Tiles became the blockers/special features as well as special planet modifiers (those didn't change)
Pops became much less micro intensive
buildings are still the main way to specialize
My point still stand, I found visualising the planet easier before, since you saw the landscape with all the special tile at once. I don't even fiddle with the special feature too much. I find it too dull to have a list with how many cavern or hot source i have that allow for this or that district.
For pops, i have to disagree though. I found it less micro before. Maybe a personnal feeling, but now you have to focus more on how you will house, give work and adapt your planet with the district. It isn't necessary a bad thing, but it is, imho, more micro than just placing infrastructure on tiles where pops grew from before.
For buildings, well yeah, but i liked how past infra worked with each others, giving bonus according to how there were placed.
Minerals and credits are much easier to come by and the alloys and special gases are the new resources people focus on so not having enough yellow/red/green districts on a specific planet isn;t a huge deal as fas as I have seen.
Agreed with that, i like the alloy and special resources new system. Make building a fleet more challenging and interesting. Before, just having shit tons of mineral was enough. Now you have to implement a neat workflow around minerals. Way better. And some systems actually got so strategically import, resources-wise, that i wage war over, so a + in my book.
A bit sad that, as you said, districts don't matter much. They change the label about your planet speciality, so there's that. Relying only on mining station is a quick way to mineral/energy shortage though, with the consumer goods we have to produce now.
Also you make it sound like you used to be able to choose which planets you specialized and now you can't...its still the exact same. Some planets are better (based on special modifiers and tiles) for minerals, some for science, etc so not sure what you mean when you say that choosing worlds is "dull" now.
This is, again, a personal and rp feeling. I still find that it was easier to spot, at a glance, what planet was good for, without having to scroll through a list (i don't like list that much). I found planning a planet specialization before full colonization was easier when i could see the whole lands. Now, i just see (at a glance again) how many districts i can build. But hey, to each their own on that, i will not stop playing for that anyway.
As for Alphamod...they will adapt. Seems odd that you think they will just go "Oh well no more tiles so we will just chop out half the mod because we can't think of any solutions"
They will adapt, if the guy behind it have the will, for sure. But from what i remember, a lot of alpha mods was based on special resources usages and how you could keep natural odd tiles on planet to use their neighboring properties. Now, you could replace that with special features and buildings based on it (like, a zoo for exotic pets), but buildings are more restricted that before. But yeah, the mod is not dead, and paradox propose a whole lot of options new mod could go with, i'm happy with that.
It sounds to me like you are still thinking of everything in a 2.0 lens and have given very little thought or effort in regards to the new systems.
Not sure what you means by that though. Obviously, i'm looking at the systems changes, while keeping in mind how it work before. That's a comparison, after all i'm playing an update, not a whole new game. You say that like i said "stellaris 2.2 is shit!" but i didn't, nor i find it to be bad, not at all.