I'm going to add to this because I was able to play a little more last night.

13a. Feature Request: Indicate how long a trade deal lasts for. Yet another mystery mechanic. You have got to get rid of these mysteries before the game gets to the release candidate stage.

13b. Feature Request: When the agreement expires, indicate what the agreement was, not just that it expired. No, forget that. Instead of offering insulting trade deals every few turns, how about using that opportunity to make a trade offer. You know, a real trade offer, not a "I hope the player isn't paying attention because this is a ripoff" kind of trade offer. If I had open borders with another race, it's fine for that to expire but if relations are still good then we will probably want to renew the agreement (if not expand on it) so let's just get right to the bargaining table.

13c. Feature Request: If the AI is offering a good deal (quite reasonable with a friend), then there should be some indication that this is a take-it-or-leave-it offer OR the player should be able to provide counter-proposals without penalty. I'm Onyx Hive. You can pry my promethion from my cold, dead hands.

13d. Feature Request: In addition to the "I accept" line being more clear and other things to make trading less tedious, how about a second marker on the trade bar to indicate the point where "I accept this as a gift" that would be sufficient tribute to give you a + in diplomacy.

13e. Idea: When a race tells you "Hey your X has been really improving our relations", how about some additional choices: A. Thank you. B. Maybe we could do something to improve relations further (opens trade) C. You know, I've been meaning to tell you, it's time for us to destroy you. No time like the present.

14. Warning: I hit 75% am apparently approaching an Ascension Victory (see 17/18 below) and the entire complexion of the game turned on a dime. Every race turned on me (instant -3 diplomacy plus an automatic dislike that seemed to go beyond that) and this includes races that were declared friends most of the game. Eventually everyone declared war on me. Since I was not focusing on building up my military, the game is probably unwinnable so I am abandoning it. This experience suggests that a diplomatic/pacifist game is untenable, at least for most races. Culture flipping takes too long and there is no obvious counter to the entire galaxy turning on you other than having an overwhelming military. Since the combat system is too opaque at this time, there is no point in attempting it.

14a. Idea: Make the effect of reaching the ascension threshold dependent on the difficulty level so that at lower levels the game helps you win and at higher levels the game makes it harder to win.

15. Intermittent bug: There is a situation where the planet screen draws incorrectly and the left panel gets cut off. I had to save, exit the game, and come back in. Alas, I have no idea how this happened or how to reproduce it. It has only happened once to me. If it happens again then I will take a screen shot.

I have concluded this play-through and will wait until another revision is released to play again.

I had open borders, at least one non-aggression pact, and declared friendships with multiple races outside my sector. I didn't investigate alliances. That was a failure on my part - I just did not check out that screen like I should have. The open borders and non-aggression pacts expire (see 13a) and I have no idea how declared friendship works.

@14 Maybe a balance issue of GalCiv4 but in GalCiv3 you were able to generate a big enough diplomacy buffer to carry the lead to the finish. In general I like this mechanic.

I went back to an earlier save to figure out the exact mechanic. I was partly wrong. I was about 75% on prestige victory, not ascension. I went and re-established my friendships to see what happens.

16. Observation: Alliances require +9 diplomacy which is pretty hard to achieve. You have to really pick sides because if you befriend two races that are at war with each other, the ensuing penalty (-2) is greater than the friendship benefit (-1).

17. Question: How does ascension work? I am mining 4 ascension crystals and making 40 ascension per turn, but I can't figure out the mechanic. There is no screen that tells me how what constitutes victory or how many points I have.

18. Observation: A -3 diplomacy when with everyone overnight you are approaching an ascension victory is a pretty steep penalty. It will almost certainly put you negative with everyone, which would then make it impossible to reestablish even open borders when they expire. But if I'm close to victory, maybe it doesn't matter.

19. Question: How does Penultipox work? When I unlocked the Galactic Challenge, I was given the option to create a Plague Research Center which I did. However, that did not end the challenge. Is that just one step in the challenge? If so, then the UI is wrong. It appears this is a bug one way or another.

It doesn't work. I've been reporting it as broken for the the last few alpha releases and now the beta.

Quoting Jeff Yutzler,

reply 1

15. Intermittent bug: There is a situation where the planet screen draws incorrectly and the left panel gets cut off. I had to save, exit the game, and come back in. Alas, I have no idea how this happened or how to reproduce it. It has only happened once to me. If it happens again then I will take a screen shot.

 

I think I had the same thing happen. I believe I got it to happen when clicking on one of the notifications on the galaxy map. I believe it was something like planet X is unhappy. That would then open the planet window, which would be blank except for the toolbar up top. Esc didn't work, and I was able to get out of it by clicking on the research bar in the toolbar. But then after that, the planet screen had the issue you speak of. The menu only stuck out a little bit, so you couldn't see everything.

I'm not saying you're wrong and that's why I specifically called it a warning and not a complaint. This feedback is as much for other players as it is for the developers. The problem is that ascension is a mystery mechanic (see #17). I didn't even know I was approaching an ascension victory.

I think Diplomatic Victory is untenable if you spawn in a crowded sector as I did in this game. Even getting a single alliance is difficult (see #16).

I'm just not inclined to play a galactic war when the combat mechanics are such a mystery. Maybe if someone published a primer on how combat actually works then I would be more inclined. It's just not fun when your flagship gets one-shotted in a battle that is marked as no casualties for you and total loss for them. I hope my alpha/beta feedback to this point has been constructive and useful but there's only so much I'm willing to do.

Hey Prey. Don’t even think about it. 

I got the penalty for pursuing a research victory and I have no idea why and I don’t even think there is a victory path for that right now. 

I assume it might have something to do with the number of capstone technologies you research but I am unsure I see what you mean now. Major diplomatic penalties can accidentally be triggered. Of course my faction power is X5 the next closest Race so nobody gonna do shit about it but if I didn’t have a hilarious amount of gunships I might be screwed. I’m at turn 380 and I don’t think I can finish the game before turn 600.

Interesting, I'll try to repro that.

I think you nailed it. I was playing a peaceful turtle game and never encountered that problem until I gave up on trying to culture-flip and decided to simply invade my neighbors. The problem coincided with the time I turned a captured core world into my own core world (probably a mistake in retrospect...) and naturally had unhappy citizens.