As long as we're wishing - 

1.  Chance to retreat from space battles I know I can't win.

2. Special troop training needed for extreme-type planetary invasions.

3. Boarding actions to capture starbases/ships/shipyards. We could use stellar marines for this.

4. Autopilot cancels on detection of enemy ship, allowing orders to be changed.

5. Ability to set up espionage bases on dead worlds and/or espionage starbases hidden in gas clouds or nebulae. They would function like the WW2 coastwatchers in the Pacific and have the ability to conduct sabotage missions in a certain radius.

6. Passive border defenses, like minefields or something and active defenses like missile-armed satellites that will ignore friendlies and target enemies automatically.

7. Ability to demand tribute from individual planets within our influence - say 1.5 times our current tax rate.

8. Clues that lead step by step to a well-hidden portal that lets us actually find the Precursors.

Eh.  There's a creative element in taking a myriad of ideas from others and combining and executing at a h higher level.

Something to be said for execution is all. 

You really think Galciv3 comes out ahead on the execution front?

When you get down to it, few ideas are truly original. It is how the ideas come together and are executed that matters, as has been said.

As far as I know, drawing upon ideas from other games is, essentially, what has been happening from the beginning. And the games that did something "first" were probably just borrowing the idea from something else (e.g., real life, fiction, a board game, etc.). Even ideas that feel original you can say, "It's kind of like this, and kind of like that, with a little of this mixed in." In other words, its taking various ideas and putting them together for something "different" or "new"--at least relative to the most recent generation or two of games.

That said, I agree with both sentiments on this--being the game that others want to emulate is better than being highly derivative, but coming up with new ideas just to be "groundbreaking" can be disastrous.

I hope the development team for GCIV takes what works and gives these elements a fresh look--maybe even changing them substantially if a great idea presents itself and fits well with other mechanics of the game. But I hope the team does not scrap tried and true mechanics simply for the sake of making the game a new experience.

As in life, there's a balance to be had. Here, that balance is between making GCIV different enough from GCIII to be something more than an expansion, but similar enough to fit within the franchise. Having played GCII and GCIII for thousands of hours--and seeing the development process for GCIII (both good and bad), I do trust Stardock to deliver a good game when that time comes.

#1 and #3, yes.

#4, yes--and lots more automation options for ships. I can't remember what RPG it was (I believe it was something from the Dragon Age franchise), but the game gave you lots of flexibility for giving your NPC allies commands, including less than/equal to/greater than conditions on various stats, choices between what actions to take under what conditions, etc. It would be nice to have something like that applied to ship movement.

• Explore generally this direction.
• Explore for X number of turns.
• Explore star systems.
• Survey all anomalies except wormholes (notify me if you discover a wormhole rather than end up on the other side of the galaxy).
• Survey defended anomalies (or not).
• If you see an enemy ship, notify me.
• If you see pirates/space monsters, stop moving and notify me before ending the turn adjacent to the enemy fleet and getting blown up along with 2 billion colonists.

I don't think adding an array of options would be too hard--and I think this would improve the AI, too, by giving them more insightful choices regarding ship movements.

#5 and #6 are great ideas.

There are things about GCIII that I had higher hopes for, as well. That said, I'm sure everyone has a different list of dislikes.

I generally like the idea of adjacency bonuses, but I feel they were underdeveloped. I would have loved to see some factions with low standard bonuses but high adjacency bonuses or specialized adjacency hubs, while others would have really strong standard improvements with minimal adjacency effects. This is an area I think GCIV could make more interesting and expand a bit rather than completely do away with. And maybe expand is the wrong word--I would be fine if "adjacency" wasn't the focus but if there was some form of synergy within the planetary improvement mechanic.

I do and don't like resources. I don't like how drastically the game shifted in needing resources for ship components and planetary improvements, often in a seemingly arbitrary and poorly balanced way. I wouldn't mind them so much if all resources were 1) guaranteed to exist in every galaxy and 2) were more sensibly balanced in terms of how they are utilized. I think this is another area where some fresh consideration could yield great results for GCIV.

I don't like how governments are implemented. But I like the idea of governments. Arbitrarily changing governments in half-year periods is silly. If there were consequences of going from a democracy to a monarchy--unless the people were requesting it--then I'd be okay. For example, if you switch to a less free government style, I'd expect revolts, rebellions, and the formation of independent states... Having the choice to change government then would be more interesting because you could try to get the bonuses you need but at a risk. This would take a great deal of nuance for me to appreciate, but I hope some thought goes into the concept of government--because done right, this could be a fantastic mechanic.

I also agree that, in GCIII, it seems like military build up is a must. Otherwise you are seen as ripe for conquest and will get destroyed. I think revamping diplomacy could help this (e.g., having allies that are strong would prevent opposing factions from targeting you). I'd like to see some careful thought put into how victory might be achieved for factions with radically different personalities--like pacifists, trade conglomerates, religious sects, etc. Violence for such factions might be totally abhorrent--and the use of violence itself might be considered "losing" rather than "winning"... influence, research, and diplomacy victories should be attainable (even if with great difficulty) without resorting to military build up.

