When I have more time, I'll comment on other things.

First and foremost on my mind from my play last night was how unfortunate it was that the same hex grid, as exactly implemented from GCII, was back. Now, I don't really mind how it was implemented in GCII because the buildings didn't interact with each other in any meaningful way. I was always sure to build the right building with a bonus in GCII. In alpha-GCIII, I didn't build this way because the connection bonuses were generally much more useful.

I wanted to be able to connect all my buildings so that they would synergize. The current implementation does not encourage synergy except with those giant 20 space planets. Even then though, the makeup of the spaces next to each other was less kindly to synergy. The one space far as one side of the map is just killer as far as percentages go.

My suggestion is to rid the randomness factor and make every space on a planetary map selectable but not all would buildable (like on water without technology). It's a bit odd that I feel like I can build on 20 spaces on mars (a size of 6) but only six are available. It would be better if I had a random generated map with all selectable but spots having a valid reason for not being able to build on there.

I really just think the planetary view from GCII is not the best way to approach this game if synergy is included as currently implemented.