Well, Sins of a Solar Empire and GalCiv II: Dark Avatar are my current favorites. Yes, I still play GC2 and will continue to do so, it's amazing and still leaves me amazed at what can happen in that game.

Older favs would be (not all being quite 4x but close)
Master of Orion 2
Stronghold: Crusader and Stronghold 2.
Homeworld
Couple games based on Roman times like Civ/Simcity, don't recall the names

Imperium Galactica (the first one) was my fave. I still to this day haven't had an epic ridiculously long impossible campaign in any game since then. Shame it doesn't run properly on XP.

I'm also one of those strange people who liked playing Pax

I never got to try either but wanted to. Both looked very promising, and even clunky UI's I can look past if the depth of gameplay is there.

IG2 was a lot easier and shorter, but looked much nicer. They were both a mix between sim city (building up your planets in sim city style view), a slow C&C (where you'd do battle on the surface in between the cities with your fleets ground forces and planetary defences) and the space battles were a bit like GalCiv. Research tree, no control over your forces, but you could customize your ships. The starmap was realtime too, but slow enough to give you anything up to 40 minutes early warning of an impending attack on a large map.

Ahh the memories. Took me three months to complete the largest possible IG1 game. IG2's biggest could be done in mere days. Still worth picking up either one though off ebay maybe. Even if only for the spacey music tracks.

IG1 on planet screeny Not bad for its time.

GalCiv 2 and Star Trek Birth of the Federation. Both games see quite a bit of playing time on my computer.

Ascendancy was an amazing game...
http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/221

It's very close to being a turn-based Sins..

The best 4x space game is undoubtedly Space Empires V... No question.

Though the game is much, much better vs. multiplayer than the AI.

Javaslinger

SE:IV *still* gets regular play from me and some of my friends (I just showed it off this morning to more potentials along with Sins).

I like SE:V but I feel like I can't get an overall picture as quickly. It's probably more of a case of just spending more time with it. I do like research in SE:V, it's more "realistic" per se than the way SE:IV does it.

X3

Bwahahaha just kidding.

If only Ascendancy had a brain. The AI was so weak that I would usually give the AI players a few hundred turn head start to make it at all challenging.

I do like GalCiv 2 (no expansions yet). Apart from that, Civilization is fun, but I do find space 4x games more enjoyable. I hope they kick development of FreeOrion into high gear (an open-source game similar to Mo2 and other space 4x games). I know when they have a complete version of that available that it will consume me.

I gotta say iv got some old favorites.

Recently, Sword of the Stars was a good game for me.

Before that, the one I liked the most was Imperium Galactica 2, which was my very first 4X RTS.




ANNNNNNNNDDDD WAYYYYYYYYY WAYYYYYY back in the day, back to 1994 or so, maybe earlier, was a game called "Stars!". It was my very first 4X Strategy Game (not RTS), and it was a lot of fun, even though I really had no idea how to play it when I was only 10 years old.

I really looked forward to the sequel "Stars! : Supernova", but that game never materialized due to publishing problems in the UK.

Stars! will probabbly be my most nostalgic favorite, since it was probabbly one of the first, (or at least within the first few years) of 4X Space Strategy games.



After "Stars!", id go with "Star Control : II", but thats more of a 4X & RPG classic. (Its Freeware somewhere out there on the internet, its a great game with voice acting! For 1995 that was insane!)


A buddy of mine also said to add "Tradewars", which was a text based 4X strategy game, but that bored the hell outta me.

I'll put in a good word for Alpha Centauri. I wish that a true Alpha Centauri II could be made. I've never played Gal Civs, but I'm tempted to get it since I like Stardock/Ironclad.