Some things

[Gurduloo]

I think one thing that people are forgetting is that SEIV is not directed at the mainstream retail market. It's very much a niche product and MM very wisely kept production costs down by not hiring a small army of professional artists and animators. If they had tried to increase the game's appeal with snazzier graphics, it would not have resulted in enough extra sales to justify the added expense, since a turn based 4X game has only so many potential buyers. It would be interesting to compare the profitability of SEIV vs. a larger production game like MOO3.