Hello there. Just a word of introduction, I'm 34, this isn't my first beta. I used to play Master of Orion way back. I played Civilization I, II and III, Alpha Centauri and an innumerable number of wargames, RTS, role-playing games. I recently acquired both Galactic Civilization and Master of Orion III to get a better idea of modern 4X games.
At first glance, Galactic Civilization II looks far better than most strategy games. Its graphic interface is easy to understand. So far, gameplay looks fine except for a few glitches that have more to do with ergonomics than anything else.
But ergonomics and general accessibility/user friendly nature of the interface so far isn't that good. No right click, no scroll-down menus (for starship and planet filters for example, not to mention that we could use more than one filter), no mouseovers... This isn't what we should have in a modern game. Think of Civ3 for instance, you can change a city's production with a right click on the screen, you can easilly change most relevant things from the advisor menues too. Think of MOO3 where you have more than one filter in the planet screen.
Tracking an autopilot ship isn't that easy (the trajectory on the minimap isn't exactly helpful on a ship by ship basis, while it's perfect for a strategical glance), and finding one's trade routes is really awful since they aren't highlighted on the trade screen and you have no way to see them on the strategic map.
The strategical minimap is nice, but it's sometimes uneasy to control zooms in/out. For some reason, when I count squares in the trade menu and try to go to the relevant cell on the main map it's not where I thought it should be!
Space combats so far aren't really looking that good, but since we don't know how fleet will work we'll have to see later. Compared to MOO3's lively spacefights it's clearly a development area.
So far, the map looks small even with huge galaxies.
AI: I've not tested it enough, but it seems it creates far too much colony ships so the game tends to be a race for the most planets/cities (Civ3 analogy). A little different challenge would be nice.
Game mechanics: the old fashioned reaganomics, that is less taxes=more happy people is a little old. Try a curve rather than a straight line, with an optimum tax level according to general place in the galactic race for domination, race (human, Drath, whatever), racial abilities like loyalty, war/peace etc. In the real world the Swedish look perfectly happy with a tax level that would lead most Americans to revolt a la Boston tea party. On the other hand they get much from the state. Trading ressources (or some of them) could be a good addition to tradable goods/wonders like those in Galciv 1.
Shipyard: it's a little hard to place custom hull parts so far. By the way do ship upgrade work so far?
Starports: We need a way to navigate from starport to starport...
Planets: it's hards sometimes to see what has been built and what is still a project.
Otherwise this game looks like a very good one in the makingn team. From a graphic point of view it's light years above GalCiv1 or MOO3. Starships look like starships (though may a real 3D map might be a little more immersive), planets and suns are nice.
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Potential bug:
When you have little money or ressoures, it seems some of your social products freeze or get a negative number of turns to complete.