Dear developers, thank you for reading what the community has to say.

To answer your questions straight up and to add more.

Pace.

I think that there is no huge problem with the pace, but there is one with the AI opponents and the challenge inside the game. The game can be playable as it is in terms of pace; if AIs made just a big of a challenge throughout the game as they did in the first 10 turns - the game would be fun also in the later eras. I didn't encounter a problem "I send an army to the enemy, but it becomes obsolete by the time it reaches the enemy's city", which is a thing in Civ 6 multiplayer, on "online" game speed. Also, let's suppose the AI opponents do not provide a challenge - the game can still be fun if it is hard to maintain a huge empire, if the game itself provides new challenges over the eras.

Aspects of the game that move faster or slower. 

Technologies are researched too fast, civic choices are opened too slow, religion upgrades are okay, build speeds are too fast, buyouts even worse, way too cheap, unit movement speeds are great, except for naval units which are way too slow.

Population growth speeds - I understand the idea behind them (slow to get from 1000 people to 2000 people, fast to get from 10000 people to 11000 people), but I'm not sure if the design is good, because in the game, there are no problems which arise with overpopulation.

Interesting decisions and turns without doing anything.

As buildings are cheap to complete, it was boring to select almost the same set of buildings in each city. To be honest, I occasionally thought "I'd like a governor to build those for me, as it's boring". They're not only cheap in their production cost, but have no upkeep and consume no workforce.

The situation with districts is not much better. If those had more interactions, bonuses were more significant, and there were penalties, it would be more fun. Also, the terrain is too uninteresting for that, "small anomalies" (EL slang) should give big bonuses/penalties to certain districts and to the city overall.

Late game, it was boring to wait until the end of the game, because all technologies were researched and there were no new eras to open. Exploring and expanding to the new continent somewhat diluted the monotony. If the full release's only win condition is to wait until turn 200, and if I'm confident I'm going to win the game by turn 80, the last 120 turns will be boring.

Economy.

Not much to say other than - balancing is all over. It felt that the design was "make everything very powerful, if everything is overpowered, nothing is", but some things inevitably get left out.

For example, a city builds a lot of districts which provide all the food and production... What is the point of citizens, then? If they are all going to be put onto research and money, since extra food production is unneeded and the industry bonus each citizen provides is negligible.

There are many other examples - some civilizations have much weaker bonuses than others, some buildings too, some districts too.

Resources.

A lot of resources and buildings have a stacking a bonus per each copy of resource, but that might be unrealistic and game-breaking. There should be diminishing returns from owning extra copies of the resource.

At the same time, some resources felt worthless. That is related to the low value of food, and in smaller part, the rest of FIMS.

Cost scaling.

There is cost scaling in the game, but it is quite small. City's region can be quite easily covered with districts (which are, sadly not bound to population, unlike Endless Legend). Units have no cost scaling.

Some examples. There can be situations in real life, when each successive thing is easier to produce and has smaller costs. Let's say, a craftsman produces goods, and while doing so, learns to spend less resources.

And there are situations, when the opposite is true. You're building tanks, tanks require steel, there are 1000 tons available from a manufacturer at a reasonable price, the next 1000 tons you need to purchase from another factory at a bigger price, next 1000 tons - import them at a huge price, and so on. You're training spearmen, you get the best and most capable recruits for one army. Now you want a second army, you have to find more people, but to get them to join, you need to offer them a good pay, and spend more effort training them.

You're buying from a market, and while doing so, the supply decreases and the costs go up.

Need for noticeable penalties.

Not just bonuses are fun. Drawbacks are fun too. But there are too few drawbacks in the game, at the moment - from overexpanding, building a lot of units and buildings.

My favorite game is Civilization IV, and one of the things which made it so fun for me was how challenging it was to expand early game, playing on high difficulty.

Cities had upkeep you had to pay every turn just for the city existing - "distance costs" - for the distance to the capital, and the cost for the "number of cities" - it was zero with just one city, small when you had two cities, big with three cities, and so on.

