Preventing stagnation

Unhappy planets that revolt should declare their independence and form a new minor race

i agree... the extermination phase of a military victory is severely hampered by the lack of obital bombardment to destroy a colony.

Ohhh... I agree with axhed. The ability to glass a planet from space would be greatly appreciated. Often times, I won't want to take over a low quality enemy planet, and would much rather bomb every last creature off of it. Well, and glass it to a class zero to prevent future occupation.

i agree... the extermination phase of a military victory is severely hampered by the lack of obital bombardment to destroy a colony.

Well, you can always destroy a colony you own. And some invasion tactics have great impact on Planet Quality.

Unhappy planets that revolt should declare their independence and form a new minor race

Well, something like that already happens: the I-League, that is formed of former colonies that have revolted due to a bad morale. And as long as the I-League is in play, you better need to watch the morale of your planets.

Every strategy game suffers as the game progresses and civilizations get wiped out. How are they going to keep the game feeling fresh in GC2? I really love things like Civil Wars that split races in two, new factions moving in from another galaxy, or a race that everyone thought was extinct rising from the ashes.

Have you played Galciv I? Because in it there was:
- sometimes, a major race splits in 2
- sometimes new minors races appear
- the fundamentalist event that took lots of planets to the evil race
- the Dreadlords event where you home system (Sol) can be occupied by a new race

well as for me, staganation meant me and another race esentially wiping out the other races and we just build up our militaries as high as our economies wil bear and we just sit there and no one wants to attack. Also, in my experience, the I-leaque never is large enuff to compete with the established majors=/

This is always a tough thing.  But we do have a LOT of events that come into play into the game.

A few off the top of my head:

1) The formation of an evil terrorist civilization

2) Assasinations that cause wars

3) Major civilizations splitting into two

But we have to be very careful in how we handle these things because you don't want games ruined by what is effectively randomness.

Some people don't want any randomness at all; some people like it when stuff like this happens to spice things up. How about a setting during game set up? A slider that lets you go all the way from no random events except when colonizing a planet, to civil wars every year.

In Galciv2 can you bombard a planet from space with your fleet?

Ohhh... I agree with axhed. The ability to glass a planet from space would be greatly appreciated. Often times, I won't want to take over a low quality enemy planet, and would much rather bomb every last creature off of it. Well, and glass it to a class zero to prevent future occupation.

There is a huge flaw with including a direct orbital bombardment feature. You end up with two (usually) massive annihilation fleets that go around wiping out every colony in the game until one side is extinct. Once this capability is there nine times out of ten thats how it ends. It might be easier than invasion but its far less interesting (as the game will nearly always gravitate towards this predictable end) and removes the strategy of building a complete war machne. You don't need any troops, just kill everything.

GC2 instead gives you a choice of invasion strategy ranging from simple assault to various types of increasingly planet wrecking 'orbital bombardments' which butcher vast amounts of enemy troops but leave the planet a wreck. Once you take control of the shattered colony you can always choose to destroy it rather than attempt to rebuild it.

The formation of an evil terrorist civilization

Hmm. Just like Earth.

That was in GC I too. I like the event. Free Planets.