I really enjoyed Stars in Shadow. It hews close to moo2 but has a more interesting way of handing population on planets.

One of the features I really like is that picking Humans for your race is basically an extra bump in difficulty. The game's lore has Humans as one of the 'elder' races. Human population has no resource boosts of any kind and start with no homeworld. You have a few population in transport ships and a decrepit fleet escorting them. Find a world and settle it pronto, and it will almost certainly be terrible compared to Earth.