I've tried cold turkey, 12 step, excessive drugging, and restraining order but... I cannot stop playing Galactic Civilizations II (twilight of the arnor). I have MOO3, Civilization IV (expans), Sins if a Solar Empire (expans), and Sword of the Stars (expans).

Could someone please help motivate me to play Sword of the Stars? I got it for six bucks last week, came home, and instantly re-installed Twilight of the Arnor.

Good reviews, screens look cool, youtube vids are interesting... but I keep playing Galactic Civilizations!

Have you tried playing MoO2? I would very much recommend it over MoO3. You might be able to use it to wean yourself off of GalCiv 2. Of course the danger there is you might get addicted to MoO2 and then you still wouldn't get to Sword of the Stars. :/

There is a new Sword of the Stars game coming out ... looks interesting. I haven't played the first game.

I'm interested in Gal Civ 2... is it really that good?

My favourite 4X (space) is MOO2, although saying that, it's pretty much the only one I've played. Was tempted by SotS, but I heard a few things that kinda put me off.

It's MoO2 dumbed down a little and tarted up alot makes a good alternative if the pixels are too many on your monitor for decent moo2 though

Have you played it with all the expansions installed? Mission impossible. About the only thing good about that game is realtime space battle a'la Homeworld. And autobattles are horrible, so if you don't enjoy them - tough luck.

So Gal Civ 2 +expansions would be worth a look then?

Well if the PR guy reccomends it ill have a look but Impulse can fuck off.

Now that Stardock no longer owns Impulse, maybe you could convince them of hopping on board here as soon as any exclusivity deal with Gamestop expires?

Does this have everything except the endless universe stand alone?

I got the base version of SOTS and really liked it. Cost me 5 bucks and I wish I had grabbed the whole thing though it wasn't on sale. For a cheep game its more than worth its price but its easy to tell its not made by a AAA company. The battles are good but not great and you really need to control them yourself. I remember some ubber ship coming to one of my planets and launching an ungodly amount of missiles at it. It looked and felt very epic. So Its a good game worth trying, but if you can't tear yourself away from the other then you may have done more to convince me I should look into Galactic Civilizations than I can do the other way around.

Yup. Without expansions it's a dumbed down Moo2. With them it finally is deep enough and quite satisfying.

Now there's a thought. Maybe then I could finally try some of their games.

Yeah, this is what I have. Ultimate Edition includes the base game and expansions. The most recent of which features unique tech trees, which is the biggest hook in my back. Ugh. I have to work soon but I think I can get a few more turns in.

Ah yes I totally recognize the desperate rationalizations of the man in the middle of a 4X game :P