I just completed my first GCIII game recently. I played as the humans on a gigantic galaxy and used the slowest research advancement settings. I won the game with the ascension victory. For the most part, I liked the game, but I think it can use some improvement. Here are my thoughts:
At the beginning (Turn 1), after the galaxy is generated, it would be nice to have a "regenerate map" feature much like what Civ5 has. The reason is that I like to have a game where my starting planet is roughly in the centre of the map. This provides more opportunities for challenge and fun when dealing with other empires. This would save me the headache of constantly going back to the main menu to reset the game.
I think there are difficulties with the AI. For one, I found that an empire just doesn't know when they're getting their asses hand to them. In the diplomacy screen, it indicated "you are weak" to the enemy empire, but I was anything but. I just treated them as a nuisance. Occasionally they'd send a fleet across my border and I'd quickly blast it to pieces without incurring any losses. Occasionally I'd send a fleet in their territory to "teach them a lesson" and I'd blow up any fleet or starbase I'd find (again with no losses to myself). They'd still stubbornly persist in a war against me when I tried to negotiate peace.
I think there should be a forced pop-up notification, when other empires go to war (like in GCII). I don't always check the notifications bar every turn.
Negotiations with other empires should include an option to demand an empire to make peace with another empire. This can be handy if I want to keep other empires from bullying my allies. GCII had this option.
I'm just curious, will empires always opt for building the largest class size of ships? Is it possible that tiny, small and medium sized ships can still provide some strategic value late game and that some empires might choose this route rather than always defaulting to huge ships?
A minor thing. I noticed a typo on the diplomacy interface. "Infidel" is misspelt as "infedel".
And odd thing I noticed was when I eventually got to the Age of Ascension part of the game was that my research capacity completely left other empires in the dust by a ridiculously huge margin. The gap just grew and grew and grew, and the other empires' research levels were just stagnant for the remainder of the game. The difficulty level was normal, so I'm puzzled how I could have completely dominated the technology race.
I think this was discussed, but it would be nice to have at least some animations involved in ground invasion, just to see how the troops perform. I think something simple like the Master of Orion II ground invasion animations would be a useful model for this.
When protecting starbases with a fleet, why can't a fleet and starbase fight in tandem instead of separately?
To make the game more exciting, I think some mega-events would be nice to make things interesting. Rebellions/revolutions, space monsters, viral outbreaks, powerful invading aliens from outside the galaxy, or whatever. In a previous post, I suggested some ideas for near end-game apocalyptic mega-events.
I hope this helps!