I played a lot of GCII back in the day, and while it was a great game and I loved it, there were a few things about it that sort of bugged me and I was wondering if they were any different with GCIII

It used to really bother me how the AI could clutter up your space with starbases and park war fleets all around your planets with absolutely no consequences, yet when I try to do it to them, leave ships in their territory or put starbases up, I start getting threats and demands to remove them and diplomatic penalities, yet I have no recourse to the AI when they do it.  I can't ask or demand that they be removed or anything.  I used to hate when a Civ that I'm "close" with put an influence base in right next to a planet deep in my territory, and I can't do anything about it except declare war and take big penalties or get labeled a war monger.  Obviously this is a legitimate tactic, but it's also a pretty passive aggressive thing to do, and I always wished I was able to go to the AI like they did with me and say "get that base out of here" or "get those warships away from my planets."  It always baffled me when Civs I had good relations with did this.  A hostile civ that's stronger than me not respecting my boundaries I get, on the other hand.  The other reason this always aggravated me is because it bogged my machine down big time to have tons of starbases and ships from all the Civs all over my territory, it got to where I had to play in the zoomed out sprite mode all the time because of this.

So, along these lines, I have noticed that people are talking about an "open borders" treaty in GCIII, and I'm just curious, what does this treaty do?  What sort of new options are there for dealing with the AI short of attacking them to get what you want?  Are these two turn wars still around?  I hate when you buy off a civ to attack or make peace with another civ, and then the war lasts for all of a turn and nothing happens before they either declare peace or go back to war.

Next thing I was curious about, I always disliked how in GCII I had zero control over my relations with the AI.  If I had a powerful military, everyone loved me.  If I had a weak military, everyone hated me, it felt like there was little middle ground.  I never liked how a Civ that had declared war on me early in the game would move to close the second I had a more powerful military.  I don't WANT to be close with them.  I want to be able to say "I don't like you" and keep my relations with them frosty.  Instead I'm forced to be friendly with them when I don't want to be, and I take a reputation hit when I initiate my revenge war against my suddenly friendly enemies.  I think I ought to be able to set a point which relations with a Civ can't move past. 

Are planetary invasions still working the same way?  I didn't like how you had to strip every man woman and child of a planet's population to invade and genocide another planet and then they just became new citizens.  I always liked the idea of needing to build a dedicated soldiering facility on a planet to be able to pull a certain percentage of its population for an invasion.

I'm not trying to sound negative, I'm super psyched for GCIII, I'm just wondering how different it's going to be from it's predecessor?

Also considering buying the Beta so I can start designing ships, but I don't want to lose all my progress with updates.  Does anyone know if ship designs that are created now are going to be compatible with the final product?  Just don't want to spend a bunch of time making ships and have them all get flushed.

Thanks!