The official wiki hasn’t updated, unless there’s a special Crusade wiki somewhere, so let me help you with the almost entirely new rules (as compared to the game in 2016).

The teaser trailer for the expansion!

(Note I’ve only played a human-type faction so far. Dunno about the other civs yet.)

First, all the ships’ hit points are set to a quarter of what they used to be and the weapons and damage amounts are adjusted way downwards as well. It balances out but, as with so many of these changes, I don’t understand why they were made necessarily. Anyway, don’t be alarmed at your 25 HP survey ship.

For no reason at all, you no longer start with a ship yard. Rush build one and you can still rush build a ship on your very first turn. Maybe it’s a bug, who knows.

In addition to ships with hardly any hit points, planets support only tiny populations starting out. Or compared to before anyway: 3 billion is the max for most planets. So you will (eventually) have to build a new building called a City to bump that up. You really get a benefit for research/production/wealth by having more people on a planet so you do want to build these. HOWEVER, cities require a lot of FOOD, so that’s what farms do now. Previously farms increased your population, now they add to a civ-wide food total you can see in your resource bar at the top. Each city uses 4 food points which amounts to 4 farms, at least initially. So guess what, this is a new planet specialization you can look into. Have a couple that have nothing but farms and farm-boosting buildings on ’em.

Get the Colony Buildings or whatever tech right away. You literally can’t build shit until you research a couple starting techs. And as per usual, you can only send dick pictures to alien civilizations until the Universal Translator gets invented. (I love the idea of Kirk sending a dick pic using the Enterprise view screen or something terrible.)

You can no longer talk to or trade with minor civilizations. At all. And the diplomacy screen looks really chintzy now.

There are buildings that add a solid “point” to construction or research, and buildings that add a fixed percentage to your planet’s construction or research (or wealth) points. The percentage guys (factories, research centers, market centers), as before, can be upgraded (they’ll add higher percentages later on). The fixed guys (space elevator, computer core, central bank) are new and I have no idea if they upgrade, I haven’t gotten that far. :(

Anyway, build a space elevator — it adds 1 point to construction — right away on new colonies. One point is a big deal, especially early on. Or for planets that aren’t going to participate as sponsors for a shipyard, build a deep core mine — adds 2 points to social construction only. You can have both if you want on the same planet. Star ports are great too, +2 to ship construction.

“Military” buildings seem to have gone away. There’s no Hyperion Shrinker anymore. That’s really crazy to me because making that and buffing it with huge adjacency bonuses was literally step 2 of winning the game for me, after getting a bunch of colonies.

Tool tips are greatly improved so hover over stuff (like colony tile bonus icons) to see what the hell they are.

“Citizens” are a new mechanic. Every x number of turns you get a new Citizen you can “train”. Techs let you train them later on into new fields, like diplomats and spies. Your faction leader is a “leader”, and guys like him can be moved around to bump your civ-wide production or research or wealth. It’s the new way to handle your economic focus.

Colony Rush: your tiny home planet population means you better not fill up that transport all the way and depopulate your home world. Also each colony ship (and constructor, and survey ship) uses an “administrator” which is a civ-wide point thing you can keep track of in the resource bar. There are some techs that add to your point total, and a fairly lame building that gives you ONE, but early on the best way to get more, as far as I know, is to train citizens as administrators. That gives you 5 points per citizen.

I guess they felt the colony rush was just too fast and had to slow it way the fuck down.

Another thing: you can see when you hover over a habitable planet what resources it has. Epimetheus pollen is pretty important for some things, but it also seems relatively common. A Monsantium deposit is great if you can find it because you can make the food galactic achievement and, like, have food. Anyway, yes, some buildings require this shit now, mainly galactic “achievements” of which there are many.

Anomalies: they reduced the number significantly so even at “abundant” there’s only a modest number. I used to have a huge survey fleet scooping these up but now I’m screwed because survey ships use up an administrator point. Also note: the starship graveyard anomaly type has been removed. No more defended anomalies and no more free space ships. It used to be that these anomalies were the ONLY way (other than certain ideology perks) to get warships early on. Now you get a starter weapon to add to your ships, the “space rocket”. This is the dumbest name for a weapon. I get they wanted it to sound primitive. Whatever, enjoy your “space rocket” defender ships.

But who are you going to fight with your space rocket defender? No matter what you set your galaxy pirate frequency setting to, there are no pirates until some random point when they suddenly appear (it’s a galactic event). I guess some really desperate civs will slug it out on turn 10 with tiny 1 attack, 3 HP fighters. I admire their determination.

Space resources no longer give you 1 point of whatever it is, then a second when you add a mining module. They are a continuous stream of whatever, slowly giving you tons of points. Maybe that makes more sense. Lots of things use these resources now, so get them early.

Some new ship parts! If you had a ship that needed a sphere in it, you’re in business now. No more of that shitty Thalan part.

One last thing: the Turn Button. There’s a stupid bug where it thinks you’re done moving everything and lets you push it, but then it goes to “idle ship” and you have a guy with 1 movement point left or something. Move him and the AI will start taking their turn. A+

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laudablepuss