The first thing i do in a game is build survey ships. Get to Sensors 1 asap, and then Ion Drive, and like Iztok said grab a cargo hull and load it up, though i focus a bit more on engines than Life Support. The quick cash you can make by having 3 or 4 survey ships out there easily off-sets the time and cost rushing for the needed techs.

I wouldn't want anomolies appearing later in the game - the initial rush is fun, but it's enough for me!

You can upgrade your flagship into a warship later, so any bonuses it gets aren't necessarily wasted. Bonuses your additional cargo hull based survey ships (if you make any) get are kind of wasted though.

I've taken to building additional survey ships as early as possible too - often partially rush buying them to get them out faster, so they can pay for themselves faster and more. It's a great way to get extra BC and bonuses for your race. Unfortunately (depending on your perspective) the AIs apparently never do this, so it's borderline cheese in my opinion.

I'm not sure the AI should build extra survey ships - it's something else to code and make them consider. A simple solution would be to move survey modules from sensors 1 to sensors 2, so that a player has to sacrifice more early and critical research efforts to go crazy with surveying.

On the opposite end of things, I'd like the option to turn the silly things off. I don't have the time or the inclination at the beginning of the game to spend resources collecting random 1% bonuses, nor do I particularly want to have to worry about them later. They really add nothing to the game for me, and even on rare you seem to get a ton of them.

I really enjoy the 25% research, too, but I NEVER use it on Planetary Improvements. That 25% is going to an expensive tech, like Impulse, Planetary Invasion, Xeno Ethics, Star Federation, etc.. I try hard not to waste it on a cheapo tech.

I agree, Galactic Guide Book wins the "most useless Galactic Wonder in the game" award.

The other whammy that hit surveying is competition. You're not the only one after anomalies anymore.

I generally keep mine around and upgrade it to a warship as soon as I have medium hulls, since it will generally have accumulated at least some sort of bonuses that make it an improvement over a brand new ship.

Yea terrans. I could always reduce the number of opponents to make anomalies more interesting too.

I think anomalies were more interesting in galciv1, because the AI's were enclined to loose their flagships, especially with space monsters around, leaving more anomalies for me! Although reloading the game would cost anomalies - i'm not sure if that still happens in DL? Anomalies dissapear so quick in DL it is hard to tell if reloading has any effect?