1) what are the main improvements from GC2?
This post from Frogboy sums it up nicely:
Yea, there are a number of areas that if you start with GalCiv II as the base, you can take it up to the next level. For examples:
The UI in GalCiv II is pretty dated, GalCiv III has a really good tool tip system that gives you a lot of helpful information.
We were able to expand the economics and diplomacy via an ideology system and a new United Planets system.
We've been able to make the warfare more sophisticated by having ship designs matter more and letting players have some options at the start of a major battle.
The planet economy is more sophisticated, we got rid of the ambiguous morale system and replaced it with adjacency bonuses.
We've created strategic resources that certain key types of ships, improvements, wonders require in order to be built so capturing and controlling them matter.
That's just off the top of my head.
2) what is the target HW-SW for playing GC3? Win7-64, Phenom X4-945 + 8GB + Nvidia GT9500 is OK? Since Steam is also planning some linux, is that an option?
64-bit version of Windows 7 or 8 along with a DirectX 10 or 11 compatible video card is all that is known so far.
Regarding, reply 93, other OS besides Windows:
Mac and Steambox support are likely but NOT promised. Depends on the challenge of supporting OpenGL.
3) when do you plan alpha? whan do you plan to move to beta?
Alpha March 27, beta summer.
