You should really give the free campaign a chance, I am sure you will like it!
They have added a lot of surprises that will make the campaign interesting long after the mid game. For instance when one civilization gets too far advanced there might be an event that the Snati (those evil squirrels) steal all their technology and will offer it for hard cash. Really nice.
I also play with the expansions (once you order you can dl Twlights of Arnor as beta version) and there is a lot of new stuff that keeps the game interesting. There are many new features, new graphics, music etc, and with all the improvements it is really a very challenging, well rounded strategy game.
I once started a thread about GalCiv2 because I think it should be on every strategy players list. Looks like it got buried somewhere.
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