I've only played it twice so far, and only with the human races. I like it mostly, but there are some things that irked me. In one game a player was effectively eliminated from the game by a surprise attack deep into his territory. After that the game was no longer fun for anyone. There also appears to be a pretty good winning strategy that is utterly boring (although I suspect that expansions will have taken care of it). Finally, turn order is more important than I like, since it allows the leading player to grab overpowered upgrades before you get the chance to get them. Perhaps it's more a problem of badly balanced upgrades, though (, and also something an expansion might take care of).