This is great game that you can always rediscover. It is just very rich in different strategies and can provoke you intellectually with its Science fiction universe . To a newcomer it might appear cluttered, but once you "get" the game it will get you coming back for more years after playing it initially to try out new things in it. In this review I'm going to give you some tips to get into the game faster. There are many satisfying ways to win. I would play one time to rush the airborne Penetrators, another time I would make a land-bridge using terraformers for my tank invasion, I would use Trans Supply units to leap-frog everyone with energy, you can even use global warming to drown off your opponents or at least make their inland cities vulnerable to your ships. You can try weapons of mass destruction. There is an in-game tutorial that explains the interface, but doesn't really give you an appreciation how the different things - your bases, their environment, your social engineering choices and your army interact. My suggestion is to turn off from the settings whatever you might find too confusing or overwhelming in the interface and experiment a few times in order to understand it. For example there is an automatic unit designer, but it will quickly clutter your menus with dozens of units, while you don't need 10 types of sea units in your menus if you are going to focus on opponents on the same continent. I also recommend turning on "Pause at end of turn". Once you feel you have found some of the easiest strategies you can look for mods on the internet - they can change the balance significantly, allowing you to try even more things! There are some very cool user-created maps and mods (my favorite map right now is hmopdd2.MP by Dilithium Dad). The game is also really thought-provoking at times - the quotes are fantastic, it is partly hard Science Fiction and might influence your views on society, both current, historical and future.
