Maybe ask very nicely if they can add mod support for the wheel?

I don't understand why the wheel has to go. Would it not be a far more better solution to integrate tools that allow you to foucs planets more efficient, but also keep the wheel if the player chooses to micromanage?

Why not have three buttons like Annekynn suggests, but the buttons set the wheel? There are also other possibilties to ease the micromanagement problem without taking away the option to do the micromanagement.

I understand the issues people have with the wheel, but I don't understand why the wheel has to go just to satisfy those people - because the wheel has fans too.

It is kind of like they get rid of the ship designer, because it is so tedious to redesign the ships every time you get a new tech.

The wheel, after all, was the greatest invention of mankind ... and GalCiv gets rid of it?

It has already been stated that "the wheel" is not in keeping with the spirit of  the Galactic Civilizations franchise. Full stop. There therefore is no point in asking them to keep it.

Also I still do not understand what exactly about the wheel is in contrast with the spirit of the game. I understand the micromanagement argument, but micromanagement alone can not be against the spirit of the franchise. Saying that is quite a tall statement. But all I could found so far is the following from the thread GalCiv III v1.4 Preliminary Discussion

OK, but can you please elaborate on that reason. Now for example the request of tactical combat, I understand the reasons why it would be against the spirit of GalCiv to introduce that. But as for the wheel, from where I'm standing it just seems to me that they bow down to the constant nagging in the forums that the wheel is tedious. Now, as stated above. I agree with that, but there are solutions for this without tearing it out. But no, the wheel is not just tedious it goes against the spirit of GalCiv, but how so? Please enlighten me.

And remember: There are a lot of gamers who are not reading the forums, meaning they will be surprised by the change and I imagine that they will also want a good answer.

Now that is not to say I'm not open to change. Maybe after the change I will be a supporter of the new way, that is very possible. But all I want is to understand that mystical reason why the wheel is against the spirit of the game, because so far I find it very fitting. Can someone tell me or do I  need to unlock a tech first? 

My _personal_ opinion why they removing it, instead of reworking it into something less micro like templates, is total inability of AI to specialize. Really the whole game screams - "specialize it!" - adj. bonus, planets bonuses, managing raw manufacturing, ship designs, etc.  But AI use non of it and lose hard. Even with difficulty bonuses AI planets stand no chances against player specialization. And why "very good" GC3 AI can't grasp and use core game concepts is another question.

Yes, but it's a sliding scale instead of an on-off thing. You really do have to give the player the ability to do stuff, experiment with things, and to generally have fun playing the game. The main objective of any game is to have fun. Everything else is secondary.

A perfectly realistic "lead a galactic empire" game where you make civ level decisions would consist of showing you all the time just the inside of an oval office where you'd write command directives to your planetary governments and fleet admirals, and then receive reports from them on how things are progressing in the colonies and whether a distant space battle was won or lost. I'm not sure very many would play it, though.

The ability to switch roles from emperor to colony engineer to fleet admiral to space explorer is part of the "having fun" requirement. You shouldn't forbid the player to do these if he wants to. Help him do them, sure, by having good UI design and an economy management model that scales well, but don't forbid it. Or make it mandatory, for that matter, which is the other side of the equation. Also, the toys can certainly be different but don't take them away. That only ends in tears.

On a practical level the wheel allows me to quickly change the planetary mission instead of waiting 30 turns before the changed buildings are done. The best example I can think off: It doesn't make sense to put industrial worlds to 100% industry all the time. Let's say an industrial world is building constructors - that can be done with only 20% of the manufacturing points the planet can produce per turn. So the wheel goes to 20% production and 80% money, granting me a few hundred extra credits each turn. Now for some reason I suddenly need to build more expensive ships, like war ships. With 20% production the heavy cruiser would take 20 turns to build - the wheel allows me to change that to 5 turns. 

Same goes for upgrades of improvements. You don't need to set the research world to 100% production, because the improvements will update in one turn with only 20% production for example, depending on the planet of course. So you still get research points despite building improvements.

Another example is if you get a planet from another race. There are already improvements on it - no point in letting their bonuses go to waste during the reshaping of the improvements into what you want. So yes, the alien research improvements will eventually be replaced by monay buildings - but not for 10 turns, until the farms and other stuff is done. So the wheel goes into a position that allows to build the improvements as well as use the research.

That is the beauty of the planetary wheel to me: the individual control of the planet.

Now again: Yes, this can be tedious hell. But thats because of bad UI-design and missing tools, not because of the ability to control the planet.

Also on an immersion level the individual control of the planet makes sense. Only being able to control the focus empire wide makes no sense at all. That's like if  a country could only control the amount of money put into public education on an nation wide level. So Los Angeles has to put 10% of its budget into public education as well as New York, Houston and Hillybilly-town in Colorado. Makes sense, right?

