Actually this Reach for the stars aint that bad. It offers some nice aspects, like species need different worlds to live on, referring to gravity and temperature etc. This was implented in MoO 3 as well, but not in SE 4.
MoO 3 is not that bad. Just days ago i reinstalled it, and its quite okay. There is even a resolution mod, allowing the game to be played in 1024 * 768, compared to stock 800 * 640.
Apart from that, you can always play MoO 2.
And FreeOrion looks awesome as well. Latest release is v 0.3 but it already has many features and graphics ready, apart from a working combat model.
www.freeorion.org
Galactic Civ 1/2 = Crap. Combats is so boring its hardly believeable...you are supposed to reign the galaxy with fleets consisting of 3 ships, fighting for about 4 seconds before a battle is resolved ?
all >>> GalCiv