Galactic Civilizations III: Intrigue Expansion DLC

This expansion obviously was not play tested on a large map. Most of the reviews I have seen appear to be based on trailers. The major is feature, commonwealths, is essentially unplayable. The only value you get from a commonwealth is some income, which is badly managed by the AI. All resources (e.g., Arnor spice) from he planets are unavailable to you. All research is unavailable. All ship building is unavailable except a few low tech ships that are not worth the fleet logistics. However, if you do not create commonwealths on a large map, you quickly run into severe morale penalties due to owning too many planets. These can only be fixed with governments with larger colony limits. This requires researching the techs that provide access to the governments rather than the things you would normally research to expand your empire. However, the perks are often undesirable for your particular strategy (e.g., Infinite Jihad is available early in the Tech Tree, but it has an absurd -50% penalty for research). Some governments require you to have an ideology different than the one you would normally play. Most of the governments that have no planet limit require Ascension techs when you control 70+ planets long before reaching Ascension if you are pursuing an empire building strategy. In addition, they usually have terrible perks (e.g., no rushing for the Star Federation government). Bottom line: the commonwealth/government features seem to be designed to force players to utilize smash-and-grab strategies on small, crowded maps.

GC III Intrigue is a good purchase, especially if you're a player (like myself), who really likes to play a variety of styles. This DLC allows for that more so than before, with clear government types that have realistic and proportioned strengths/weaknesses/assets. Although some players do not like the commonwealths, I think it's a great idea and fun to use them. Unlike many 4x games, it adds another layer of "realism", a sense of political decision making that goes beyond, "all these worlds are mine and do what ever I want". Similar to colonization in human history, setting up colonies in far away places is costly and not easy; they tend to run themselves whether the mother country likes it or not, but are still their citizens. So, if you just limit the number of colonies by government type in a game, that "seems" artificial, slows down the game, and there is an incentive to just play for the governments that allow for the most colonization. However, with commonwealths, it allows a player to maintain a certain style of government and forces a player to "THINK" about how to expand. Which newly conquered worlds or established colonies or resources should you keep direct control over and which will be allowed to have some autonomy? AND by autonomy, I don't mean the auto governor that frees up micro-managing, but political autonomy with loyalty to the home world. Also, the expanded Bazaar is useful strategically, as well as, the spying and galactic market. All of which I find fun to employ and definitely use to strategic advantage. Over-all, this DLC adds more layers and ways to play the game.

Galactic Civilizations III was released in 2015 and has been in constant development and improvement since then. Even without the expansions, the core game has received enhancements to its engine, improving graphics and performance, and updates to the gameplay iteslf. GC3: Intrigue is the 2nd major expansion for this game and the new features it adds more enjoyable changes. They fit into the game well enough such that they blend in naturally and you will take them for granted. As a company, StarDock takes gamer feedback seriously for both bug fixes and features. Drawbacks to me: - The A.I. isn't as good as that found in Civilization III or IV. However, StarDock has made frequent and ongoing effort to improve it. - Some updates were major enough that older saved games could not be continued. StarDock addressed this later on in the forums with instructions on how to stay at an older version. - Minor races actually lost some features. But it feels like they will come back in a future update. I prepurchased the game at the Founder's price and consider the money as having been well spent. Think about not only the number of hours that will be spent but also how inflation has affected consumer prices since the early days of PC gaming. It was the right price for this game.

Thank you for continuing to update and improve this game. I know Stellaris and Endless Space 2 often get more attention, however they are from the 'join the dots' school of space 4x games; where somehow they've managed to make the vast openness of space itself feel more restrictive than even a terrestrial based 4x game such as Civ and Endless Legend. Gal Civ operates on a 2D plane where you have complete freedom of movement, only restricted by the engine limitations of your ships. That fact alone is enough for me, as I simply can't get my head around the sector-based starlane driven design of so many other space 4x games. With the additions of Crusade and now Intrigue I honestly believe this is currently the best space 4x game available. It deserves more recognition.

