The Rise and Fall of Galactic Empires is a game where the players garden the civilizations through the phases of birth, rise, glory, fall, and death. It's played in turns, and each turn you do one of the following:
Explore: push the boundaries of the galaxy and find seeds of civilizations. Mechanically, draw and place a few hexagonal sector tiles and then deal and draft three event cards per player.
Conquer: plant a civilization in a sector, in control over anyone who's already there. Mechanically, play a card and place a matching disk on a tile. Cards have special powers that trigger (most often) during this action.
Reap: harvest the power of the civilizations you've cultivated, then decide whether they live or die. Mechanically, simultaneously sell a card with the other players. Its value is based on the value of sectors the matching civilization controls. Then do a simultaneous bid to determine how many disks survive the reaping.