My review is now up at Gamesradar.
The long and the short of it is that this is a good expansion to a great game. A lot of other reviews have, I think, oversold how much is truly new and original here, but there is no denying that this is a must have expansion in many ways.
The AI’s inability to sniff out a good deal at the trade table is my biggest complaint. If you have a decent research infrastructure, you can discover all the extreme colonization techs, even though you only ever need a couple of them in a given galaxy. You may not have any radioactive planets at all. Still, the dopey Drengin will pay through the nose for the useless technology that lets them settle worlds that don’t exist.
But complaints aside, Stardock has done it again.
The trade has always been a let down … although I must admit on a couple of games on the higher difficulty settings I’ve been quite glad you can convince the Drengin to trade for your useless technologies. This one is definitely on my “buy” list. Just as soon as I find some time … playing Warhammer: Mark of Chaos at the moment.