It's been a few weeks since the release. I've squashed the immediate bugs, and while I'm generally very happy with the state of the game, it's clear that the conquest mode needs improvement.
I've gone through hundreds of recent reviews and forum threads and collected all your feedback about the conquest mode. Reading through everything that's wrong with my game was a bit... emotionally draining, but I got through it and have put together a list of the biggest issues that I think I need to address:

• Conquest starts out hard, with lots of opponents to fight, and then becomes very easy once you have a big enough fleet to steamroll everyone.
• Some enemy ship designs are very weak, and once you do have a big enough fleet, your ship designs don't matter very much.
• The mechanics around attacking, intercepting, and fleeing cause a lot of back and forth with little progress for either side in a war.
• Town defenses and counter-espionage are both expensive and not very fun.
• It doesn't really matter where you attack because all cities just give you extra income.