A TBS with absolutely zero RTS elements.  At no point in the game should faster clicking result in an advantage.

That said, I hope multiplayer gets attention.  Design multiplayer like you were actually going to compete in multiplayer rather than making it a feature just to appease a certain small group of people.  If you build it (right), they will come.

MOST IMPORTANT THING IS 3D!!!!   MAKE IT 3D LIKE SINS OF A SOLAR EMPIRE!!!!!

We all love Sins of a Solar Empire, but honestly you can only play that game so long until you are like 10 min into the game and you already know of you are going to win or not.  That would never happen with a 4x game like Galactic Civilizations.  There is a new game out called StarDrive which is great 4x game but it was released too early and when I played it had a lot of bugs, I don't know how it is now, BUT I am hopping that Galactic Civ III will blow it away, and that would def happen if it was 3d.  Would it even bee a lot more work since you guys already make Sins???

GalCiv II with all expansion packs was pretty much the best 4x experience ever for me. The only thing it lacked, was deeper internal politics screen (I liked the voting thing, but it was pretty shallow ;< Would love something more...sophisticated.) and actual combat with orders etc.

I absolutely loved the random/global events. They were outstanding! Ship creator was another very nice thing (But it was kinda pointless with that combat :<) and I really liked the universe/races. If you guys would be able to achieve GC II+exp. packs level of things and won't make it streamlined and casual, Im totally bought.

Like every 4X strategy game I have played they lack the complexity I crave. I want huge galaxies with thousands of planets with so many complexities that you almost can't cope lol. I want an economy that needs varying resources and gathered by different means such as different transport ships, moon mining, asteroid mining, planet breaking etc. I want a complex marketplace where you can buy, trade etc.

I want a powerful diplomacy system where I can actually type replies to the AI and it respond accordingly. I always hated the AI saying things to me that I wish I could tell it where to go stick it lol.

I want planets to mean much more. They should each play an integral part to the game. The ability to set up trade lanes, trade ports, to truly be able to build a realistic galactic empire. I want to feel fully immersed in the game. I want a tech tree that you can only research certain elements as long as you have access to certain materials. 

Battles need to be fully 3D where I can control the battle or let the AI do it. I know I want more but can't think right now. Good start though lol.

I'm curius what is a Turn based stradegy game with Real time stradegy elements. I think Sins of a solar empire like game with everyone is good for multiplayer. Still want a turn based for single player.

its early days in my thoughts here about what i'd like to see so watch this for edits but initially,i'd like to see;

i) a multiplayer element which rewards how you perform with your allies...generosity rewarding you. maybe playing with the same guys again will reward you but not overly so or it could be abused. weaker team members maybe get a small boost to balance teams out.

ii) a multiplayer element like age of empires where depending on your race for what your team gets, you get a seperate team boost.  

iii) a stats tracker where if you play the same race repeatedly you get a bonus so it goes a bit like dota2 so we have guys preferring a certain race instead of a just who should i be today attitude. (admittedly with dota2 its because there's so many characters but the idea of player's being proud that they always prefer to go race x i think is good-makes a nice bit of competitive spirit.)

iv) infrastructure that with stats tracker it feels more like a competitive community instead of a lot of individuals looking for their own games to play.

v) with all this in mind, each race although having it's own strengths and weaknesses to be as competitive against each other as possible, so as time goes on obviously will need tweaking.

vi) sorry stardock for saying this and putting it on you (but lol you can only say no(spacetosaynoremoved:))), but i'd like stardock to organise a competitive league thus putting their effort and commitment fully behind the game. i know its normally heres the game and our next involvement is the next update but lets be honest everyone or most people who played galciv2 thought great game or very good game but where's the mp element...rather than 'here's our mp element', id like them to unfurl the banners and start waving the banners hoping for a 'wow, look at that mp element' from other designers.

vii) i would like ability to put a little completely personal thing on my designed ships even if its just something designed from 16 pixels to sit under the cockpit or on a wing or is that thrust vectorer (lol who knows).

 viii) ok not fully with how far you can go into designing your own ships but if its extensive id like to see regular external game competitions to choose best ship designs (maybe a screencap or something as entry) hosted by stardock but voted on by community and the winning design maybe go to an end of 6 month or end of year competition where the winning ships compete for inclusion in the next update as a cpu (ai) ship design and they also get the ability to name that ship (supplying 3 choices which the powers that be can choose from)

ix) going on the generosity thing in i) maybe winning teams get a bonus or something for subsequent games but they can only give it to a fellow team member if they choose to once theyve decided which team theyre on or if they choose not to issue it out they can hold it for another time and possibly stack it with another win but risk losing all theyve stacked in wins if they ever lose whilst holding onto the issue bonus...would make playersthink, what a nice guy or boo hiss, why's he not issued me his bonus...an added gameplay element.

x) the ability to give ships or at least fleets in a game to an ally so its like you handle the green guy and here take my fleet star destroyer 1 along too. let us know if yer having problems.

xi) with x) in mind, ability to nominate who takes which opponents ingame and for game to state it but yup could be easily accomplished just through chat but ingame benefits for such and progress related i think would be cool.

xii) yup im going too heavily into mp element but why not. galciv2 is still one of my fave games so without any of this above happening, even if mp sucks, im sure galciv3 still will be good. 

