GalCiv 2 Engine

The GalCiv2 engine was developed by Stardock. Sins of a Solar Engine use the Iron Engine, which was developed by Ironclad.

-HM

Im looking to get into GameDev, that's why I ask, what would be your professional opinion for an ex network programmer comming from a nix and bsd background? From scratch (in house engine baking) or some XNA stuff or even OGRE?

How big is your team?

I do strongly suggest getting a good size team together, especially for a 3D game. Very little can be done by a single person these days.

Another game engine to consider is Torque, or modding an existing game such as Half-Life 2. Modding is usually much easier than creating an entirely new game.

CobraA1, my team is made by me, my soul and my spirit

The Game itself is a spinoff of the Civ idea. Basicly your a God ... and that's it. You dont move anything, you dont do anything, you just influence, and based on your influence, you can create mountains, etc. Anyway, the only 3d would be in a 3d map and probably a heaven and a hell, rendered only for fighting's sake, something similar to the invasion screen in GalCiv. One of my favorite games is the space sim BattleCruiser Millenium, and as far as I know, it was made by one guy. And it rocks. Sure, the ever present bugs, but the degree of freedom is fantastic.

I have the collector's edition of Universal Combat, which is a sequel to Battlecruiser Millenium, and according to the manual it was developed by a team of 15 people. As other posters have stated, it's extremely difficult to develop a game with one person these days. I suggest you check out Introversion's website, the team who made Darwinia. They are a very small team of indie programmers who have made successful games with limited resources. They have also recently posted a series of blogs which describe what is required to become a successful independant game developer. Well worth a read if that's what you want to get into.

Sounds something like an updated Populous. Cool idea but like others have said already, you may want to think about enlisting some help. A team of developers can push ideas around and really flesh things out. The finished product will benefit from it.

As a tabletop strategy game designer (Board, card and hybrid) Ive always found it best to work with at least a couple other people once you have a good grasp of how you think the game should play. Its very important to not get too attached to any specific ideas because once you get a working model of the game to test you will find that some things you thought would be great may not really fit right.

Having others help you in the early design process will definately give you a better chance at weeding out problems and making sure that the game will be both fun and balanced.

That being said picking the right people to collaborate with is well a whole other big topic.

Look up Dungeon Keeper, it's done by the same people who did Populous. It's just a bit smaller scale and could lead you to a bunch of ideas. However you might need a semi-decent team, you could try recruiting off SourceForge.

I wouldn't recommend making a mod and gambling on it becoming as big as Counterstrike and getting bought out by the parent company. Most companies also reserve rights to simply take everything you make, slap a sticker on it, call it their own, and sell it. It's all in that EULA you agree to by installing the game. Just be aware of it.