I played a few games back in fall '19, and am going to start a new game with the Natural Law expansion soon. What should I be aware of in terms of major additions that aren't obvious or things that I knew that are liable to trip me up coming back?
Hi. Quite a lot was added since the fall of 2019 and many aspects were improved, which should provide for a more complete and enjoyable experience. The following are just a few of the highlights added by the free updates released since then. The 1.0.7 and 1.0.8 updates in December 2019 added: - automated remote exploration, colony automation and automatic ship designs features, colony bases, new galaxy configuration settings (including a star distance option), improved empire borders, AI improvements. Then, the free 1.1 major update released in April 2020 added a host of new features and brought the game to a new level. Features added included completely new 3D ship models, 3D terrains in the colony view, population migration, new "Gigantic" map size, roaming space monster offspring, new leaders, new events, a new combat isometric view option, new animations in combat, score and hall of fame, increased challenge, many AI improvements and balance changes. In November of 2020 the free 1.2 major update added a new Human fleet set (that can be used in custom races), improved galaxy map graphics, an auto-combat feature, several research UI QoL features, rally points, more AI improvements, balance changes and other improvements. In November 2020 we also released the Natural Law expansion, which added 2 new races, each fully equipped with unique new capabilities which are also usable by custom races. It also includes 9 new fully animated ruler options, 4 new music tracks, and 4 new leaders. So, in sum the game offers a very different experience now when compared to 2019. The graphics and the UI are more polished, the game feels more balanced (e.g. in terms of pacing, combat aspects, etc), the AI is more challenging now (especially in the higher difficulty levels), there are new automation options, many QoL improvements and the game is very stable at the moment. \Edit: By the way, if you haven't played the game since the fall of 2019, please delete all the custom races that you may have created before playing new games as they are not compatible anymore and may lead to unstable behavior.
