Hi,
I haven't buy GC3 yet, but I'm playing GC2 ultimate which I bought for a month now (quite intensively because I love it, congrats guys) and here are ultra basic features that would make me buy GC3.
From a GC2 ultimate POV (just translate to GC3) :
- In relationships, please circle with green/gray the leaders that actually allow you to talk to them this turn. I understand how it works, I just don't count turns for every other civ and trying them all nearly every turn is a pain. It's cheap to do, and can't bother anyone (at worst you just dont care).
- When discovering an asteroid field "+25% on your current research", make it "+25% on the available research you wish" OR "+XXX (no %) points in research" (rest spent in next if overdone). Right now, every turn before I ran into a field with a survey, I change research to an expensive one and change again before end of turn. It half seems like exploit but not really if you consider the option "+25% on the available research you wish" which would be better imho. Again, tedious to look for optimum.
- Make a "no RNG" option at the start of a skirmish but nearly nobody does that
How it works : just takes average rolls in combat (both ships combat and planets invasion), fixed. Yes you will miss the "random part" of a combat but hey, it's just an option so who cares! Personnaly I don't really like the feeling "ho, I've been screwed" or "ho I really shouldn't have won here" of randoms. Again, it's just an options which makes all rolls = average = fixed. Don't try it if you don't like it, easy to code I bet.
- Some improvements are too costfull to maintain compared to older ones, but thats not a biggy (exemple, imho since manufacturing center = cost 150/maintain 6/ prod 10, next tier Industrial Sector shoudnt be 400!!/10!!/12 but more like 250/8/12, or it's just 95% of time a waste unless its ultra bonus planet on prod out of 100 with no more room). But hey, as I said, not a biggy, gc2 is already nice balanced overall. Like any games it just could be endlessly "better".
Of course there are more large-scale important things but I think those features are like 1-3 hours of coding each (less than half a day for sure, yes I code in game industry too), so, as I might not be the only one thinking it would make the game a bit better, that could be cool for not much effort.
Maybe some of this "features" are already there in GC3, can't tell but I hope.
My 2 cents, cheap-small-improvements, nothing revolutionary.