I've been lurking about the forums for a while, unable to participate, as this place does not like my Safari browser at all. Thought I'd dust off the ol' Explorer, just for laughs, and whattya know... I can actually post! Scary!

First off, I got the game last month as a birthday gift. I've been playing GalCiv2 at every available (albeit rare) free time slot, and now have a few games under the belt. I have to say, the game is fantastic. I haven't been this enthralled with a 4X game since Civilization II came out. It's captivating, addictive, and difficult to hit the quit button. You know you've got a winner when you are the direct cause of "one-more-turn-itis." To Brad, Cari and the rest of the GalCiv2 crew: a job very well done! Thank you!

That said, I do have a few minor, yet important gripes, which I hope you don't mind if I air. Having gone through the forums, I can see that most of them are being addressed in some manner, so that's cool. Here are a couple of things I failed to see mentioned thus far:

1) Currently, I'm playing on a gigantic galaxy. My empire is quite large, with around 30 or so planets and many many ships. Obviously, keeping these organized is important. It seems an easy way to do this is using the planet /ship list. However, the way the list works actually hinders ease of use. Here's an example... with the Torians starting an sudden military build up on our shared border, I wanted to pull a bunch of ships which were currently orbiting planets to the front. I brought up my planet list, and clicked on the top planet. I was taken to the planet on my map, and could now see which ships were orbiting. I clicked on a ship and sent it to a rally point. All fine, until I started going down the list. What happened when I clicked on a ship and sent it on its way, was the list, for whatever reason, reset itself to the number one position. This meant I could not simply go down the list and launch ships. Every time I launched a ship using the list, I had to scroll back down to where I was (assuming I could remember) just to go to the next planet on the list. This is not at all convenient, and frankly, it's exceptionally frustrating when trying to deal with such a large number of units and planets, and I hope it can be dealt with in future versions.

2) As the new turn begins, a stack of icons piles up on the right hand on the screen to inform the player of completed ships and planetary improvement. These should help greatly in keeping complex gameplay organized, however, these also have problems that make them more of a hassle than an aid. Specifically, quite often, when I click on a new ship icon, the game starts to take me to the planet where it is now orbiting; however, it never quite makes it there. All too often, the game never stops on the selected ship/planet, but gets diverted to some other ship elsewhere which is waiting for orders. When I click on the icon, I expect to go to the planet in question and conduct the business I need. That's precisely WHY I clicked on the icon. Yes, of course the other ships need to be given orders, but if I click on the new ship/improvement icon, that order should be given the topmost priority. As it stands, with such a large number of ships and planets, if the game takes me elsewhere after I click on the icon, I have no real way of knowing which planet and/or ship was skipped over without doing a lot of extra searching around. This is an unnecessary glitch that, again, I hope will be addressed in future versions.

In the meantime, if anyone has any decent workarounds, or perhaps some good advise relating to how to keep a large galactic empire organized and running smoothly, your post will be most welcome.

Again, thank you for such a great game!!