Just finished a ~400 turn game. This game is getting super-addicting. I did it with a custom race, and putting one together was pretty easy and fun. I wanted to chase a tech/ascension victory but ended up winning by conquest. I really started playing with patch 5.2, and coming from other 4x games, the learning curve is pretty good in my opinion. I can't wait for some of the newer features, like planetary governors and the fully unlocked tech tree. if you're reading this, thanks Gal Civ 3 team!

Bugs:

• Total research quantity in lower right of tech screen does not display properly for large number (e.g. 5 digits). There are other text problems too but according to the dev stream they're known issues.
• UI sounds worked find in the beginning of the game, but as the game went on, they cut out completely (medium map)
• On the other hand, I had less crashes to desktop later in the game.
• Stacking diplomacy screens: if two civilizations come to you with urgent notifications on the same turn (e.g. two civs declare war on the same turn), both pop up in quick succession, but closing one closes them all
• If I overwrote a save game file name and tried to load it, the original file would stay in its original position, and a new file would show up with a ~ in front of it and be unloadable. However, if I clicked cancel and then opened the load screen again, I would be able to open the new save file manually.
• If a civilization admitted defeat, a screen would pop up and say "PROGRAMMER: *we give up, all our assets go to this civ.*" That same screen keeps showing up every turn, until the message where they ask for peace comes up and I accept peace.
• Can still see lines from starbase to resource/ascension even after the starbase is destroyed.
• Tier 5 benevolence reward made a class 4 planet appear
• Ship commands in the govern menu didn't work sometimes
• If I had a shipyard repeating a design, sometimes I would be able to update the repeat to the latest design with the update, but more often I couldn't
• For the multiple-option techs, partial completed ones were colored inconsistently, i.e. if I only had 1/3 or 2/3 on a multiple-option tech, sometimes color would be brightly filled in like a completed tech, sometimes it wouldn't
• I once got a ship to go outside its op range by sending it in a direction where it end up back in op range, don't know if that's intentional
• When you select some ships out of a stack of ships, often the unselected ships will move instead

Personal feelings:

• Should be able to research more than one tech per turn
• Should be able to peacefully flip starbases, or there should be some sort of punishment to the civ who builds starbases in another civ's territory
• Upgrading ships is prohibitively expensive
• It would be great if in the zoomed out state of the map, you could filter the map by layers, so like *only see planets,* *only see ships,* *see starbases and resources,* etc.
• Would be cool if you could set separate rally points for military and non-military craft
• At one point a later update of a ship reduced its moves/turn, I thought that was a bit strange.
• I see no reason to avoid conquering minor civs ASAP. You can get a trade route, but they spam starbases and conquering them pretty much gives you a free class 16 planet with no consequences. AI seems to agree in conquering minor civs.
• I once spent half an hour in the designer and accidentally hit cancel, losing everything. It would be cool if there was a confirm message for cancel, and/or if you could save changes without leaving current ship's design (like apply changes)
• Everyone always seems to have an opposing ideology
• (Late addition) It's absurd how fast the AI get colony ships, even on beginner. I have early quit several games because of this. They have like 5 colonies before I pump out a scout.

Questions:

• What are aura points for ascension victory?
• Are there any benefits to having a large population/high growth besides being able to load transports and colony ships more frequently?
• How do you pirate a trade route (or is that not available yet)?