after playing civ 4 for over a year i desided it was time for a change. i heard good reviews about this game and gave it a try. i must say between the two i like galactic civilizations better. here's my primary reasons. in GC i can focus a planet on whatever i want, reasearch, ship production, economy or some mix. in civ 4, i find this much harder to do as placement of cities drastically dictates what it is for. in GC i can build ships with the attack/defence/equipment that is nessicary for a particular situation, though civ 4 automatic balance between units isn't too bad. in GC the tech tree can be focused on whatever i believe to be most important; trade , military, production, economy, better reasearch; while in civ 4 techs are much more depandant on one another. my dislikes of GC are just some of the minor things. sensors and engines; i find them nearly useless. it would be cool if they made it such that engines increase the chances of the enemy missing you, and sensors increased your accuracy. takes too long to reasearch higher upgrades; in civ 4 i find the reasearching balance to be very good, about 3 -8 turns for each tech, unless your reasearching something out of your league, but in this game it seems even when i have 3 planets dedicated to reasearch it can take 34 weeks to get the production level 3 tech. music, i like civ 4 music much better, except for the fact hat you can port whatever music you want into GC while for civ 4 this is much harder to do.