I think what some of the posters are trying to say that they don't require sophisticated graphics to enjoy a game as long as the gameplay is fun/good. If the gameplay is good, then nice graphics can only make it better. Although sometimes it might be frustrating if a game with both strong gameplay/graphics is made slightly less playable because the graphics are a little too intensive, making the game run slower etc. In most cases these days, you can get by reducing some of those in-game settings.
I'm not sure how we got off-track debating the merits of worker automation in the Civ series, but in general I think most would agree that Civ3/Civ4 would be more tolerable than the earlier entries. Of course, it is also possible that a feature that was lost in one of the earlier games sours their experience in face of other new options.
Obviously the graphics in SE:V in comparison to other games are somewhat lacking, but there's likely a couple of reasons. First, the money issue - better graphics generally means more time, which equals more money. Second, in order to keep large fleet battles workable, some "caps" were kept in mind when making the 3d models so that the game wouldn't come to a near standstill for on most people's computers.
Graeme, you don't need to be so edgy. I think merely Renegade13 was suggesting that no one was changing their position, so the thread was becoming a continuous re-hash of the earlier postings.
