Galactic Civilizations III: Intrigue Expansion

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.

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*.

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.

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!

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.

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,

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ohhh yes. The Intrigue expansion makes the best 4x Sandbox game on the marked such better. My current game is the deepest 4x experience I've ever had and I can't stop playing. The government system and the crisis gives a completely new feeling and the smarter AI Is also a very big step forward.. Every cent for this expansion is worth it! In my opinion a must have!

found i keep getting the exact same events. they are scripted to take place they dont get selected at random. oh btw they are all options that have full negative effects on my civilization. so yeah. good idea but horribly executed.

It's a pretty decent DLC. I like it as it adds some difficulty to the game which in turn makes it more fun. I do recommend it to anyone who enjoys playing galactic civilizations III.

[rescind]Nothing I change in the settings is save back to preferences ini file...nothing. Refunded.[/rescind] Just came back in here to let y'all know it was a Win 10 error. I couldn't get the game to go into full screen to save my life. I finally got frustrated, refunded the game, and went back to watching something on Amazon. It wouldn't go into fullscreen there either. I swear an actual lightbulb appeared over my head. Edit 2: and thanks for the response Sean. Since you took the time to respond, I figured I would do you back a solid and publish my shame for all.

This is a really nice game, aspecially the intrigue package makes this game to the one i desired so long. Makes me really happy to see how the game developped but i can't give my "thumbs up" yet.... because one really important feature is missing that makes the game horrible in endgames.... can we please get a "Repeat Endless" Button DLC, so our colonies can just rerun what you built last? i'd pay for that dlc because playing this game is fun untill you reach the endgame and own 40+ colonies where any kind of project is done in 1-2 turns >.< even if you list a project 10-15 times you have to repeat this every turn or atleast every few turns on several planets. The game becomes 3% less fun per planet you own, giving a total -30% per 10 planets, with 40 planets it fall from 100% fun to -20% :O ... then i found another cool button "destroy planet" each time you press this button the game becomes 3% more fun, after i pressed it 40 times i had 100% fun again, until i saw a dialog screen poppin' up telling me i lost due to not owning any colonies, after i realized i lost due to a missing button the game was at 0% fun again without owning any planets at all... T.T

While not the game changer Crusade was this is still an excellent addition to the game. I think the governemnts are really well implemented. Commonwealths could use some work, but I really like the idea of focusing on lines of the tech tree I sometimes neglected early on to make sure I could put the governments in place I want to support my expansion in the early game. When I look at where this game was when it first came out to where it is now I have to say I am very impressed.

Just thoroughly disappointed in the game. I expected more from a company that has been doing these kinds of games for this long.

Incredible DLC that irons out the kinks even more on top of what Crusades already does. Very fun and replayable.

This is a great expansion that really adds to the base game with alot of nice new improvements. I'm loving the new government types and the new social events. Great game and great expansion!

First game of Intrigue and on turn 34 I'm stuck on a "wait", unable to continue. Frustrating to start on a new DLC and hit the same issue that was supposedly resolved eons ago. I very much want to give a thumbs-up but can't with this basic lack of QA.

Ruins what was one of my favorite games. Chokes you and forces you to play a certain way. Defeats the whole purpose of the genre. Garbage.

Many crashes trying to load saved games or even ending a currently running game in order to access the main menu. Very much less stable than previous builds. Game nearly hangs when navigating a ship manually near a black hole.

5/5 Bretty gud I recommend it if you already got the base game and enjoy it. It adds gameplay elements and deepens the base game.

Keeps crashing to desktop after just a few turns. Complete buggy mess. This company is now blacklisted and I will not purchase any more of its games in the future.

It is perhaps possible that this is a good dlc. If I ever get to try it, then I'll know. For now, Steam took my money, and I simply cannot get it to install. I guess getting my money was the entire point.

Only played about 5 hrs- like the added goverment styles. The commonwealth is a bit suspect - you sort of outsource parts of your empire- milk them and then you all get defeated because you had 20 planets now you have 4 teams of 5 planets which then get picked off rather easily by larger foe. Not sure if the fracturing that the commenwealth brings is a good thing.

Been enjoying the new features with governments, crises, updated AI and so forth. Felt it is worth the money and would recommend others that enjoy space 4x or Gal Civ to pick it up.

Just played a ten hours campaign with Intrigue and found that the new features are pretty nice. I didn't use the Market that much, but I did create a Commonwealth which worked decently. Also the new government type are quite varied. For instance there's one that's good for war as it doubles the income, but prevents non-military ships from being built. Another keeps your people happier but you can't declare war. The Galactic News Network is a nice touch, it helps to highlight important changes that are happening in the galaxy without requiring the player to go hunt them down. About the only disappointment is the new Crisis feature. There will be a pop-up noting that something has occurred and giving you three options, although not really explaining to any degree the impact of those options. You pick one and a while later there's another screen with another three options and you pick again and after awhile up comes a resolution screen, saying whether or not you "passed" the crisis. And unfortunately it seems that there is no way to turn off the Crisis feature in the options, if there is, please let me know.

This is a great expansion that really adds to the base game as many has say, best DLC so far in Gc3

Well there is 4 hours gone before I looked up...another good investment.

Galactic Civilizations III is a great addition to the game. I love it.

I'm literally Brokeman Sam for an entire game now

very good , better then GalCiv2.

Badly designed and too expensive.