If the player did not pay attention to it and overexpanded, they would literally lose, because their economy would be ruined. Expanding became easier as new technologies were being researched, but with too many cities in the beginning of the game, research was on 0%, 100% of gold was going into city maintenance. The player would become stuck in the ancient era, while other civilizations advanced. And I think that it's fair and fun for the game to be punishing like that.

That was a game inside a game, to find perfect spots and squeeze out the most gold one could, and that prevented city spam, which is almost unrestricted in games like Civ 6 or Alpha Centauri. It was also fun to see how the economy improves over ages, the empire becomes capable to expand. Gold was precious and valued until the end of game.

There are other possible games to add into the game, to keep it fun in later eras. Epidemics, revolutions, pollution. Economic rivalry based on how well one continues to "SimCity" one's districts would be fun.

This is going to be a wall of text, so buckle up as there is gonna be no tl;dr version - and don't say I did not warn you! As there are a lot of systems interconnected, I am going to delve into each category of Era Stars and offer some thoughts on the related features and stuff.

Era Stars

Lets begin with a simple statement - I really like the Era Star system. It is really common experience to be daunted as a new player of 4x by both seemingly unreachable Victory conditions and not knowing how to actually get there. Era Star system is really great, because it: a) guides you through the game by telling you what to do by reducing complex tasks to simple goals (grow some population, build stuff, kill stuff etc.); b) gives you short term goals to reach for that are just enough to be satisfying by themselves while quite easily achievable in a couple of turns; c) gets you to the finish line eventually by following breadcrumbs of the Era Stars. So far, only good.

That said, there are several minor things that Era Stars suffer from:

1) unbalanced categories - some are much easier to get than others - Scientist stars are by far the easiest to get, while Expansionist and to lesser extent Merchant stars are almost unachievable, unless you are steamrolling (I'll get to all that later)

2) not enough clarity - pop-ups as a whole are going for simplicity, but not unlike in ES2, once clicked on there are no detailed screens that would tell me what is really going on - in case of Era Stars, it is really difficult to know for example what Era Star did I get, if it was Bronze or Silver or Gold, or even how much Fame did it bring to me

3) unintuitive gameplay mechanic - players are supposed to race to get 7 Era Stars so I can get to the next era - but in doing so, I am punishing myself, because I lose other 14 Era Stars I could get Fame from - it is not itself bad, but since I follow the game from the beginning, I got to the impression that reaching 7 Era Stars is the main way of playing, only going for more if you are really ahead or can safely get more Era Stars in the next couple of turns; right now in OpenDev, civilization that would go straight for the 7 Era Stars and right to next era would most of the time be the one with rather less Fame at the end (if AI would be willing to get more Stars than 7); that could be helped by couple of mechanics

a) Fame for Era Stars would start to fall of more rapidly once you get to the 7th Era Star, so it would give rather short window of couple turns and than it would be not worth it;

b) Fame for Era Stars would start to fall of more rapidly every time some culture goes to Next Era (not in the cases someone from behind gets to your Era etc.);

c) Fame of other players/AIs would be hidden until the end of game or shown only briefly upon entering Next Era - having all the time exact information about Fame and Era Stars of the others players, it really takes all the risks from overstaying in the Era - barring the edge cases, most of the time I can be pretty sure I can postpone getting into Next Era and reap more Fame without punishment of other civilization snatching my favourite Culture (that is right now one of the few reasons to get to the Next Era ASAP - other ones being first to claim next era Wonder or getting ahead in technology)

Agrarians and Food

I start with the simple one. I like Agrarians, I like their rather peaceful nature and their ability, it goes right up my alley. But I noticed the Agrarian ability bar is filling really slowly in this build, making it most time unrealistic to use the ability before I get the 7th Era Star - especially in the case of Ancient era. At least one use of Ability like this in each Era should be guaranteed, when I focus on Food production, I feel it could get me to 2 or even 3 uses of the ability. That said Mother's Milk seems to be in most cases stronger than the Land of Plenty (which right now shares the exact name with Haudenosaunee), not mentioning the later giving your neighbors Grievances against you - either Mother's Milk could be nerfed (for example make it only usable in one City) or make Land of Plenty stronger, since it already carries the downside of Grievance. Personally, I would prefer the nerfing of Mother's Milk and making the Agrarian ability more spammable to compensate for that - it would be a more flavourful and strategic decision than "no brainer" button-push for more population everywhere.

