I thought that S&S worked pretty well as a game, but I thought it was better as a game system. I should point out that not long after it cam e out, I was doing some academic research on cycles of hegemony and processes of empire, so the subject matter was of particular interest to me. The EMA/S&S system was one of the very few games that actually "unpacked" empires and factored in their internal workings. Instead of just being conquest machines as they are in many other games, the empires/political entities in S&S had to cope with internal problems and instabilities; many turns are spent just trying to keep the existing holdings intact and stable, and a successful campaign of conquest is usually followed by a period of consolidation and absorption, which very much fit the historical evidence I was looking at at the time.

The randomness of the sector changes might be something of a game problem; in your case "greatness was thrust upon you", and off you went. From a simulation point of view this was fine with me; a sudden imbalance in military capability could lead to one state subjugating much of its opposition (say Rome in the 1st and 2nd centuries BC, or the Arabs c. 600 AD). The appropriate response in the game, as it is perhaps in the real world, is to gang up on the leader and try to hold him off until his comparative advantage is compensated for and/or internal problems (revolts, civil war, decline in quality of administration) kick in. The sector change is one way to show this in the game, but it does have a element of randomness to it. Trying to simulate all the factors going into the change would have added another layer of complexity to the game and probably made it unwieldy.

As a science-fiction enthusiast as well as a historian, I found S&S to be a little dry. A bit more could have been done to enliven the setting, making the alien races more real, and giving the game more SF trappings.

At least with EMA, the players could bring their own background imagery of Charlemagne, Byzantium and the general setting of medieval kingdoms and empires to the game. Think for a moment, how S&S might have been were it set in Asimov's "Foundation" or Herbert's "Dune" universe.

As you indicate, S&S may not be the best SF game. A four person match of Stellar Conquest is more likely to be a better multiplayer gaming experience, for instance, simply because the four positions start evenly matched, and there is less randomness. S&S sets up more interesting situations, and delves into processes more. However, like Bruno Wolff, I think it works particularly as a solitaire game for players particularly interested in this level of simulation.