I’m gonna be honest…I didn’t like GalCiv 2 that much. It felt bland, soulless or lacking in something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. When GalCiv 3 was announced, I sat back and waited for the early access version to fill in with some content before diving in, so to keep my expectations as level as possible. Well, you can imagine my shock and surprise when I found out that not only is Galactic Civilizations 3 a compelling game with an actual soul this time, it’s damned fun, funny and full of interesting choices. It also has a pretty damned good UI (I’m something of a UI nut), even if it is missing some tooltips at the moment ;) Watch as I take us through around 60 turns of a new game, never once getting bored. ;) Enjoy!
I kinda felt the same way about GalCivs I+II but I’m a Stardock die-hard. I’ve played GalCiv II for maybe 7 or so games and around 50 hours. I picked up GalCiv III when Stardock sent me a 50% off anything in their library coupon. I was pretty pleased that GalCiv III was included. I’ve been waiting to play this as a) it’s Windows only, which mean I have to use my beefy game box as my laptop won’t pull it and it won’t run on my Linux Workstation b) Early access has pretty caused me to hate Early access. (Thanks Lords of the Black Sun for killing my joy.)
What I want in a 4x game is what I found in Warlock. Shallow(ish) strategy layer with a nice wargamey-army-unit-heavy game. Warlock reminded me of Sword of the Stars in that your planet management (at least in the vanilla game) was pretty vague and you got lots of ships/fleets to move and go to war with. My problem with SotS was I often hit stalemate conditions where neither I nor the computer could push through and win. I’d love a nice Warlock+Sword of the Stars+GalCiv game. Maybe I’ll understand GalCiv III’s tech trees enough to be able to make clever/interesting decisions.
Ohhh, that would indeed rock my socks off. I just got Warlock 2 recently and am really enjoying it. I guess the closest thing I can think of to what you’re looking for is maaaaaaaaaaaaaybe Spaceward Ho!? Maybe?