I played GalCiv3 a bit at a friend's house.  I like it, a lot, but not enough to buy it in its current form.  In short, this strategy game needs a better way to handle strategic information.  I kept asking myself, "Are my survey ships headed to the right anomolies and not clustering up?  Are my constructors heading to the best resource patch?"

The minimap needs a full screen version.  Or better yet, a way to filter what is displayed in the main view.  It could be a "separate" screen (minimap full screen) so the main view is forced to "always show everything" to avoid player confusion, but it should show the various icons and not just simply dots. 

The minimap lets you filter what dots are displayed (ships, planets, anomalies).  This is nice, but it needs a further breakdown.  How about only showing ships with the survey module installed.  Only show ships with the colony, transport, or constructor modules.  Additionally you should be able to filter by battle role.  Ideally this filter would have checkmarks rather than just radio buttons, this way you could select a battle role capital ship that has the transport module.  Or if this could be too complex, how about just radio buttons that list the (existing) ships from the ship designer list.  This way, the player can find all their ships of a specific type, and only those ships on the minimap. 

Starbases, planets, resources (such as antimatter), relics, and the like should also be able to be turned on and off on this display.  These should be able to be further filtered as well.  For instance, only show planets that are toxic, or only planets with a rating of 12 or X or higher.  Only show antimatter, thulium, or other resources rather than all.

I realize this may be difficult to do and even more difficult in creating the UI.  Maybe something along the side or bottom similar to what the minimap already has, but when you select one of the tabs (say planets), and additional panel can pop-out with the various options.  It could have an X on it to close it so it's not always obscuring the display.  While all of this is definitely needed for a "full screen minimap" type of window, it would be nice to be able to filter the main view like this as well.

The various icons (ships specifically) need a better way to understand them, or customize them.  I designed a survey ship with a few beam weapons and shields so they would not need escorts.  I also designed a "Spy Ship" with nothing but drives and tons of sensors.  Both ships had the same icons on the main view when zoomed out.  (My survey ships lost their little radar waves in front of the ship.)  Since both ships looked the same zoomed out, this caused managing what I saw on the screen harder than it needed to be.  This game has the most incredible ship designer I have ever seen.  It's beyond anything I've ever encountered.  But they forgot to let us customize the ship icons? 

If these changes become part of the game, it would definitely replace all my other strategy games for years to come.  In my opinion, it would become the new standard that all other 4X games were judged against.

Edit: And ability to turn off or hide some things in the main view.  For instance, anomalies and asteroids look VERY similar (and dead planets can be confusing too).  Either changing these icons to be drastically different or the ability to hide certain elements (such as asteroids) is sorely lacking.  I don't know how many times I click quickly with my survey ship only to watch it fly by an anomaly I mistook for an asteroid while zoomed out.