Umm Gal Civ 2 and finite tiles too. 16x16(?) tiled sectors arranged onto the map. With hexes you can expand as large as you want. Civ5 maps were small mainly because of hardware limitations. 

For tile based games hexes are much better than squares. Squares systems are generally used in computer games because they are easier to program. Which I'm speaking from the point of view of someone trying to code his own hex based game. Anyways, movement and range are better handled in hexes. The distance from the center of one hex is the same no matter what hex you choose. With squares if you move across the diagonals you are in effect moving about 41% faster and shooting 41% farther across the diagonals (or square root of 2). Plus hexes look sexier and considering the "city" tile is a planet it hexes just fit better than the squares. 

I am stoked by this change. It's the main reason I stuck with Civ5 vs Civ4 (vanilla days) even though Civ 5 originally blew Drengin balls because of a host of issues that it had when it released. Please do not start a debate on this the game as it is now is a zillion times better then release. Civ4, GalCiv2, and Elemental all where relatively terrible at release verses the state they ended up in. Hopefully you can read this. I'm limiting the time I can play around on forums tonight. 

squares were stupid ... hexes are Very welcomed !   and thnx!

I very much agree.  Hexes would have been great for elemental.  I am guessing that since GC3 will be getting them, though, a future expansion or sequel of Elemental will as well

HEXES HEXES HEXES....

Can we please have galaxies which stretch for seeral thousands of stars?

 Add: Olympics tournaments for a year in GC3 huge galaxies with spectator mods for watchers.

add: GNN reports automaticaly created for players and spectators.

add: espionage and diplomatic options that no other games have so far - forcing researchers into dead end tech tree...conventions between allies and races, with punishments for break ups...Galactic trade markets, which physicaly exist in game and are not easily attacked....galactic space monsters? MOAR relics, artifacts and hidden neutral berserking robo monsters....

Space nature events, which can be modified in a techonology run, like Supernova evacuation of planet, supernova and shield of planet...add more races, 10 more, no add 500 mor races....use Saga of Fallen suns for race ideas - hydrgues, Faeros,  Illdirans connected to one Emperor thorugh psy links,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Saga_of_Seven_Suns

add everything...and a kitchen sink.

That would be incorrect, kengrant.  GalCiv2 had square tiles, you couldn't place anything between tiles.

The third dimension isn't as important to me as much as having a challenging AI to play against and the opportunity to match wits with another human player. plus 2D map really doesn't detract from simulating a galaxy like our own either, the galaxy is flat enough that travelling from planet to planet and star to star is effectively on a 2D plane anyway.

Civ5 hexes had a big flaw: They combined overly large hexes with the concept of one-unit-per-hex.  If they had changed the scale so that the current hexes got divided into 7 smaller hexes (and cities stayed the same scale, but took up 7 hexes) then the one-unit-per-hex concept would have been fine.  As a result, you had huge bottlenecks in a lot of terrain and the scale of units vs cities didn't really make much sense.

I don't envision hexes causing the same problem in the GC3 system because you can put multiple units on the same hex.  I definitely prefer it over square tiles because it makes for a more organic looking map.

That being said, I was never entirely happy with GC2 galaxy sizes.  I have to play on immense, with sparse / dense start clusters so that there is a lot of empty area between island clusters.  Which adds some "terrain" strategy to the game.  Sometimes you can't make the leap from one island to another without putting extended-range modules on the ship, forcing trade-offs in other areas.  Or you have to bridge your way across using starbases.

Civ 5 could have done something where they spread out the citys over multiple hexes. Kind of like what GC dose with it's planets. You have all the planet facilities each on a different tile. One of the reasons I think that  single unit per hex might work better in GC then it did in Civ5.

I would also use the distant stars tight clusters set up. For much the same reason. I kind of thought of the space between stars as a space ocean because you needed to design ships with extra components to cross it.

Age of Wonders had a better hex implementation than Civ 5 did. The hexes were much smaller, cities took up multiple hexes, and you got a LOT more movement.

So it can be done better, Civ 5 is just a bad example of a lot of things.

Would love to see hexes in a future iteration of <don't call it Elemental anymore> ... especially tactical battles.

I'm curious to know if and how they're doing sectors, quadrants, etc. If the boundries will bisect hexes or whatever.

Wouldn't they just be boundaries around existing hexes, and be more meaningful since with hexes you can create more fluid boundaries that actually make sense.