If Starships is anything like Railroads, or Civ Beyond Earth, it will not make much of a splash.

Not a game for me, but the trailer looks nice. 

And the graphics on screenshots looks IMO visually superior in comparison to GalCiv III.

Just look at the screenshots guys: it looks very similar to GalCiv 3. Good inspiration imo.

So it's your turn Stardock! Go and make realistic 4X turn-based strategy game that covers all human history and looks Civ V pale in comparison. HA!

I'm serious: only Stardock could make a game that could be a direct competition with Firaxis' Civ games. And I don't really think they are capable of making anything really innovative in this area (as Civ:BE clearly shows). I bet Civ VI will be graphically superb, but nothing more. So Stardock makes it or there is nothing interesting in this sub-genere in foreseeable future.

I was just about to post something about this game, then i saw it was already posted on here. I saw this write up on Engadget. http://www.engadget.com/2015/01/19/sid-meiers-starships/

I use to play those types of games a lot when Age of Empires was still around. C&C, Empire Earth, Star Wars Galactic Battle Grounds were also fun! But i never really cared for the Sid Meier games. I'm waiting for a game that you can play 3rd person and first person. Lead an army of soldiers into battle, but also play at a soldier in first person. Travel to different worlds and conquer each. i don't know. something different. But since i have always love BOTF, it lead me to Gal Civ and other Stardock games which are really the only PC games I play anymore. I was never really a space game fan, but that is basically any game I play now. I just bought Destiny for PS4. I got the PS4 so I can play No Man's Sky and Far Cry 4. I am definitely a fan of quality of games, over quantity of games to choose from when i get board. It is fun to stick with a game and be able to play it over and over, or have it take so long to finish, it might take me a year to finish the game. I don't have a lot of time to play video games anymore....

I could never really get into the civ series because they always felt pale compared to xcom, Alpha centauri & sim city/earth/etc.  With that said, I hope that this is the turning point for a new page in the book.    Back in the day, those sorts ofgames all had semi-credible/credible competitors in their own generes with their own takes on the general concept just like there used to be mechwarrior, starsiege (no not tribes, mech game tribes killed off), & a few others.  They all had generational improvements that built off the raised bars set by their own & alternative previous versions where things that worked well were implemented & things that did not were pruned/ignored the next time around.

Somewhere along the line in the last 10-15ish years, things went hardcore fps/rts for the ability to cheaply crank out a new version every other year more easily than turn based strategy games.  I'm not sure if this is an indication that firaxis will be going back to the old ways, but Sid Meyer's name attached to a game has long felt like seeing "peter molyneux" on a game.... specifically a big name that gets lots of press with revolutionary claims taken at face value because they had a revolutionary game years ago when the new "revolutionary" things are more just "evolutionary"

But, who knows... Perhaps strategy games will be the first genere to really start benefitting from 64bit addressable memory capabilities now that GalcivIII is about to be paving the way & I'm just being overly skeptical

Well, for me it all boils down to one thing: I always view strategy games as existing on a scale, with "Boardgame-like" on one end and "Simulation-like" on the other.

Boardgame-like

• Construct a highly optimized set of tight gameplay rules
• Design every decision the player must make to carry weight, with no single obviously correct choice
• Do not include game mechanics which don't contribute significantly to the above

Simulation-like

• Implement a broad set of rules and mechanics which simulate the subject matter as realistically as possible
• Let the player loose in the world, and see what happens

Now it's a matter of personal taste which one people enjoy, but I'm firmly in the Simulation camp.  I love Distant Worlds and Crusader Kings 2, since they're both very firmly on the Simulation end of the spectrum.  The original X-Com was quite Simulation-like, but the Firaxis version was solidly on the Boardgame end, which is why I found it to be a disappointment.  I felt like I was playing the game in a straitjacket, due to what felt like contrived choices being forced on me.

In today's interview with Sid, he said that Starships is essentially XCOM with space ships, so I'm pretty sure it won't appeal to me.  Firaxis seems dedicated to the Boardgame approach, which is fine.  It's all a matter of personal taste, but it's not the approach that appeals to me.  To me, the advantage of modern computers is that they can do things boardgames could never do, like simulate a massively complex world.  Firaxis' XCOM could be turned into an actual physical boardgame, but it would be impossible to do the same with Distant Worlds or Crusader Kings 2.

Of course everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but by what metric did they not execute the board game approach well?  Not liking board game vs. simulation is different from saying that it wasn't well done.

Honestly, it was done exceptionally well, and has spawned any number of future games also looking to implement their tactical portions using very similar rules.  XCOM was and is one the better polished titles to come out in years as well.  At least for PC, I realize there are still some issues with the ports to PS3, but meh, who cares about consoles in a forum called PC Gaming

A fair point is if you disliked the strategic layer (as overblown as most of those complaints are in my opinion they are still valid).  Yet the boardgame design had nothing to do with that layer.