[licker]

My comments are based on GC2 and the 2 expansions. The core issue is that of the open movement system making it far too easy to exploit AI tendencies with small and faster fleets.

TotA plays like a different game because of some new rules for colonization and racial specials, but while it provided a nice little bump, once you get through the new mechanics the core is still the same.

Some people love it, I'm not one of those people. It's not a bad game, it's just not a GREAT game, and IMHO a badly flawed game from the movement system standpoint.

MoO3 got movement and map strategy so completely right it's a shame that the rest of the game was such a puddle of **** (well to most people) which killed anyone wanting to 'borrow' mechanics from it.

Sword of the Stars is another good one though. However, they really stripped down the empire management to bare bones so you don't really get the planet building fix most 4x games tend to provide. It's also horrendous at micro on large maps in long games.