We are quickly coming up to the day when Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar goes gold.

With the last beta being nearly feature complete, work has begun to be totally focused on making the computer AI make full use of the new features as well as make use of the new options that take advantage of Dualcore and Quadcore machines.

As some people know, the AI in GalCiv is not scripted but is instead based on a series of adaptive algorithms based on trying to play similar to a human player (or at least a human player who is role playing as an alien race).  Each player has its own unique artificial intelligence engine which runs in multiple dedicated threads.

To see a running tab on how the computer players are doing, see the Journals area. There you will see the AI do stupid things and see how we tweak the algorithms so that it makes better decisions (usually based on making sure it has more information to make a decision on).

Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar will be released on February 14th. It is an on-line only release (i.e. you can only get it on its own here -- CD or digital download).  Users who pre-order it will be able to start getting it early (how early we can't say yet).