1. Space combat seems to be a little better than in DWU, but still not really seeing fleets fight beyond a mob. Still seeing escorts charge in a few times by themselves, and not as a group
Stellaris still has a massive edge in this area
2. You can see the racial make up of a planets population, but I yet to find where you can see this at the empire level.
There is also not policy setting for not allow specified races from colonizing. In the first game, I have incorporated an independent colony of Ackdarian. That was good as they could colonies ocean worlds for me.
Later, I met up with an empire of Ackdarians. Next thing I knew, I had colonizes of them revolting with no warning that they were not happy
3. In the other game, I invaded two IC's with Gizurean. They really don't get along with humans. But when I went to colonize some desert or volcanic worlds, the colony ships was using them. Why would I want a race that doesn't like humans to colonize a large number of planets within my empire. You cannot designate which race to use to colonize a planet
4. Space monsters are everywhere, even on the default setting
5.And pirates are way to easy to bribe for protection. Never seen one charge more than 125 credits
6. Even with over half of my colonies in negative revenues, I'm still gaining large amounts of cash, simply because my civilian economy is so strong