I see many players complaining Food builds are utterly useless in this build. I rather felt it was quite difficult to grow my population in the Ancient era, if not having really rich exploitations or heavily focusing on the Farmers Quarters (especially true for Unadministered cities with 0 or 1 population, that are almost unable to grow on their own), but by the time I got to Medieval and Early Modern, growth was steadily every other turn without me even building any new Extensions or Infrastructures. While I think similar progression is quite fine, it could be good to bring something like growing demand for Food per Population in later Eras to slow population growth a bit down.

Agrarian Era Stars thresholds seem to be sometimes too easy, sometimes ok - while I was able to get at least Bronze one regularly in every Era in every gameplay, they were rather limited in later Eras, especially the Silver and Gold one, by the soft cap on the Population Growth - it was both weird to get Bronze Agrarian Era Star right on the turn I got to the Ancient era (by having exploiting Neolithic era gameplay) and to barely reach Bronze Agrarian Era Star in Classical as Celts (as I got 7 other Era Stars before it, even tho I was building Nemetons on every free hilltop).

Builders and Industry

I think early Industry is rather fine, but it is quite easy to get really big yields by Exploitations alone, especially if coupled with one of the early Infrastructures. While building one district in your first City can take on average 5 turns, even with growing Production costs it gets to the point where new Extensions and Infrastructures are built multiple in one turn. There is lot of much better posts about how Industry can get out of hands pretty quickly and reach insane numbers. I will focus my thoughts on something else instead: maintenance cost of Extensions and Infrastructures. Thinking you can build something like Pyramids or Canal District in the Ancient era and have them functioning the same way without any regular maintenance till the Contemporary era is just silly. If each Extension and Infrastructure had it's innate maintenance Industry cost, that would scale with the technology level needed (i.e. the later it is available on the tech tree, the more would it cost to maintain it), it would steadily chip on the Industry production similarly how Population consumes Food.

It also seems weird that I can build a new District of the City faster than train for example Promachoi - it might help to make units a bit cheaper, incentivising the conflict amongst the players a bit.

I only used Builder ability a couple of times, but I think in order to make it properly shine, regular Industry production needs to be nerfed a bit. There should be clear windows of opportunity to click on the Builder button - like building the Wonder or expanding city quickly to get the Era Stars. Speaking of Era Stars - it might be caused by my particular gameplay style, but Builder Era Stars seemed like the one of easiest and most consistent I could get, secondly only to the Science - having both multiple means to get them (Production, Buyout and Conquest) and direct control over that (in contrast with Population Growth, which is both capped and with Conquest reducing the number of available Population).

Scientists, Science and Technologies

I'll start by saying it outright - right now, while at much reasonable pace than in earlier OpenDevs, Technologies are the biggest offender causing the fast game pace:

1) Even without focusing on Science production, simply by placing my CCs next to the Science Exploitations, I am able to progress pretty fast through the Technology tree.

2) Because of that, I can most reliably get the Golden Scientific Era Star almost in every era (if I don't settle my cities next to the Science tiles, I get the Silver Star at worst); that alone is 3/7 of Era Stars required to progress to Next Era without even needing Scientist culture.

3) By simply slowing down the Technology progress (increasing the Technology cost), it would bring more balance by slowing Era progression and giving more opportunity to build all the juicy new Units and Infrastructures unlocked by Technologies, before they become outdated and negligible in effect; it would also make Scientist Era Stars much more precious to get and actually give reason to pick Scientist and use Science ability (which right now seems rather like an overkill most of the time).

