Hi there all! As someone who is fairly new to the galciv world I thought I should give you a few thoughts. I bought galciv 1 about 4 months ago (love it by the way), and heard galciv2 was coming out so i thought goody!
As someone who doesn't know galciv inside out I've got a few suggestions, and I think newer players might relate to my suggestions.
1) More identity for races - Although the races are great, I just felt that we should know a little more about them. On the diplomacy screen it gives a brief description, but this could be much better. For galciv2 if a few paragraphs of text describing each civ will immerse the player more in the galciv universe. You could put some stats for each race such as average lifespan, average height, amount of time the species has been sentient etc. This suggestion would only take a couple of hours and a bit of imagination to implement and would increase the immersion factor
2) Have an in-game encyclopedia - From a newbee's persepctive I do not know all the concepts of the game. Choosing between good, evil and neutral is a great concept, but I don't know the benefits and drawbacks between them. It might say in the manual but for me and many other gamers I never look in the manual, and i'll probably lose it behind my desk within 3 hours of buying the game. There are many concepts such as this in the game, so an encyclopedia would be good, or a tooltip explaining when you come to make your first moral decision.
3) One thing I thought when playing galciv1 was that there should be more wartime news. The drengin and torians were at war both had about equal territory, then when I looked again about 20 turns later the drengin had almost wiped them out. It would immerse the player more in the game if when a race lost thier homeworld a popup came up saying 'The galaxy is shocked as news spreads as blah blah'. Something like that but better, you guys have more imagination than me. I similar popup if a race has lost 75% of it's territory etc.
Although I really liked the jokes in galciv1 I think they could be placed differently. For example jokes when a new technology is discovered is fine as I only see it once per game, but in diplomacy when you look at the races opinion of you and it says 'let me put it this way if you say these aren't the droids your looking for...'. First time I saw that I laughed, second time I saw it I chuckled, third time I smiled, 1204th time it's just plain annoying.
Anyway hope you take some of my points on board and hope I speak for newbees everywhere!
