Slitherine

The story feels bolted on to the mechanics of the game. For example

The goody boxes are a tried and true mechanism for helping out players at the start. Yet for all the text about an alien race we learn nothing about them during or after the game. The presence or absence of the the towers and observatories can be measured in so much food, minerals or research. The disappearance of the towers after you send a unit there is disconcerting and intrudes on the immersion. This is a lost opportunity to make the story relevant to the game. The ruins should not disappear but there could also be a cost for locating near them... We don't even understand the effect of our own technology much less someone else's. How about an end game penalty in terms of population unrest or having cities near the ruins or towers transcend early?

The factions are predictable and would not be too out of place in the early Industrial Ages. The scholar, the devout, the industrialist, the dictator. The "green" faction is new but the ideology of the factions does not really change your play style. I think that the choices the player makes should matter. If you want to be green you should not be able to pollute your heart out without your cities deserting to another faction. Given the choice of technologies you would think the green faction would consider integrating with the Pandoran ecology. Why have earthly cities, why not fungus towers? Similar changes could be made for each faction. I agree that a different city icon for each faction is a surface change. The penalties and bonuses for each faction could be much more unique.

More along the line of your choices should count is the happiness/morale of the populace. If a city is very unhappy due to pollution or overcrowding why don't they riot or defect? The only cost for letting your citizens breathe smog is a hit to production.

I notice in the end game you are deploying weapons like black holes and EMP strikes that would a lot more than raise an eyebrow in some societies. Surely the scholars, greens and industrialists should receive some sort of populace unrest penalty for using weapons of this nature?

This is just scratching the surface of the idea of delivering a game that has more rich complexity. Fortunately the developers have a good base product and I can hope for more in the future.

Interestingly, some other posts have made the case that current faction bonus/malus values make too much of a difference. Perhaps it varies by difficulty level, or makes more/less difference according to the world set-up.

The factions are largely similar to SMAC, and are essentially ideological caricatures. I don't really see them as "dated", because human motivations don't change that much. Militarism & theocracy are both as old as civilization itself. Even pre-industrial revolution you had trade-oriented societies (e.g. Venice). Science is a relative latecomer, since it relies on the scientific method that only dates from the Enlightenment. I would imagine that in the distance future the same sort of motives will be around.

I think it would be interesting to enforce ideological priorities on the factions, if they could figure out how to do it (and not upset the game balance in the process). For example, the green faction logically would be forbidden to generate any polution or clear any forest, and also forbidden to use terraforming that would be changing the natural habitat). Similarly, the militaristic faction would be forced to maintain a big military regardless of threat level (arguably stunting their economic growth in the process) and to research all miltary techs in each tier before being allowed to research the other types. There are not any religious buildings in the game, but if there were the religious faction could be constrained to build those first in every city (perhaps some should be introduced just for that faction, perhaps giving "free" taxes representing tithing). The scientific faction would logically have that constraint regarding science buildings, which would in effect be their temples.

There could also be faction-specific random events, such as heresy among the religious or controvery among the brass over military build priorities (army vs navy vs air force).

Agree about the disappearing goodie huts, given that they are supposed to be the ruins of ancient sites and would not disappear. The ones in SMAC were supposed to be bits of the destroyed colony ship's cargo, and would therefore more logically disappear. If they were not going to disappear, ideally you'd want to have something to mark that you'd explored one, but you shouldn't be able to tell if it was already explored by somebody else except by your just not finding anything there. Interestingly, they never seem to contain anything bad, unlike most other games. Aside from that, they could be given a more prominent role in the backstory. Maybe you'd find fragmentary info that would ultimately lead you to something big, if you found enough bits of info.