Ok, I'm hoping this will help the devs out (if they read it). These are the few issues I feel that need addressing that I've noticed. Obviously this list isn't exhaustive.

1) Population. With Crusade there is no incentive (indeed mainly penalties) for increasing population. The square root formula currently being used just doesn't make it worthwhile to invest in any buildings of this type basically doing away with the whole Food/morale paths as well. This is a shame and seems counter intuitive. Needs addressing - there are plenty of threads with ideas on how to do this.

2) Trading. Currently broken if the AI has a negative credit balance. You can get ALL his ships for something like open borders. In a recent game I met the Terrans with a -231 balance. I traded tech with them but was able to add in his entire fleet (including the starting survey ship, 2 colony, 2 constructor ships) Obviously not working as intended

3) Trading. Again, not as game breaking as the first one but an exploitation that shouldn't really be available. Resources - when trading it is possible to fill up any excess with multiple resources. If the AI has 10 promotion they will be willing to part with 2 but 3 is a deal breaker - however if they also have 17 Thulium you can add 4 of these & so on & so on. These all should have a value per unit to the AI so I shouldn't be able to not be able to take 3 promethium but can take 2 promethium+ 4 thulium + 2 antimatter + 1 snuggler etc. (basically as long as the trade amount is below 25% of the total owned by the AI {with diminishing returns when they have large numbers of a particular resource})

4) Save time - Not a big deal but thought I'd mention it. Once past 10 hours the save time seems completely strange. For instance I can load up a save that says I've played for 10hrs 32 minutes & play for 3 hours & now the save is showing as 10hrs & 43 mins.

5) In a recent game, after about 15 hours or so, (Gigantic map - 13 players) it seemed that traded technologies from the AI wasn't adding any bonuses at all.

The 2 main ones that I spotted were:

Planetary Specialization - Soil Enhancement - Meant to add +1 food but didn't

Trade Route Optimization - Meant to add Trade Route Value +10% - My trade value before & after acquiring this tech (via trading) was 55.

I'm not sure if its just these specific techs that are broken, or the fact that I acquired them via trading is the issue.

At present I wish to play the game as I do like it, however in its current state there is just too much not working properly to justify playing it. I do hope this gets read by the devs as its not a "moan" thread but hopefully a way of highlighting some issues.