Thanks.

I understand that certain planets don't make it easy to terraform. On these huge maps though, an option to be able to terraform would be great....even if it means through the whole play-through of massive universes, just a handful can be done due to the time constraints and resources needed. It would add to the decisions and strategy for placement.

Rare number of planets inhabitable.

Small number of planets inhabitable after terraforming only. Limited to class 4 maybe.

Many planets uninhabitable.

So no effect in the starting rush, but mid game decisions can be made about new worlds to colonize. But, I repeat with a huge undertaking of time/ resources possibly.

But only other small gripe re-terraforming is, why can't we choose out starting base position on a planet? Surely with our Tech/ survey ability we could decide the best place instead of random.....to make best use of the adjacency bonuses. This is a strategic game after all.

Just my thoughts.

I'd pretty much agree with the OP. The game as it stands is dead boring. I haven't made it completely through a single game yet and doubt if I will. By spamming minimalized colony ships (ie- a colonization module on a frame (no engine, no life support) I was able to take control of over half of a huge spiral map by turn 100. That part of the game was relatively fun, but after that it's just been a grind. Same build order on every planet, don't even bother checking what techs do anymore- just take the next cheapest one, after colonizing every colonizable planet on the map I switched from colony ship spam to minimalized constructor spam. At turn 179 I now control every strategic resource and relic within my area of influence. I pump out on average 5 new constructors per turn, and now what? I suppose I could start spamming transport fleets and finish off the map, but why bother? After the initial exploration and colonization phase there are no meaningful decisions to be made.

I'm also at somewhat of a loss for suggestions that might make the game more fun. A semi-randomized tech tree (like Masters of Orion3 and Sword of the Stars 2 employ) would help. At least that way you have to adjust your plans according to what techs are available to you each game. Some sort of malus to inhibit colonization spamming would also make the game a good deal more challenging. I guess I'll wait to see how the game develops through subsequent builds, but as it stands it ranks with washing the dishes on my fun scale.

The game's mechanics so far are becoming pretty fun for me.  What kills the fun at this stage is the lack of AI's to play against.  I play on huge galaxies, and I'm 162 turns into my current game and I have yet to meet another civ.  So that's not too fun.  But I also know that this is a very temporary problem.

Do you think GC2 had superior colony management?  and how so?

I was actually just thinking about this. I never add defensive structures on a planet because, the important ones are specialized, and I can't be bothered to waste a research lab on my research capital. I would however, be much more inclined to spend money, and time researching defense if you could build defense platforms, fleet managers, listening outposts etc. on "red" tiles. I really like the idea of different tile types for different uses.

They could be much more common on lvl 4 planets too. This works very well with terraforming as it is. If you had a bunch (say 4 red), and (3 yellow), and 2 green tiles on a few lvl 4 planets (I know, not really "lvl 4" anymore), they would become much more viable strategically. Terraforming would then improve a greater number of simultaneous tiles (which makes a lot more sense), and crappy planets could eventually become good relative to regular ones (with a lot of research, time, etc.) but could not be made overpowered. It would still be much more valuable to find lvl 8+ planets in the beginning of the game, since terraforming would take research, time, money, but lvl 4 planets would still be useful, both in the beginning game and late game this way.

Come to think of it. I wonder if we really could have meaningful choices for every planet in a game like gal civ. And by meaningful, I'm going to steal Wraith367s definition which I think was really good. I.e. multiple options that are significantly different and can each be worthwhile.

I'll try to explain what I mean. Take civ 5 for example. In ciV each time a city grew you would have a choice, more or less meaningful. And that worked fine in ciV where the number of cities are significantly less than the number of planets in gal civ 3. But in gal civ 3 one has only one choice. And that is when the planets is colonized. The choice is than in what direction to specialize. The rest is just a chore, to build the structures, micromanage the production wheel etc. If they introduce good planetary governors maybe they will relieve that chore. But than again, only one choice will remain for each planet and that is when the planet is colonized. I will then just choose the appropriate governor and leave the planet be and it will become just a production unit amongst hundreds of other production units in the empire.

But what if meaningful choices turned up for each planet with regularly interval, much as it did i ciV with the city-growth but at a lesser frequency. I'm not sure what that would be. It was just a loose thought. Maybe elections once democracy and federation are invented giving planets increased autonomy. And the terraforming idea discussed above sound like an interesting idea.

Anyways, my two major issues with gal civ 2 was starbase micro management (which they have claimed in streams will be fixed) and colony management. The latter being not meaningful and being a chore. If they remove the chore with good governors it will still be an improvement and I will still buy the game.

Come to think of it, I have already bought the game...

The purpose of "Early Access Feedback" is for people to leave suggestions and feedback. Stop acting like an immature fanboy.