(apologies if a lot of this is all ready in game on one side or on other, totally impossible but lol i can only say)

Update: just read the excerpts from Brad interview to Strategy Informer- the Ship Designer sounds a lot lot better than i expected but am a little bit disappointed the phrase 'it's primarily a single player game' or close to that was used...ive played galciv2 and was well aware..its just needing to say it..the mp aspect sounds like its getting downplayed..a tad disappointing but well no worries

@MichaelWhittaker below, yes personal, i was thinking a unique item design like yup maybe a flag which would seperate it from everybody else's designs but from reading what was said in the interview i think the Ship Designer is going to be light years away and better than what i expected so disregard my bit there but your items bit for teams sounds cool  . As regards the give ships to allies my apologies there, it's been a while since i played galciv2... ive been, whats the words, flitting around from sword of the stars 2 to endless space to sins onto other things like eve and dota2.i also downloaded moo3 from an old games website and i think jupiterincident, lol im all over place as regards alternative game's to play..my memory's not the best, all i remember is galciv2 was one of my favourite games and jumped at opportunity to be onboard early with galciv3.

This is some of my thoughts, copied from another thread.

-Ship design is great. More please, Maybe add a couple of additional hull sizes (bigger) to flesh it out a bit more.

-An aircraft carrier type starship/module. Perhaps remove the 'tiny' hull size and start with 'small' then use 'tiny' for groups of fighters from a carrier.

-This would require an overhaul of the space combat mechanics, ie-a carrier typically tries to stay out of range while it sends its fighters off.

-Ground combat/invasions. This was a little bare in gal2, while the invasion support stuff was good, I think Id prefer to be directing units, even somewhat abstractly.

-Which leads into- A variation of ground units would be nice, armour, infantry, artillery perhaps?

-More minor races. Perhaps they can be scripted to expand into mini-empires also, perhaps 3-4 planets max, to give a better challenge if someone wants to conquer them.

-Expand diplomacy. Id like to see more non-warfare treaty options other than trade or research. How about non-aggression treaties to close your space? Have conflicts over borders. My territory littered with other players starbases just seems odd.

-Similarly, greater negotiation options with minors, vassalisation for example might be better than outright conquest in some cases. Might as well add more options like this for majors too.

-While I appreciate the sometimes quirky sense of humour displayed in gal2, a race of giant squirrels???

-Id personally like to see the 'colony rush' style you have to play toned down a bit to a more 'establish one colony then move on' style.

-A starbase should be more rare and a fortress in my opinion. It was too much investment with the endless modules only for them to be destroyed easily without massive investment. Even as a newbie Ive seen most advice steer me away from upgrading starbase defences. Keep resource & economy bases mostly as is but combat bases should be a significant challenge for a fairly large fleet.

-In fact, tone down the whole modules thing in general. If we do have to have loads of upgrades for bases, just pay for them direct, without having to go to the trouble of building streams of constructors.

-Perhaps expand on starbase type units... Defence outposts, orbital weapon systems etc that have to be attacked directly before invasions can be attempted...

-Id like greater control in space battles also, to be able to direct ships or at least issue general orders to specific ships such as 'try to move out of range' (which would be very useful when one ship is taking a beating) or some other broad orders such as- target small ships/target capital ships/all power to defences/all power to weapons etc.

-Some method of retreating from tactical battles would be welcome, obviously smaller more mobile ships would have an easier time of this.

-Endless Space has some really fantastic music, taking a leaf from that book would not be a bad idea.

That's a good point, planets that switch or are conquered in gal2, as you say, become just another planet.

To that end I think the planet population should not be used in the invasion defence mechanism, dedicated troop units should have to be stationed to defend a planet. And some of the general population would inevitably get killed in said invasion.

more objects then just planets, asteriods and stars to interact with, things like blackholes, nebulas ( in which you could hide a military force to strike or just have mining stations within it and act similar to the asteriods themselfs but remove all sensor abilities within that tile)

plasma storms, to investigate just like the spacejunk out there

for a perfect gc game...

3D galaxies

"infinite" continuously generated areas of galaxies in a 3D space as you explore them, similar to the way Minecraft generates blocks

Intergalactic space

A slider you use before the game starts that affects the amount of content outside of galaxies(Intergalactic space), such as anomalies, runaway stars/planets/etc.

Wormholes would be rare and have the potential to have disastrous consequences for the ship traveling through it. An example would be being flung into intergalactic space millions of light-years away across several galaxies. Also, throw in the ability to stabilize and continuously use wormholes, both one-way and two-way.

Neutron stars, Quark stars, Black Holes, Pulsars, Supergiants, etc.

Supermassive galaxies

This is part of my dream. Maybe something like this will show up in like..........um...

30 years?

I had/have some occasional crashes on GC2, but it has never been a real big issue, it seems to mostly occur when some other program in Windows interrupts GC2 if I have another program running in the back ground. My computer isn't exactly cutting edge at this point, I am looking to get something newer just so that GC3 will run correctly.