[Bman]

I am very happy with my SE4 purchase just as I was happy with SE3 and will be happy with SE4:Gold.

That being said, I have been keeping my eye on GalCiv for quite a while. I have heard nothing but good things about it's previous OS/2 incarnation. It has a lot of role-playing elements that you don't find in any other 4x space games. For example, as you explore the universe you are often presented with questions. The different answers have different repercussions. The example always given is: You land on a planet and discover primitives living there. You can a) kill them all and colonize the planet. b) enslave them. c) only establish a tiny outpost and let the primitives live mostly alone. d) leave the planet alone.

a) gives you the most space to build but is quite evil.
b) is fairly evil. It gives you less space to build, but you get some cheap labor!
c) is pretty good of you but gives you only a small space to build.
d) is really nice of you but gives you no space to build.

And over time your choices affected how others view your empire. If you always do evil things, your empire becomes perceived as evil by the other civs. And even your graphics changed to more dark and sinister looking graphics. It sounds like a neat concept and I look forward to seeing how it works in action.