Has anyone played this one at all?
I confess that while the game appeals to me conceptually -- it emphasizes macro-management, combined with a fairly strong
Emperor of the Fading Suns vibe -- I was never really able to get into it. I'm ashamed to admit this is mostly due to its presentation: I found its art style & graphics unlovely to the point of immersion-breaking, and the UI is rather clunky (though probably not worse than what you have to deal with in
Distant Worlds: Universe, if I'm being fair).
Fortunately, developer Silver Lemur Games has begun working on the
sequel, which aims at improving both gameplay and UI functionality (among other things). They also just posted their
first dev diary, which describes in broad terms how the Holy Terran Empire is organized in terms of planet classification. I think I like the model he's setting up; it matches up closely with how I've often thought an actual interstellar empire might work.