So I've been absent for a long time from the GalCiv2 community. I devoured the first game and played it endlessly, then pre-ordered Dark Avatar and before I was able to really sink my teeth into it, I got pulled away and haven't really been back since. Now that I see the ramp-up for the new expansion is in full swing, my curiosity is piqued again.

What's troubling me, though, is that while I was able to keep pace with all the patches and changes made to GalCiv2, I never really did anything with the expansion. Never played the single player campaign, and only played one or two rounds in sandbox mode. I never got deeply into the spies and asteroid mining.

In short, I feel a bit unprepared to play TA when it comes out. I'm going to dig into DA in the next week or two, but it's already undergone so many revisions, that it's difficult for me to figure out what's going on.

The manual helps a little, but there have been so many nerfs, tweaks, boosts, and AI upgrades, it's hard to know what's going on under the hood.

Is there any way that those of us who have largely been absent since GalCivII could get some sort of a primer guide? A collection of dev journals and news posts that detail the relevant alterations. The changelogs are one thing, but I always find the posts and comments to be much more informative.

Even if it was something as simple as a post with direct links to all of the change threads, it would be much simpler than wading through post after post trying to figure out the info I need to get the most out of the game.