Add me to the "Tough Titty" list.
I'll assume that you're extremely good at 4X and, yep, playing Galactic Civilizations 3 right now is beans supremo. You know how to work the research, how to get Planetary Invasion the quickest way possible and look, after 50-60 turns you've won the game.
Good for you.
Not being such a kickass 4Xer, I spent too much time farting around with the early research so it took me a while to get Planetary Invasion (I researched Diplomacy which of course is largely irrelevant at this point - economic benefits are fine, but really, who cares?) So while the Dregin ships are currently looking at each other going "You know how you said there's no place like home? Thanks to those Terran assholes, there's now no home, period!", I've still got to kill them off for good then deal with the other two evil empires.
The game is obviously far from finished:
Ship battle is awful, I'd rather they did away with the pop up screen, just let your ship/fleet go against the enemy ship/fleet and inform you of the result.
Planetary Invasion is like, so horribly difficult with all the training and stellar marines you need to research. Not. So at this point, why have the research options there? Research seems to be the most fully fleshed out at this point, to me, but without the necessity to get some of that research.
Diplomacy/Espionage/Trade are non-existant and of all the things Stardock could get right to make me happy, it's those things (If great diplomacy/espionage comes at the cost of some of the fancy ship design I don't think I'd miss it much). So I'm prepared to wait.
One last complaint. The "Random events" when you colonize a planet. Can we do away with the stupid pods every time? Yes, great for your research but c'mon. And keep the humourous descriptions like GalCiv II 'Advanced Diplomacy: Note to self: "Pull my finger" is not a universal greeting. Gaffes such as this one can be greatly reduced and, we hope, eliminated entirely as our diplomacy becomes more advanced and our understanding of other cultures (rather humorless cultures, some would say) increases.'
But I fully knew what Alpha and Beta meant when I paid my money over. I'm happy with where the game is now (third or forth update?). Given the advancements that have been made, I'm sure the next update - whether that takes the game to Beta zone (however that's judged and by whom) or not - will show the same level of improvements and yep, I don't have to pay one more cent to get the full version/DLCs/Expansion packs. Even if Stardock did decide I had to put up say another $50.00 for all the DLCs/Expansions, if the Gold/Finished Galactic Civilization III's good enough, I'll cough for it (I'd just expect to get plenty of warning about the extra investment and get a discount on the extra money Stardock wants the non-Founder crowd to cough).
