I played Civ, CivII and Alpha Centauri. I think each one is a great game. Civ was a DOS game with not too many frills. It had VGA graphics but that's about it. CivII added slightly prettier graphics and better music and nice cinematic sequences for these special projects called 'Wonders'. The first time through the game, I watched every movie but then I skipped over them to get back to the gameplay. Alpha Centauri had similar quality graphics and sound and the movies. It added some neat sound effects to combat. The first couple of games, I left that turned on. But after that, I turned it off so that combat would resolve faster so I could get back to the gameplay.
Then, by chance, I read about SEIV on
http://www.gamespot.com and downloaded the Demo. Finally, I thought, here is a program author who really 'Gets' it. He realized that a lot of us strategy gamers think the eye-candy and 3D sound is pretty impressive the first few times through the game. But after that, we just turn it off so we can get on with the game. He realized that he would probably make us happier if he instead wrote a deeper and more detailed game.
If you want all that glitz but don't care to play a very deep and detailed game, go checkout Imperium Galactica. This game has the graphics and sound but no depth. I played one game but not a second. I still have it and would probably *GIVE* it to you if you lived nearby.
What SEIV does that is so much more incredible than anything I could have ever imagined is allow you to customize the game. Hmm... don't like the way the Xiati race's ships look like? You can replace them with ships that look like Star Wars, or Star Trek or Babylon 5 or whatever. You can also customize how races behave--what they research, what the build, etc. You can even change fundamental rules of the game. Isn't that amazing?!? Do you know how hard it is to create a game that lets you change so much?!?
Bottom line: if you 'claim' to like playing strategy games, then you are made a liar if you don't buy this game.