No Minor Civilizations?

Same.

What is your setting for minors in the galaxy settings?

My setting for minors is "Abundant"

I haven't tried Abundant. I've been playing with "Occasional" and I see a minor maybe once every five games or so. So it would seem the devs do need to look at this.

I just started a new game last night. I have a minor race in my starting sector. But even after gaining Universal Translator tech, I cannot talk to them.  They don't initiate conversation, and I get nothing when I click on their planet.

I don't have one in my current game, so I can't check this, but if I remember correctly, you have to click on their planet, then when the planet window displays in the lower left part of the galaxy window, click on the top most icon attached to the right of the planet window.

Hmm, I wonder if there is a new bug. Were you also paying with abundant minor civs Reisz?

Can both of you please try verifying your files if you recently updated.

Ok, I followed instructions from Publis of NV above and they spoke to me. Gave me a mission.  Thanks.

But this is similar to something mentioned before.  We shouldn't have to look through buried menus or guess at things in the interface. Once someone clicks on the planet, the planet screen should just have a "Speak To" box that you can click.  I think previous versions of GC had that for minor and major races.

I have encountered a few  minor races in different games but the last one seems to be a bit bugged. Previously I was asked to research a tech for them and after doing it I could speak to them and get a reward. The current one asked me to destroy 7 pirate fleets and after doing so the quest disappeared from the left of the main screen but the dialogue window is stuck on either saying nothing or declaring war. The accept button is greyed out.