Graphics actually have held up modestly well, due, I think, to the colorful and less... what we now call "gritty." Putting that aside, though:

I still enjoy MOO2's non-standard take on research (In that, most races will research towards a broad category, such as Communications, and usually be presented with 3 different technologies. 1 they will recieve, and the others will have to be stolen or traded for). There are exceptions, with a trait that allows you to recieve all three (or however many) picks, and another that (If I recall correctly, I never used it) chose 1 breakthrough for you. This would lead to some interesting choices, like choosing Soil Enrichment, for some extra food production, or Habitation thingy-whatsits for greater population on your worlds (which you will need more food to sustain!)

If you have ever played MoM, the population management is identical aside from the ability to move colonists from one planet to another, or set them, in addition to farming and mining, to research. (Edit: I forgot to mention that if you took the effort to invade enemy planets rather than simply bombard them to dust, that those conquered colonists are yours to do what you will with, complete with their race's specific bonuses and drawbacks. Sometimes this will give you an added boost in an area you needed it).

In the same vein, I find races in MOO2 to have more personality than in GalCiv, no disrespect intended. This is in part to the more powerful positive and negative traits, which have a far greater impact on the game than their counterparts in GalCiv. Psilons are the research powerhouses, and will very rarely place even second in research points (barring custome races using the same traits) and Klakons are so focused on production and are so prolific that they will give those superior Psilon ships a run for their money in numbers alone. Gnolams, the lucky race, really are lucky. They're constantly the target of random beneficial events that other races would love to get their hands on. And the Cyborg and Silicoid races, able to eat some or purely minerals, allow them to thrive on worlds that other races would be placing on the bottom of their list.

These races just had so many (pretty well balanced, if powerful) traits to choose from, that had real immediately tangible effects, that it's hard not to feel a strong erge to attribute personality to them.

The Antares side story is a nice addition, with the increasingly hostile random attacks. It's hectic discovering you have a massively powerful and hostile fleet from another dimension inbound to a major planet of yours with an ETA of only 4 turns. Do you pull the colonists off, or can you raise and reroute enough forces to stop them? Thankfully, though, those attacks can be disabled at game creation for a more traditional 4x game.

The games tend to be shorter than in GalCiv, reaching end-game levels of technology only on the largest maps, or on amazingly peaceful smaller ones. But I tend to play on the largest maps possible, whatever the game

Exploration is more important, in a way, as planets are fewer in number, and tend to range at the lower end of the hability spectrum. The planets also have a bit more... personality, if you don't mind me... personifying a planet. See what I wrote about race traits, and apply that to planets. The Bonuses just mean more to the game and to your empire. Even large maps will only have a few seeded Terran like (or better) worlds, and even fewer will be unguarded by giant space eels or the Guardian.

Space combat is..... infinitly more fulfilling than GalCiv, if for no other reason than you have control over your ships. Different weapons have different effects, like turning enemy ships, which might have some of their weapon mounts facing the wrong way. Combat is turn based.

Ship design is less powerful visualy than GalCiv, which is no surprise, as no one comes remotely close in ANY genre. You get a few set sprites you can choose from per size class, and based on race. Internally, though, the customization is more robust and varied than in GalCiv. You have numerous more-or-less unique weapons to choose from, and each can have various customizations that will effect things such as range, rate-of-fire, accuracy, etc, at the cost of... well, cost, and available space within the hull. There are also varies extras, like medical bays, or ship-based research labratories, that allow for more specialized ships.

Leaders is an area where you see a big detour from the standard 4x model. You can hire the services or random captains and governors, who each have their own abilities. Governors may be attatched to a solar system, and will increase that solar system's production of minerals, or taxes, or farming, or research or lower the polution produced by the industry. They also have more abstract abilities, like increasing the effectiveness of your spies. Captains may be assigned to single ships, where they will have effects such as increasing that ship's accuracy, or allowing it to make minor repairs during battle.

Both types of leaders are unique and few in number, so it's important to pay for their services when you get the chance. They also gain levels as turns go by, which increases the potency of their abilities, and makes their loss, whether through combat or a sudden lack of credits, that much harder to face.

Unless you have two older PCs with serial ports, Hotseat is your only chance at multiplayer, but the AI isn't bad in its own right.

I've tried to be concise here, but MOO2 is one of my favorite games, and I tend to ramble. I heartily suggest getting it.

