I disagree on #5 the distance of the home worlds of scum that infest the Galaxy which rightfully belongs to my race alone.

Joking aside I would be perfectly okay if in the biggest Galaxy I did not meet an opponent for 5201 turns.

One option could be a slider that goes from zero to ten which sets the number of streams between races, may need bigger maps, I still think your maps are too small, and a second slider that activates if zero is chosen that sets the number of races that can be located in the "Home Sector".

 Of course, I live to explore and expand, and I hate the AI pestering me every turn with deals that insult me.

This could be solved by an answer in diplo quoting the great W. C. Fields " Go away kid you bother me" or "If I want to talk to you, I'll pull your chain", results of which is it blocks communication with said race. At least for further trade talks, giving me the tribute that is my right as master of my empire could be an exception, but ignorantly trying to extort me should be blocked as well. this leaves only the fatally stupid decision to declare war which of course I would not want the suicidal AI from being denied. 

Of course, you have players that want war, war, and more war, did I mention you have players that want war?

Small maps should be recommended for this style of play. 

Other than #5 I have no problem with any of the others it seems they will kick-start your empires.

OT I wonder as motorcycles are built for whimps now days how many know where that term comes from. Just hope any who try's out a "74" doesn't forget the spark retarder.  

Regarding 1. Are you familiar with AOW:Planetfall?

They have something kind of like this. They're called empire quests I believe.You unlock stuff for completing them, and the first player to complete it gets the "pioneer" reward - some small bonus.

They are things like "Gain the favor of two NPC factions" , "Launch 5 covert operations", "Build and exploitation on a sector and get it to level 4"

The galciv equivalents would be something "Colonize two planets", "Make another planet a core world", "Customize 5 ships with vault items"

They also work as kind of "soft tutorial" in that the rewards nudge the player towards learning and exploring the game mechanics.

Its hard for me to do the sytem justice if you aren't familar with the game, so I'll leave it at that. Might want to look into it.

gc4 has this in the current public alpha.  They’re called missions. When you complet them you get culture points you can spend to unlock a new ability.

Agree

You sure do like rush buying stuff. I prefer to hold on to the cash you start with and spend it slowly until I develop a sustainable economy.

Something I like is being able to do is select ideology perks with less worry about prerequisites. I like starbases with big AoE. To get a +2 range for my starbases in GalCiv 3, I typically have to select 4 pragmatic perks: 1 for the pragmatic improvement to gain pragmatic ideology points, and 3 to work my way to the perk I want. With the current version of GalCiv 4, I'm able to jump fairly early on to spend a culture point on the perk that grants a +2 AoE increase. With the Terrans at least. They start with 2 out of the 3 ideology points needed to make "mobility rights" perk available to select.

I didn't like admin points in GalCiv 3. I'm not going to go into details, but I didn't think it was a good mechanic. I think needing to supply your colony ships, constructors, and troop transports with citizens works better. Also, I don't like the circle AoE. I much prefer the hex that GalCiv 3 did as it was much more clear as to what fell under its control.

In 4's current state, I feel less rushed to build colony ships. In the previous version (v0.65), I often had nearly 100 planets in my home sector, and my population grew quickly, and my colony ships were quick to build. In practice, I spammed colony ships to the point I got sick of it. It gave little time for me to build much else. Now I think there is a few dozen colonizable planets in my home sector, and my population grows significantly slower than my colony ships. I feel I can do other things than just build colony ships.

If you are looking for executive orders, maybe add draft constructor to the list. They're important too.

When it comes to games to look back on, I would point to GalCiv 2. I think its the best in the series. A shame that updating is such a problem.

A little off-topic. If you would let me have access to the source code to GalCiv 2, I would work to make it compile on modern systems. I would love for it to get updates again.

4. I really miss the flavor text in GalCiv II.  Now, there’s a reason this went away – GalCiv II was English only and in the world of translations,  being so wordy is hard.  But I miss it.

This is what got me hooked on Gal Civ2... The AI... Was the only game I have every played (even out of GC3/4) that the AI was a challenge and would taunt and make fun of me. I set the dif level so high that I only won about half my games. The entire time the AI was just funny and mean to me while playing. 

With GC3/4 I do not think it is even possible for the AI to beat me. Save for the godlike setting and that is only cause I have to focus soo much it becomes not fun to play.