Stardock announces beta testing of Galactic Civilizations III is now underway for founding supporters of the space strategy sequel, apologizing to those who want in on this that they are still offering the game for $5.00 less than its eventual full price. This trailer accompanies the news, and here's word:

We’ve officially launched the beta! Bells are ringing, birds are singing, and it’s a beautiful day to dig up the archives of a forgotten race’s reality TV shows and use them to placate a restive populace that for some reason doesn’t see the value in mandatory six-month stints working the factories of the nearest forgeworld.

To all of our Founders, thank you so much for your early support. Elite Founders, your feedback and bug reporting has been invaluable in getting Galactic Civilizations III ready for a wider audience. Fire up your Steam client, and it should patch your install to the beta automatically.

To anyone waiting for Galactic Civilizations III to be regular price before diving in, you’ll have to wait a little longer. Sadly, the game is $44.99 during the beta rather than its regular $49.99 price. We beg your forgiveness.

Follow the development of Galactic Civilizations III throughout the beta, ask the team your questions live, and get sneak peeks of upcoming builds every Friday on the official Stardock Twitch channel.

The Galactic Civilizations III beta includes:

• Race-specific tech trees – Each race discovers the secrets of creation in its own way. Look out for Drengin invasions a whole age before anyone else can pull one off.
• Ideology rework – Get an entire invasion fleet for free, take control of all planets inside your sphere of influence, and more!
• Huge hulls – For when you absolutely, positively, have to kill every last filthy alien in the quadrant.
• New colonization events – Thirty more events will challenge your ideology whenever you bring the light of civilization to a new world.
• Terraforming – Maximize your adjacency bonuses by filling in gaps on your colonies with SCIENCE!
• Map features – Durantium, Elerium, and Antimatter are now on the map, waiting to be harvested by your starbases. Watch out for black holes!
• So much more – reworked planet traits, shipyard queues, automatic improvement upgrading, tons of new art, vastly improved rendering (ships are so shiny now!), the list goes on.

Read the full patch notes here.