Developer Stardock has announced the next expansion for Galactic Civilizations 3, titled Mercenaries.

The new expansion will include its own story campaign and will re-introduce two old factions to GalCiv 3 for the first time: the ancient Arceans, and the aquatic, perpetually enslaved Torians, who are the focus of said campaign.

Stardock CEO, Brad Wardell stopped to give a brief look at the new mercenary ships for which the expansion is named. Players will be able to discover "Galactic Bazaars" where various mercenaries will offer their services. Aside from having their own unique ships, they can also be assigned to individual systems to grant statistical bonuses to them.

The real key here is that every player is pulling from the same finite pool of mercs, which means you might want to hire particularly dangerous ones just to prevent your opponents from using them against you. Will you go bankrupt early trying to keep the best of the best out of enemy hands at the cost of your early development and economy? Or will you wait until you're more financially established and risk losing powerful ships to enemy empires?

Galactic Civilizations 3: Mercenaries comes out on February 18, and will cost $19.99.