GalCiv II is one of the least fun 4xs I've ever played. The only one I've played that was worse was Master of Orion III (which set an amazing new low for shittiness, but I'm comparing GalCiv II to good games, not to the worst 4x ever). GalCiv II doesn't really compare to even MoO II in terms of fun, or to Sword of the Stars: Complete for meaningful strategic choice. In SotS: Complete, the AIs are competent and challenging despite having actual meaningful differences between the weapons, as compared to GalCiv II's straight rock-paper-scissors tech tree, which I can only assume was implemented because Stardock couldn't figure out how to make a competent AI without crippling player choice to make everything easy for the AI to calculate (at the time they were saying it was the BEST AI EVER). Caveat: I haven't played GalCiv II in years and only own "Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords" and "GalCiv II - Dark Avatar" (the first expansion), because I decided not to throw good money after bad.
