With the report that EA is considering licensing the Spore engine (http://kotaku.com/5045855/ea-considers-licensing-spore-as-a-platform-for-developers), how cool would it be for a game like Civilization or Galactic Civilizations 3 to license that technology.  It wouldn't affect the tried and true turn-based 4X strategy formula, but would allow for a pretty amazing way of visualizing your empire. 

Imagine being able to pan around your starting planet to see your infrastructure grow as you place new support structures and change governments.  You could, visually, see the effect of a high-culture city vs. a low-culture one.  Also, with the scalability of the Spore engine, you could zoom around from planet to planet.  It would also be able to handle viewing of space battles and planet invasions/bombardment. 

The graphics don't even have to be much different from GalCiv2, so it can still run on lower-end systems like GalCiv2.  Graphics are not not the important part of the Spore engine applied to GalCiv2 as much as the ability to scale to support all of these different views into your empire.

I just thought about this and got incredibly excited, so I had to share!!  Thanks!