First Impressions

[Daetrin]

On launching: "This sounds a lot like SMAC." I don't mind the load time (Civ V takes forever to load on my system for whatever reason) but maybe a few more assets to keep us entertained while the counter ticks down?
First five minutes: "This is pretty derivative." I probably would have preferred a closer homage to SMAC. Xenomorphs, Zerg, mentions of Raynor - these are all immersion-breaking things for a different IP than the ones it mentions. It just feels odd. Unit stacking? I'm glad that cities can defend themselves, but unit stacking was taken out of Civ V for a reason. I haven't played enough to really get a feel on how that balances out, but my first reaction to unit stacking is fairly negative. Various issues I had in the five minute mark: Why can't I refit my trooper? No button on the unit, and the option on the military screen is greyed out, despite my city making a trooper to the new specifications. If I can't refit, give me a reason. Barbarian (alien) units are fairly powerful. It sort of squelches the Explore axis of 4E when you have something eight times more powerful than your starting unit just hanging around two tiles away from where you started. I don't mind that so much (they don't seem to be aggressive?) but for a 4E game it seems rather odd.

Some UI cleanup - don't give us the option buttons for foreign units, some slightly more robust tooltips for common what moments early on - like, I haven't been doing anything special, and suddenly my morale and food are terribly negative?

First thirty minutes: as first five minutes, really. I obviously have no idea how most of the mechanics work (and that's fine! You learn a game as you play it) but I feel like I'm not being given enough information to make decisions sometimes, and others I feel like I don't know how much I should mess with things (how much micromanagement do I need to do on my cities? Why isn't there a button for food/science/prod focus? Why aren't there governor options like with SMAC?). Other than unit stacking I haven't noticed any flaws with the fundamental core of the game, but I do feel like the initial experience needs a bit more guidance.