I like a lot of the new re-balancing. One thing that has really changed is the value of planet quality. By taking away Neutral alignments ability to auto get SE, HI and Terraforming, all three of these techs have become WAY more valuable.

It seems like every low quality planet (1-4) now ALWAYS has loads of possible upgraded tiles. This has the effect of making them more valuable, almost immediately.

Also, it makes the +20% planet quality improvement bonus racial ability less important, because that ability does not seem to have an effect on the number of upgradeable tiles.

The worst planets now are PQ 6-8 initially, because these often only have 1 upgrade per improvement tech.

For instance: I find a solar system with a PQ 4 and a PQ 7 world. The PQ seven world will let me build more things immediatly, but look at the progression:

First, I will build soil enhancement, which is a very cheap tech and can be picked up almost right away. This will take the PQ4 >> 7 tiles, and the PQ 7 >> 8 tiles. The PQ 7 is still slightly better, and Habitat Improvement is too expensive for me to go after in the first few weeks, but I'm planning on having my civilazation around for many years still.

Whether researching or trading, I will eventually end up with Habitat improvement. At this point, the PQ4>>7>>10 and the PQ7>>8>>9. And you see what is coming. By the last tech, the PQ4 is now a class 13, while the PQ7 is only a class 10.

Interestingly, this makes no planet bad to colonize anymore, you can always get a significant infrastructure on every world. The worst I have found is a PQ6 that only went to a PQ 9. Gone are the days of the PQ 4 planets with no available upgrades (so three buildable tiles).

You will still always want to colonize a PQ11+ in favor of a 4, a PQ 13+ in favor of a 3, a PQ15+ in favor of a 2, and a PQ17+ in favor of a 1. But for the most part, going for the little worlds is now the better strategy for a long term infrastructure.

Not that this is necessarily a problem, although it is a little counter-intuitive. Just an observation on strategy change.