Gamespy's Allen Rausch has a hands on preview of Galactic Civilizations II up.  Allen reviewed Galactic Civilizations I for Gamespy, so he is quite familiar with the game (it received a 4 out of 5 star review then).  His conclusion: "If the Stardock team were just to drop those parts of the first game into the improved elements we've seen in this beta, the sequel would already be much better than the original. Make any improvements at all (and Stardock says they're working hard on them) and Galactic Civilizations II could be on its way to becoming a classic. "

Check out the whole thing..