After playing the scenario several times now (around 5) the biggest thing I've noticed is that we get a million choices but there are very few that feel impactful. I never had an experience where I researched a technology and thought "this is going to radically alter my gameplay". Same with buildings. I never built something and felt "wow, that was amazing" with the exception of wonders which did feel amazing. I feel like this might be an issue with fame and era stars because I never felt forced to persue a strategy in order to unlock era stars, they sort of just happened to me without me doing anything. I want to feel like it's important if I build one infrastructure over another, or that if put my resources into maximizing production that it will pay off, or that in order to unlock era stars I should have to work for it. In addition, most emblamatic quaters felt pretty much the same as generic quaters, and investing in building them didn't feel any stronger than just building a generic one. However, the celts quater felt amazing to build and I felt like I could choose their culture just for that quater, it felt very fun to build. Additionally it felt to me that choosing which resource citizens worked didn't do much because most of my yields came from extensions or exploited tiles. If I was stagnating, I could just attach a region rather than assigning farmers, and so I just put my citizens in money for the most part.

There were a few areas where I did feel like my choices mattered a lot and I did feel like they altered my gameplay. Choosing a culture is done very well and It did make me stop and think for a while about which one I would choose, weighing the benefits of their legacy trait and culture type, and it is one of my favorite parts of the game. It doesn't feel like a reward for getting era stars, but it is still very fun. Secondly civics and events are just amazing. I love ideologies and civics because they made me actually stop and think. I had to the bonuses civics and events gave me with the ideology I wanted and I felt that some civics would have long lasting impacts on my gameplay. Trying to balance my ideology with the civics I wanted was incredibly fun, and combining it with the culture choices, I really felt like I could build any playstyle I wanted to. Seriously, civics are by far my favorite part of the game.

I want to say that I don't think this an issue with the core gameplay elements, just an issue with balance. Maybe the game is balanced better for all 6 eras, and since we are only getting a snapshot it feels wrong, and I am very much looking forward to the game, but I thought I would share my opinions.