Low-replayability

I have a concern about the colonization system, the almagest story, and game re-playability.

I can see myself possibly working on Colonization... once anyways. But after that... why? The game is basically just a giant pile of basically meaningless tasks. Build infrastructure for non-existent people.... why? Be creative. Why? Accomplishing the game means going from A to B to C, and just executing tasks.

I think it's fine if you want to include this kind of playthrough as an option for SE2 players who were never able to get into SE1. I think you'll get a player base bump, and some of those people might eventually move forward and play the game more deeply... which is where your real long term engagement will come from.

Many people who play SE1 do it because they can do as they like. They can play the game they want to play. That's where the re-playability comes in. If people can't mod, they add other peoples mods in, they experiment, mess around. Start again. Different mods. Different game. Create your own game.

It's not good when people are saying basic SE1 game features are missing in SE2, and they'll just wait for the community to FIX it with mods. To me, that means those people already see what you're developing as fundamentally broken.