Ha, I have a big backlog of new games including XCom, Jagged Alliance, SPAZ, Sword of the Stars, Sims 3, the new Finest Hour expansion for HOI3, Victoria 2, all the expansions from EU3 I haven't gotten too yet, plus all the stuff from various bundles like Indiefort and THQ and groupee and oh geez I don't even remember em all...
And instead I have been playing good old Space Empires IV the last couple of weeks - I did a game with Invasions Mod that was kind of interesting and now a new version of one of my favorites - Carrier Battles 1.7 in which the AI is actually giving me a pretty good fight. I got really lucky with the opening and was able to grab over 1/4 of the galaxy with only 3 warp points to the outside. So I start building up fleets on them to seal off my section so I can develop the ton of planets I have - I started out with at least 12 carriers and a few smaller ships on each one and was feeling smug (that's a HUGE force at that stage of the game in most SEIV games) but the damn AIs, *even though they are fighting each other too* kept slamming bigger and bigger fleets at them 20, 25, 30 ships including about 40% carriers, owwww. I have been winning because warp point defense and more carriers, but taking more and more damage.
After 120 turns I finally built up enough to get some offense going and took 3 neighbor systems, but now the counterattacks are brutal - against my 25 ships I see fleets of 27 and 53 in one system, and against the battered northern warp point where I have 20 warships I see fleets of 34 and 48 on the way. I thought my main effort was going pretty well - I blockaded and have ground combat in progress on the Phong home world with about 30 ships left in the warfleets but my scouts see a Phong fleet of 96!!! ships coming through the adjoining system, fortunately "only" 20 carriers (the main power in this mod).
It's a blast, not bad for a 12 year old game...