Agreed.  It's  a lot of fun.  Good time to try it out.

Recommend everyone to try this if you enjoy 4x space. It's quite different but immensely fun. Get in with a friend and play multiplayer to get the most out of it.

Really liking the new content in the Echoes of the Endless free update from last week.  Lots of good stuff but the best for single player.....option to turn off the battle timer so you can manually fight out each battle if there are multiple in a turn.  HUGE feature update there.

And they keep on rolling out updates.  Sounds like there will be at least one more free content update/dlc in the next couple months plus hopefully an expansion next year.  Really impressed with how the devs keep on improving the game.  For me that will make me follow them to their next game.

I made the mistake of trying it before I had breakfast.

...and I just now had breakfast a little bit ago because of it.

It's 66% off on Steam now. I got it when it was 50% off and I've played a few games. The 3rd "free expansion" came out a few days ago and added some minor content. I am having fun with the game, but I actually bought it for what I hope it will become in the future. It has a long way to go to get to the level of GalCiv2. Granted, Amplitude is probably a smaller company than Stardock, and GalCiv2 reached its superb state 4 years after release.

I feel the game needs to get you more connected with your faction, perhaps more unique techs and unique ships. It also needs the obvious features like espionage, sabotage etc. and more variety in ships, perhaps some fighters/bombers, or more specialized ships. It also needs invasions. Invasions as they are now, are just a slider. GalCiv2 had that great cutscene with the awesome music making you feel how awesome you are for even trying to invade a planet. It just needs more immersion.

What do you guys think?

EDIT: Merry Christmas for those who celebrate it!

Grabbed this as it's on sale for 66%. We'll see what it matures into, the devs have been doing well so far.