Everytime I think I am on top, this thing keeps kicking me down.
First I over expanded my industry and crashed the economy.
So I created loads of colonys and built lots of financial centres, and got the economy up and running.
Then the new human Martians kept complaining about a lack of protection, so I decided to I needed a military. Got all the bits of kit designed, and couple more Naval Shipyards built.
Then just as the capacity of the new yards got high enough to build the ships, Earth runs out of minerals.
I have Mars terraformed, and have found two more low cost planets, and another at 0.18 cost, so I can certainly expand. Assuming I dont run out of fuel first.
I have found two alien races. With one we are just ignoring each other (despite my Diplomacy (and Espionage) teams best efforts.)
The other killed the Geo-Survey vessel instantly (no active sensors), and I think I might have met the Swarm, but again, I havent been back to check. My new military was designed to combat the little detail I did have - beam type weapons and 800 odd tons, but I am not going back with only the two ships I have coming of the yards soon. For a start, I need a long range active sensor - and we have nearly researched a max antenna, resolution 800t one. I will see them coming.
Also found some ruins, which have been explored. I then designed and built two Troop Transports, and to get the Engineers there quickly, I only put the battalion sized tranport hold on them. Which of course is too small, the Engineering Brigade needs a large hold.
Still, I have a couple large versions rolling off in a couple of months, and the small ones more the garrison battalions to Mars, and got them quietened down.
The games not quite perfect, theres a little too much information management for me to be totally lost into it, especially when the number of explored systems and colonies starts rising, but it has that 'just one more turn' aspect that CIV has, and I have certainly had a couple of late nights, especially as Mars got close to being Terraformed.