There are exactly 0 mods on steam. What you get on steam are Shipsets, Civilizations and Factions that have to be made via the ingame editor. Once you mod 1 single xml file you can no longer use the workshop for publication and have to find a 3rd party to publish your mod for people to download like, Nexus or these forums.

Well, color me surprised - that seems quite bizarre. What's the rationale for that? And is that why the built-in tools spit out files that can't be opened or altered outside of the game instead of editable XML files?

Rationale? No clue.

Yes, the in game editor bins up all the xml's into compressed faction, shipset files.

EDIT:

I would pay right now for workshop support for GC3 if the only way SD could make that happen was via DLC.

I would also pay extra to make sure GC4 has Workshop support from day one.

The game is obviously huge, making it hard to get every possible suggestion into a single post. My take on governments is that I enjoy having them in the game but changing governments should be a huge affair not to be taken lightly. Even changes to a government without switching the actual governing type can cause everything from protests up to actual civil war. Going from monarchy or dictatorship to a republic would likely entail a period of anarchy and low productivity and an impact on the economy.

I like the resources in the game but I agree that unavailable resources should have some alternate method of collection. Exploratory mining ships that hunt the asteroid belts, ForgottenSlayer's ideas of black market or shipyard missions, faction negotiations (yes I know it's already there, but flesh it out a bit so it doesn't require giving away three ships, a starbase and some tech research just to get a little durantium), or even an open market available to all factions where resources can be auctioned off would serve the purpose.

I also agree that defeating a ship, fleet or planet of a faction that has higher technologies should provide at minimum a few research points due to reverse engineering of the spoils of war.

Galactic conquest by whatever means is the ultimate aim of the game, but in order to balance the main method of simply building massive fleets, why not allow factions under attack to request a "special session" of the United Planets to request sanctions or intervention, etc.?

My thoughts for Galactic Civilizations Going forward...

A hybrid 3d/2d map would add something new to the game, making it a true sequel and not just an expansion with a '4' after it instead of a '3'.  Adding depth to the map without making it too complex, that would be the trick.  There are several games that have attempted a 3d map design and only a few that have pulled it off.  I don't think they  have to go full 3d, but a hybrid version would be awesome.

I personally liked the options more in Galactic Civilizations II as I felt spending the race points on different traits gave more of an unique look at the races versus Galactic Civilizations III.  There is almost too many different race special traits in III that wash out the race points with abilities.  I'd rather see all abilities balanced out and just pick and choose where one could go crazy on a few abilities and really handicap others.  Let me have 20% extra on planetary class but that cost all my ability points, ect...

Diplomacy isn't great.  One can keep playing with it to work for them, I like the OP's idea.  I would also like to see more diplomacy options such as a neutral zone/don't enter my space treaty...  Then actually have ships that are guarding, if it's within their sensor range, and it breaks this treaty, they will attack.  Make it feasible to trade planets that for instance is in the others space..

I disagree...  simple to the point.  However, maybe give an option for planetary battles, similar to the total war series, where you can if you want play, if not you don't have to, however, unlike the total war series don't make it a huge advantage to play the battles, make it a true option.

This was promised, however, never delivered.  This would be a must. upon release.

Yes, yes, and yes again.

I understand the need for war!!  However, yes there should be more focus on winning other ways as well.

Completely agree make it uniform throughout, plus match the color of the icons for adjacency bonus's to the color of the production, say blue for research and research icons... ect...

Sounds interesting about moving your capital to a different tile.  Also absolutely correct about the GNN.

Yes, multiple monitor support, 2, 3 or even 4 monitors but 2 for sure.  Make it so one can choose what to put on the second monitor as in a window view, have map one place, planets another, ect... completely customizable.

Apart from Galactic Civilizations 4 for PC/MAC...   A dumbed down version for Android/IOS.  If not Galactic Civilizations 4 maybe a Galactic Civilizations 2 Hybrid.  Several PC games have made the conversion over, some good some bad.  Rome Total War for instance is okay, but not great, but generates $5-$10 per copy,  Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 or RCT2, has a great port for Android and very playable.  Generates up to $15 with all expansions per copy.  Extra revenue is always great...  I'd buy it....

While you could do auto-resolve, I find that it gets results that are significantly worse than what you could get if you fought the battle yourself.

On a related thought, fighting the battles yourself might not mix well on large maps, especially the insane ones. Bigger maps would mean more fleets, which in turn mean more battles, which then will slow turns down to a crawl. I think it'll make any game a real chore to play, or the game will have do something like limit map sizes to prevent too many battles.

If there is an option to do it yourself or to auto-resolve, I agree--auto-resolve will likely produce sub-par results. To me, I think turn-based or real-time control over individual fleets in battle would fundamentally change the game, but not in a good way. I would like some broad-brush tactical control over fleet battle objectives (e.g., disable and capture rather than destroy, hit and run, etc.), but nothing so focused as individual tactical control.

"I think it'll make any game a real chore to play" - exactly.

"limit map sizes to prevent too many battles" - and risk a riot...

I'm a yes to options and new combat mechanics, but a no to forced fleet micromanagement. And an auto-resolve option is, to me, forced fleet micromanagement.

Oh, I am soo gonna love this. Hell I am twisting a few friends to make sure they buy up and into the next incarnation already! I know its a ways off but when can we get in?