Thoughts:
- It really makes you feel like you're controlling a massive galactic civilization. There are so many planets and stars, and you can create absolutely massive fleets.
- You feel like all your work early and mid game is finally paying off. You aren't constantly having to stretch your resources to
- Because they're so close to the endgame, a lot of the late-game techs I don't really get to put to use.
- It wasn't until I actually looked at the .txt files that I realized that the telepathic trait did anything besides make researching psionics cost less. If you're even going to try for psicogenic domination, you're already far enough along in your research that you should probably just go for the tech victory anyway. Also typically I'm either investing so much in research to grab the tech victory at that point, or investing so much in production to fend off enemies or monsters that having the psychogenic domination or stargate focus is kind of pointless, and I've never actually gotten to use either.
- While I understand wanting to make most of your research lead-up to the tech victory, the fact that nearly all of the research-boosting techs lead into it I think creates a bit too much positive feedback.
- In general while there is a very noticeable buildup in both production and industry as the game progresses, pure energy metabolism seems just broken. I've noticed that once I get pure energy metabolism my production and research shoot up so fast that it might as well be over, I know there are other systemic issues in that area, but it should probably just go.
- Due to researching the growth techs, I didn't even use terrafroming until probably my third game, It doesn't seem very useful by the time you get it. If I grab a decent colonizing native species, or enough of them, in conjunction with growth techs, there isn't going to be a reason to use it except to apply the gaia transformation. This may be a positive feedback problem like the tech victory, with terraforming being dependent on the other growth techs.
- Though not a late-game issue per-say, growth specials aren't that "special". Some of them are so widely spaced that I never got to put them to use, or by the time I did, like with terraforming, I'd researched enough growth techs that their difference wasn't really even worth considering for colonization in many cases. Especially with Egassem the narrow environmental tolerance meant most of them weren't even suitable to colonize until later on. At first I though they were completely randomly associated to planet type, but looking at the .txt files I saw they were not, but didn't seem to be spaced evenly, or associated with the planet types used by the species who would benefit from them.