First Impressions

[Principes]

I've played the game for about six hours total. Overall my first impressions are mixed. I like the general format and user interface. I'm a fan of the genre and love turn based games. However, my general view of the game is currently negative.
1. The backstory and factions are pretty generic. I'm not sure what happened to the nations of Earth, but the backstory is insufficient to account for such a dramatic change by 2100. Nothing in the faction backstory is exciting or provides character to the factions. As much as I have made fun of Games Workshop for their poor game mechanics, the one thing they get right is a solid backstory for each faction/race that gives them a unique feel. It greatly enhances the appeal of the game.
2. The 5 minute first impression: Game loaded well. Intro, backstory and factions are weak. I expect better from Slitherine. At present feels like a low budget indie release. Nothing grabbed me and made me want to play a certain faction. GUI was clear and usable. Graphics looked ok.
3. The 1 hour first impression: If this was a demo I would have already uninstalled it from my PC. Very difficult to find the exploration and growth sweet spot. For no apparent reason, aliens become suddenly hostile. I understand the game mechanic behind this scripted event, but it definitely ended my first game. I wasn't prepared for the tidal wave of aliens. One of the things that bothers me about this game mechanic is there is no good in game reason behind it. It's obviously scripted for play balance and is a blatant case of metagame designing. Once I got over the alien wave issue, I was unprepared for the concurrent attacks by enemy factions that I had no interaction with. Factions that had to walk halfway across the board to attack someone they couldn't even see. Given the sparsity of troops and the fog of war, it was a bit of a surprise. Which leads to my next major issue.
3. The diplomacy AI. My activities with enemy factions are to always attempt to initiate trade, research and nonaggression pacts. However, some factions don't appear to like me and being nice to them has little to no effect. As a matter of fact, they dislike me so much that they will expend almost all of their production to continually generate an army and march 8-10 turns across the board to attack me. This is odd, because in general I haven't even explored the area around them. I really feel like a bystander in diplomacy. The folks that like me tend to always like me and the folks that dislike me have an overriding irrational hatred.
4. Fog of War: I like having a fog of war. However, there isn't a good scientific reason for having one with satellites. If the ground receives sunshine, satellites can see troop concentrations and I don't know of any electrical disturbance sufficient to disrupt all the radar wavelengths that wouldn't obliterate life on the surface. Having to suspend disbelief for such a critical game component significantly detracts from the game experience. The other issue with the fog of war is the generally low sight radius, combined with a sparse number of troops provides extremely limited information on a large number of hostile aliens and hostile factions that will cross the entire world to kill you. Tactical options are relatively limited. Which leads to point 5.
5. At present, it appears that the dominant ( and only workable) strategy is to fort up, slowly wipe out local hives and develop a large expeditionary strike force to take out the faction that irrationally hates you. Everyone else will leave you alone while you do this.
6. The games tactics, sight range, fog of war and general gameplay are more applicable to a game of colonial era expansion (15th-18th centuries) than advanced technology. It really feels like a Civilization clone put into space. The technological improvements of the last 6 centuries don't have an appreciable impact on the game.
I like the game concept and really want to like the game, but the gameplay and limited tactical options just aren't that much fun. I'm going to give it another 10 hours play to see if I can find the fun sweet spot.