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[Xantalos]

I recommend Sword of The Stars and all of the expansion packs; not sure about the second game. Aurora is another good one, though as many have said, there are bugs and glitches galore.

[Neonivek]

I recommend Sword of The Stars and all of the expansion packs; not sure about the second game. Aurora is another good one, though as many have said, there are bugs and glitches galore.

I get mixed oppinions.

Some believe it is a shadow of how great the first is even in its current state. Others say it finally caught up with its potential.

[Lightning4]

Space Empires 3. Because you can cut yourself off from all the other star systems in the galaxy by closing the wormholes between them, then devote 10 years to buildinga fleet of cloaked robot kamikaze ships armed with system destroying sun exploder bombs, then unleash them upon the rest of civilization.

Space Empires IV is quite good too. Also has a mountain of mods to extend the playing experience.

5 is... okay. It's not bad at all, though I find the AI in vanilla to be a fair bit incompetent.
Mods can improve the experience, the Balance Mod in particular.

I recommend Sword of The Stars and all of the expansion packs; not sure about the second game. Aurora is another good one, though as many have said, there are bugs and glitches galore.

I get mixed oppinions.

Some believe it is a shadow of how great the first is even in its current state. Others say it finally caught up with its potential.

Eehh. It's not a bad game at all, but Prime still does have an edge on it. I think by now it needs polish, and I think that's what they're doing now that it has been given the 'all-clear'.
Sort of a time thing. They've drastically improved the game in one year, and I suspect that the next year will see further improvement.
If there's another expansion, I suspect that's when the comparison battle between Prime and 2 will really heat up.

They're really generous though. An entire free expansion.

[Korbac]

Europa Universalis 3 - There's not actually that much you can *do*, unless you get all the expansions, but it's fun.
CRUSADER KINGS II - LIKE EU3 BUT YOU CAN DO TONS OF SHIT AND IT'S AMAZING
Space Empires 5 - The main reason I don't like this is that unless you make all your ships different sizes it's hard to distinguish the Vigdaloons from the Rumbako's. Also requires Balance Mod imo.
Civ 4 / 5 - 4 for depth in all departments except military tactics and ongoing civ diversification (culture & faith), 5 for these two points but little else
Age of Wonders Shadow Magic - This is an amazing game in it's own right, but after you add mods which diversify the races a bit, it becomes fantastic.

[DrPoo]

Star Ruler is pretty fucking awesome too.

[inteuniso]

Distant Worlds: There is a whole slew of things to do, from the micro to the macro. The best part? You can let the micromanagement be entirely automated, allowing you to focus on the big picture. And you can take manual control whenever you want.

[askovdk]

In the light end of the scale I currently like 'Warlock : Master of the Arcane' now.

It's not difficult, but I keep comming back to it for the entertaining Explore, Expand, Buff units, Exterminate.

[ragnar119]

StarDrive, not out yet, but looks interesting.
http://www.stardrivegame.com/

[Eктωρ]

What about Galciv II?

[RedKing]

What about Galciv II?

No. Just....no. I've really tried to get into the GalCiv games, but they don't do it for me. I never got the feeling of any kind of unitary empire, just a couple of scattered planets with a handful of ships. Also not fond of the never-ending constructor race.

My retro votes would be MOO 2 and Master of Magic.
Modern votes would be Civ 4 (I like 5, especiallly post-G&K, but it's just not the same), Aurora and Sword of the Stars 1 w/ all the DLC.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

What about Galciv II?

No. Just....no. I've really tried to get into the GalCiv games, but they don't do it for me. I never got the feeling of any kind of unitary empire, just a couple of scattered planets with a handful of ships. Also not fond of the never-ending constructor race.

Can you be more descriptive please? I ask since a friend and myself bought it on a Steam sale a month or so ago and, although we haven't gotten around to playing it fully yet, first impressions seem to indicate it was a turn-based Civ inspired 4X in SPPPACCCEEEE.
We wanted a decent multiplayer game in the vain of Civ/Alpha Centauri with a different setting and a slightly higher level of complexity to bridge some boring weekends. I certainly hope we didn't waste our money.

[puke]

Distant Worlds: There is a whole slew of things to do, from the micro to the macro. The best part? You can let the micromanagement be entirely automated, allowing you to focus on the big picture. And you can take manual control whenever you want.

I'll add my voice to this one.  DW is really great, though part of what improved upon its rocky initial release are features only found in the expansions.

That said, Matrix Games has them all on sale until Jan 14.

There is supposed to be another expansion / prequel thing coming out later this year, I'm sure they'll discount or bundle the whole series when that one hits.

[TripJack]

All of the best 4x games are older I'm afraid. For fantasy 4x, Age of Wonders and Master of Magic are best. For space 4x, SMAC and Master of Orion are on top. All in all, Alpha Centauri is probably my favorite 4x. They took the Civilization model and made it better in every way

Aurora is newer, and it is really something else. But I still haven't quite wrapped my brain around it so I can't recommend it. Yet.

[RedKing]

What about Galciv II?

No. Just....no. I've really tried to get into the GalCiv games, but they don't do it for me. I never got the feeling of any kind of unitary empire, just a couple of scattered planets with a handful of ships. Also not fond of the never-ending constructor race.

Can you be more descriptive please? I ask since a friend and myself bought it on a Steam sale a month or so ago and, although we haven't gotten around to playing it fully yet, first impressions seem to indicate it was a turn-based Civ inspired 4X in SPPPACCCEEEE.
We wanted a decent multiplayer game in the vain of Civ/Alpha Centauri with a different setting and a slightly higher level of complexity to bridge some boring weekends. I certainly hope we didn't waste our money.

GalCiv is hard to describe, for me at least. There's a tech tree but it feels disjointed. There's exploration, but on default settings, 80%+ of the planets you find are useless and uninhabitable. Much of the strategic game revolves around finding and exploiting "resources" which are floating out in space, by sending constructor after constructor to build/upgrade an outpost.

There's unit design (which is better than the first game which used stock units), but the unit designs are kind of a rock-paper-scissors thing: there's beams, missiles and railguns. Each is a seperate weapon tree, and each has a seperate defensive counter tree. You can try to build a ship that's strong in a single weapon, or has a spread of weak weapons in each category, but the space limitations are such that the latter is typically impractical.

There's diplomacy, but it seems opaque to me. Espionage works pretty decently. Economy works rather oddly and in a somewhat hamfisted way, IMHO.

[MonkeyHead]

GalCiv 2 bored me to tears. It felt so sterile. The ship design was unfulfilling, the diplomacy AI was wooden and the tech tree was inflexible. I echo the call for SMAC, which is the polar opposite. Devious AI which plays different depending on how you play, unit design which gives strengths and weaknesses to all designs and difficult compromises to make, and a dynamic tech tree.

Or, Master of Orion thr... lol no, I cant even complete that sentence without laughing. Unless you are willing to find a hard to source 2-cd version and mod it to hell and back - I have a few incomplete LP's around the place with that going on in them.