The mother and father of all space strategy games.
This game is a 4 CD game, and is about building an empire in space and conquering everything.
Now things are not really this simple. Just learning the game is a bit hard, not to talk about all the possibilities you have.
You can build structures on every planet, manage politics, send spies to other empires, build ships, build armies, conquer the enemy, make pact with them, eventually coming to killing the greatest enemy the whole universe has. You can start with a faction of your choosing, all having their good and bad sides. I usually played the humans, but they are not the greatest. Every faction has its own ship designs, but the greatest in ships is that you can create custom designs, having a large array of customizable features. After you made your own designs, you can assemble an army with your newly made ships and be the greatest.
To unlock new weapons and larger ships, you have to invent them first, meaning you have a technology part of the game where you have a large tree of things you can research. This section also contains technology regarding population, like improved hospitals, military buildings on planets, etc. You not only have to worry about your spaceship army, but also about the land army your ships can carry and the well being of the people in your empire. People will revolt if they have no good living conditions and you are in trouble then.
My favorite part is the section of spies. You can send spies to the enemy and gather all kinds of information, like you can steal blueprints, assassinate leaders, catch other spies, make double agents, etc. You also have a section where you can negotiate with the enemy and make pacts and non-aggressive associations. The best thing is that you can still send spies to allies and see if they are up to something.
The game also has a story, but it can be replayed infinitely, because the map is randomly generated. I loved this part, I could play with each faction and the game was always different, always adding small things to the story that made it lovable. Noone had the patience to play this game, because it was too complex. Probably I was the only one from my gang who played this, but I spent a lot of time with this game, because I loved it.
My rating for this game is 11 out of 10;
Games played by Gadratil 