4) With mechanics like Technology osmosis, there is no need to worry that some civilizations would be left severely behind if they don't focus directly on Science; with catch-up mechanics like Technology osmosis already in place, there is no worry about some civilization being left behind with outdated technologies, even if said civilization would neglect Science production.

As for sources of Science, there were quite a lot of them in the current OpenDev map, making it rather easy to find a place for CC that would Exploit not only one, but in many cases two different tiles with Science yield. That said, I would say there is a place for early Infrastructure that would give something like „+5 Science on Exploitation.“ – just because right now, there is little reason to go for +3 Science tile Exploitation with Research Quarter if it possible to get more from adjacency to Makers Quarters – which is rather low by itself and many times it seems more reasonable to fill the spot with another Makers Quarter and make more Industry instead of trying to get some little Science from it. I know there is the Cabinet of Curiosities, but it comes rather late to make it worth it to focus on Exploiting Science early. There is also lacking any Infrastructure that would boost adjacency yields from the Makers Quarters (at least up to the Early Modern included). With all that said, any Infrastructure pales in comparison to School – extremely cost effective source of Science.

(I would get to this point once discussing each culture, but I’ll put it also here for convenience; one way to utilize early Science Exploitations would be to give for example Greeks LT that would give „+5 (+10) Science on Exploitation“ – making them masters of inquisitive minds.)

Merchants, Money, Luxuries and Trading

Right now, Money making seems in a rather weird spot.

For most cultures, sources of Money generation are rather limited for several reasons:

1) There are not many natural sources of Money – all of them being Luxury Resources.

2) Market Quarters are rather weak right now – they give only small adjacency bonus to Harbours and Artisans Quarters, while getting little adjacency from Farmers Quarters (even with Food Market Infrastructure).

3) Other early Infrastructures give very little Money for the investment, only exception being Fishmonger, which boosts Harbours, making it unusable on landlocked Territories; in first OpenDev, there was Infrastructure Tanning Racks, that would give Money for each Territory on City, and also Fishmonger would give Money on River; while both of the mentioned Infrastructure effects combined might be too much for early Money production, only one of them could be really useful to have on hand.

4) There are Traders which can be used for early Money production, but them being tied to Market Quarters and Market Quarters being rather weak limits their usage.

5) Trade is probably one of the biggest sources of Money – problem being it seems to be another instance of invisible power; there is no place I can come and see how much Money am I earning by Trade if any. At first, it seems that I just have to pay (an early pretty hefty) pile of Money to get access to Luxury Resource. Where did that Money go? Did I just give it to the owner of Luxury, or was it to set up Trading Posts and invisible infrastructures? As it depends on the distance between trading parties, it would seem so. But is there any profit I get from on-going Trades? Some features (Infrastructures, LTs and EQs) are doing miracles from on-going Trades, but is there any base income from it even without them? So many questions and so little answers. In some games, there is a dedicated map showing all Trade Routes and Trading posts, making it easier to visualize the complex money making engine, so that is certainly one way to tackle this clarity issue.

It is not helping that Merchant ability, being passive and the way it works now, offers yet another invisible background power that is hard to appreciate properly. In a way, Merchant ability works like a Legacy Trait – you can Trade resources in the Ancient era for half price and still have the Luxury/Strategic Resource accessed by the time you get to the Contemporary era.

With all that said, as Money generation is one of the most difficult ways to earn Era Stars even for Ancient Era Merchant cultures (most of the time as Phoenician and Nubia, I didn't even get the Bronze one), there might be some ways to help with early Money generation.

One of the ways could be to introduce Infrastructure with „+ Money on Exploitation“ earlier than in Early Modern Era – by the time it gets to game, it feels rather underwhelming as Great Fishmarket surpasses it several times an era Earlier (with Coastal and Lake tiles being much more abundant than Luxuries in their distribution, it would be reasonable to boost Luxuries earlier).

