It's got a much bigger empire building focus then say Sword of The Stars. You spend a fair amount of time micromanaging your colonies. I actually thought combat was the big weak point of the game, but just my opinion.

It's actually based very strongly on the extremely old game called Armada 2525. It manages to capture a lot of the things that made that game fun but I still didn't really like it that much.

I posted there already. I've played it a lot. The memory leak causing time between turns to slow to a crawl ruins the game.

Never played it, but from what I've heard it's GalCiv with bad tactical combat.

You could try Distant Worlds, it's really been scratching the 4X empire building itch for me. Kind of hard to describe though, it's kind of like a good version of MOO3 with some Space Rangers thrown in.

I have the game. It's not that much of a builder, and neither is GalCiv. All you have is a few buildings, and a tech-tree to develop things (ships buildings etc).

The game(s) are combat focused, but there are planetary things to watch out for. Happiness, environment etc etc, it's not much if you are looking for a "building" game.

Naturally you can take a diplomatic path to win, but it's not very satisfying, and you still will need to develop battle ships etc to protect your planets.

I would suggest having a look at Light of Altair. 

I personally LOVE Armada 2526, it's an outstanding game.