Brad, are you smoking something?  Moo3 had starlanes, but Moo2 didn't

Downside is that large battles, especially late game, become a horrible, poorly balanced nightmare of huge fleets fighitng, and the outcome being decided by who goes first.

That's Armada 2526, Moo2 was pure point-to-point.

Simple graphics could play a part in the charm.  For example, Heroes 2 graphics are more cartoony but also more charming than the "realistic" graphics of Heroes 3.

I do miss not having to the ability to command the ships in my fleet with Gal Civ2, but I would imagine the game would become too tedious and too long for the average attention span.

The diplomacy is way better in Gal Civ 2 than Moo2. Especially the higher the  difficulty levels in Moo2 meant more  of your opponets  had the replusive trait killing any chance of diplomacy.

The AI is way better in Gal Civ 2 than Moo2.

Having unique heroes that benefit your systems or ships adds more variety to the Moo2 experience.

I would say both games have a decent array of random events to mess up your carefully laid plans.

Both games will provide many hours of rich strategy goodness for the player to enjoy.

I would love Stardock to develope a total war type game but in space where you had a TBS strategic map with RTS tactical combat, or a more complex Gal Civ 2 features like diplomacy, planet managment, and custom ship designed but merged  into a similiar RTS framework like Sins of a Solar empire.

Discalimer: Below is my personal opinions- they are in no way meant to disrespect StarDock or GalCiv.

Space Empires 4 was the closeest to being a succesor to Moo2, but it fell short in a few ways. SE5 succeded in many of those ways, but failed in others (horrible UI, and a few killer bugs, and poor AI)....

As for GalCiv, I have tried, and tried, and tried to get into them, but never could (Sorry Frogboy - I really wanted to love it ). Theres just something lacking in my opinion. The lack of cultural identity for one - every race no matter how unique always felt the same. They changed up the tech trees in one of the expansions to try to make them feel different, but they were pretty much parallel to each other with only minor differences. No real populations either so if you conquor an enemies planet it's no different than other ones in your empire.Finally there was only minimal control over the development of your ships. There were a few basic componenents and research just made them better versions of each other. They were good games, just not anywhere near the level of Moo2.

Moo2 is still by far the best 4X space game out there. If only Moo3 hadn't failed so much.... Just goes to show what happens when you give a major game licence to a company whos only developed business applications..I wonder if there will ever be a Moo4 - despite the bad rep Moo3 got, the series could be revived by a competent developer. Even with all the stuff I don't like from GalCiv, it does show that the developers are good at what they do. There was a ton of great stuff in the game, and it would have been phenominal if only a few things were done slightly differently. I would feel very confident if Stardock got there hands on the MOO licence and gave it a go.

cynicalP- Your speaking my language cause thats a game I would love to play too!

You can pick up a copy of MOO1 and MOO2 on Good Old Games for 6 bucks. It runs perfectly on Windows 7 64bit. Brings back a lot of memories.

While both are 4X style games, they play really differently.  Also, considering MOO2 is something like 15 years old, it might be hard for a younger player to get into it considering it feels dated.

That said, I think MOO2 was a better game.  I enjoyed GalCivII as well, and it has many of its own merits.  The main thing you will find with MOO2 is different races with different technologies play VERY differently.  Ship design made for wildly different ship tactics.  Part of the replayability of MOO2 was to use a different race and completely different design techs and tactics to win the game.

GalCivII was a very good game, and had some great innovations, like the ship model designer.  I'm sure many folks (myself included) played around with making ships for hours.  The actual ship attributes were a bit simplistic....3 different weapon types vs 3 different defense types.  I would have loved to see some different classes of "special weapons" but since combat was automated, this wasn't really the focus of the game.

I think one of the most critical things differentiating the styles of the games was that MOO2 tech trees made you choose between 3 different technologies at each tier.  Each tech had a very specific advantage, so you were always having to make choices and then protect your technologies from being stolen by your enemies.  Tech in Galciv2 was largely attainable by all races until the final expansion came out and different races got access to unique techs and buildings, which was a huge step up.  The interesting thing Galciv2 had that sets it apart was the alignment system that made you choose between good and evil choices, both of which had their benefits and consequences.  GalCiv2 random events also sometimes had epic consequences...which could either be extremely frustrating, or extremely interesting depending on how you looked at it (or whether your inevitable victory was just thwarted by 3/4 of your empire rebelling and forming a righteous coalition to stamp out evil.)

There is really no reason to not try out both games, especially considering MOO2 is dirt cheap or a used copy can be acquired.