Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords v1.1 is in development.  We've got a lot of new features planned.  The list below is by no means comprehensive. It's just some of the things we're focusing on:

• The ability to set a given planet as a technology, research, ship building or balanced planet, . NOT like the overall focus. It would literally add a 9% boost to a given type (or 3%, 3%, 3%).
• Color coded the hammers/etc. based on whether they are bonus or not. Then on mouse over, which by then should be very nice, we can display where these numbers come from.
• On game setup, have an option to simply set up how many players you want to play against and have it randomly pick who you’re playing with.
• On game setup, have a checkbox that says "Randomize intelligence". The result would be that the game difficulty would be used to distribute the intelligence points. Example: I could select "Tough" and then have this checkbox selected and it would look at the # of players and the total number of intelligent points it takes to have tough and then distribute it out so that some are smarter than others (up to a 30% difference between intelligences).
• Lots of tweaks to the context window UIs which we’ll be discussing how best to do it.
• Fleet Manager screen.
• An option to show auto pilot ships destinations on map with a very very faint line (dotted preferably if possible) where they are going. Ala the trade routes.
• When selecting a constructor, have a very very faint circle that shows the area of effect a starbase would have.
• MAJORLY updated AI (not to make it tougher, to make it smarter at higher levels and dumber -- i.e. poor strategies -- at lower levels)
• Additional ship extras for more ship options
• Bug fixes of various kinds
• Approval Rating > 75% gives you a 5% boost to production. Approval rating < 40% has a -5% affect on production. Players won't be charged for this bonus production.
• Ability to rotate ship components in the Ship Designer
• Dynamic logo components - brand your ships with your insignia
• Enhanced context menus for managing stacked ships and fleets
• Starbase modules pruned/tweaked
• Unused Social Spending routed to military spending (or back to treasury if nothing is being used)
• New ship components
• UI for selecting MODS/Total Conversions
• Updated Scoring System
• No Tech Trading option
• New maps and scenarios
• Various tweaks to economics, costs, etc.

Update: Free-form ship component rotation and resizing after being placed added. Very cool in action!

We expect to have this out by the end of the month. It'll be free for all customers of Galactic Civilizations II -- now at a store near you.