Most of this has probably already been mentioned, if so then take it as an 'I second that motion'

Also, as I hear there won't be another expansion, I suppose these would be suggestions for GalCiv3...

1.) Two or three new races done in the same way as the Krynn (ship styles, logos, etc)

2.) Three or four new political parties

3.) One or two new 'Generic' tech-trees possibilities could be 'Generic warrior race' or 'Generic diplomatic race' or tech trees for races that will eventually align with good, evil or neutral.  This would be good for opponent creation for the less mod literate player.

4.) More ship jewels and hull designs for all races plus perhaps one or two 'reserve' styles for customization purposes

5.) More complexity in the UP - more motions and perhaps a leader could be elected once in a while, say every four meetings, who could propose motions while in office - similar to MOO (but not as a way to win)

6.) Ability to close (and re-open) ones borders (selectivley via diplomacy) to everthing except trade ships, or failing that, making colonization - in particular - in another empire's territory an act of war.

7.) Protectorate option in diplomacy - similar to alliance except that protectorate pays some kind of tribute (money/research/influence/whatever) to protector who automatically declares war on those attacking the protectorate (as if they themselves were attacked)

8.) RE point 6 - make colonization more logical on the part of the AI

9.) Better combat - space empires IV style would be fine for me, seeing as this is not RTS but some kind of say in the combat side of things.  This would be good for planets too but ship combat is more important.

10a.) Make starbases generally tougher, more HP with some form of wepaonry as standard so that individual ships can't take them out so easily.

10b.) Starship construction modules on starbases perhaps requiring a construction specific starbase with modules that  decrease build time (balanced so that planets are still quicker and cheaper)

11.) (Maybe better for a patch) Eyes of the Galaxy wonder should give planets 'eyes' too.  It doesn't.

12.) Terraforming ship module, (similar to mining module) with three tech levels that allow you to make use of class zero planets and improve lower class planets.  Terraform Tech 1 - Brings planets to Level 4, Tech 2 - Level 7, Tech 3 - Level 10, for example. This should be a slow process and expensive technology.

13.) Ability to board ships during aforementioned improved tactical combat (boarding party/ship security modules?) and later possiblity of reverse engineering for captured/diplomatically acquired ships.

14.) More government types, some with senate elections, some without using the various political parties as a basis for bonuses 'Star Theocracy' or other.

As it stands, I never change from Star Federation once there which makes the government aspect of the game an underdeveloped facet, considering its potential.

15.) 3 or 4 policy options for each type of government with benefits and penalties.  'Free Press' +10 morale, -10 'something else', for example.

As I said above, these will pobably have to go in as suggestions for GCIII but if any of them could make it into a patch, I'd be one very satisfied customer (not that I'm not already - great game!  )

also maybe you could have the ability to have an orbiting starbase around a planet (such as the international space station with weapons and research) which will allow your planets more that just ship protection, that can be destroyed easily and leaving your planet wide open for attack. also i'm in for the more tactical fighting mentioned by Redsonia. Maybe you could tell your ships what to do at the biginning of the battle and have the ability to change your order during the battle. then if ur crew is big enough you could send a team over to the ship maybe by transporter or small craft inside the ship. ALSO i think it would be cool to have captains and admirals on your space ship.

For a sequel, the following reqests.

These aren't meant to suggest that I'm in any way unhappy with GalCiv2.  The game is excellent.

1.  I'd like to see "Range" be a more meaningful attribute of ship design.

Currently, range seems to translate to: This is how far your ship can go.  You can go up to the limit, at which point some magical force will prevent you from going further.... engine troubles, crew mutinying because you wandered into the 'here there be tygers' part of your interstellar charts, the Q continuum throwing up a forcefield.  The game seems to support the idea that range is related to your available food, water and oxygen on-board, because you have to add more/better life support modules to go further.

