Yes, because events that could potentially wipe out a couple of your top planets in a single turn is fun

Besides, the probability that any sun on the map would go supernova in the limited time that a game takes place (one turn being a week) is probably non-existant.
And I really don't see what black holes would add to the game.

I really love the title... you are a little drastic.

As other replied, having your starting solar system going supernova is a really bad idea. Same for some of your key system.

Maybe if you fine tuned your ideas slightly for instance

with supernovas its increadibly annoying that your best system is destroed for no reason like on moo2. So when you explore a new planet a popup can come up that says 'our scientists have concluded that this star will no nova in approx 25 turns, but there are super minerals on the planet that will boost productivity by 500%' So I would be quuite content to colonise the planet for a short time to get the production bonus.

That was just of the top of my head some other fine tuning can go on

I would much prefer to deal with a nova than a damn recession that lasts an interminably long time.

I think many real Earth politicians would agree on that one!

On this time scale, cosmic events will almost certainly not occure. On this time scale, a recession will almost certainly last most the game.

Not missed.

In the real world we could colonize type G stars for millions of years without a super nova.

Exciting? If you say so but not realistic.

And there are disasters in GC2,

The influence shrinking event for example. It is very nasty for your influence zone.

I once played a space conquest game where you could pray. Build shrines and temples and your planets terraformed, your risk of bad events was lowered, your weapons and defenses became more powerful, stick a little talisman on your ship (ok, a 50 megaton talisman) and it's direct-fire weapons (lasers, depleted urainium cannons, etc.) would never miss. I could lead my pious empire to glory in cooperation with the Ferengi while we smote Space Vikings and the Starship Troopers' fleet. If things got really tough we could call for back up from a civilization of hogies (like the sandwich). They proved to be heroes many a time.

OK, I pre-ordered galciv2 just based on playing the demo of #1. This is going to be a wonderful experience and I am syked. That being the case, Space Empires doesen't need to be any better or worse. We probably will have enough time in our lives to play both, I even built time shrines in all my systems to make sure. As you can see from the proceeding paragraph SE can be pretty much whatever you want it to be (there's even a mod that turns it into a fantasy game, like with fairies -hey, nothing's perfect). It's great to get stoked about galciv but you'd be cheating yourselves to dismiss SE.

The influence shrinking event for example. It is very nasty for your influence zone.

Nasty is not the word I would use, more like DEADLY!

I was winning the game on all fronts in the Beta 5 when there was a backlash against my growing Terran influence. Suddenly blue completely disappeared from the map! I needed to build a mega cultural starbase between Earth(home world and tech capital) and another world(manufacturing capital and omega shipyard) to keep them from rebelling! I began invading the other races worlds only to see their influence zone shrink to be replaced not by mine but instead another race's! Only after building up my cultural star bases and taking over enough planets did I once again see my influence re-appear and begin growing. Now my influence covers 3/4 of the galaxy as a mop up the last two races!

I was winning the game on all fronts in the Beta 5 when there was a backlash against my growing Terran influence. Suddenly blue completely disappeared from the map!

I'm pretty sure the influence borders were buggy in the Beta. I had several very radical changes, like almost the whole map taking one colour all of a sudden without reason noticeable to me, which I can't explain otherwise.

While these things do take many millions of years to happen, it seems reasonable to allow a certain degree of abstraction in regards to these events. We already do that with plenty of other things. No one is suggesting that these things would happen more than once per game per galaxy (and even that wouldn't be certain), nor is anyone suggesting that you wouldn't have any warning. You'd probably know whether or not there was the possibility of a star exploding during the game the first time you saw it. You could give the player at least 20 turns of warning. Thus disaster management/evacuation would be an interesting challenge for the player to deal with. I remember one other game that did this. Imperium Galactica 2 anyone? Anyway, there are plenty of other stellar phenomenon that could have a place in the game. What about ultra high density neutron star systems? These could be loaded with resources (heavy elements) but have no planets (or at least habitable ones). The radiation here could damage ships, forcing the player to make new designs. It would make combat interesting if nothing else.

These are some nice ideas! Maybe in an expansion something like that will be included. I would also add the suggestion that a race's starting solar system would never go super nova to avoid complaints.

I think adding catastrophic disasters would be a mistake. First, it can hurt game play. Did anyone play "Star Trek Birth of the Federation." There was nothing worse then having to fend off a random Borg attack (I know that's not exactly a disaster). Oh wait, there was one thing that was worse... When you could fend of the Borg but the other races couldn't. The Borg would decimate the other races completely ruining a game.

As far as scientifically, most stars don't even go supernova. The Sun, for instance, is about four times too small to result in a supernova. Also stars have a pretty distinct lifetime. That is, a star stays in it's mature stage most of its lifetime. Then it becomes a red giant. Well, in the game red stars don't usually hold habitable planets anyway. Three stages later the star might supernova. The next issue is that we have a decent grasp on the aging and lifespan of stars. For example, we know our star has billions of years before it turns into a red giant. We base this on the mass of a star and how fast it consumes fuel for nuclear fusion (larger stars consume fuel faster and thus live shorter lifespans). For a scientifically advanced race to only have a few weeks or even only a few years of notice that their star is going to die isn't really logical.

Meteors don't seem very reasonable considering that, again the trajectory of a meteor can be predicted in advance enough so that a planet that is at a sufficient technology level could take action.

As far as having the formation of stars and planets, that again takes a long time. If they were going to be in the game as "just growing" there would have to be a reason. Say, a starbase could be planted in a nebula with developing stars to steal resources.

There are some interesting thoughts in what's been mentioned but personally, I'd rather see an intelligent AI than a lot of random events. Epically when the events shouldn't really be random. I don't think it's quite right to say that a space-faring race couldn't see the meteor coming that wiped out their home world or colony.