Agreed. The current system can be (and often is) a huge timewaster, with too much fiddling around to find the break point. In fact it's far and away my biggest single interface gripe.
After opening foreign policy/report/speak to, when I click on money/influence I get a CTD. Exception report emailed as well.
I also prefer a no-weapons start. To me it makes sense that it would be easier to send out unarmed ships before developing militarily viable ones.
I'd also favour an expanded ground combat system. I agree that battles taking longer than a week would be preferable, both from a strategic and aesthetic points-of-view. I like the idea of being able to fight a delaying action, or sucking an enemy into a meatgrinder, and an epic global battle that takes years is just kind of cool. However I wouldn't mind if it was essentially automated system where the player plugs in a few broad strategic options, along the
GalCiv2 Forums
Another from me. To be fair to the developers, writing software is a tricky process, and estimating time to do things is hard. It's even harder when you factor in feature creep (which seems normal for every software project I've ever seen). Dates slip, always have, probably always will. Actually I'm impressed enough with progress I've finally decided
Ship design.
ixed tree for the AI.
Stardock Forums