It is rather silly, that most Merchant Era Stars I got were while playing Militarist cultures, as Ransacking is the most easily available source of Money early on (together with Mammoths).

On the other hand, the Classical era and later Merchants seems to be rather on the strong side right now. If coupled together, consecutive Merchants can get out of the hands in Money generation pretty quickly. Their playstyle offers little downside, since they can construct almost anything with cheap Buyout costs, they can buy all Luxuries bringing incredible boosts to other parts of their economy.

There are few great posts about Merchant exploits, so I am going to focus mainly on Buyout and Luxuries here.

Buyout offers little downside from the Merchant’s point of view. They can pile up unimaginable amounts of Money and then just throw them on the Cities to build and produce anything they wish. While increasing all Buyout costs might hinder the early usage (which is definitely not the one that is making it problematic), it might be possible to introduce „inflation“ – when you Buyout, you increase the cost of all consecutive Buyouts in the same turn – that way, Buying-out one or two assets might be still easy to manage, but 10 or more should be rather difficult (if there is such feature already, I did not notice it).

Luxury Resources right now are really fun to play with, each of them providing a small boost to some yield and Stability. While some of Luxuries probably need to be nerfed a bit, as they are really cost effective, it could be balanced by making them rarer, only showing in single quantity and/or in distant or otherwise poor Territories (i.e. Deserts, Tundra, Arctic, Badlands, Islands) – it might already be in place but I could not experience it in OpenDev. What I think is problematic is stacking of Luxuries, as they can easily surpass many LTs. One way would be to simply nerf them, but it could also be made that any copy of Luxury apart from the first one would only boost Stability, not giving other yields – that would make it still valuable, but little bit less than now, when grabbing all the available Luxuries not only boosts Money generation, but well everything else too.

Aesthetes, Influence and Wonders

I apologize in advance, as this one will be a little bit clunky and tangled… While I really like Aesthete affiliation, it is in a very difficult spot now as Aesthetes juggle with Influence, which itself has a bit of an identity crisis.

Right now, there are only two ways how to spend Influence: Claiming Wonders and Territorial Expansion (i.e. Creating Outpost, Attaching Territories, Merging Cities). With later being done by Money in earlier OpenDev builds, I think Aesthetes (as their name suggests) were meant to be about Claiming Wonders. They can still do that, but they also became somewhat better in Territorial Expansion than the other Affinities (including Expansionists) as they simply have more Influence to do so.

As I played ES2 and bit of EL, where Influence represents mainly Political Power, I have a feeling that Influence in Humankind wanted to be represent Culture, but with Civics (generated by Stability) already in place, it landed somewhere in between, creating thematic dissonance as a result.

From that, most of the other minor problems and hiccups sprung.

1) Aesthete Era Star is generated by Influence production, but said production, especially early, is severely limited – and this is probably because it is tied also to Territorial Expansion and this is done mainly to limit it early.

2) Some of Aesthetes have one or more special ways of generating Influence (either by LTs or EQs) – but Zhou and Mauryans have none and they have really difficult time to get their Era Star as a result; on the other way, Egyptians, Romans and Goths have all better ways to get Influence then mentioned early Aesthetes.

3) Early base Influence production is really low, with new CCs being the most easily accessible source. That leads to a strange situation (together with new reworked Olmecs LT I will talk about somewhere else), where the easiest way to make Influence is Territorial Expansion – and that is coincidentally also the way to spend Influence, making it snowballing a positive feedback loop.

4) With all the early Influence going into the Territorial Expansion, it can be sometimes difficult to Claim first Wonder – which is what Aesthetes kinda thematically are about.

I wish there were other ways to spend Influence, as by the time of Ming or Edo Japanese or Venetians, generation of Influence is so high it is possible to Claim all the Wonders (realistically, with only 4 Wonders per Era, if there are 8 players, it is reasonable to get one or two Wonders, even three sometimes, but all four was nigh impossible). Besides that, if there are no Territories to attach (which is incredibly cheap – I will get to that with the Expansionists), the only option to spend Influence is by Merging all Cities into one gargantuan megalopolis.

