Galactic Civilizations II: BETA 4 has arrived to beta testers.  User who pre-ordered after Beta 3 was released should be able to get it tomorrow.  Which should work out as we will be releasing Beta 3A tomorrow which will have some fixes based on whatever gets reported tonight.

There are so many new features in Beta 4 that it's hard to itemize them. There's a post in the forum that does it to a very weak degree. Beta 4 is the first beta that could be described as letting players actually play a "game".

Here are some of my personal opinions on what's the "big" stuff in beta 4:

• Fleets.  Players can now build fleets based on their logistics ability.
• Detailed ship battles.  If users choose, they can watch their ships battle it out in a pretty cool (we think) battle screen.  This way, players can see how their different weapons and defenses interact together. 
• The Metaverse.  The metaverse is starting to go in.  Unlike GalCiv 1 where players had to pick between modding the game and playing on the metaverse, this time the Metaverse uses its own game data.  It's also integrated much more so in the game.  This part of the game is still fairly rough at this point.
• Starbases. These are now much further along.
• Rally Points.  It's hard to believe that GalCiv I shipped without this.  Expect to see this feature expanded further so that they're easily accessible in more places.
• Hot keys are in (will post them in the forum).
• Culture Conquest.  You can now carry on a war through cultural domination. It's much cooler IMO than it was in GalCiv I and works much more straight forward.  You click on a given planet and can see alien influence on it.  If that alien influence > 4.0 then that planet is at risk of rebelling.
• The Alien Negotiation Screen is in (barely).  It's still at the start of things but the new engine supports vastly more sophisticated discussions with the AI than was possible in GalCiv I. It also supports real-time commenting on your trade.  This is still quite rough though.
• AI can build fleets (poorly).
• There are a LOT LOT more technologies in the game.
• There are a lot more planetary improvements, super projects, and galactic achievements in the game that we think are a lot more interesting than what was in GalCiv I.
• There are governors in the game that will automatically upgrade your buildings to the best of its kind.  This eliminates a lot of micro management.  We will have the ship governor in soon (i.e. tell planets building X to build Y).
• The end-game summary screen is in.
• A host of new screens are in.
• Tons of tweaks, UI improvements, and polish in.

Now, all that said, the game is still no where near done. There are a lot of unimplemented features.  We have until the end of November to get all the basic features in.  Then after that it's two months of polishing, playtesting, bug fixing and tweaking.  Then it's off to manufacturing and translation into German, French, etc. to go for a late February retail release at your local store.