Last week, I put out a universal distress call, pleading for some PC news with which to battle the approaching armada of console minutia. This morning, I get in to find that somebody has left a howdytron on our galactic garbleblab. Translating the message, I find... an advertisement for squirdleprong enlargement pills. Stupid space spam. Oh well, that was a waste of time. In which case, we'll have to make do with these first Galactic Civilizations 3 screenshots.

Click to enlargenate.



Here we see the new diplomacy screen. As in GalCiv2, there are a number of options for trade negotiations, including tech, ships, starbases colonies and resources. That means the infamous Tom Francis "give me everything you own for 1 bc" insult tactic is still alive and well.



A Drengin Battleship. From the picture, it's impossible to tell how many guns it's carrying. My guess is: a lot.



The main map screen made its debut in our GalCiv III preview, but I'm reposting it here because it's where you'll be spending most of your time in-game. The UI has had a pretty significant overhaul, and seems to strike a pretty nice balance between depth and readability.



Finally, a Krynn Starship, likely packed full of television and mind control.

For more details, and to here from the game's developers, check out our recent Galactic Civilizations 3 preview. You can also check out some of the game's concept art from the GalCiv 3 website, and see the announcement trailer below.

Galactic Civilization 2 is now available on Steam. If you have any interest in strategy, or space, or conquering space using an army of customisable doom ships then you'll definitely want to check it out. It also has incredibly smart, creative AI. A full sized game can take weeks and weeks to complete, a fact our own Tom Francis knows all too well. We'll be posting his Galactic Civilization 2 diaries shortly.

The Steam version is the Ultimate Edition, that means it comes with both expansions, Dark Avatar and Twilight of the Arnor which add new campaigns, enemies, tech trees and even spies to the original. It's on sale at 25% off for the first week until December 9, meaning you can own all the space war you'll probably ever need for just £9.74 / $14.99. Go go go!