Hi all,

I've finished a couple games with the latest beta, and I just wanted to share my thoughts/observations about some of the changes made. Here they are, in no particular order:

- The AI does not value AT ALL any of the Extreme colonization techs, save for extreme colonization itself; attempts to sell Barren World, for example, had 1 bc being red. Note: this might happen if the AI possesses no worlds of that type, OR if none are available for colonization... I had conflicting experiences

- (Bug carried over from previous betas) AI doesn't value Enhanced Miniaturization at all... it's hard to even give the tech away!

- I like the new minimap and graphs, but the ship range shading is too tough to see (med. graphics settings)

- As noted elsewhere, colony modules only carry 250 colonists now... definitely slows down the post-rush buildups for everyone! I liked it! On a similar note, playing on Maso, the Korath were *excellent* at using the spore ships -- I even caught them repopulating spore worlds with colony ships!!

- AI is good at attack, not so good at defense... despite being outgunned and outteched by the Korath, I was able to concentrate forces better than they and wear them down. I think that force concentration is the key there; the player that can concentrate their forces - from fleets to transports - better can still pull off victory.

- Perhaps in an attempt to negate Wyndstar's RL-only strategy, I noticed that on the "normal" tech speed setting, tech point inflation increased. What I'm talking about is the rate at which the cost to research a tech increases has changed, I think. This makes it more difficult to beeline up a particular branch of the tech tree, changing the pace of the game (for the better, I think so far!), and making it more difficult to run an economy off of tech-whoring.

- I don't know if anyone has tested it yet, but I think that the off-type defense bug may still be present... I had a 50 PD against a 50 beam (example), and took no damage/lower than expected damage from the fight.

- AI still has issues with land management; building 6 morale buildings on one planet isnt' always the best choice, neither is building an econ capital on a class 8 planet. I did notice that it IS getting better at it, though!

- BUG!!!!! If you have a ship under construction on a planet, and that planet gets spore-shipped, the result is that the planet gets a "phantom" defender of the same type and class as the ship that was under construction; it is necessary to destroy the ship with conventional means. This bug did not appear under normal invasion circumstances, only when spore ships invaded. It IS reproducible -- simply put a ship into the build queue, have a player conquer the planet via spore ship, and then you will see the ghost ship. It is possible that the ship needs to be a certain amount along in the queue, however.

- Random ship picture in the corner of the galaxy still there. Got a laugh from it

- I like the new AI conversation strings.

- When playing as the Altarians (or with their super-ability I assume), whenever someone declares war on you, you end up getting a one-turn heads up because the "[blah] similar ethics... declared war on [blah blah]" message appears a bit early. Possibly tied to the AI clicking their internal "end turn" button too early? Similarly, when you refuse an AI demand, they will sometimes declare war on you, but there is no message saying so.

- Diplomacy, again: when you have no money in your treasury and you click on your money in negotiations, a dialog box is supposed to pop up saying you have no money to give to [x] race. This box doesn't get shown to the front of the screen until the negotiation window is closed.

- Kinda reluctant to share this one since I like exploiting it, but when you research Xeno Ethics, pick an alignment you have to pay for, and you already have a negative treasury, your funds get reset to 0 after the pick... something to do with the financing, perhaps? (is this by design?)

- Nice performance increases. I like the ship stacking UI now.

These are just my thoughts from the last couple of games... what do you all think?