I cant wait my sis is going to buy me a founders game. I have every galactic civilization game out except GALACTIC CIVILIZATIONS III. I have GAL CIV II running so good I can make an Emence map laoded with planets and 13 minor races that agressivly colonize. and it still runs JUST Very slow !.  One Idea I want to give is allowing your custom race toad tecs from other races to YOUR Perminant tech tree as you aquire them. and also open up that part of the other races tech tree so you can resurch it after you finish your own tech tree. I hate not having techs to resurch after I get all mine. LAZY scientists are useless !.

I agree the market does look more than a little medieval.  The good news is at the moment most of the art for buildings and such are placeholder art lifted direct from gc2.  So will be replaced. 

Can I just add I find it stange if people think of the colony view as a literal arial photograph of the colony since it would mean those buildings are all gigantic to the point of sillines.

This is why I see the colony view as representative a map of the planet from orbit with icons overlayed on areas to dipict the focus of activity in that area. Hence the plack and white part didn't bother me either.

GC has never attempted to dipict a realistic to scale colony growing as one probably would.

That is exactly how I feel!!

I fee like a God watching down on his subjects from a birdseye view, dropping Gigantic buildings in place and seeing at a glance where resources are thanks to Cybernetic overlay vision.   That is the problem with black and white, God does not have Dog vision but rather cybernetic overlay implants. God also has eyes everywhere, this is why he can see the surface as flat instead of a sphere.

After reading all the feedback, I suppose I'll throw in my thoughts as well.

Overall, I like what has changed.

1) Monochromatic vs. Color: I agree with the folks that said they like the monochromatic because it creates good contrast, but I also agree with the folks that don't like the monochromatic because it affects the feel and immersion. I wouldn't mind the monochromatic look, but I'd prefer color. Perhaps we could have a desaturated color on the unusable tiles that would let us know, "hey, that's ocean" but also makes it easy to say, "hey, that's not usable."

2) Jagged vs. Rectangular: I don't mind the hexagonal border, but I think it would look cleaner with a straight edge.

3) Outline of Water: I tend to agree that the bright blue outline of the water (within the usable tiles) is a distracting element. If there needs to be an outline, I hope it gets toned down a few notches.

4) Outline of Improvable Hexes: I like that the outlines for improvable hexes (arid, etc.) are not present--I'd rather see those only when the tech is available (somewhat like in GC2, where you can see some as you approach the next tech, though perhaps you shouldn't see any until you start that branch of the tech tree). 

5) Outline of Unusable Hexes: I don't mind having no outlines around the unusable hexes, but I also wouldn't mind if there was a very faint outline, especially if the unusable area remains monochrome.

6) Production Icons: I agree with the folks that mentioned the icons for Manufacturing/Research/Wealth are a bit noisy--and I like the suggestions of moving away from 1/5/10/50.

7) Production Queue: I really like the way the queue is laid out on the bottom of the screen using improvement icons, and I have no problem with these not having names as that information, I presume, will be offered via tooltip. That said, I too would like to see some indication next to the icon of how long each improvement will take to construct (I realize this is in the 'available projects' section, but having to look there adds an extra step), and perhaps a total timeframe for all improvements.

8) Planet Arrows: I agree that these arrows are small and unintuitive. Since there are no other UI elements adjacent to these arrows, I'd love if they picked up the mouse hover a little more easily (from a little more distance).