Since GCII I didn't like the terran race their ships and many of their planet improvements (icons).

I have always dreamed and asked in GC3 the planets to be treated as real planets with multiple cities expanding over the time and introducing new buildings of course with some limitations, in buildings and population. I never liked the sector type maps and building a single improvement in a whole sector.

It's more like small bases in space rather planets or even cities very unrealistic and old fashioned from games perspective in 2014.

Does it work? Sure it does and it was ok so far but I expected something much better today especially from a 64bit game.

So since it's the same again I thought to suggest some things I made on GC2. A mod I made in combination with HRGM 2.0 and some other graphic only mods such as ship models.

I never made public my mod because it's been always in beta and I had some bugs.

In all strategy games I was always focused on research. To research as much and as fast as possible become better and stronger before anyone else. I was avoiding conflicts and focused improving my planets, economy and so on. When someone declared war on me I had already very strong research capabilities and stable economy. Researching weapons especially on the first stages it was a piece of cake sometimes I could research 2-3 advacements in one turn.

Eventually I was so strong my population was exceeding other races by far also economy and research it was a matter of time to win a game and I never lost one up to tough difficulty.

So I did win many times over and over I decided to make my games more interesting. Since I love techs and research I introduced more cool looking buildings and some great techs.

The icons are not my design since I can't do 3D so I find them on the internet and that's also a reason I did not upload my mod. I only manipulated, changed them to my liking and to fit in game.

1st : Atmosphere Generator. Researching the technology gives you the ability to colonize barren and toxic worlds. The improvement gives you a 3 tile bonus.

2nd : Biosphere Researching the technology gives you the ability to colonize aquatic worlds. The improvement gives you 1 tile bonus you lose one you get it back, but it acts like a small city with morale, economy and food bonus.

Ecos.png is the Ecosystem Control. It's the last technology on extreme planet colonization tree and bit expensive both research and building.
The technology gives you the ability to colonize toxic worlds at 100% and the improvement gives you 6 tiles bonus.

All above improvements can be built only one per planet. A max of +8 usable tile bonus.

Factory improvements with different names such as Robot Factory, Android Factory, Replication Center and IPU (Intelligent Production Unit) the ultimate and expensive factory that has very low maintanance and high production capacity. 

Farm 1 is called Tower Farm and gives you a +4 food bonus
Farm 2 is called Replication Farm and gives you a +8 food bonus plus +4 morale bonus due to exceptional food quality  

H-Morale4.png is the Unimatrix with +50 morale bonus is a highly advanced AI machine that contains all the knowledge culture, entertainment, science etc.
It's the ultimate morale improvement.

PlanetShield.png obviously it improves planet's defense.

And the last 2 improvements are the most important ones. Star City and Starport Center.
Starport Center was created to upgrade Starport but due to game's limitations that was not possible so it was set for economic bonus and influence.

Star City upgrades normal cities but with higher bonuses. And whenever you colonize a planet first build a colony and only later you can upgrade the colony to Star City when you have the production capacity.

All the other improvements are just graphic alternatives.

For techs I changed the extreme planet colonization tech tree with another more realistic.
Humans have already terraformed Mars in the past so that gives them experience and a head start 50% for barren worlds. Atmosphere Generator improves that by 100% and those of toxic by 50%. Aquatic worlds with Biospheres at 50% and Aquatic World Transformation at 100%. Nano Cloud 1 and 2 100% for toxic and up to 100% for radioactive worlds.
Gravity Generator 1 and 2 for heavy gravity worlds up to 100%.

Special ships called speeders they are small up to medium size and they have a speed bonus 3-4.

A space probe tiny size smaller than game's tiny sizes very cheap it can be used as a scout. Research miniaturization tech and you can load an engine and survey module. A smaller version with reduced range.

An Ultra Huge ship from Star Wars the Star Destroyer, very very big and very very expensive. The Ultimate Star Fortress I called it since it could carry lots and lots of guns and many engines to travel ultra fast.

Transwarp Drive and Vortex Generator. Ultra fast engines up to +18 speed bonus last in the space drives tech branch making traveling from one point of the map to the other really quick!

Invasion Tactics: Genesis Device and Thalaron Radiation. (yes Im a trekkie )

Genesis Device destroys everything on a planet both population and improvements while Thalaron Radiation it just eliminates all the population.

Finally Researching the last stages of research branch it does not give you a research victory but huge bonuses economy, morale, influence at some point all the other races will have no other option but to submit to you.

Other mod changes were ships (Star Wars and Star Trek:Enterprise)
Mars terrain was a terraformed version and planet quality at 10, Earth at  16.
Political party that was focused on research and a balanced bonus in economy, morale and production.

I posted this to show my ideas and how I was playing for more than a year and hoping some ideas might be introduced in GC3.