My first full game went pretty well, but there are still lots of bugs, sadly. Here's a list that I noticed:

1. After taking over a planet, sometimes the icons don't change when you zoom out to icon view. In addition, it appears that some did change, but the old icon didn't disappear so they kinda overlayed eachother.

2. Frequent crashes to desktop. Unfortunately it happened about 20 times while I played my game (which took about 24 hours to complete)

3. Some audio issues. Sometimes sound would shut off and i'd have to reboot my computer for it to work. Never had this issue before (it's a sb audigy 2).

4. This isn't so much a bug, but rather an AI exploit. By the end of the game I was very powerful. I kept attacking the Drengin after settling peace for huge sums of money. They caught on to that, fortunately. Unfortunately, one of the races, who they are allied with (that i forget at the moment), would also declare war on me to satisfy the alliance. I would immediately seek a peace treaty with that race and they would give up planets and money every time. This happened about 5 times. So if a nation declares war on you then they really shouldn't sign a peace treaty unless a few conditions are met (like their partner also declares peace or if they start to get devestated).

5. Models would sometimes get stuck in planets even though those ships weren't there anymore. Kind of a weird bug.

6. Military might doesn't seem to take starbases into account. In the beginning of my game I built up about 7 VERY powerful starbases, but I had a small military to keep costs down. My military ranking was rated very low as a result even though the ships I did have were far superior to everyone elses. What the system fails to realize is that I had very good manufacturing capabilities and could develop enormous fleets after about 30 turns and use the starbases as defence. I ultimately went from having no influence one year to controlling the galaxy the next. So military strength rating should take into account the quality of your ships and manufacturing capabilities.

So in the end I had a blast playing the game. The micromanagement was really minimal. I played in the gigantic galaxy with rare habitable planets and the result was a perfect balance for me. I also played at normal difficulty and ended up winning on the technological path.

At the end of the game I cheated a little... I completely overextended myself because I took every planet with mass drivers and utterly destroyed them. I also destroyed my population due to my frequent invasions. As a result I was a little low on ships in certain areas and the Drengen were starting to attack aggressively. Knowing it was the end of the game I started leasing fleets of ships as I had huge cash on hand. Worked out amazingly well. I wouldn't have run out of money for ages and I was just buying ships in areas that needed to be defended.

My next game will be a smaller galaxy at the next difficulty level. I need a bit a of a break now.