Ahoy there!
I'm really tempted by this ace looking game, it looks like it's going to fulfil all my Iain M Banks spacey empire dreams. Just a couple of questions and then I'll buy next pay-day...
1: Does the game have an atmospheric diplomacy system?
Does it feel like you're actually horse-trading with other empires, making friends and enemies of personalities ala Civ IV, or does it all feel a bit spartan and bare-bones? Such as are there race leader-head images and fun dialogue? Is it immersive with lots of options?
2: Is it easy to mod new races?
Such as can I change Empire names and leader-head images for skirmishes? (By this I mean as found in the Civ games. Alpha Centauri had a great faction editor where you could insert new jpegs for leader's faces in diplomacy, and easily change names in notepad - and change your own name and image ingame before launching a map.)
3: (Bit of a boring question this one, sorry...)
I have a 2.5 gig XP single core with 2 gigs of ram and a 7600GS card. Will this run rather well? Or will I have to lower either AI settings or GFX settings?
Thank you for your help! This looks like a game with a great community and a lot of love put into it. I got here from the excellent Eurogamer interview and am really intrigued.

Happy empire building!