Despite recently getting a pretty massive content update, Stardock Corporation have announced a new expansion for Galactic Civilizations III.

The “Crusade” expansion is set to launch sometime in the coming months, and it brings with it even more new content, including: new alien species, a new story campaign, espionage, a graphics engine update, and more tools being made available to your disposal. Featured above, you can view the announcement trailer for the expansion.

“Our focus with Crusade has been to create a much deeper yet more approachable space strategy game,” Paul Boyer, Lead Designer of Galactic Civilizations 3, said in a press release.

“At the heart of your civilization are your citizens. What you do with your citizens, whether that be training them to be scientists, engineers, farmers, soldiers, diplomats, merchants and where you send them will determine how your civilization evolves.”

Here’s a breakdown of the highlighted new features:

• Interactive Invasions: Conquering an entire planet is no small feat. Now, players will take citizens that have been trained as soldiers and battle it out across the planet’s surface. Invaders choose where they will land and defenders will choose where they will resist, both decisions requiring considerable strategic thinking.
• Galactic Citizens: The player’s agency within their civilizations are now expressed through their citizens. Citizens are created every several turns and can be specialized by the player into numerous specializations to help boost their civilization globally or to enhance a specific planet.
• Espionage: Citizens trained as spies can now be used to to take down adversaries from behind the scenes. Players can use spies to destroy planetary improvements, steal technology or assassinate enemy agents.
• Civilization Builder: From the main menu players can now design their own unique civilization including all the ships that player will use for each role. Players can design their own custom ships or download any of the over 12,000 ships that are available via Steam Workshop. With the Civilization Builder, players can literally create any fantasy or sci-fi civilization they can imagine and pit them against each other.
• Crusade: The new single-player campaign introduces players to some of the new alien civilizations that the expansion introduces as well as provides a story-driven narrative of making the mistake that those soft, pink hominids of Sol 3 are push-overs.

Chief among the additions is the new Galactic Citizens, which are generated every couple turns and can be allocated to various specializations that further your sprawling civilization, or even boost a specific planet. You can also use the aforementioned espionage tactic in possibly obtaining tech or even state secrets from rival civilizations.

Galactic Civilization 3: Crusades will set you back $20 USD via Steam, GOG, and Stardock’s own store, and is targeting a spring release.

In case you missed it, you can find our review for Galactic Civilizations III here (we recommend it).