I need to. I don't know why but Fallen Enchantress and GalCivIII just can't seem to suck me in like Civilization does. I should love them both but hardly ever play them.
FWIW, I didn't take to FE:LH right away myself. I was initially less than enthralled with both the somewhat-darker atmosphere and the artistic style. I've since come to appreciate both, but it took me a few attempts at getting into the game before that happened.
Fortunately, I stuck with it. In doing so, I discovered that FE:LH does a very nice job of balancing 4x strategy combed with RPG elements, probably better than any other game out there. There are also some fairly elegant systems embedded into the game, such as how the tech tree and upgrading your cities work.
I also like that you pretty much have to make certain choices: Your characters (your faction ruler, plus whatever champions you recruit along the way) aren't going to be able to level up anywhere near enough to grab all the abilities available, so you have to pick & choose. And as a practical matter, you have to specialize your cities, as you're not going to be able to build all the construction options that are available to you.
The multiple victory conditions are appreciated as well: In addition to the traditional conquest and diplomacy victories, there's also the "Master Quest" and "Spell of Making" victories, which offer a somewhat different way to win the game than simply painting the map your color. It's not perfect, of course, but I really appreciate that the options are there.
I hear you on
Galactic Civilizations III. It has a ton of neat mechanics & features (I like the "alignment" system, and they finally found a good way to implement Starbases!), and I even enjoy the lore. However, there's something about the game itself that always ends up leaving me feel...cold, I guess? I suspect the GC series has long suffered from a problem of feeling "generic", which is a shame.
For GalCiv4, I think Stardock needs to:
1.) Implement lore-based events and event-chains (ala Stellaris) into the sandbox campaigns. (Also, ditch the separate story campaigns entirely.) Brad Wardell created an entire backstory for the GC universe; it's long past time that he fully embedded it into the main game.
2.) Get a professional writer or two on-staff to tackle everything from writing out descriptions for the stock races (Terrans, Drengin, Altarians, etc.) to planet types and technologies. (One of the reasons I got sucked into
Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes was because of the atmosphere/immersion factor, which in turn was largely due to text descriptions for every faction, spell, creature, etc.)
3.) For the love of all that is holy, do something about the space combat! Just about anything would be an improvement, as the current auto-resolved battles and battle-viewer is a complete turd. (I continue to find the lack of tactical combat utterly baffling, especially when juxtaposed against their in-depth ship-designer.)