Eclipse Impressions - Updated

I am a fan of science fiction and have been looking for a good sci-fi themed, conquer the galaxy board game for some time. The obvious first choice was Twilight Imperium (3rd edition). Typical game length for TI is 1+ hour per player. In our first game of TI it took us three hours to get through 3 turns. Getting the time and the players together for such a long game was a chore. Twilight Imperium is not a cheap game, so I held off purchasing it as I really wanted to be sure it was something I would get a lot of use out of before I bought it.

Then last year along came Eclipse. I missed the first order (they ran out of copies) and had to wait for the second printing which came out around May, to get my copy. Although approximately the same price as TI, the reviews for Eclipse were very good and it maintains a high rating on Board Game Geek. The group I regularly game with has been running a Warhammer tournament for the last few months, but last week I finally got a chance to try out a short 2 player game. We did a test game, reading the rules as we played, getting a feel for the game before introducing it to a full 6 players.