Another thing I'd like: an option to choose the proportion of extreme environment planets when setting up a game. One slider that would add a ton of gameplay variety IMO.

1. add an option to turn off most popups (asteroid base changing owners, research done, ship going into standby). On huge maps, all those popups can really interupt your gameplay.

2. add more shortcuts and keep them consistent. Make it so "return" = done or accept on all screens. "esc" = cancel or close on all screens.
Add more hotkeys, like "space" to end your turn. And maybe more hotkeys so you can really guide all your ships without having to open up the details panel.

3.-5. Get some bug fixes in please, please, please.

There are a pile of techs that aren't tradable from some racial tech trees...just not all of the * flagged ones.

There's a few things I'd change for GalCiv3 which are impractical as a "fix this first" list entry, like a more reasonable production system.

For things to fix now, as part of GC2/ToA, however. . .
1. Fix the instances of broken racial tech trees, most notably the Thalan lack of starbase offense techs.
2. Fix the Mind Control Center. Very long running bug that should have been fixed in or before the previous expansion, much less ToA.
3. An option to keep racial "special" techs secret, while still being able to trade or sell more common techs.
4. Make Terror Stars more interesting and/or effective and/or affordable. For six constructors and 10 turns of inactivity, I'd at least like the chance to fight back against a single lightly armed scout. Having your uber weapon of doom blown up by a pilot in a junky fighter makes great movies, but terrible strategy gaming.
5. Update the ToA manual to at least make some mention of the various ToA features.

1) The UI has a ton of really lousy design covering up even more lousy design. Get rid of the popups and consolidate more information into an easy-to-read single window. I don't need 45 popups about mining starbases. You already saw my thread on this (telling me to get bent, oddly).

2) Tech trading is miserable. Again, you already know about this as you told me to go to hell. But whatever. Make it so we have a few options on how to change trading that will restrict it in a way that still allows trade, but doesn't allow the AI to dilute tech trees. My proposal: Any tech that isn't in your tech tree cannot be traded for. This will keep 90%+ of the techs tradeable, and will make races like the Drengin / Korath natural trading partners.

3) Altarian / Thalan tech trees feel really incomplete. The former just feels like a beta feature, the latter is just broken.

4) Espionage is still really bad, but I guess that's changing.

5) Make diplomacy harder! With a good diplomacy rating, you don't have to do anything and everyone will just love you. In addition the diplomacy modifiers, like -- "Trying to Ascend", are simply weak. It's way too easy to get a ++ for "good relations", a + for "trading", a + for ethics, etc. and you'll never have to worry about a thing.