It's disappointing to see the low effort put into features that could have made the game better. Sure, they added more stuff to do, but this adds nothing to the strategic choices you make. Stupid limitations are put in place of your expansion and you get rudimentary tools to deal with this unnecessary and unwelcomed burden. Of course, had governance of the realm had any strategic depth, this would have been a really good idea. But you basically pick bufs/nerfs instead of actually making choices or having to deal with actual challenges, your internal affairs don't change in any meaningful or interesting way, even the aesthetic changes are minimal.Most annoyingly, overall gameplay is not different between different types of governance. Instead, you get silly random events. The worse part is that they have the audacity to ask 20 euro for this pile of rubbish for the people who haven't backed the game in pre-alpha. There's definitely not enough content to justify the asking price,

Very good DLC. It adds that extra bit giving the game more scope. Seems well balanced and stable as well. While I do believe that this DLC and Crusade DLC contents should have been combined into one DLC to save money for buyers, I do know not many players are currently involved in this good game and that the devs do need to stay in business so we players have more good games. So while I think this DLC is very expensive for what buyers get from it, keeping Sttardock around is a good thing.

This Expansion, completes the game to the same level of depth, as Gal Civ II, in its final form (Arguably to greater degree). Its essential for anyone enjoying the base game. Apart from many obvious benefits of additional game mechanics, its adds the layer of immersion to your civilization, which allows for almost a book or movie like depth to each game. That is, we all live in a very political world. Our media, gov and morality in real life, is constantly defined and redifined by political currents. This expansion adds this very kind of layer into the game. What kind of politics will you offer to the galaxy ? Will you build a vibrant Democracy, an Autocracy, Technocracy, Oligarchy or a Theocracy ? What kind of a Democracy will it be, tightly unified at federal level or perhaps a confederation of worlds? Maybe a Galactic Republic ? Those are just the democracies. What about the size of your realm, will you struggle to maintain every world in your tight grasp, or build a commonwealth of allied but somewhat independant sattelites ? You can now build your very own space feudalism (40k), or a realm of religious fanatics (space Iran); Struggle with eternal question of Federalism vs Planet rights (Space USA/Russia), or take your nation on path of supremacy and domination (Space Germany). Then again, maybe you just want to get filthy rich (Space Venice); or only care for scientific progress and innovation (Space Japan). Perhaps, you refuse individuality all together, and look for perfection of machine singularity (Borg/Hive Mind). Possibilities are great, and a lot of fun. Highly positive addition to the base game. PS : This expansion is deeply interwoven with Mercenaries Expansion, as it builds/expands on citizens feature. I have every DLC to the game. Thus the impact of this expansion on the base game is possibly larger, then what it would have been, if I only had it in isolation. Both expansions are quite good, if not essential to anyone who is enjoying Gal Civ III. Cheers!

Before I start: Yes I wholeheartedly recommend GalCiv 3 as a game. It's absolutely amazing and cool. I just don't recommend this DLC (Intrigue) ... the government system might look good on paper, but in usage it only feels like a restriction rather than an interesting option/addition to the game.

Adds a few nice features, but overal lacks exactly the kind of subtleties and options I would have liked such a DLC to have. The Government types are imbalanced and far too restrictive. It would have been better if they had allowed people to design something more customised according to types of principles and ideas. The mechanic that the game uses with the ministers, advisors, secretaries slots/roles to define the govenments would have lent itslef nicely to customisation. Instead what we get is something overly simplistic and inflexible that just does not cut it. Being able to select from a roster of cabinet minsisters (with different skills and abilities and allow for subtle choices) to make up your Government is what I would like to see. As an example: the *cannot declare war* restriction for Republic should really have some options for dealing with abusive factions that continually ignore your requests to stay out of your borders. An optional ability/skill for one of your cabinet members granting authority to temporarily impound and detain tresspassing ships would be a nice feature. The one useful feature was to add trading resources at the Galactic Market. I don't recommend this particular DLC as it stands. Crusade and Mercenaries are 2 fine and essential expansions to the base game, but this one is a bit *meh*.

I love Galactic Civilizations III when using the Huge or larger maps. This Expansion is awesome and adds some seriously needed elements to the game. BUT . . Hitting EVERYTHING with maintnance costs forces you to use many planets soley for income offsets and really limits the size of fleets you can put together. For me this kills the largers maps. I play this game for the vast empires and fleets, but this expansion killed that. I have uninstalled GCIII and reinstalled specifically without INTRIGUE. I really wish there was an option to fix the maintnance (money) caps because I really do like all the other pieces of this expansion.