Is Space Empires the most complex 4x game ever?

MOO3's complexity is almost entirely achieved via obfuscation. Sure it has a nice planetary economic model, but thats about it. Most things are just buried under layers of fail.

Stars! had a fair bit of complexity. Emperor of the Fading Suns was fairly complex, from what I recall. Galciv, Spaceward Ho!, Reach for the Stars, Ascendency, MOO1/2, all not very complex. There are others I can't recall atm, of varying degrees of complexity. I don't know which space opera* game is the most complex, but SE is certainly a contender.

*4x is kind of vague and could include games like Civ, depending on how you interpret it (not that Civ is very complex).

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The most complex 4X game I've ever played is VGA Planets 4. Unfortunately its user interface is also among the worst I've seen. Although I enjoyed the complexity of VGAP4, I've pretty much dropped it in favor of SE5 and its drastically better user interface. Also, VGAP4's graphics and combat model seem rather dated at this point.

The main failure of VGAP 4 is that its complexities are not documented in the user interface. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of special rules for particular races, ships, devices, etc... but the user interface doesn't display this information. You have to dig around in the wiki and version histories to find out about most of the rules.

The poor UI is also the cause of endless frustration; although it offers tons of flexilibity, any plan you might devise which is more complicated than moving from point A to point B is doomed to failure. There's always one more switch you forgot to flip, or one command code you forget to set, or an important ship in your battle group which didn't get the right orders, etc...

SE5 doesn't have nearly the complexity, but it has enough to stay interesting. Meanwhile SE5's interface is *so* much better.

VGAP4 doesn't really have a single player mode. There wasn't even an AI until very recently (and the current AI is laughable at best). I played all of my multiplayer games using a play-by-web type system (vgap.drewhead.org if you're interested).

There are lots of very cool ideas and gameplay elements in VGAP, and I'd love to mod some of them into SE5. But after using SE5's interface I have very little desire to muck around with pure VGAP again.

One of the key aspects of SE5 is that it is very moddable. This allows people to make it more complex than it already is.

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I concur as far as Stars! and VGAP goes. I think (and it's been years so perhaps there are sugar coated memories) that VGAP was more complex -- but I find SE4/SE5 a better mix.

Stars! was slightly different. It could successfully be played without horrid attention to detail. On the other hand, given that it was created by some of the original Excel contributors, micromanagement from the race setup clear to optimizing the number of colonists moving about and automated resource shipments would yield huge additional results impossible to achieve casually. Stars! still ranks as possibly my all-time favorite game when I consider how old it now is.. Once you started playing that game with an eye to the specific way in which certain equations behind the scene worked out, the complexity far outstrips anything one will see in SE. The AI was also killer.

After that glowing review of Stars!, though, SE4 is still fun. Some times you want to play, not ponder if you need to be sending 18kt of pop or 21kt of pop to a distant colony along with x kt of fuel in order to get it up to full speed by turn x, lest the other guy get it right and beat you by x turns to the Nubian hull, or whatever. SE5 is more approachable, playable, and forgiving of noob sins.

I do wish the Stars! clone projects would make more progress though..

I agree almost completely with Fyron - SEV is definitely a contender for most complex (and not because of its UI, either). The reason I keep playing SEV when GalCiv, MOO3 and the rest all sit on my shelf is because SEV has such depth. There's ALWAYS new strategies and counter-strategies to try. And for me, modding just adds another giant layer of complexity that makes it so much more enjoyable. In fact, I think I enjoy modding more than actually playing (which is why I don't consider myself a very good SEV player!).

The only games that ever really came close to sheer depth of gameplay for me were Master of Magic and Stars! If MoM had been multiplayer and moddable, I think it would have beat SEV for complexity and enjoyability. But alas, MoM 2 is still vaporware. Stars! was MP, but not very moddable - however, it was quite complex. Stars Supernova Genesis also turned out to be vaporware despire being 95% completed. Luckily, SEV (and other games like Oblivion, NWN2, and HoMMV... as well as a veyr busy work life) are keeping me quite occupied!

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Stars! is very complex from the micromanagement point. If you want to be successful, you have to micromanage alot (moving minerals and population, paying attention where exactly the enemy fleets are headed and when they arrive - with simplistic graphics sometimes easy to overlook). From the overall gameplay and content it is quite simple - a star is a colony, only mines, factories and defenses to build.
But Stars! is a great game, and if you could have fine tuned ministers like in SE which would help to get rid of the micromanagement, it would be more appealing to not-so-hardcore gamers aswell.
(My favorite race were CAs ^^)

From the strategy-point, SEV is surely one of the most complex games out there. You have to factor in so many things: Colony Types + Facility Building, Research + Intelligence, Ship Design, Ship Movement, Battle Tactics. With tons of different facilities and components it makes a very complex game. If you plan to micromanage everything, a turn in an advanced game can last a few hours.
And do not forget the mods, as each creates a different type of game (yes, the basics are the same) which needs its own strategies. You cannot play a GGmod game like a BM game.

The other games that were mentioned are less complex, but can still provide a challenge and a fun gaming time.
Moo2 is not really complex, once you figured out what you need to research
Moo3 is bug-ridden and under-rated (yes I like it). If it had not been abandoned by Atari it could have become another great game (You could compare moo2->moo3 like ultima7->ultima8. The breaking of continuity is strong, but viewed independently moo3 and ultima8 are good/great games)

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I liked Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, Outpost (the original with all the add ons, not that RTS wanna be Outpost 2) and Imperium Galactica (the II one, didn't play the first).

To compare SEV to those its definitely in the top 3 of my all time favorite. hen you add the fact you can mod it, its at the top with no peers (even with some of the functions not activated yet )!