I agree wholeheartedly! There is an ongoing discussion here, about what some feel are game elements that still could be improved upon and concerns, similiar to your points have been voiced there.

"Hey,

 I'm wondering if someone else has similar problems with the early rushing out practice to get the last availible colonies before AI is explosively expanding it's zone of control.

Doesn't make sense to just explore the galaxy and plan your expanding empire. You have to rush out and colonize every single availible planet before the AI is approaching. You defenetly get no second chance otherwise. This is horrible and feels like all AI players act like robotic swarming grasshoppers. This aspect really cuts off the funny part of this otherwise quite interesting game. 

Next argument is, that the whole galaxy is divided, before you even develop the needed tech to found a huge space empire. In most cases I only have Ion drive when the whole thing is settled and all availible colonys are gone. Why not limiting the distances one is able to fly from home or let's say from drydocks at least. Other then now, only with more advanced drives it should be possible to reach the farthest star systems.

Why not having enviromental diversity...so one has to research the needed tech to settle on different planets. I mean, there should be at least a comfort zone for your race, while other parts (ice, desert, vulcanoid, oceanic aso.) may start to get colonized the more you invest in colonyzing tech. 

(Allready mentioned the lack of racial diversity, as all players do more act like different faction of a single race instead of different species. All do compete on the same habitable planets with simply the same # of build slots. Seems to me like a missing design pattern...)

So, do we get some more flavor, in-depth development on this exciting and long-term interesting part of the game?"

How to solve early colony rush is a constant problem in 4x games in general.

 I do believe that on the larger maps, it should take a lot of tech research to be able to reach the other side.  As it is, I almost never research engine techs.

Also, extreme planets aren't in yet, and race specific abilities aren't in yet.

The early-planet-colony-rush is strategy independent and amounts to all-out-chaos in an attempt to grab powerful worlds. This is why some people have been advocating for more powerful "prime" worlds that could be built up over time. Currently, there is no benefit to focusing efforts on planetary development. The only focus is on gaining more planets. That's not to say that you don't develop your planets, but that it's secondary to colonization for every player.

Sid Meier's Civilization series approaches this problem through two very useful mechanisms. You need both workers and population for each city to be useful, and buildings are built over a much longer period of time. This means that a focus on building more workers means more tile improvements. More tile improvements means more food, which leads to more population, which increases workable tiles and allows the city to support more workers to build and maintain those tiles.

When you take all of these dynamic attributes together, any five older cities are worth more than ten new ones. This is because both strategies are rewarded. Someone who rushes out and builds 10 cities will typically be leaving several completely un-protected. Not only that, but builders can only focus on one tile at a time, at a single location. This means someone who builds workers, increases food for population growth, and focuses on strong city defense is often at an advantage early-mid game. Obviously the individual who colonized twice as many areas has twice the potential, but his resources are spread out too thin, leaving him vulnerable to attack, and stunting his early-game-growth. If he is both clever and lucky this can work to his advantage, but against a powerful and aggressive opponent he would be crushed unless he was able to find a diplomatic solution.

Why is Galactic Civilizations different? Population is treated as a universal variable instead of a local one. The purpose of population is mostly for the acquisition of wealth, which is then used to fund production. This means that the population of any planet can fund the production of another. If Civ5 used their population variable in a universal manner, then an increased population in your home city would allow you to work a new tile anywhere on the map, including one at a brand new city.

This wouldn't break all the mechanisms of Civ5 by itself, but if you combine this problem with a second variable, "production" you start to have a lot of problems. Production, in terms of city growth, can only be accomplished by workers. They have to be built in order for a city to grow, and they can only work a single location at a time. You have to decide between building a settler and colonizing a location, or building a worker and focusing on growth. Since "production" is mostly a universal variable in GC, you can work a single tile at every colony simultaneously while also building colonizers.

So imagine Civ5, where an increase in population at any city allows you to build on a tile anywhere, and you do not need any workers. Instead you work on a single improvement at each city simultaneously, and this is also independent from unit and building production. There would be no reason not to run out and colonize every conceivable location. Couple this with the fact that most cities can only build five-ten buildings, and it's nothing but a mad-rush at land grabbing.

Since there are so many colonizable locations in GC, having production set up as a mostly universal variable makes sense. Workers would just be an added annoyance. However, population is too powerful in its ability to affect universal production. There needs to be a mechanism put in place to limit this effect on a per-planet-basis. I would suggest planets that have to fund their own production, but this would most likely be met with strong criticism from veteran game players as it has been a core game mechanic since the beginning.