Simultaneous turns (similar to the alternative Civ 4/5 turn system) is certainly needed for multiplayer games, especially larger games between players. I expect this to come in much later though, but I would like to hear it to be confirmed, becuase truth be told, it is essential for larger multiplayer games which I take part in with my mates.

I don't have a problem with the other points the OP made, but I do have an issue about the rock/paper/scissors system. Did it work for Galciv2? Yes, it worked just fine. Was it great? No, it wasn't great, and can it be improved? Most certainly.

I'm already seeing curious stats like tactical speed, missile range and a few other things that may make combat much less abuot rock/paper/scissors, but I'm hoping for more but limited control. The devs are absolutely right on not inserting in tactical combat, because it is completely and utterly not feasible for large games. Tactical combat of decent depth would drastically increase the turn time. Think about other players who have to wait while you get involved in tactical combat, or in single player it would soon become a drag as you start playing bigger games.

So any indepth tactical feature is just not feasible in a game like GalCiv. But, adding more depth to the fleet combat system and giving the player more options prior to combat that would effect combat, would be a decent compromise that doesn't result in crazy long turn times.

First I want to say I've decided to stick it out with GalCiv3 as some of the people arguing against my suggestions have made some good points and the potential for modding the game is enormous so even if I'm not thrilled with the end result likely someone will mod it so I will like it much better or I might try my hand at modding myself.

So it seems based on this thread that there is consensus that multiplayer needs simultaneous turns hope the devs agree.

Tactical combat is not an option for GalCiv at all, so arguing for it isn't really productive even a single turn or set up.  Choosing formations or assigning roles/tactics to ships/fleets before combat would I think be an interesting addition to the game.  I would suggest if this idea is implemented the player must assign them before combat not when the combat occurs.   Also I took a look at the support modules that are already in place and they are still lame but modding could make it more interesting if Stardock doesn't get to it.

I still think colony management needs an overhaul but choosing where to place the colony center and knowing where the expansion tiles are from the start would at least make the adjacency system more useful so that players can plan better for long term colony management.  

I think the tech tree should really but trimmed revamped.  Combine some of the incremental techs and throw in some interesting ones like the ever popular inertial stabilizer and or nullifier which gives bonus to tactical and strategic speeds, genetic manipulation that depending on the race will provide different bonuses, military, production, intelligence, birth rate, or tolerance to hostile environments, cybernetics could be used similarly to genetic manipulation to give bonuses, different bonuses than genetic manipulation though, or to allow building of a cybernetic core that give bonuses to production but penalties to research.  At extreme end of the tree, planet building, turning asteroids into a new planet, change the orbit of existing planets to improve conditions or build a ring world or teleportation arrays to move ships from one end of the empire to the other.  It would take more work and I'm sure the player base would be happy to contribute ideas for more interesting techs than just incremental bonuses.

To put it simply, the gameplay is flawed. Gal Civ 2 was already complex and refined. Gal Civ 3 so expands the scope of the complexity but only in sheer terms of complexity. This was never a necessary addition to the franchise. It was already there, hence the universal acclaim of the series. What the game really needs is moee fluid and organic gameplay, which I believe the commubity expected and asked for but which the designers shut out due entrenchment in the company standards for game design. Chess is beautiful because it is simple and complex. Galactic Civ 3 is too complex in hard terms but lacking completely in liquid terms.

People need to go back and remember what the beta for GC2 was like.  GC3 is a blessing in comparison.

And civ 5 was only really good after several expansions.

I love this idea, but I would assume you would need to replace the graphic for the ages with one for the web.  I think you would still have to fairly simple just so its readable.  Or I may be thinking too small in that, you should be able to import new images and options right?  If so you can use a much larger diagram and allow a fair amount of complexity.

I'm not sure what you mean by hard and liquid terms but I completely disagree about the game is too complex and that GalCiv2 hit the mark in terms of complexity.  Go back and play GC2, I did this weekend and realized how much better 3 is already.  That said I still have issues with 3 and agree that it should have more fluid game play, also not sure what you mean by organic game play.  Paul has said many times in the dev stream that the devs don't want to take choices from the player, however there are certain choices I don't want to micromanage, like I would love to have transports move population for me with only a few settings, like people can move from my home world to new colonies and new colonies will accept more colonists.  Each colony would have check boxes allowing immigration and emigration and it happen in the background, but those lanes of transport shouldn't be instant and should be raidable like trade routes.  I also think trade routes should be abstracted in the same way, that's not something I want to actively set up and I think is similar to tourism which just needs to be unlocked.  I also thing internal trade should be abstracted, visible and raidable however that might be a bit much for the game and lower end computers to handle.

Additionally moving population is generally disincentivized as everything but food production is based on population, this is part of why I think production should not be directly tied to population.