It does not help that Aesthete abilities make little usage of Influence. Both of them have their own problems: Firstly, Tourism Yields – until I played Aesthete and saw this ability, I did not have a knowledge about some „Tourism“ and honestly, even now I do not really think I get it either. Apparently, there is some Money generation for each Territory under my Cultural Influence? And now I can double the yields? Well, it is not really a satisfying experience to just push a button to get more Money, as it lacks any explanation, context or visualization. How are the yields calculated in the first place?

Then there is Influence Bomb ability, which converts instantly one Territory under Aesthete‘s Cultural Influence, which is another of the rather poorly visible game mechanics for several reasons (it happens on separate screen, it’s mechanics only superficially readable). There are two uses of this ability – to gain Grievances to demand converted Territory, or to prepare me more Culturally Dominated Territories to make more from the future Tourism Yields… while both abilities seem powerful, they don’t convey the thematic feeling of Aesthete that much for me, and don’t help with achieving Aesthete Era Stars at all. (Thinking about it, Tourism Yields makes sense for someone like Contemporary Aesthete Brazilians, less for Olmecs or Zhou – maybe simple renaming could work?)

Lingering a bit with Cultural Dominance, there is a powerful mechanic of Cultural Osmosis going on – being Culturally Dominated by other culture can force them to either change their culture (Civics) or suffer Stability hit. While this is again pretty powerful and thematic mechanic, it utilizes Influence only passively, not giving any possibility to spend Influence directly. This seems to be the biggest problem of Influence – most of it is passively working in background doing miracles, but Era Star incentivizes actively gaining stockpiles of Influence with really limited options to spend it (on the other hand, Money are purely active, while Stability is purely passive, making Influence once again kinda torn between the two worlds).

With my current knowledge of the game mechanics, I see no other easy and clear way to make Influence more thematically in line with Aesthetes. It does not interact with either Religion or Civics, which have some of the overlap with it thematically. In some way, it fights with Stability – from the thematic sense, Influence could be spent for Civic points (but that would need much reworking of other mechanics). It is generated by Pottery Workshop, Teather and Festival, but somehow helps in Territorial Expansion, stealing spotlight from Expansionists. Until there are some other mechanics that would enable spending of Influence and make it more thematically about Cultural achievements (besides Wonders), I am afraid Aesthetes will get the raw deal here.

(Okay, one small idea that additionally occured to me: if there would be short time City boosts that would be activated by Influence, it would be both a way to utilize excessive Influence and thematically fitting for Aesthetes. Heck, it could even use already existing Repeatables, only they would be a bit stronger and would be only activated for several turns and would not stack, like projects. When I think about it, Feast, Holy Day, Games, Parade, Festival… they are all Cultural projects and would be fitting to be Influence based.)

Militarists and Combat

This is gonna be short, I promise! I like Militarists. Their ability is highly thematic and the power is visible. Only downside being produced Units are the weakest sort, they can still be powerful. I find it difficult to use in the Ancient era, when City populations are low, but once you get to Medieval, instant access to several armies is nothing to ridicule. Especially if you can get to the Medieval Era sooner than others, you can get a stronger version of Militias that can be on par with most of the Units of the earlier Era, giving the upper edge. If there would be a possibility to upgrade Militias to regular Units somehow, it might be more satisfying, but also overpowered.

Getting Era Stars for Unit Kills is also awesome. Not unlike the Expansionist, it is great that the only way to deny Militarist Era Stars is by Retreating or any other way of stalling the war. And there are always Independent People and Animals to sate the bloodlust.

Expansionists and Territorial Expansion

This is the tough one. Expansionist Era Stars are by far the most difficult to get – most of the time, even with Expansionists, I got none. It ties to several of the problems, I will try to discuss them together with some brainstorming about possible ways to solve them.

