Age of Wonders is up there with just a few other games for me. I hope some digital download service soon can get the rights to AoW - Shadow magic. The options now are rather bad 1. Very expensive through ebay 2. To play it streamed through GameTap (!) or 3. A Pirate version, possibly with trojans and viruses.
If I didn't have enough games already to play, I probably would choose number 3, but I really hope It will be available here or on some other good download service soon. The game deserves it.
As for Gal Civ II, there are many good things about it, but what really makes the game a lot worse than it could be is the whole atmosphere of the game. It doesn't take itself very seriously (the gameplay is serious), the races are really bland, cliched, unimaginative and the game is very unrealistic. There are many events where you can make a moral choice, but it is always either good, bad or neutral.
This is very silly, if there were other sentient beings on other planets, I would not expect them to have the same ethical values as we do. Just look at our own species, there is a very wide variety of ethical values among us. Just think how different it could be if someone had evolved on another world.
A science fiction game should be more based on reality than a fantasy game. (both MOO II and Gal Civ II are more like space fantasy, than science fiction)
Of course, most of the content will be up to the developers imagination, but the more it is based on our current science, the better.
I fear that Elemental will have some of the same flaws. I do think good and evil is more fitting for a fantasy game (Tolkien is still important!) but it shouldn't be too dominating.
Brad has done a lot of good design decisions though. The most important is the modability of the game. If it gets a good enough userbase it will solve all the problems.
Perhaps Elemental will be the Civilization of fantsy TBS.

For me, the thing that makes MOO better than GalCiv is that MOO technologies and racial traits are just much more flavorful and interesting than GalCiv. In GalCiv, technology and racial traits usually just give % bonuses, like +10% production. Okay, that's useful but not very fun. I much prefer MOO's approach with special traits such as Creative, Aquatic, Telepathic, etc that make every race completely unique in their strategy and play style. The technologies are more fun and interesting in MOO as well, such as the ship technology that lets you take two combat turns at once (forgot the name)