Alright its great to see that Stardock has been improving the multiplayer experience by adding new game modes and everything. But there are some flaws that came with them as well. The whole point of adding some of the new game modes was to add flavor and experience but I don't see many people using these settings if certain aspects of the game are not improved and new mechanics are implimented.

• Diplomatic Victory: Has been improved but I don't think people play this type due to its non epic ending.
• Flagship Victory: Is fine as is.
• Capital Victory: This is where the problems show up it is great that we now have a goal in our games to aim for this should be activated in all serious multiplayer games. But the problem with this comes to not being able to chose our spawn locations. This needs to be added and once it is people may actually play some of the default maps and stop playing random.
• Occupation: This is a fun mode actually and I enjoy it but there are so many imbalances and even with this victory on people tunnel vision on killing their opponent. Maps need to be designed that benefit from being secluded from your opponent while you can get a force to fight for the Occupied world. In my opinion get rid of the "Small/Medium/Large maps" and divide the sections into suggested maps for a certain game mode. So it would be "Normal/Capital/Occupied" or something along those lines. Small maps that keep enemies from rushing you are good for Occupied. And balanced and symmetrical maps are good for Capital
• Research: Is really boring I don't see people playing this game mode.

Its not just those reasons that are the problem. It also has to do with the imbalance of planets in alot of the maps. Some planets will have a moon next to them others will have ice. The person that gets ice gets a clear advantage. But sometimes two player will get ice and then some will get two crystal extractors, but another might get four. If stardock wants to beef up the competition of this game these things need to be fixed.

tl;dr: 

• Let the host be able to choose spawn locations for teams
• Change the "Small/Medium/Large" maps option to maps for a preferred game type.
• Make default maps give the same resources on all symmetrical planets. So if ice planet a gives 4 extractors, the opposite player on the other side of the map should get 4 extractors as well(as long as the ice planet is the symmetrical one).