Not only fill in the gaps left by Stardock, but create entirely new gameplay styles. Litterally everything will be moddable, to the point where if you really wanted to you could turn it into an enhanced GalCiv clone. If you find it too dumbed down, find mods to enhance it or add complexity yourself.
In somewhat related news, since Beta 2 comes out this Thursday, some of the actual gameplay mechanics will finally be revealed (as opposed to the placeholders meant to debug their game engine currently in use).
The main thing which concerns me is music quality and quantity. GalCiv2 basicly had 1 tune which I think may have been remixxed a bit, but overall every tune had the same bit in it... That sort of Stargate SG-1 theme song feel which was repeated ad-nauseum. Browsing through the music files of GalCiv2, there is at most 1.5 hours of music, maybe less. Many of which are conditional musics (first contact music, finding anomolee music, first colony music, ect) which aren't even in the cycled music. As of now, the Elemental Beta files seem to be using a set of layered musical themes, the total length of which is still on par with GalCiv2 levels. As much as I love the Elemental theme song, I don't want to listen to it for an entire 30 hour game, let alone another game or two after that.