

Then add in the ability to invade planets took you halfway through the combat tech tree. That and the maps were very limited by wormholes, and getting to certain parts of the tech tree which always felt impossible to balance between all four sectors. The problem I had with it was the shipbuilding sucks, space battles are obnoxious and not interesting at all.

I tried Endless Space to find something that would itch my want to find a modernish game of a 2D shareware game from a 1000+ free game CD I happened upon as a kid. There's also Civ: Beyond Earth which got some flack for being called the new Alpha Centauri while really being Civ 5 in space but Civ 5 is still a pretty good game.

What about Endless Space? It came out a few years ago and has its own flaws from what I understand but it might scratch that itch.
