Just a quick note: In another thread you were asking if we could think of anything that might be a hindrance to the release date when it was still early June (probably thinking about Diablo 3 launch a while back).
Well, if you push it to July, I would be concerned about the Steam Summer Sale coming up. There are rumours floating around, but as far as I know only Valve knows when it will be and will not announce it that much in advance.
During Summer Sale the whole Steam pages will be full of AAA titles with massive discounts in a way that new releases will probably just get drowned. And after the sale I am afraid many people (if they are like me) spent more money than they intended and will probably not be willing to "impulse-buy" a game cruising by.
Just saying - a release early July might be feasible, but I would be careful in pushing it more than that.
That said, I am definitely looking forward to this one, I love 4X games and I am really excited to see what you will make of it. Since I have very little time at the moment, I'll skip Beta this time and buy it when it's done. :-)
Cheers,
Ipkins