I love 4X games, despite being terrible at them, I still really enjoy them but I've been looking for something deeper and with more customization options than Civilization games (although I'm open to Galactic Civ) I've tried getting into Sins of a Solar Empire but I never liked it much; the game was based almost entirely on a weak combat system and although I love Starcraft 2, it's not really a "strategy" game as much as a "tactics" game if you get what I'm saying. I've been looking for a game that focuses more of the empire building aspects rather than strong, real time combat. So far the most complex strategy game I've played is probably Ascendancy on iOS devices or the Civilization games but I wanted to play something more involving on the computer, even if it meant going through Amazon to find a 10 year old game. I don't care if the game is old as long as it's still fun and the graphics aren't a total turn off (Civilization 3 is one of my favorite games, the vague graphics actually made me like it more, using my imagination to picture it all and s***). I love strategy games but I'm not very good, as such I was hoping to find a game that was relatively complex but not necessarily difficult, if you get what I mean. I wanted to test my hands at a deep and complex game so if there are any non-science fiction TBS games you'd suggest over science fiction ones then I'm open to that too.

So, simply put (sorry if I rambled),here were the core aspects I was looking for

• complex dipomacy/economics/exploration/colonization
• player customability
• complex but not unfairly challenging
• combat is less important
• strong single player; multiplayer unimportant

But also please note my laptop is really showing its age (~2005); many new games simply will not even run at the lowest graphics and resolution settings and the graphics card and other hardware cannot be upgraded so I know 4X scifi game had their Renaissance a while back so maybe hitting some classics would work well, but then again, I can run Sins of a Solar Empire with no terrible crashes

Thanks a ton anyone who can help!

Strategy games I've played:
-Total War Medieval 2: started lots of times but game loses fun in second half when you have the advantage until the Mongols come and then it's basically just waiting around for something to happen, as such I never finished a game
-Spore: really liked the idea of it, huge fan for a couple years during it's production (I'd literally get home from school and check to see if there had been any new annoncements everyday) but the game itself was a complete let down (partially my fault, I'll admit that) and space stage had lots of promise bt was let down by simple problems such as the constant pirate raids and eco-disasters stopping you from really making the "Galactic Empire" it promised
Black and White (1,2): Only played 2 extensively, favorite City Builder I've ever played
Sim City (1, 2000, 4)
Age of Mythology
LOTR: Battle for Middle Earth (1,2)
Civilization (3, 4, 5): I love Civ 3, but I scratched a disk on Civ 4 and can't play anymore and I bought Civ 5 a couple months back and my computer is too old to run it -- older video games are better (:
Warcraft 3
Starcraft 2: loved it until my computer really began to show it's age and can no longer play it very smoothly; my laptop had a stroke you could say, it still functions fine but can't really run the new, high end games, even with very low video settings
Sins of a Solar Empire: too much focus on battle system which in itself was fairly simple; I was more interested in developing my colonies/economy/politics
Ascendancy (iOS): It's derived from Masters of Orion but in my experience (perhaps because I only played it on a iPod screen) it seemed relatively shallow and lost my interest after two days of consecutively starting new games (also perhaps why I may not have liked it in the long run), but I did get very far into the game a number of times -- nearing the final tech advances but giving up because of boring AI

Sorry this is so long, this is what vicodin does to me.

Thank you so much for any suggestions at all, sci-fi or not, anything is appreciated! :D