Master of Orion

I used to love Masters of Orion II; I would play as the Psilons, get a ridiculous technological advantage, and produce massive death-star like Dreadnought ships that could vaporize any target or planet in one mega-beam. The game had a flaw, though. The AI opponents would mass up hundreds of zergling-like very weak ships, and they would EACH get a turn in combat. So my 4 dreadnoughts would wipe 4 of their ships, then 296 enemies would fire individually and…

There is an excellent remake (with an active modding community and real tricky AIs if you want to enable them) available; open source, no less! Remnants of the Ancients: https://rayfowler.itch.io/remnants-of-the-precursors

Played this for years. Our family all-time unbroken record for fastest win was by my middle son Joseph, in 83 turns(!) He was a custom telepathic race. Developed the homeworld to build only frigates (minimum size to take over a world telepathically) and skipped across the galaxy taking new colonies from each opponent as soon as they were built. The AI opponent would marshall its fleet to defend and arrive one turn too late, as his frigates were headed to…