Empire total war aint nothing to do with space though

Warhammer: DOW 2 is pretty nice with futiristic stuff but again no space battles

you could try Eternal Silence

Or HAWX

Homeworld 2 is pretty much what ur looking for but you need a decent mod to make it look shiny. Don't know how many people still play that game though.

Civilization 4!! Although it's not futuristic of any kind.. For that, you need to turn to Alpha Centauri

world of warcraft

depends with how many people you play it really

you could also try age of wreckoning

Pros: Protoss, Terran
Cons: Zerg

Okay, seriously now

Pros: Starcraft is awesome, even if it is old! Make sure you get the brood wars expansion, that way you can use medics, dark templar, and whatever the zerg got (sorry zerg fans, I don't like 'em ) Also a lot of people still play SC, it's cheap, it's very small and doesn't take much processing power (incase you have an older computer). It takes literally 30 seconds to install, maybe a couple min to update via battlenet. Since battlenet is property of Blizzard, it's not going anywhere for a long time Also a lot of custom maps are out there, so you can play different games within the game

Cons: Everyone will kick your ass initially. Don't get discouraged, it'll take some time to get on par with others

Yes, it keeps a record of your online wins and losses, and I believe rank (not 100% on the rank, been awhile)

awesome..and are you able to control what kind of lasers and shit the spaceships shoot and the kind of shield a ship has? in sins of a solar empire you could and it looked sick!!

also are there any other really good games i might like from my description in my first post??

you can't customize your units that much, but there is a bunch of micro managing, for instance, telling your battle cruisers to fire the yamato cannon, or using high templar's psionic storm ability. Of course, you can research upgrades for your units.

warcraft 3, but that's not space battle same with age of empires 2. So not that I know of. Although you might like rise of legends, but that's not really space combat, more just like futuristic I guess.

hahahaha Blizzard sticking to a release date? Okay yeah.

Starcraft/Brood War [its expansion] = best strategy game available to date. Warcraft III is a newer and more user-friendly game (for instance, few more units can be selected at once [not really an issue, you'll tend to number your units in smaller groups than max for micro anyway], casting is more user-friendly in WCIII where telling a group to cast will have 1 unit cast, whereas in SC/BW you'll often have to quickly select individual casters to effectively use most spells), but SC/BW is still a better game than WCIII as far as strategy and balance. SC/BW has faster pace combat with a LOT of attention given to damage/armor types (gotta use the right units for the job, and there is pretty much ALWAYS a counter), whereas WCIII tends to be more "mass more stuff and throw it at them sooner than they can mass more stuff and throw it at you" oriented more toward whatever units are most imbalanced under the current patch. Heroes are huge in WCIII as well, which I've never met a SC/BW strategy game fan who was happy with. I'm not saying WCIII is awful but I know my opinion of this comparison of SC/BW and WCIII is shared by many, many who have played both games... Okay, to be honest, I never met anyone who disagreed. Random sidenote: In addition to the regular games, WCIII has a newer and much more customizable map editor which makes for better custom maps. SC/BW's was powerful, but time offered a lot of advancements if you enjoy the custom maps. +what people said about customization: You can upgrade your weapons/armor for most everyone and research various other species/unit/building abilities, but nothing so unit-specific. The 3 races all have some different ways of doing things but the game is remarkably balanced with all of its counters.

I still remember working with StarDraft and a bunch of other mods for the SC/BW map editor to make it do all the things you could do to custom maps not available in the vanilla editor... You have no idea how long it took to randomize timers for wormspawns in a massive Dune map even with all my mods! [/rant]

I'm not sure how populated it still is online, but I have no doubt it's still easy to find a lot of games. SC2 is almost here so you might as well wait. Gameplay videos are available online.

lol @ shadowwolds and Blizzard never keeping to a release date. times ten.