Black and White 2 is better than the original because it's a little faster paced than the original was. But it still suffers because it takes too damn long to accomplish anything. And this is from someone who can spend DAYS playing through the same skirmish session against the hard AI in Sins of a Solar Empire. Of course, one aspect that Sins nails is that while you don't achieve total victory very quickly (not normally anyway), you can easily achieve any of your lesser goals quickly enough to keep you interested. And let's face, galactic conquest is much more epic and satisfying than pleasing/abusing your cultists.