The latest Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar patch is now available via Stardock Central, version 1.6 rather impressively adds a new graphics engine which can at times increase video performance tenfold. The full change-log can be found on the official forum.

"Many of our game developers have been working on our next game, a fantasy strategy game and in the process have made real advances in 3D engine development," said Brad Wardell, Designer of Galactic Civilizations. "We wanted to bring some of those performance advancements into Galactic Civilizations."

As a result, players have reported seeing a 10X graphics performance improvement.

"Now players can play on gigantic maps and be zoomed out quite a ways to display hundreds or thousands of ships and still get fantastic performance," said Wardell.