can add their creativity to the game in a much more accessible way. Add to that the support and free added content that you can always expect from Stardock. Yes, I am an unabashed fan of this company: they once did a whole update just so those of us with slower computers could keep up! I have found that requests for improvement on their forum often magically result in improvements to the game. They really do care about your gaming experience! So, all the fun of GalCiv2, with more customizability, more diverse play strategies, better graphics (of course), and an overall better gameplay experience. I have quibbles, but they are quibbles, not cons. GalCiv3 is finally a mature sequel with Crusade! Again: BUY BUY BUY!

Crusade is a really ambitious expansion pack. The difference between GalCiv3 pre-Crusade and GalCiv3 post-Crusade is bigger than the difference between GalCiv2 and pre-Crusade GalCiv3. In other words, Crusade finally makes GalCiv3 be its own game. There's some clunkiness to go with such a big modification, similar to how large mods for games would also have. Still, the end result is intriguing, and the devs have been very active in patching and improving it.

Risky move to totally remodel the game. Most people prefer improvement to overhauling, so definately a brave move. The Good: Mostly works out worth the changes. The UI is much more intuitive. The Excel spreadsheet components of the game (e.g. +5% here, + 10% there) are replaced with concepts that are more immersive such as longer projects to help economy with a +50 credit boost upon completion instead of flat +5%, or a treasure hunt from space-port instead of spamming constructors. On that note, the removal of constructor spam and other similiar features that have zero fun and simulate working in an admin job are mostly replaced with much better mechanics e.g. you just buy the modules you want with accumulated durantium and credits, whenever you want them. No automated features with this though, so you do still have to cycle through every starbase when you develop a new mining tech, but that is nowehere near as tedious. Customisation of everything is even better, and new features like invasion, espionage, citizens, and reworking of tech tree all add to the experience positively. The Bad: The maps are much smaller and feel crowded with resources and the like. It just simply doesn't feel like Space, it feels more like public housing. Given the backlash last time they made it smaller I don't get why they are so insistent on cramming all the stars together. Bunch of little things that feel lazy or untested. Like fast ships still leave staggered/broken exploration paths so you have dashes of explored territory and blackness. Lots of those little bugs not fixed. Feels a bit stupid that all my custom civs (and their custom portraits etc.) were not ported over to the newly created GalCiv3 Crusade folder, yet all the Steam Workshop downloaded civs were. I had to manually copy over all the .pngs and then recreate the civs. The Ugly: Just one thing, but it's the exact thing that keeps Stardock games from ever becoming AAA games. My first citizen Jennifer Shard was great with her own name and picture. But my second named "Jennifer Shard 1" made me roll my eyes. My third was some dude with a cowboy hat, cool - but my fourth was "Jennifer Shard 2"... I mean seriously, no-one thought perhaps we should come up with 100 names if we can't be bothered making a name generator? This game has immense role play potential. You want players to get attached, to relate, to play favourties, to care. This kind of thing just takes one creative person to help the team, but adds more value than most of the new features. Hire an intern from your fan base or something, but quit being ignorant. Reminds me of the only valuable thing I ever heard Trump say. He said "I don't understand those people who sell their car, but don't wash it first - 20 minutes work for 50% added value" Overall, worth the $20 for me, but not everyone.