Genres: Turn-Based Strategy, Strategy
Release Date: April 30th, 2008
Publisher: Stardock
Developer: Stardock
Official Website: https://www.galciv2.com/twilight/
Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor is the second and last expansion pack to the award-winning PC strategy game, Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords (2006).

The first expansion pack, Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar (2007) was an immense commercial success and won Editor’s Choice awards from G4 X-Play (5/5), GameSpy (5/5), UGO (A), Gamespot (9.1), PC Gamer (90%), 1Up (9/10), IGN (9/10), and many other sources. Dark Avatar introduced two new civilizations, a new campaign, super-abilities for civilizations, asteroid mining, unique planetary environments, and more.

This second expansion pack, Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor (2008), aims to top Dark Avatar in terms of game enhancing features. It adds a new campaign concluding the Dread Lords trilogy, adds hundreds of new features, and also gives every civilization its own unique technology tree and therefore unique ships, unique planetary improvements, unique starbases and more. It also introduces a new victory condition option called Ascension, which provides a whole new way of playing the game. All of these features are wrapped in a massive graphics overhaul that takes advantage of a new technology that actually significantly reduces the memory and hardware requirements. In other words, it’s not just a lot prettier, it runs even better on lower-end machines with better graphics.

Our Story So Far...

In Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords, the galaxy is on the verge of war. The evil Drengin Empire is only held in check by the might of the ancient Arcean Empire, which is nominally allied to the fledgling Terran Alliance. The Drengin fear the up and coming Humans from Earth because while the Humans claim to be diplomats and merchants, they also have seen evidence that Humans are lethal when it comes to war. Moreover, the Humans are rapidly spreading their influence across the galaxy, leading the Drengin to conclude that time is working against them.

In a desperate search for an advantage, the Drengin unwittingly discover and free the ancient precursor civilization known as the Dread Lords. The Dread Lords quickly wreak havoc across the galaxy, while the Terran Alliance builds a coalition that fights the Dread Lords off. Just as victory appears imminent for the Humans and their coalition, the Drengin Empire, which had stayed out of the war, strike with a massive fleet. The Arcean Empire is quickly overwhelmed and the exhausted coalition is no match for the fresh forces of the Drengin and their allies. The Humans, however, recover the collection of artifacts that the Drengin had taken and discover that one of them is a planetary force field that makes a planet completely impervious to attack (though it also means nothing can leave the planet either). The Humans use it to protect Earth and then use the second artifact they found to send their main fleet to a pocket universe that had trapped the Dread Lords in the hopes of finding additional artifacts to even the odds.

In Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar, the galaxy is on fire with the Drengin Empire dominating. However, the Drengin are conflicted as to what to do with the defeated. The Drengin shock troopers, known as the Korath, feel extermination is the best way. By contrast, the Drengin high command feels that extermination is wasteful and wants to use the defeated as a neverending supply of slavelings. This leads to a galactic civil war between the Drengin Empire and the newly independent Korath clan. The Korath, however, are merely pawns of the Dread Lords. The Drengin manage to successfully fend off the Korath assault on the Drengin homeworld leading the galactic civil war into a stalemate.

In Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor, a deep space expedition force of the Terran Alliance has found the last known survivor of the Arnor – the precursor civilization that had battled and exiled the Dread Lords in the first place. The last Arnorian explains that the source of Arnorian power (the Dread Lords are of the Arnor as well) are a series of shards scattered across the galaxy. The Terran Alliance must collect and destroy these shards. Only then will the Dread Lords be forever diminished and the galaxy free to determine its own destiny. Twilight of the Arnor includes the campaign to conclude the fate of the Arnor – both the Dread Lords and the Arnorians.