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I'm basically looking for Civ IV in space. Something where I can create my fleet and orchestra huge space battles. I dunno what has gotten me wanting to direct the conquering of the universe, but I would really like something that allows me to create and orchestra a large scale space battle. I think it was finishing off Mass Effect and seeing the large battle outside the Citadel that I couldn't take part in, or really direct.

I've taken a brief look today at newish games and only really noticed Galactic Civilizations II.

Any that you folks can recommend that I take a closer look at?

Master of Orion 2.  You will pretty much need to just put the whole CD on the HD, run install, then play it via Dosbox, but nothing comes close to it even 10 years later.
As far as I know (haven't installed it yet), GalCiv 2 doesn't have ship to ship turn based combat, just Civ styled sucky combat.

Sins of the Solar Empire comes out soon. Maybe you want that. Maybe not. I don't know a thing about it.

Homeworld and 2 are on Gametap.  Those are some of my favorite fleet games. 

Galciv is a solid 4x game, meaning you have to deal with colonies and diplomacy and research and so on, but you said you wanted Civ in space, and that's pretty much it.

I haven't played Gal Civ 2 in a while (could have changed alot via patches, I don't know) but I did play it.  It's basically Civ in space... I guess.

I stopped playing it because late game ships move so fast they can literally travel halfway accross the galaxy through enemy territory in a single turn.  Seems impossible to defend territory when your opponents entire fleet can show up and attack on the opposite side of your territory in a single turn.  Not to say I was getting stomped by the AI.  It always seemed lame when I did the same thing... fly a billion ships to the back of his territory and sack his planet in one turn.

I could be wrong, but late game seemed to turn into planet swapping.  I played maybe 5-10 games and went back to Civ 4.

Sins is going to be real-time though, but fairly complex.   More along the lines of Homeworld and its ilk than anything turn-based.

I think Sins of a Solar Empire (http://www.sinsofasolarempire.com/) is more of a RTS-in-space but has a lot of 4X-in-space stuff.  I'll be getting it because I love giving money to Stardock.  They don't believe in copy protection but in including support for paying customers instead.

There is another expansion (http://forums.galciv2.com/index.aspx?aid=170595) for GalCivII due in a week or two.  Doesn't add turn-based combat, though.  It also drastically increases the size of the playable field, too, from what I recall.

Actually a 'fleet game' is EXACTLY what I'm looking for. I couldn't think of a way to put it, so I said Civ in space, but that sums it up perfectly. I've looked at the Homeworld games in the past, maybe it's time to revisit it.

Definitely either Homeworld, but mostly if you want realtime.

Homeworld 2 has a demo, I'll grab that and try it first.

Thanks.

I played some more Master of Orion 2 today just because I wanted to see how it works on a fast Intel iMac over a G5.  Its still  :awesome_for_real: as it gets.
Even if my game was cut short by the Silicoids getting the 2nd biggest race in the game to surrender to them, making the bastards more powerful than the other 6 remaining races combined. 
Of which only one was close enough to talk to. :(

I want to play some more. 

If you have never played Homeworld, you're in for a treat.    Personally, I prefer the first over the second, but both are phenomenal.

Also, the original is so great in how Hard it can be. You have to make every ship Count.

I just want to throw in another Masters of Orion 2 praise in there. Best turn based strategy I have played... ever. There was also some sort of mod around when I played it last year to make it a bit harder.

Simple.  Don't take Gifted as a racial trait.  Its like easy mode regardless of difficulty.
Ive been taking screenshots to pimp it.  I currently have 18 of them.
Expect them tomorrow night sometime.
Commander Tigatron of the Cyber Farming Mrrshans is on a quest to liberate the galaxy from the hated Psilons.
Outpowered and with allies being more interested in beating each other up and not the BIG FUCKING MEGAFORCE, it fell to Tigatron's fuzzy paws.  Outnumbered and outgunned, his Panther class battleships WILL PREVAIL.

The Psilons even offered a 10% income tribute if I would stop attacking them.  He declined seeing the sorry state of the Silicoids they had as slave labor.

First the Psions...  THEN ORION ITSELF.

MOO2 runs well on win XP?

MoO2: http://www.atari.com/us/games/moo2_battle_anta/pc
Some people have to struggle with it to run on XP, I installed it and it ran first time. v:-)v
If all else fails, installing the DOS version (and possibly DOSBox as well) will work. Also, make sure that you patch up to 1.3 at least - there's a nasty little bug in 1.2 and below with tactical combat and tiny planets.

Here, I did up my ongoing game on my blog.
I could repost it, or I could whore it up a little and send you there.

http://wargamedork.blogspot.com/2008/01/master-of-orion-2-battle-at-antares.html

And I couldn't get it working under XP at all, and my friend can't either.
You can run it as a DOS program under Windows pretty easy, or as my Mac self is doing, DOSbox it.