I've gone through another phase recently of trying to like 4X games. It's a pretty varied genre on the whole, but I often find there's an issue with each game I can't get past. Usually it's that there's just too much to keep track of and they're too complicated, or too long. AoW Planetfall seems to be in a pretty good middle ground there because it's _mostly_ all about the military. There's not a lot of questing, and very little diplomacy past being able to buy units from other factions. It's still a little slow, but overall I really enjoyed it.