[PvK]

For me, the ship design and combat are the main reasons for playing SE4. The value of the rest of it is mainly to give the ship designs and battles a consistent context for the fleets to maneuver around. Galciv demphasizes to nonexistance ship design and tactics, so it is not really the same kind of game to me, and has little interest. Also although I have gotten hooked playing Civ and Civ II a couple of times, I don't particularly like those games. There are many many design decisions I would do very differently. Mainly it's just addictive because there is so much stuff in the tree, and they give you a steady stream of new toys. That gets people, even me, to play compulsively for a while, but shortly I stop and don't go back to finish even a single game, because I realize that I don't like the implementation of most of it. Heaps of game design choices that I find blah. Too much aimed at the casual audience, for me - I'm not the casual audience.

As for Roanon's comments about not liking complex mechanics and opaque results... well I actually do like games that have those, when they're done well. The real world is so complex that you never can just calculate to figure out complex things like the production of a nation. But there are some cause and effects which can be figured out an applied. I have no confidence however that GalCiv's "complex" mechanics would interest me very much, though, since the Civ game mechanics have generally disappointed me.

But not having detailed ship combat stuff makes GalCiv a genre I'm not particularly interested in.

PvK