[TheRaisin]

Alpha Centauri. Highly complex (but completely playable) PC turn-based uhm... I guess it would be called a strategy game (screw your RTSGs! >_<). Basically, you play as the leader of one of seven human factions that are all that's left of humanity (same old story, same old song and daaaance) and you must colonize and fight for survival in an intense and hostile alien world, wachataah! Okay. Now let me explain.

Although the game involves plenty of warfare (at first mainly with the indigenous alien monster worms, then later with the other human factions), it's not really a war game (unless you make it that way). You can choose how you want to allocate your resources, so you could play as a faction of warmongering brutes or you could devote your followers to pure research and gaining knowledge, or anywhere in between/any combination/so on and so forth. Ultimately you'll find that you need to keep yourself fairly oriented towards research and discovery, as this will give you the technology required to A) fulfill the primary goal of the game and B) equip your army with some sweet-ass weapons, G.

And there's plenty of optional automation, if you don't feel like directing a bajillion units every turn.

And apparently there's an expansion available with two new alien factions, and all kinds of new technology and stuff and such. Sweet. I gotta get that, mang.

Oh, and the CG movies are the pimp-shizzle, homeslice, I'm talkin' all up in dat.

Two things I should mention about this game: 1. it's old as hell, and 2. it would probably be a tremendous pain in the arse to find.