Good Lord I'm still playing GalCiv2!!! You sound like EA...release a huge-hit game (BF2), mismanage it and give horrendous bug and patch support, and then a year later try and release another game (BF2142) based on the same engine without letting the first one even run its course. GalCiv2 has so much time and life left in it, why bury it before it dies? Heck, it took me the better part of 10 years to stop playing MOO2 and GalCiv2 is at least as good as that game. I'm not saying wait 10 years for GalCiv3 but come on...give it some time!
I've played MOO3, and GalCiv2 is, in my opinion, 10X better than MOO3. I predict that if StarDock kept doing things correctly, they could get at least 5 more expansion packs out of GalCiv2 before GalCiv3.
Why, the fact that StarDock does so much Beta testing gives them an edge in gaming that other companies don't have. That alone will net them some serious life-time customers. I've played a lot of games including Doom, Doom2, Doom3, Wolfenstein (the original) Wolfenstein(remake), The Sims, The Sim2, SimCity3, Civilization 1, Civilization 2, Civilization 3, Civilization 4, Empire Earth, Fable, Oblivion, and many other less famous games.
GalCiv2 is in my top 5 games.
If StarDock keeps beta testing, their games will always be great!