I think there's a fair amount of regret going on - Frogboy has shared how he would have prioritised certain things differently had he been more hands on from Day 1. For instance, he'd have had the Civilization Designer in from the start and added the Ship Designer later.
My main beef is there doesn't seem to have been a "This is how the economy is going to work and no way, no how, are we going to change the basic structure. Build on it and improve it as needed, but ignore the haters and stick with the road we choose!" attitude Same attitude the team should have had with every other aspect of GalCiv3. For now, It feels a bit "Here's a new thing! Cool, isn't it? Um....Yeah...Didn't see the consequence arising. Yes, it goes against how it worked before, sorry to those of you who liked it but we prefer this new system".
To be clear, I like some of the new stuff, Citizens especially - and yes, they can do what they want as they want to create a game they want to play but from a consistancy point of view, that mechanism should either have been in from the beginning or left for GalCivIV. As should all other mechanism changes.
The mechanism changes also lead to either unintended consequences or intended consequences that haven't been thought through and implimented completely. The issue with buildings v population, for example and how they affect production. If farms and cities provide a bigger boost to all types of production - Wealth, Research, Manufacturing etc - then, great, how ever many hours of work in designing the factories, research labs, entertainment centres etc etc become useless because people will just build farms and cities and have a happy, productive civilization. They should have been removed from the game or balanced better.
I disagree that the game isn't playable but I'm not good enough at 4X to take advantage of any "Gamebreaking" bugs yet. I know there's an argument that you shouldn't take advantage of them, but also you could argue they shouldn't exist to take advantage of in the first place. If they are, in fact, bugs rather than intended things....
I still really like the game and am impressed with it and hope there's a major couple of patches left before GalCiv4 0.0.0.2 gets launched and yes, I'd happily be a Founder for that, too.
And it's Mayham as per Paulie Walnuts.