Slitherine

It seems that after a certain amount of play time given research and expansion that all indigenous life is killed. At least, I see none, even sea creatures are gone.
Once that happens how does it matter that I happen to be playing on an alien planet? Apart from the landscape, It is the roving creatures that give the planet interest and character.
When they are all gone it seems very empty indeed.

At one point, while I was at war with another faction a sea monster destroyed some landing units saving me for another turn. That was cool. Without the creatures no chance
that will happen again.

It would be more fun if the Pandora life forms evolved to become more threatening. To counter the rising human threat.

I thought the alien artefacts might play into the story, but nothing so far.

I thought it would be cool if hives could be created over time. I also agree that it would be cool if the aliens became stronger cause the weak ones all got killed of in the beginning.

I play just the eye-glassed faction and got overrun by the aliens several times. Far away from extuingish them. My scientists are fine, very fine and military has good weapons, but i cannot compare with a lot of that aliens.

HPHimmel wrote:...got overrun by the aliens several times. Far away from extinguish them.

They can be challenging, yes. But after you kill all the hives, the number of aliens will drastically diminish and eventually there will be none left. There's even a notification telling you when it happens.

Anyways, I understand the idea of taming a new planet to become a second earth, but the game would prove more intriguing if the task becomes more difficult than expected. If this happened correctly, then the taming would occur more towards the end of the game with aliens that put up a long-term fight.

Plus one on that. I also did feel tha the aliens, in the mid to late game, become very scarce and weak. At one point I intently sent out my troops to clear out all remaining hives.
Its something that's definitely missing in the game. As time goes on and depending on factors as global pollution and population, the aliens should start spawning more, with new hives and fungus spreading, and more aggressive towards non-friendly-to-aliens factions. Not that the aliens should evolve to be stronger( that would be okay as well), but more spawning of all types of aliens.
And maybe some global negative impact( and positive) for global industrialization, population, ridden of fungus and alien life. There's a lot of stuff in this sci-fi environment that could be explored to add more in depth flavour to the game.

Consider

-Less fungus on the map would cause the aliens to spawn stronger. (not that they evolve overnight... they are the same creatures, but much more aggressive in order to survive. Perhaps a higher rank, and/or with a "device" that was increased aggressiveness.)
-What if new queens could spawn and then go off and create new hives? (btw: I think queens should be quite a bit stronger than they are right now. what if queens were guaranteed to never attack, only defend... but had a much higher power?)
-What if the hives' defensive bonuses gradually increased overtime? (like the aliens eventually learn the scent of humans and the fuel that the machines use; thus allowing them to anticipate enemy attacks.)

It would be interesting if hives whould be more like alien cities, growing over-time and perhaps producing new queens after a while?

Perhaps in a expansion, if the back-end doesn't support it currently?