Hi,
Even though I played GalCiv I & II, Civ I to V and also a lot of Europa Universalis I to IV and therefore do have some experience even with complex strategy games I still do have a hard time figuring out what I should build next when it comes to planetary buildings and what I want to research next. Not because I do not have any idea what I might want to do but because I do not know exactly what I have to do to get there. This however isn't new, I had the same issues with GalCiv 1 & 2 and most other games that offer complex tech trees. Sure you always can just play a lot and test out if what you do really leads where you hope it might lead to or read/watch tutorials to compensate for your lack of knowledge or overview but that's not always fun. To better understand what kind of issues I have I like to tell you a little more about how my thinking goes.
When it comes to the decision making I might just have some rough ideas in my head like I would like to make more money, or I want to support more people, or more general I want to become a strong defender, or I want to be really good with star-bases, or I would like to be an aggressive expander, or something like that. But then I look at my planets or the tech trees and really have a hard time figuring out what exactly I would have to build or research to achieve these goals.
This problem is affecting my gameplay experience in a rather bad way. I often get a little frustrated in the process and build or research things even though I am not 100% sure that they will support the goals I have set in my mind. In return this makes me feel like as if I'm not fully in control. Therefore I would love to see some kind of better guidance in game. This for example could be achieved by having advisors or just having different forms/views for looking at tech trees and buildings. I could imagine looking at things like research and planetary expansion more from a perspective of ideas and strategies rather than definitive buildings and technologies. A simple example, let's say I want to bolster my abilities to build better ships, why not let me select that in a view and in return it would show me what I could build and research next to get further to that goal. But please don't get me wrong I don't want to make the game less complex and I would not want to have such a view to replace the existing traditional views, but I want to have it as an additional view or layer. An additional way to look at things from a more natural, less technical perspective.
This would be by my mind a huge step forward to help a lot of players, not only those who do not have vast experience with GalCiv, to have more fun from the beginning on with every aspect of the game because it would make it much easier to support and realize strategies the player has in mind with the right buildings and technologies.
Have Fun