So what I'm saying is: Whatever you do, please don't take away control. Here is an example from GalCiv 2: In the beginning when building starbases, you had to select every module to build yourself - basically just like it is in GalCiv3 now. Later they introduced the option to select a build order, so you could tell the starbases that it first should build economic modules, if none were available to build attack modules, if none were available to build defensive modules ... etc. That reduced the need for clicks to build a starbases dramatically. But it was an option, you could still select the modules individually if you wanted. THAT is what I'm talking about: Don't take away control, just take away clicks.

Thinking about it more the following aspect comes to mind: The ability to control something puts me into a position where I get the feeling I'm being able to play around, explore and figure out stuff. 
For example the ship designer allows me to figure out that I can build a constructor without engine to make a cheap constructor, which is advantageous if a starbase next to the shipyard needs to be build.
The planetary wheel allowed me to figure out the example with the constructor and the cruiser from the previous post.

To play around with the options and to discover strategies is fun to me.

If you only could use the prebuild ships or could only select given governors to control the planets, it would severly limit the ability to play around with the options and figure out smart strategies. It would make the game less complex and more streamlined, which is not really what I'm looking for in GalCiv3. I want complexity and options so I know there are still hidden secrets and strategies waiting to be discovered.

It's not a matter of liking the wheel. It's a matter of all the alternatives being worse. Name any alternative that gives the same level of control, without requiring just as much micro.

If we have 'focus' buttons, well, those are just going to give 1 specific slider setting each. You still need to go to every research planet and set them to the 'manufacturing' button, or governor, or whatever. This is exactly the same amount of micro, with less control - in fact, since I can just set my research world to 90% research, 10% manu with a research project on and then never go back, but 100% buttons would require me to go and fix them every time there's an upgrade, it's more micro for less control.

The wheel itself is fine. We need the ability to direct more-than-one-but-less-than-all wheels at once. That's all. A simple grouping system would achieve much more to minimize micro than removing the wheel will.

Pretty sure we need some hardcoded stuff available in XML to be able to mod it in the game. But hey, some more UI stuff moddable should be a good thing? They could release more stuff to mod if they made available more menus etc. in game

@Khazdec

With bonus production from Malevolent, or some "hybrid" huge world, tweaking the slider on the wheel to something not 100% when building a project, will give you more output. (as well as a way to "funnel"  just the appropriate amount of military production into the shipyard) Then you have the whole upgrade buildings thing going, where you just allocate enough social manufacturing for 1 turn upgrades of buildings etc. until it's done. It steamrolls very easily in the hands of a skilled player.

That is key part to why SD removes this I think. The difference between someone who does the above part, and the ones who do not, is huge, and makes the game hell to balance for AI. Too easy for the ones using the wheel, too hard for the ones not, if they balance it for the former. Essentially all players would be forced to tweak the wheel to keep up with an AI balanced for wheel usage, and that is not good game design  

If you mean that as in "specialization should be done with some other control than the wheel" then yeah, no big deal. The UI to specialize planets can be whatever works best. OTOH if you mean "you shouldn't be able to specialize planets" then no, complete opposite. The specialization is exactly what brings you the choices.

And by specialization I mean "being able to allocate the population". This has to be so if we keep the production=population basic idea. The "specialization by building improvements" only works if you change the economy model to production=buildings. I have nothing against that, and actually would prefer it, but it probably is too radical a change and thus costly.

As long as the economy model is based on production=population then you must allow the allocation of that population by planet. The shape, place, and workings of the UI control that allows you to do that, is not that important, although some are more user-friendly than others. Like, for example, being able to group planets and setting their specialization focus as one. However, the main point is that the ability to set the planetary population allocation must be there.

Because if it isn't then there's no choice. We are optimizing the total output of the empire. If we are restricted to just the empire wide population allocation then the optimal output comes from building balanced planets instead of specializing them. The empire wide wheel will then dictate what buildings you will make in your planets and the planets will end up looking the same. Otherwise you'd be simply wasting part of your population and producing less. Which then brings the question why have factories, labs, and market places at all? They could now just be replaced with an automatic planetary output of manufacturing, research, and wealth, and you'd then build just the special buildings (military etc.). However, wouldn't the game be poorer for this?

There must be planetary specialization. The form the specialization UI takes can be whatever but it must be there. Otherwise the game economy mechanics just collapses into a dull predefined pattern with no choices.

In GC2 there was planetary micro via focus as well. And because excess military or social production wasn't transferred to the next turn, you had to go to every planet and backcheck focus if you wanted to play an optimal game. And if you ever touched your global sliders every microed planet's setting fell apart and you had to redo it again.

The current level of micro via wheel is LESS.

In GC1 the inability to adjust planets directly was a major gamebreaker, because planets that were outbuilt still raised unneeded social production - which you had to pay for. And usually MUCH more than on new planets which led to the paradoxical situation that you couldn't fund all your production which forced you to reduce global spending to ~20% midgame, and at that point all new planets took FOREVER to complete new buildings while your old planets wasted tons of your bcs for NOTHING.

That's what governors should be for.

Nevertheless, the wheel is elegant in that in many cases you set it up one time and it can stay like it is irrelevant of how you fiddle with other settings.