If it's something based on this governor system, then it will be extremely unpopular and not a great deal of fun.  This may be the single worst implementation of an automation system that I've ever encountered in 20+ years of 4X gaming. And that's not an exaggeration. It is, quite simply, terrible.

Firstly, you tech-gated them. I simply do not see any solid reason for this. At all. At the point in the game players most need to maximize output because the game is at it's slowest point, you have elected to prevent them doing so. That's just going to frustrate and annoy people, and will make rushing Interstellar Governance a required starting play. It's not immersive, it's irritating and it removes choices from the player. Both automation and complete control should be available from the start. Being force to earn not one, but BOTH through going deep into a tech tree (which you can't even get through quickly because you're stuck managing at a global level and so can't maximize output properly) is not fun. 

Secondly, giving governors bonuses is going to annoy some players regardless, since it rewards automating things against micro. Micromanagers will hate that, as they're getting punished for putting more effort in. Moreover, the bonuses in question are meaninglessly small, and in no way compensate for the loss of control over the production wheel. Literally all these bonuses accomplish is to annoy a section of the community. The ideal balance would have automation be reasonably competitive with micromanagement, but allow micro to be slightly better overall. If bonuses enter into it at all, then they should go to the micromanager;  after all, the Emperor is PERSONALLY overseeing Factory Planet B. Even players who prefer to automate generally agree that microing should be better, so that they can pick a small number of core worlds to micromanage.

Thirdly, the governors are completely incompetent. Their use of production is hopeless. Their build queues remain dreadful. Implementing them removes agency from the player, gives him an inconsequential buff, and makes his planets horrifically weak compared to self-managing. This means that no-one in their right mind would actually use governors on any planet they care about unless forced to do so. This means that, despite locking us out of the global wheel, the governors (which unlock at the same time) still don't actually reduce the required level of micro, as you still need to sort out all the planets and set the production wheel if you want the planet to achieve anything at all. The only time I can see myself actually electing to use a governor is on a planet that I didn't want in the first place, from a conquest or surrender.

This is a game feature that people will not want to use. It combines a high cost (the gated research) with a payoff so bad, it leaves you worse off than you were without it. This isn't Gratuitous Space Battles. Running the economy is part of the fun and challenge of a good 4X game, so much so that some players just stay at peace and play economics all game. It ultimately comes down to giving the player interesting choices, and choosing between a set of governors to run my planet badly is not a choice at all - it's an American election ( ). Automation should be there to help the player reduce micro load. It's not an area to get creative. It is bog-standard, un-sexy, nuts-and-bolts stuff which needs to exist but should be both reasonably capable and unobtrusive. The 1.3 governor system fails on both of these counts; the main effect this is going to have is that it will make people appreciate just how bad the AI is at a strategic level.

Just for a minute, let's assume that maybe there's nothing wrong with the basic production model as it stands (because there isn't). Mechanically, it's fine. There's some overproduction problems, but these can be sorted out very simply by either reducing production from population, or nerfing the output bonuses on factories, labs and markets so that we don't see planets with >1000% bonuses to the outputs. There's some AI problems, but these would be sorted if you took this 'Offset' concept and fleshed it out so that the AI could specialize planets itself effectively. These two measures would make the present system work properly. It does not require replacing outright, it just needs an AI that understands it and a little bit of balance work.

Using the Control key to show the remaining distance to travel doesn't work now.

Ur post is really on point, i was too mad when i found about it to make a post like urs, so, cheers

If they are using the yor tech tree(or maybe just yor, I don't remember where it is set), they can 50% colonize it aquatic & barren worlds out of the gate & a later tech gives them 100%.

It crashes a lot more

I was disappointed with losing the colony wheel at first, but reserved my comment until I tried it out.  To be honest, I'm seeing it as an improvement.  I'm finding the game going faster and I can still be fairly efficient at the beginning of the game by semi-specializing all planets with 50-50 hammers and beakers.

I'm glad I didn't pop off before I gave it a decent run.

I'll be interested in seeing what will replace it, but I'm good with it as is for now. 

The other improvements are great!  The Shipyard list on the right, the sortable planet list, the fleet list.  I saw the fleet management screen in the govern page and it looks like a start anyway.  

The unlimited ship range bug has been squashed.  I'm looking forward to seeing more.

Good job, devs!   

Naselus nails it on a good number of points, I've tried modding the governors in a bunch of different ways, but the best that I've been able to find is "it sucks less".  Like he said, they piss off micromanagers and fans of automation by making both harder and doing them so badly that you still do it the old way badly.  I don't mind the game being slower, but there needs to be something to do to stimulate my brain in more ways than slowly scouring the galaxy for planets to settle with slowly built low quality ships equipped with terrible tech range while it's practically impossible to anger anyone or run out of money... even if I spend it all, it's really tough to have a negative balance.

I almost get more interaction after fiddling in the xml's by watching how the ai reacts. I've tried using the governors, and they are just terrible to the point of saying "I'm giving you a 10% raise after cutting your billable hours in half & putting your office across the street from your computer... congrats on the raise & the worlds longest usb extension cord!"

Right now I'm so bewildered that I'm afraid to even do any modding pending more discovery of where things are going.... Paul mentioned the governors are already set to change during the devstream, but not even vague hints of details on it combined with the certainty that 1.4 will again have an even larger change in removal of the wheel in 1.4 making any modding plan/work potentially the equivalent of trying to drive through the forest at night with your lights off & hoping  for the best.

Until I play 1.3 I won't say my opinions are conclusive. I heavily specialize and micromanage my planets, and using the per-planet production wheel is a big part of that. That said I also dislike changing that repeatedly, so I am not opposed to it going away, reducing specialization to a degree, but also reducing repetitive actions. What you do instead better darn well be good.

