Well, that's certainly a new take on the planet management system, compared with the previous GalCivs.

The change of perspective from the Mercator projection of previous games to the actual Earth makes for a beautiful-looking background, to be sure. The spider web of icons overlaid over it makes the whole plantary improvement mechanic look kind of disconnected from the planet itself, though?

Does look very clean and beautiful but my immediate reaction is the improvements are too removed from the planet. I'm presuming the new Core World mechanics (feeder planets etc) lends itself better to this style of displaying information - particularly over multiple sectors etc. I have personally always enjoyed the sense of planting new colonies and growing them in 4X games (e.g. MoM, Colonization, MOO2, FE:LH, EL, ES, etc.), so wonder how this new format and planetary mechanism will feel. Guess I'll have to wait until there is an opportunity to play GC4... hopefully in Alpha or Beta (fingers crossed) .