I've sent out scout ships to the limits of their range though, and then forgotten about them for a couple of years.  They stay there, scanning the perimeter of my known space, crew loyal, with enough food/water/fuel/oxygen to stay out there for as long as I want them to.  If the ship could stay there unsupported for so long, why wasn't it capable of going a bit further past the set range limit?

Really, the outer limit of a ship's range would be how far it could go if it immediately turned around and headed back for the nearest starbase/friendly planet for resupply.  If it stayed in unfriendly space for any length of time, it would use up its stored supplies and the crew would die.

Possibilities for gameplay:

-A weak but well-stocked supply ship that travels with fleets to extend their effective range.  Shorter-range ships can effectively keep up with the fleet and travel beyond the limits of their own rangeby siphoning off the life-support of the supply ship.  If the fleet's supply vessel(s) are destroyed, any vessels that are beyond their own range are on a countdown to starvation.  If they want to survive, they have to head back towards the nearest starbase and hope to meet up with another supply ship coming from the other direction.

-Setting up supply lines... effectively mobile trade routes from planets/starbases to a fleet in order to keep it "fed".  Worrying about the possibility of supply lines being attacked, or plotting this strategy against an enemy.

-Debating whether to keep a ship at the limits of its range, or send it beyond the point of no return.  With no resupply, a scout ship could go even further and gather potentially valuable intel at the cost of the crew's life.

-Starved, dead ships can be captured by any race which find them and put to use.  Also potentially they can be disassembled and "mined" for technologies that were present on them but which the finder's civilization don't possess.

-"Scout drones" as a research goal on the tech tree.  These can be left behind by scout ships, and can also be destroyed.

2.  Ship damage can result in damage to functional components, including engines and weapons.  If tactical combat is going to be employed, ships or fleets can be ordered to concentrate their fire on specific parts of an enemy fleet's vessels.  I'm presuming that ballistic armor is across the ship's entire hull, and therefore probably can't be disabled.  Perhaps shield emitters or anti-missile nodes can be disabled by damage?

Gameplay potential:

-On the way to an enemy's planets, an entire fleet can be slowed down or weakened by a ship with a damaged warp engine.  Cut it loose or move more slowly.  Similarly, a relatively weak defense force can deliberately target an incoming fleet's engines or weapons, in an attempt to soften it up for the second wave which might not have been manufactured yet.

3.  Deeper diplomacy options. 

-Currently it's: ([action X] and/or [give me X])  [and in return I will]  ([action Y] and/or [give you Y])

-I'd like to see: ([action X against species A] and/or [give X to species A] and/or [disable, remove X]) ([and] [or] in return I will)  ([action Y against species b]  and/or  [give Y to species b])

Examples:

-"Remove your fleets from my space or I will declare war on you."

-"Disable Starbases 1, 2 and 8 or I will give warships 365, 584 and 878 to (your enemies) the Drengin."

-"Pay me 300 bc (recurring) and I will declare war on (all your enemies)."

-"Give the Torians your Fleet 71 and I will give Planet Y to the Krynn."

4.  Asynchronous multiplayer.  I think this is the "hotseat" play that many people are talking about.  With a turn-based strategy game, many of the complaints of dropped connections can be reduced.  Allow players to sign up, choose races, and set the order of play and the deadline for each player's turn.  Anytime a player doesn't submit his/her moves by the deadline, the game's AI takes over for that turn and executes moves with a high intelligence setting.  Players can drop out or in as they please, but if a player drops out entirely another new player can't take their place.

Wow, the expansion pack is out and we're still talking about what should be in it.  Where's that post from Mumble about necromancing?    lol

Keep it up and I threaten to find the ole' orbital bombardment, tactical combat thread. Bwahahaha

Other requests, again these are for GalCiv III if/when it ever happens.

