My further thoughts having played 0.82 for a bunch more hours

- AI is passive and I am "close" to every single civ, including the warlike Drengin

- AI is constantly broke - why? What does it spend its money on? Not ships. I'm no.1 there easily. Yet I am flush with cash.

- I steal planet after planet from the AI (influence/culture flip) yet it doesn't seem to bother it in it slighest - we remain "close"

- Should it be possible to culture flip a Yor planet? They are after all machines and don't have feelings like envy and desire

- UP Council - always makes me the chair and they always support my decisions - usually unanimously

- I have 0% spending on social projects yet can build many improvements within 1-2 turns - is something broke here or am I misunderstanding the mechanic?

- Money from tourism is too high - it makes trade hardly worth the effort - and it is possible to exploit the AI here, which seems not to develop tourism much?

- In short, with the passive and super-friendly AI and overly represented influence (I'm not even building many embassies) I am quite easily and gradually taking over the galaxy without even firing a shot. I am playing Normal difficulty. Should it be this inevitable?

- Please, please add in the ability to cycle through shipyards - this would make ship management/building so much quicker and easier

- Please, please add somewhere on the govern screen an icon showing whether the colony already has a shipyard or not - it would really cut down on the clicking back and forth between screens during the colony development phase

I know Brad is working on the AI this weekend so I am hoping that some of the above will be addressed anyway, but I wanted to give my two cents nonetheless

Thanks Stardock for listening!