The day is upon us! Revel in the terrible might of your grand fleets, witnessing their deadly grace with the power of the brand-new battle viewer in Galactic Civilizations III Beta 4!

Beta 4 isn't just the addition of the real-time battle viewer, though, sweet as it is. Today we've also got a whole bunch of gameplay additions and tweaks for you:

Extreme worlds extend the colonization race throughout the game by unlocking valuable new worlds with advanced technology. Every colony is precious, so you'll have to make the tough decisions between racing for the techs that let you land on these rich new planets and all of the other directions you can focus your research in.

The Ideology revamp dramatically changes that whole system. Now you progress down five different branches of each ideology, going deep or wide or some combination of the two. How does finding hidden planets, or adding a free fighter escort to every fleet sound? Sounds like it's time to beeline some ideological improvements, that's what. Oh, and the ideology screen is just slightly prettier than the old version.

Gigantic and Immense map sizes are our biggest yet. There should probably be a prize for winning one of these monsters before the game comes out. Of course, there's still Insane to come...

And of course, the battle viewer is in. Pause, replay, and play with several camera modes to get the best angle on the sweet, sweet flaming death your fleets launch at the enemy. It is not interactive; Galactic Civilizations III is a game about huge space empires, not battle tactics.

Read the full patch notes for all the gory details.

Thanks as always for your support, and happy conquering!