5.  Cloaking, Cloaking Detection.  It'd be interesting to see a tech tree on Cloaking research, with 2 branches: cloaking/detection.  Yes, I know it's very Star Trek-y, but just like the first Star Trek episode to feature a cloaked ship, it would introduce the space equivalent of submarine warfare.  I think the ST universe could give us some useful guidelines as well, such as the inability to fire and still remain cloaked.  Ships could be reined in from becoming too powerful by making the cloaking devices expensive in terms of component space; not so much room left over for armor or weapons.

Gameplay potential:

-Cloaked ships are given a +/- cloaking score compared to any ship of any other species.  If the other ship doesn't have a high enough cloaking-detection ability, it can't see the cloaked ship.  If the other ship has close, but not equal-to-or-greater detection ability, it will see radar echoes of where the ship was while it is moving.... not where it is currently.  Ex: A ship with a cloak value of 5 and a movement of 7 moves through the sensor range of a ship with cloak-detection value of 3.  The game calculates the difference between the two values and determines that the detecting ship can see X amount of "blips" from where the cloaked vessel's movement path.  The detecting ship may be able to tell from the blips what the other ship's attributes are, but not where it started moving and not where it ended.  The detecting ship also can't fire on the cloaked one, since it can only see movement echoes rather than where the ship is presently.  If the cloaked ship opens fire, it immediately becomes visible and remains so until its opponent is destroyed or it fully repairs, whichever comes last.  Cloaked ships are also visible when they have fewer than full HP.  Cloaked ships would remain undetectable if they remained still, so long as they have a greater cloaking rating than their opponent's detection rating.  Cloaking/detecting tech tree branches would be like the weapon/defense advances, with more advanced research yielding better and smaller techs.  Cloaking tech would always require much more component "room" than detection modules.

6.  Mines.  I'd like to be able to set out mines armed with laser, missile or ballistic weapons.  A mine's punch would be one-time but powerful, either destroying the mine itself or completely consuming its power supplies.  Mines could also be equipped with cloaking tech, making them potentially invisible to fleets that don't contain a ship with sufficient cloak detection.  A mine would have a set home location and a sensor range.  If an enemy ship/fleet passed through the sensor range, the mine would start moving towards it......slowly..... and detonate when it reaches the same co-ordinates as the enemy ship/fleet.  If the enemy passes through and out of sensor range, the mine would either remain stationary or return to its home location when it can no longer detect them.  Mines would have a very slow rate of movement but potentially a high sensor rate, and their "punch" would affect every ship in the fleet simultaneously. 

7.  (And this would be a big one) I'd love to see a meta-game in the CalCiv universe.  Something like GalCiv3, with standalone expansions that completely tranform one aspect of these interstellar wars.  So a product line something like:

-GalCiv 3, with more generalized ship combat and planetary invasion tactics.

-GalCiv Planetary Assault, a standalone expansion that gives the player a campaign of a single planet being invaded, with much more detailed ground-level tactics.

-GalCiv Deep Space Combat, which would focus on fleet engagements and give a single-player campaign that takes place in a single fleet.

-Galciv: Colonists.  There's got to be a good sub-game/expansion dealing with the hardships of colonists in a new world.

Each of the expansions would be essentially a game unto itself, but if a player owned the additional expansions, he/she could play a potentially very long game with an unprecedented level of detail.  When a planetary invasion or fleet battle begins, he/she could choose to let it play out with the simplified rules or load the expansion pack to take more direct control of the action.

8.  Turn length.  Turns should be much longer..... probably a month or year instead of a week.  Several things would have to be accounted for, including changing over (human) leaders as they age and die, and perhaps something do deal with the maintenance of ships over a certain age.  There's just no other reasonable way to explain population growth and the acquisition of new technologies, except for time.  This ties in with the request above, for range.  Most of the population growth factors are explained by fertility enhancements, so the population growth should be reasonably related to human reproductive abilities.

9.  Players who are attacked by other species and win should earn the admiration (or at least grudging respect) of other civilizations..... rather than earning the label of "agressor", which only increases the likelihood of yet more attacks.