1) Territorial Expansion is complicated process – first you have to have Army and go to empty Territory with enough Influence in stockpile, than you build the Outpost (each consecutive costs more and more Influence), wait some time, depending on your Army size (I think), until the Outpost is completed, and finally you decide what to do with the Outpost: you either let it be for the time being, you let it slowly develop some Extensions or itself into the City, or you just throw some Money at it making it into the City in the notime.

2) Expansionists get Era Stars by Territories owned, i.e. they must be either City itself or Attached to one, giving no benefit from the Outposts themselves; right now, there is no reason to leave your Outpost as Outpost, if you have Money or Influence at hand – one possible solution would be to get Outposts not attached to your Territories count for Expansionist Era Star – after all, you had to spend lot of time and resources into making them, right?

3) Creating Outpost costs Influence (used to be Money in earlier OpenDevs) and it brings a bit of thematic dissonance I talk above in Aesthetes part. The price is low and starts to grow linearly, limiting early Expansion, but doing little to slow it later. Thematically Expansionists should be the ones able to Expand easily, but right now, Aesthetes are.

4) Attaching Outpost costs Influence – but the price is pretty low. Right now, one of the easiest and cheapest ways to boost the economy of the early city is to attach another Territory. If Expansionist Era Stars would also count unattached Outposts, it would be possible to increase the price for Attaching Territories (like 5-10fold).

5) In one of the first Feature Focuses, Devs talked about Outposts and I loved it – the idea presented was that once you create Outpost, it stays like this for some time vulnerable, and you have to protect it for some time until it grows enough to become a City. Right now, the process skips right from the setting of Outpost to New City/Attached territory just in a turn or two. If it would take some time, it would be more high risk/high reward gameplay I would expect from Expansionists, rather than how pretty safe it is right now (given you have very little amount of gold for instant City building).

6) I liked how Colonies worked in ES2 - once you establish one, you send there some Food and/or Money from nearby Planets to speed up the process, but it would always take at least a couple of turns until completed. It could easily work like that in Humankind, even with Outpost race where two Empires set up Outposts and try to be the first to claim the Territory (this would work rather badly with Outpost being counted for Era Stars, I admit).

7) If Outposts would stay for a bit longer and would be viable on their own, there could be some new mechanics possible. For example, if there was actual number of turns it would take for Outpost to become City, Expansionists could have second ability, that would let them throw the pile of Money to do it instantly, making them uniquely apt at making new Cities (right now, best chances have Aesthetes).

8) (Another) If the Outposts are more expensive to Attach, there would be more Cities, and it would make sense to make Merge Cities ability a bit cheaper (which is what a lot of people complained about).

Ok, a lot of speculations and daydreaming on my part. Point here is, that Expansionist ability as it is now is really situational (i.e. have to have ability to waltz into enemy Territory during Peacetime and sit for couple of turns on their Outpost/CC), Expansionist Era Stars are really hard to get (even for Expansionist) and similarly to Aesthetes, Expansionists suffer from lack of the clear path to get them (mainly from the lack of Influence that is now required to Territorial Expansion).

EDIT: Bold.

I felt the game could advance much more fast than I liked. I waited to have almost all stars before moving era, mainly because the other leaders would not move era before I did (and I noticed that as well regarding the installation of a second outpost in Ancient Era), so I made profit of all this available time to gain fame, given that we had to wait until turn 150 for the victory and for reaching the feedback form.

Given that, my main complaint would be the sensation to quickly have cities producing more of everything than needed so no more objectives:

1. 1 pop/turn (food -> doesn't matter),
2. a district every 2 turns or multiple infrastructure/ceremony every turn, a shared wonder in 3 turns (tedious to manage on 10 cities -> no need for more production)
3. I was able to unlock more than half of the next era technologies immediately with the accumulated science (science -> doesn't matter) - I think I had more than 50000 accumulated science when I reached Early modern era,
4. I only could have more money (but for which usage?) as I didn't focus on it, but I heard it can be as abundant as the others FIMS.