Hey peeps,

I just want to firstly give my thanks to Stardock for being an awesome company!  I went ahead and purchased the founders elite GalCiv3 edition knowing that I wouldn't be disappointed.  Having joined Elemental in the early beta stages and like many being slightly disappointed at the initial release I kept faith and was rewarded with two free upgrades in the form of Fallen Enchantress and Legendary Heroes, which were both great standalone expansions!  Stardock stand out from the other developers/publishers (particularly the larger ones) in that they always try to provide an excellent service to their customers, instead of just working to extract as much money as they can. Which ironically makes me more keen to give them my money  

Anyway, GalCiv2 was one of my most played games so am definitely looking forward to seeing how this game develops. I've always been more into fantasy turn based games but GalCiv2 kept me interested largely due to the challenging and unpredictable AI.

So I kicked up the alpha build and messed around for a little, not in any great depth but here are my initial reactions:

• First things first, that opening trailer and particularly the epic music is incredible.  Was not expecting that   I find great music makes a game much more immersive initially before the actual gameplay takes over.
• Graphics looking great for a game at alpha stage.  As mentioned above I played around with the Elemental beta and this is far superior, although admittedly it's the third in the series which probably helps 
• [BUG] I imagine this is mentioned elsewhere but one bug I'm having is when scrolling the screen, or zooming out, the fog of war takes a moment to load in areas which means there are gaps.
• Also, I'm suffering from quite lagging framerates at the moment, though presumably this will improve in time.
• Liking the research options, the split of research options between different areas is a nice bit of streamlining that makes it easier to find what you want to research. I personally prefer this to GalCiv2's huge techtrees which could be somewhat daunting and difficult to navigate (though I note there is a [currently disable] button to show a tech tree if preferred)
• Had a quick event pop up for colonizing a planet which was near identical to GalCiv2.  Like these events, though I wonder if they could improved a little.  I've been spoilt by playing to much Crusader Kings 2 and liked their events that would have random element of something happening (20% change your character is wounded e.t.c).  I think adding a slightly random element may make these decisions more interesting rather than just weighing up the stat changes.
• Also noticed the ideology options, liking the fact that good and evil actions can have more effect on the game and open different possibilities. Not so keen on the statistical changes (I've never been keen on numbers!) but like the option to unlock numerous buildings based on alignment.
• The economy wheel thingymajig is a nice touch.  (but numbers again... heh)

Anyway that pretty much sums it up at the moment as I haven't invested much time in it, but thought I better get some game time in (as Age of Wonders III is out in three days and I will likely be hooked on that for a while).  Have to say so far I'm very pleased and can see this turning out to be an amazing game.

Keep up the great work Stardock!