I am thinking of making a 4x style game (Master of Orion, Civ, Empire, etc.) as a hobby. I am looking for an engine or framework that would support this. It has to be hardware accelerated 2D (and not SDL which I've already rejected for personal reasons). It must have support for sophisicated GUI handling. Particle systems would be great (if it could do something like the FLurry screensaver on the Mac, that's be about perfect). Tools to make rote tasks easier would be awesome. Language doesn't really matter as I am proficient in most common ones. Support for networking would be a plus. Goofy license agreements (anything GPLish) would drop it to a zero in my eyes. Cost is not a big factor if the tool is good. I also am not concerned about cross platform, if it runs on WIndows that's good enough. Yes, I could write my perfect engine, but I don't want to write an engine, I want to write a game. The first thing I saw that looked like it might fit the bill was Torque2D, but you can't find out much about it without buying it. If anyone who has experience with it can let me know how suited it would be, that's be awesome Or any other framework for that matter.

I don't really have any experience with an Engine bar HL2, but here is a list of the engine that you could use.

There is a description for each one, the API they use, the language, operating system... in fact everything you want to know. And of course the price if it's isn't free.

http://www.devmaster.net/engines/list.php

Also, i never used Torque2D, but i heard good comment about it.

Hope the list will help.