One of the interesting reasons why Stardock Corporation makes a lot of money off of its games is because of the company's ability to maintain good relations with their consumers, and ultimately, to make those consumers a part of their fanbase.

One way they've done this is by removing copy protection from their games, yet creating incentive for people to stick to buying the original, and that's the topic they're discussing in their recent blog post for Sins of a Solar Empire. More on this after the jump!

Stardock Corporation has announced that the Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar beta will be coming to PC users on November 16, 2006. Of course, with this being such a large-scale release, Stardock isn't letting just anybody in on the beta. There is a catch. Beta slots will only be allocated to those who have pre-ordered Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar through totalgaming.net for $25.

The full version of the expansion pack is due to ship in February 2007, and therefore this beta gives gamers the chance to play the game before everyone else.

Dark Avatar expands the gameplay of Galactic Civilizations II in a big way compared to most expansion packs, introducing custom opponents whose play styles can be completely defined by the player, espionage agents to engage in sabotage and destabilization, special worlds which require specific technology to colonize, and much, much more. Here's a few of the features:

• Custom Civilization Opponents. Players can now design their own opponents within the game and then play against them. This includes both what the opponent looks like but also how it plays.
• Espionage Agents. Many of the reviews of Galactic Civilizations II have made mention of how the game allows players to win through many different strategic paths. Espionage agents give players the ability to win through covert operations. Spend money on espionage to hire agents who can sabotage production, research, morale, farming, etc. on enemy worlds. Or use them to snuff out enemy agents on your worlds.

We did say there was a big feature list in this expansion. Check out the full list after the jump!