Looking for a 4x game along these lines...

1. Diplomacy and politics near the level of SEV (SEV won't work for me)
2. Good AI
3. Stuff that will rebel

4. A good variety of customization for ships/vehicles

5. Large maps

6. Varied races, maybe even custom races

7. Engaging combat system

8. An odd entailment but if I have an empire that stretches half the world or half the galaxy it seems unusual to only be able to research ONE technology at a time and only have a few meager fleets of 20 ships each or a few armies with a small amount of units.

9. Interesting economy system that's not shallow.

10. If it's old, compatability with Windows 7 RC

Sins of a Solar Empire has some of those things... No custom races and not a lot of cusomization... But it is still a pretty massive 4x in terms of the size of maps and very large scale battles (hundreds of ships if you computer can handle it and you have your research far enough along to build that many)...

It is also a fairly recent game (early 2008)... so it has very good visuals...

Make sure you have a lot of time on your hands though... larger maps with hundreds of planets and dozens of stars can take hundreds of hours to complete...

I can only really think of Galactic Civs 2 and possibly Master of Orion 3....except MoO 3 isnt that great of a game overall.

The upcoming Elemental has most of what you are looking for.

I can only really think of Galactic Civs 2 and possibly Master of Orion 3....except MoO 3 isnt that great of a game overall.

The upcoming Elemental has most of what you are looking for.

XaosII

I'm not sure about the Dark Avatar, but in the vanilla Gal Civ, you can only research ONE tech at a time... i remember, coz that was one of the reasons why i ditched the game.

Hm, any other ideas? Thanks so far guys...