But StarCraft is RTS and he's looking for 4x, I thought? Besides, usually RTS is pretty fast-paced and 4x is slower paced, so he's looking for a fast pace 4x?

I wake up confused every day. I only know that I know nothing.

Endless Legend was a massive surprise with how good it was. I'm not playing it atm, due to heavy backlog, but hey, I fully recommend at least checking it out.

Warlock 2 feels like a cross between a light Civ and a sort of AoW style game. It's not bad and offers a decent variety, if you're looking to give something light a go.

AoW3. I have to mention it, as the game feels very much like Civ 5, but with tactical RPG battles with magical powers, big sieges and lots of dungeons to explore and fantastic monsters/creatures to battle or summon. It's quite fun and if you haven't already, I fully recommend it as a more than worthy successor to the venerable original series.

Master of Magic. Sure, it's ancient af, and has none of the QoL UI things you may like about the Civ series, but it still holds up mechanically and I think is worth a look.

As previously mentioned, Colonization is also available here and I believe is worth checking out. Like MoM, it's pretty dated as well, but not in any egregious way, it's also not extremely deep in an offputting way like Paradox grand strat games tend to be. If you're looking for a game you can just boot up and play in a window for a few minutes or a few hours, Col has you covered. It's a lot like MoO2 that way.

Advanced Civilization. Based off the older Avalon Hill boardgame, it's not hugely deep, but it IS hugely challenging. It's also its own game and only shares a name with the Civ series. Give it a go. A lot of people missed it due to MP Civ furor at the time, but I think it stands on its own merits, if you're a fan of boardgame style mechanics at all. The only con is that there's no legit way to getting it, so the only method of acquisition is via the abandonware avenue. That said, it works perfectly in DOSbox with no need for tweaking, so if you're curious, it's easy to find and easy to run.

Rise and Rule of Ancient Civilizations. Like AdCiv, it's not easy to find, and requires a few things to get to run, due to its 16 bit era windows status, but, I feel like it got unfairly maligned as a Civ clone, while it really didn't have tons in common with that game. It may be too much of a pain to acquire for you, though, so I'd only attempt to find it if you're really curious.

I'm looking for a turn-based 4X like Civ 5. I don't like RTS games, and I'm not interested in 4X games with RTS combat.

This one is a lot like the Civ series. On another world though, so might not be your cup of tea. I've loved Civ forever and I like this one (as well as the Civ IV Colonization game too... that thing is fun also).

EDIT: I just looked and I have a code for this game if you're interested. (Pandora... not Civ IV)

OK, that clarifies things.

Oh man oh man I wish I could play that again. I really enjoyed that game (something about the music really did it for me in that one.) And I loved having different cities focus on one branch on research and watching the philosophers spread the knowledge around.

Just for nostalgia purposes I so wish I could play that again but I would have no idea where to find it or how to get it to run if I did find it. Wish GOG would get it. Instabuy.

EDIT: LOL, I still have the CD! Thought I did.

Here is the wishlist page for Rise and Rule if anyone is interested and hasn't yet voted for it.

Thank you for your generosity, but I cannot accept it. adaliabooks already offered to gift me Endless Legend, it'd be impolite for me to accept two gifts. Even worse if, with these games being as big as they are, I accept multiple gifts and one of them just ends up in my backlog. So despite the generous offer, I'll have to pass on it. But I promise I will keep an eye on this game in the coming summer sale.

I see that during the time this thread has been active, the Age of Wonders games have gone on sale. I'll take this opportunity to get them. If it does just increase my backlog, it bothers me less if it's my own money I'm wasting XD.

Edit: And I see that Age of Wonders 2 is 50% here and 75% off on Steam. I think I'll still get the GOG version, but still, that's a shame.

With Age of Wonders 3 it is even worse. Just look at the pack Steam is offering and then look at the prices here in the "big paradox sale" ->26,67 euros here vs 12,49 euros on Steam for the same content (all dlc's plus deluxe edition)

Endless Legend is a great game, even without DLC's. I hope you enjoy it! :D

Galactic Civilizations 2 is right now free on Humble (steam key). You can not go wrong with this one.

Stellaris is a good 4x space game. Is easy to learn, but hard to won.
Seven Kingdoms is a classic one. Note that the AI is highly cheater. It not have to deal with some ,management aspects that the players need, such troops loyalty.

I found a download of Rise and Rule of Ancient Empires. And the cool thing is, all I had to do was download it (342MB), then unpack it, and when it unpacked it created a directory with a BAT file in it that all I had to do was double click. And voila.... I"M PLAYING RISE AND RULE OF ANCIENT EMPIRES!!!

LOL, I thought I'd never play that again as I had tried using the CD to install it on a couple of computers over the past 10 or 15 years but with no luck.

Oh man... that nostalgia... it's thick. And just wonderful. Almost making me emotional I remember so many hours playing this game back in the 1990's. (When I was just MIDDLEAGEDFATGUY. lol. And could walk!)

Votado! I actually had a lot of fun with it, and like a lot of Sierra games back then, the music was great and memorable. I had to go the abandonware route myself, and run it via a Windows 3.11 shell via DOSbox, but it runs and is a pretty good nostalgia play for me.
I had to do the same thing with Warlords 3, because it's a bitch on a bitch boat to get running natively AND/or you have to pay full retail to some dodgy site that has a lot of the former Red Orb strategy games on it.

Speaking of, if DaCosta hasn't checked out Warlords series at all, I 100% recommend checking it out, even if its just Warlords 2's Deluxe edition.

Also I feel like I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention Empire of Fading Suns. It's like Panzer General, only with space, space naval battles, ground war battles, researching, noble houses with traits, etc. I feel like it was criminally slept on, much like the Fallen Haven/Liberation Day series.