This is more for the players than the devs, though the devs might find this interesting as well. Yes, these have been reported. Some of them were reported well before 4C, so I'm surprised that they're not fixed already, so obviously priorities are elsewhere at the moment, which is understandable. This should help smooth out early-midgame progress, as well as helping the AI since I doubt it knows about how to deal with these issues in an efficient manner.
There's a few things with Beta 4C that are rather broken that are fixable by the players. These all consist of "fixing" the XML config files that come with GC2.
By speed bumps, I mean improvements that don't upgrade properly, causing a slowdown in development as you tear down all of one type of improvement and replace it with its upgrade.
First there's the problem with Advanced Marketing Centers not upgrading to Trade Centers. Looking in the XML files, the problem is obvious. Trade Centers have an upgrade target of Marketing Center, not Adv. Marketing Center, so they'll upgrade a Marketing Center, but not an advanced one. Easy fix, and pretty obviously the right thing to do.
The next econ speedbump is the banking center. The banking center gives a 12% boost in the economy, with no other benefits, compared to a Trade Center's boost of 15%. Two fixes come to mind. One is to give banking centers a non-existant upgrade target (obviously not what the devs will do) and then set Stock Markets (which have the same 15% econ bonus, but also have bonuses to morale and prestigue) to upgrade the Trade Center.
The other possible solution is to swap the bonuses, giving a trade center 12% and a banking center 15%. Personally, I think that in GC2, we're getting shorted on the bonuses, since while in GC2 you can have multiple banks or stock markets, you're still limited to X of each, and in GC1 you could have one of each. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the stock market should have a better econ benefit since it will be replacing a bank rather than adding to the effect of one.
Next speed bump: Research Centers don't upgrade to Research Academies. This has a similar problem, in that Research Academies have an upgrade target of Research Labs, which don't exist in GC2.
Finally, and not quite a speed bump, there's several ship components and a wonder or two that got left out in the cold by the redesign of the tech tree. The sensor branch of the tech tree is shorter by two or three techs, and while the techs all got renamed, the ship components and I believe the "Eyes of the Universe" didn't get their tech dependancies renamed, meaning that most things with a sensors tech requirement are requiring a tech two levels higher than it should be, and in the case of the Sensor 5 and Sensor 6 component, techs that no longer exist.
I'll be posting a fixed version of my XML files that address these (but I've currently gone too far and need to start over from a clean XML file) later this week, if all these don't get cleaned up by the 4D beta release. (Not a threat to the devs, I just see no reason we have to wait on them to fix something that we can fix ourselves).
