[raynor]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
But if you take all of those things out, it is no longer a very good game. A 4X game without those things has no replay value (and quite possibly no first play value ).

You may be right. If I had my preference, I would ask for challenging AI plus all of those things. It may very well be that the lack of all those things will detract so much from the game that I won't like it.

On the other hand, it may turn out that the AI is absolutely fantastic. It may turn out that it is 100x better than any other game that claims to be part of the space 4x genre. In that case, I may be willing to put up with a game that doesn't have those features.