Naselus makes some very great points. Let me summarize what it appears you did in 1.3:

1. You took the AI governors, which are provably dumb, added a small bonus to them to convince people this is better, made them unlock with tech, and wrapped them with a UI so the player could use them.

2. You modified your list widget to now be sortable, with ships in fleets grouped.

3. Commands for individual ships can now be used on fleets.

Seems like a weekend worth of effort. Maybe the rest of that time was spent on those 30+ bug fixes.

So you plan to make the governors better in 1.4. I think you need to reconsider releasing the governance changes in 1.3. People are not going to like this unfinished "solution" in a released game. This isn't beta. First, I don't need the AI to decide what to build where. That is a level of management that is not annoying. The only time this is useful is if it's a throw-away planet, as in Naselus's "Thirdly" paragraph.

Second, "focus" to you means a 10% shift? I hope that is not the same degree of focus you plan to allocate to addressing the AI or constructor/starbase management. I make a planet with all factories and less than 50% of my production goes to factories? No.

Now time to play the game and see if my concerns are warranted.

While playing some more today I noticed a couple of minor issues:

When the notification screen refreshed again the text showed properly again.

Not sure, it was a custom race I downloaded from the forum here months ago before the workshop was setup. I'll have to see if I can find out who it was again and check.

Played the game, focusing on the govern settings.

Good thing #1: Forcing planets to be less specialized through governors that restrict production settings isn't as bad as I thought it would be. Yes production is wasted, and it will take me some time to mentally get over that, but its not the end of the world. I feel gimped and weakened, but I guess I'll now be using the same management rules the AI is using, so they will be more of a competition.

Good thing #2: Since my global wheel now has to stay in a more balanced position, now that means all my planets will have some manufacturing to do upgrades. That manufacturing now necessitates using projects, and those projects aren't useless with balanced production settings.

Issue #1: I cannot use a governor and set the planet social-military slider. So I must choose between the two which I want to do. Presumably in 1.4 it will be a choice between global or governor. I'd like a governor that allows me to choose between a military manufacturing focus and a social manufacturing focus. I also want a project that automatically sets the slider on the planet to 100% military so it uses that setting when there are no improvements to make, that way I don't have my manufacturing-specialized planet wasting even more production on a stinking economic stimulus project.

Issue #2: I don't want my governors building improvements. They suck at it, and they don't know my plans. Check out the screenshot below. The AI governor dude destroyed two improvements to make farms after I unlocked them. There is no attempt to make use of adjacency bonuses, no attempt to make use of the "Foodplain" tile, and once I reach max population my approval is going to suck. Epic fail!

Still no solution for the constant freezing. 

Disappointed to see no mention of fixing the battle viewer not matching the results or that the pirate ship set has been fixed so it displays templates, including the starting blocks.

https://forums.galciv3.com/470741/page/1/#3584370

From the 1.2.1 patch notes:

• Battle Viewer: Fixed a problem where the ship battle result screen was not matching the actual battle results.  

Edit: ninja'd.

Mine crashes just about every hour now

I didn't see this in the notes, but the ship repair rates have been greatly increased.

I discovered this when I noticed that my damaged ships did not stay damaged as long as I expected.  I then put damaged ships in various locations to determine the repair rate and if it changed with location.  Here is what I found:

4 - Hit point repair per turn in space.  It is the same if the ship is moving or stationary.
7 - Hit point repair per turn when a ship is stationed at a planet or a shipyard.
9 - Hit point repair per turn when a ship is stationed at a starbase.

Ah, my mistake.  Hadn't seen there was a patch last week.

Would be very interested to try this out, sadly Steam wont donwload the beta no matter what I do :-/

Same problem for me. Tried everything from verifying cache to deleting local files to disabling all mods. Nothing seems to trigger the download.

How do I get to the Planet Options (Rename Planet, Auto upgrade Improvements, etc) before the discovery of Interstellar Governance?

Quoting Hereward_Hills, reply 46

How do I get to the Planet Options (Rename Planet, Auto upgrade Improvements, etc) before the discovery of Interstellar Governance?

You can rename the planet right from the main map screen. Click on a planet and then in the lower left side of the screen with the planet info, click on the planet name there and a window will pop up allowing you to rename it just like in the Govern screen. As far as I have been able to tell, you can't turn off auto improvements (which sucks imho) until you research Interstellar Governance.

Fantastic, the game is improving with every patch. Contrary to some people I like the idea of governors. It's exactly what I wanted for planets I didn't want to waste time on, especially when I have a core set of planets I already built up. If people don't like them, then nobody forces you to use them. The production wheel may have helped to specialise each planet a bit more, but how much difference did it make in the end? I haven't used the per planet wheel at all, I stick with the global settings (but then I'm not a heavy micromanager). I wouldn't mind the per planet wheel to stay as it is and the people can choose to use either that or the governors. It's all about choice maybe.

To summarise, who wants to be interrupted with "Idle Colony" alerts when you are trying to hunt down the Drengins' last planet/ship!

Obviously all this comes with the "I still haven't downloaded" caveat. I look forward for the actual release (no time to test the opt-in right now...)

Yep, I know, it was a rhetorical question to give the devs some feed back. I've just opted out of the opt in as I like to micro manage and I can't access the auto improvements.

Dear Devs, in GalCiv2 I could name a planetary governor and give them nothing to do. This enabled me to tag planets with the specialization I deemed for them whilst enjoying the process of implementing that specialization as per my own rules. Rules that I evolved as I played the game and learnt how better to build my empire. These new governors are of no use to my style of play, full stop.

BTW, I think this is in 1.3 but I had my favorite track from GalCiv II rescored and remastered and put in to GC3.