According to Steam, I have 32 hours total in Galactic Civilizations 3.

I bought this game at release, played a bit, decided it wasn't that fun, and to let it go back in the oven.

When Mercenaries came out, I bought Mercenaries, played it a bit, and decided it was a big leap forward from the base game, but it didn't hold my attention for that long either, and I let it go back in the oven.

Now Crusade has come out, I bought Crusade, and once again, I think it's been a huge leap forward from the base game, but I am getting bored with it as well.

This is what happened in my last game of Crusade, which I dropped halfway through the Age of War. I was Terran Resistance, spawning pretty much in the center of a small, scattered galaxy. A fortunate special tile on my home planet allows me to put down a quick Computer Core. I don't see the point of having Workers because Social Constructions tend to end when the planet gets filled up, and here's one of my few and minor problems with Crusade. It feels like the special citizens aren't very well thought through. It seems like Stardock just put in a type of citizen for each type of thing a planet can make, without thinking about balancing them. But then, I could just be very biased against social construction due to it doing nothing for you in the past if you've actually filled up your planet. In any case, I put down a scientist, and really put down a string of scientists after that because more science is always good, I'm already making my capital also my research planet, and I don't have access to any other citizens I'd want, besides an administrator at one point when I have too many starbases.

I find a juicy looking system with 3 planets to colonize in my neighborhood, and spend my starting cash to get colony ships. But disaster strikes. By the time my first colony ships claims one of those planets, the Yor have moved in and squatted on another. Then the filthy Yor squatters claim the third. Try as I might, I find no other unclaimed planets, so I mentally make my first objective in the game to kick the Yor out of the Fremont system. So I... sit back and tech until I can have Legions and enough of a fleet weapons advantage to beat the Yor down and land on his planets. At this time, I'm staying around the middle and lower end of the strength scale

Fast forward to the Age of War, and I have Particle Beams on Medium ships and I got my free War College technology hooked up, and I go after the Yor. They have strictly pathetic Small ships with low-tech weapons that get blown out of the sky, and I take one transport of 5 Legions onto the two planets I was planning to invade since the early game, then just for the hell of it, I swing by his homeworld and land my legions there, too, exterminating the Yor and eliminating them from the game. Then I said "...wut?" and quit.

So what went wrong?

It really feels like, throughout the entire game, I made only two meaningful decisions. First, I decided to make my starter planet a research planet. Second, I decided to kick out the Yor. Neither of these decisions were really contested. None of the AIs could do anything about how I chose to build my homeworld, and the Yor offered pretty much no resistance whatsoever against my invasion. But why couldn't the Yor offer any resistance whatsoever? Well, they probably didn't have the tech to field a good enough fleet or to raise the Resistance on their planets. So... why is the game designed to allow the Yor to not have any tech to resist me? This seems like a perverse question - I made a point of specializing in warfare, my faction is specialized toward fighting, and so why am I annoyed by winning?

I think the problem is the way in which this game's progression is structured. In the early game, there is a colony rush. Great, I lost the colony rush. But then I can't do anything about it because the techs allowing planetary invasion are locked to the midgame. So between the actual colony rush and the times when warfare becomes possible, the game has basically no tension. I am making a few decisions about how to develop my capabilities and planets, but I am not really interacting with the AI that much. We might do some trades and diplomacy, we have the United Planets, and we are competing also in a much lower-stakes mercenary rush and starbase rush... both of which also end fairly early.

Compare to Civilization 6, which is like the standard for this genre. The initial rush for cities is balanced out by the need to defend your settlers and cities. The first few military units, Warriors, Spearmen, Slingers, Archers and such, are not terribly formidable against enemy cities, but a determined gambit with them can pay off. And if your AI opponents aren't messing with you enough while you're trying to settler rush, there are always randomly spawned barbarians to force you to decide exactly how defensive you want to be with your initial land grab.

Now let's talk about the actual war... or lack thereof. The basic scheme in this game of having 3 weapon types and a defense for each type... does not work. If you are supposed to be able to research the counter to your opponent's ships, either the AI does not know how to do this or cannot do this fast enough to prevent me from simply stomping all over his planets if I happen to have a ship advantage at the start of the war. It also doesn't help that there is a series of techs you need to have before you can even participate in the counter system.

Speaking of which, let's talk solutions...

I think a huge issue with Gal Civ 3 is that the too many features of the game are locked by tech. Your military power is basically zero until you make a relatively big investment in military tech. Then there's no reason to actually fight until the midgame because you can't defeat starbases and you can't land on planets.

Fighting is extremely important because it is the most direct way to interact with AI factions, tied with diplomacy. The possibility of fighting also makes the building portion of the game more interesting because of the inherent tension between improving your economy to get stronger in the long run and improving your military to get stronger in the short run. I really think anyone should be able to fight starting from the beginning of the game. Maybe it should take you a tech or two to be able to feasibly defeat Starbases with a fairly determined investment in your fleets. You may then need one more tech to build offensive legions and transports.

Fighting should also take a longer amount of time in total. Planetary invasions should take quite a bit of time, even if an enemy's planet has no legions whatsoever. This is to stop a faction from being swept away immediately by an opportunistic opponent and allow them to rebound if they have a significantly stronger economy than their opponent. It is also good for the opponent to be able to research counters to your main weapons and stand a chance of fighting back if you open up with a weapon/defense advantage.