The review on Gamespot was done in Nov. of 2000 by Bruce Geryk so I'm pretty sure it's the original game.
Here's the link to the SEIV review:
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/...pace%20empires
Maybe it's the biases of the reviewer's that's coming into play. I know that Bruce Geryk is a hardcore boardgamer and computer strategy gamer. I don't recognize the SEV reviewer.
Just for the sake of discussion what happen's if SEV never rises above mediocrity even after all the bug's are fixed? I know Aaron can create a better game and I for one would rather see him move on to SEVI than to spend a large amout of time fixing SEV if that game turns out to be no good.