Unlike other commenters here, I didn&#x27;t dislike BE. It&#x27;s a fun game, and it&#x27;s worth checking out (especially with the Rising Tide expansion).<p>It&#x27;s very much trying to be a spiritual successor, but I&#x27;m not sure it really achieves the goal. The setting isn&#x27;t as convincing (it&#x27;s mostly Civ 5 in space, with orbital units). The factions all pretty much play the same, just with some bonuses. The biggest problem (though I suppose this has been a problem for all civ games to some extent) is that the AI is bad. It can do tactical decisions, but strategic big-picture it seems to have no clear goal.<p>It&#x27;s worth checking out, but it&#x27;s only partly the spiritual successor to SMAC it tries to be. I see a lot of people here recommending Stellaris, I haven&#x27;t tried it but now I think I should.