Master of Orion II's only flaw was that annoying research choices. The AI admittedly was lame but that was because the game was old (MOO3 AI's was worse, although galciv2 seems to have a good AI)

Moo2 could:
* Race Customization was the best (although MOO3 did try, but lacked some things). There was just so much to make the race unique, and not just a stat modding thing. In GalCiv II, race modifiers are teeny about 20%, and most race modification is replaced simply by what buildings you have. But at least the game didn't have the nasty thing in MOO3 where other races not designed to your strategy infected your planets and you couldn't get them out as an influence victory gives the new people your race's stats.
* use transporters
* replace your population with androids
* lots of weird technologies
* Basically the game made things feel real and not just I'm upping stats. Like instead of speed of ships, it's the race is trans-dimensional. Instead of faster ship repair, the was was cybernetic.


GalCiv2 is the best one I've seen since then, though. I do hope people at stardock might think of these ideas.