I have encountered two strange things in the last few games. Sometimes I lose control over everything. When this happens, the only thing I can do ist zoom in and zoom out. I can't even move planet around by pressing the mousewheel. I have no idea how to recreate this bug, it just happens. Another thing is that suddenly the economy bar disapperead in the middle of a game. I have no idea how whats wrong with that.
Are you accidentally pressing the button for entering "cinematic mode" ? That kind of sounds like what is happening...
It was space bar, a few patches ago, so may well still be. Have a try next time and see if that's what's happening.
Only kind of slowdown I get is when something big happens, like if I'm zoomed in on a nuke or whatever. Haven't played much of this patch though, so I'll have to give it another go and see. Or are you talking about freezing for apparently no reason?
I had a freeze like that in the opening of a game I was playing. When the game came back my commander had continued to execute my command chain and a bunch of buildings appeared on the screen which hadn't been there previously. I've also been getting a number of "connection lost" issues today.