Speaking as someone from Stardock, I can honestly say that we do care. Really! Truly! We just no longer seem to have the time to make great games and provide great forum interaction at the same time. We may have to choose one, and that is always going to be making great games.
This is a bad excuse, and it's one I dislike having to use, but it's true. We cannot be everywhere at once, or solve every problem, even if the problem has been around for a while. You've already talked to Cari and andrew, the two people most able to make changes in the game and forums respectively. If they cannot make changes that satisfy you, I am not sure that anyone will be able to, in the short term at least.
The essential reason for this is that they both have too much on their plates. Cari is responsible for making a lot of of the changes that are released in the updates and for ensuring (in part) that the expansion getting out on time, while andrew has to deal with making the forum system work right on multiple sites, under all the browsers that the skinning and gaming communities use (and let me tell you, that makes for some interesting test cases). As for Brad, he has so much to do I am amazed he gets time to sleep, let alone read email or the forums (he didn't mention it, but he's been replying to you from the airport while waiting in line for a flight to get back here to work some more . . .) - and he'll soon have another member of the family to deal with, too. None of them has all the time that they would like to hang out on the forums or fix things.
That is the unfortunate reason why minor problems stick around, and will probably stick around in the future - because they are minor, and there is always something more important to do in the limited time that we have. GC2 has (at a guess) maybe five times the users that GC1 had, in a shorter period of time, with effectively the same number of people trying to manage it (more people were involved overall, but most had other projects to return to after GalCiv II's release). We can no longer devote as much time talking to users and fixing their problems as we used to.
There is some light at the end of the tunnel, though. The fact that was do have more users means that we can safely hire more people to help them. We have recently hired someone specifically to get out there and be our forum representative - not just on our forums, but elsewhere as well. He will be starting work in the middle of next month, and hopefully you will get to know him as well as you have the dev team.
I am sorry that things have changed from how you may remember them to be. We cannot alter how much work there is to do, but we will be trying to ensure that you don't feel like nobody's listening to you, here or elsewhere. And, if you ever do feel frustrated, drop me a line. I'm not on the game team, or the web team, but I can usually take a bit of time to look into a problem with the appropriate peopl, even if I can't promise a solution.
