Repetition kills games

Just out of curiousity, did you give Legendary Heroes a try and did you find the same repetition there?

Haven't played that game.

Repetiveness is a subjective measure.  So that part I can't speak to.  However, I do think that playing only at easiest levels will aggravate that situation.  At easiest levels, the game has less chances to affect or change your play.  You overcome all too easily all of its challenges.  It is only when the game can challenge you that you get the feeling that outcomes are variable from game to game.  Try going up just one level to see if you get a little more variety without getting killed right away.   If you are like me, learn to build a better military so they are less likely to come banging at your door. 

The thing is though people 'say' they dont want repetition, the reality is they need 'consistency' and that makes the game feel 'repetitive'. However without consistentcy, players feel entirely lost when they switch races and this makes the game much more frustrating. They want to at least understand what the game, at it's core, wants you to do. Each race might have nuances, but they cannot really flip the core game on its head.

You really can't make a game where the CORE game concepts vary extremely between different scenarios. You dont want to introduce concept A in one place, then for some odd reason that concept vanishes if you switch races, and is replaced with an entirely new concept B. YOu might have VARIATIONS on concepts. Maybe race A gets certain techs. Maybe race B controls supply differently. etc. But the reality is that in any game the fundamental core concepts that drive the game are always the same between races or whatever.

Honestly, this is a problem with the genre itself. You will find yourself many times in variations of the same scenario. Fortunately, they are adding multiplayer into the game for people like you. A human will generally have the possibility of a wide variety of strategies.

try a different genere

if you refuse to raise the difficulty, these games aren't designed to make you adapt

This is the nature of the beast. You start with a newly created map, it's fun to explore and develop your civilization, but eventually you get to the point where you dominate and the outcome is completely predictable. The developer can extend the life of the game by providing several playable races with different strengths and weaknesses, multiple difficulty levels, multiple victory conditions, Elemental style quests and wildlands (which I hope will find their way into GalCiv III), DLC's and expansion packs, random events and mega-events. All are intended to keep the game fun for experienced players but it will be a long time before the AI can offer the same replayability as experienced human opponents. Turn based games of this size and scope don't lend themselves to multiplayer because of the time investment required but a MMORPG based in the GalCiv universe might be doable - fun to think about anyway.

Multiplayer wouldn't be of much use to him either, since it would have the same problem of him losing in about the same time frame as an AI could beat him. I guess he could play against human players much worse than him. He seems to want fun replay value from facerolling dumbed down AI, and it's not going to happen here. Possibly something like Sim City would be more his speed.

Well, speaking from experience, the one thing that seems to liven up GC2 and make things interesting is loading in a mod.  So if you think you'll get bored with GC3, there's always a chance that someone will make mods for it.

To break the repetition you got to have innovative combat, otherwise you are playing the game of the higher numbers wins all the time. You need secondary factors to keep combat from getting bland, or perhaps some innovative ways of using all planets in the game instead of having useless class 0 planets doing nothing but taking up space. even destroying class 0 planets for resources would be better then serving no purpose but to piss the player off when he/she wants to find a habitable planet.

So do you want a big exclaimation mark above the head of the alien quest giver, too?  Oh, I know.  What about ships that level as they gain experience unlocking cool new abilities, with attributes that you can put points into to further distinguish yourself from all the low level noobs?

Yeah, no.

I remember in GC2 that as ships gained experience they could level up, which gave them an increase in some of their characteristics (HP is one that comes readily to mind). Better maneuverability and/or evasion abilities might be nice.