[jowe01]

ok, by now I have played about 70 turns of the demo. I very much like the animated combat (although the interface is also somewhat tedious here). However, there seem to be so many bugs and shortcomings that i am a little bit worried how Aaron is ever going to get the game in any shape for the release. Just my main hick-ups:
1) Crash bugs. that's how i just "terminated" my game, no clue what caused them.
2) Diplomacy: just does not seem to work. I propose a treaty and specify it. Then I receive an information that my message had been sent. However, in most cases there is never any reaction from the AIs.
3)AI: Seems to suffer from the same weaknesses as in SE4 (here I am really disappointed - I thought building on SE4 was a good idea, so you did not have to start from scratch but could develop the AI into a new dimension of quality. This soes not seem to have happened), namely a lack of "memory" (always making the same mistakes) and an inconsequent behaviour (the AI attacks on of my planets in a system, the withdraws instead of attacking my other colonies with its much superior forces).
4) The really tedious UI with its complicated ways of doing things and its unsuitable proportions between buttons, legends, units and map. mentioned by dozens of others before me

Hopefully Aaron does n otmind working 24h a day...