It's almost definitely not going to be released in a month. If it were, there would be way more videos of it around, there might have been a closed beta (maybe even a demo, like with EU4 and CK2), and the screenshots wouldn't say "ALPHA" (which comes before beta, which comes before release). It's much more likely for it to be released towards the end of the year, if not next year.
Yep, I think it's going to be released in Q2 or Q3 actually.
Anyway I can't wait for the next DD, since it's about diplomacy. I hope that one of the upcoming 3-4 DDs will be about the planetery invasions. I really want to see that how complex will that be @ release. I suppose it will be quite simplistic, and they will upgrade the system in an expansion. Who wouldn't buy an expansion which focuses on planetary battles? Heh.
I don't think there has ever been a game that has done planetary battles well simply because of how absurd the simulation would be.
I mean, imagine if earth had to invade another earth. Like, literally conquer the whole thing enough that the whole planet is flying our (superior earth) flag. We'd need like... tens of millions of troops at the very least. Then we'd be fighting for decades if not centuries conquering every single region. Just attacking a portion of earth (say the US) would take an army so large it'd qualify as a separate global entity. And then after that comes the peacekeeping and assimilation efforts which would probably take just as long if not way longer. Just the logistics of such an action is leagues larger than any game has ever dreamed of doing so far.
And it's actually significantly easier when it's humans vs humans. After all, we have the same habitat considerations and more or less the same cultural mores, etc. What if we're the Gorkian Morg Race of Aberdeeks. What the fuck. We don't even breathe the same air, have completely different pressure and radiation resistances and we exclusively eat the borongian dispatches of lesser races. Also we can only communicate in eight person. What kind of insane levels of warmongering would it take for something completely alien to invade another planet?
It's always irked me how games, movies, and such all simplify such a huge undertaking. Especially when it's like, oh my one single scout ship has blockaded an entire planetary system. =|
Of course, I don't think any of that is really feasible to do in a game so... meh.