At the moment, my suggestion is for developers to focus on more powerful planets that allow you to develop "prime" worlds over time. However, I do feel these other issues also require some consideration.

Maybe tie % of planet pops that isn't at your capital to government type, and then going over that limit can have some side effects, such as bad events/Chances of planets declaring independence if they get strong enough?

Thx the response, all have good points to discuss about. 

What makes me feel uncomfortable with the current system is the concentration of 2X instead of 4X.

Yeah, I've played GC1+2 and I really accept GC3 to build upon that system. But at the current all is too much concentrated on eXpand instead of eXplore, while eXploit is just a matter of # of built starbases and eXterminate I currently have no clue about, as combat is not included yet.

I play all availible sizes, while I found tiny and huge to be the most stable frame. Got no stucked game with these two sizes yet. 

In all cases, the whole galaxy is divided within turn 50-80, what cuts off the eXplore idea totaly in my eyes. As one stated, there is more benefit to play swarming grasshopper instead of reasearching ground tech. 

GC3 shows up with a very nice diplomatic area. Why not having a decleration on ZOC...or zone of interest, so other empires will know they have to pay a price if they expand into this area? I mean, in real-world, would you start to found a city in France if you aren't a French? If you would, then all local citicens would count this as an hostile act, try to convince you to leave and on next step they'd start shooting. Aliens might have other social behavior, but anyone would know that settling into others zone of control or even zone of interest will get you into trouble soon. 

In GC2 an early game colony rush would crush your economy.  Is there no mechanic in place in GC3 to hinder it?

"Yea Charon, I remember if you rush rush rush and than having to spend 100+ turns doing NOTHING because I have no money or production to do anything till population increases (slowly) so I can tax the hell outta them and start the process all over...."

That was definitely not too fun.  I hope there's some mechanic in place, but different.

Need upkeep for colony capital currently there is none.  Colony modules need to cost triple what they do now.  Base population growth should be 0.05 instead of 0.1.

Upkeep for colony capital sounds reliable to me.

How about having an 'outpost' first (no shipyard building, no border advancement !!! with outpost, bonus with basic economical buildings) till it reaches minimal population level to form a official colony out of it?

@charon2112:

I'm sure they will bring tons of balance tweaks, but if you do not have the basic design patterns in prefered direction, there might be no choice left except cosmetics.

Stardock does a real good job by having a long alpha/beta time as they listen carefully to our response. I think it is essential to give our ideas and wishes so we'll get the game we desire.  

The game mechanics seem to be headed in a great direction to me.  Even in this state, I'm enjoying colony management more than GC2.

This is a great discussion.

FWIW, we talked about this a bit in last week's stream. The short version is that extreme worlds are going to change this dynamic quite a bit -- you won't be able to colonize everything in sight because you won't have the tech for it. So we're not spending a bunch of time balancing expansion right now when it's going to change so drastically once extreme worlds are in.

Personally (and remember, mormegil is the lead designer, not me!) I dislike the idea of leaning on explicitly anti-expansion mechanics like Civ 4 maintenance, Civ 5 happiness, or FE/LH unrest. I'm hopeful that we'll be able to get the pacing into a good place with GC3 without having to resort to such things (which absolutely have a point, don't get me wrong) simply because I hate feeling like I'm being punished for founding a new city/colony/whatever.

Besides, GalCiv is about having huge space empires. If it ever ends up making more sense to found four colonies and turtle forever until you tick over a science victory like in some other games, we've probably made a mistake somewhere.

Inherently, the OP is correct. There really isn't much of a penalty to rushing pop and colony ships and taking every bit of dirt you can. Other factions can't invade you for a looooooooong time. By then, your colony is built up.

Bingo.

The main thing that should slow expansion is danger.

MOO2 for perspective: Rapid expansion in MOO2 was dangerous because newborn planets with no defences were easy pickin's for predatory neighbors. Backfilling your own corner of the galaxy was okay, but if you wanted to settle frontier worlds, you needed some firepower to go with it. Not defending planets is like just giving them away for free.

In GalCiv there is no penalty for blindly sending colony ships out to explore and expand at the same time. There is no military ability to steal fledgling colonies from neighbors in the early game, so why not? It's like playing a Nerf game. No one really gets hurt.

^^That sounds really old and boring. IMHO.