I feel like with Endless Space around I have all the space 4X I need at this point. GalCiv2 was really disappointing to me, honestly. The AI is dumb as rocks.
Disclaimer: I may feel EXTREMELY BURNED from having been an Elemental pre-orderer. Take my negative opinions re:stardock with a grain of salt.
Stardock has burned a whole slew of people before. On more than one occasion even. I will wait and see how it looks when released before coughing up money in their general direction. It sounds like BS with them saying the price is $100 to get the game and all the expansions they may choose to make later for it. At least with the Borderlands "Season Pass" they told you in advance how many expansions that would account for. With this the price is quite high and I have not even heard about the base game, much less planned expansions. Hell, I would sooner trust Microsoft to make two good OSes in a row than Stardock to not rip me off. Still, the trailer looks nice, though vague to the point of not even bothering to demonstrate an interface or anything that would confirm a genre. (I own GalCiv 1 & 2 with all expansions. I know the genre it is going to be.)
I also feel burned by Elemental. I know that Fallen Enchantress had a better reception, but for me, it was too similar to Elemental.
Stardock have some dedicated fans, and the GalCiv franchise is still reasonably popular. It will sell. But don't forget it also has Alpha access and some other shit, so you are getting a fair amount for the $100. It's the third version, something like Legendary Heroes or whatever, that seems to have really hit the mark. It's a little dodgy that they're selling each new version at basically the price of a full game whilst still having the old one on sale (I think...), mind.
I've never been burned by Stardock because, I'll be honest, Elemental never even began to interest me. What I do have is experience with GalCiv II and all it's expansions. And unlike our resident diggle animator I always found the AI to be just where it needed to be. (unlike a certain Total War series) I've lost many, many wars in that game. So the announcement of a third GalCiv, this time with MP so I can play it with my wife, caused quite a bit of happiness to me. But it appears I'm one of the few
