Hi,

Just wanted to give some comments on the opendev and really appreciate the chance of getting to try out the game. Did a few runs that I really enjoyed after which the scenario felt too repetitive. Haven't had the time to read through all other posts so may be some repetition to what others have already commented.

- I really liked the idea of being forced to explore the map before settling. However, after trying a few starts I couldn't really figure out any real benefit to not just getting down one or a few outposts as soon as possible and farming a handful of scouts before choosing a culture. A scouthoarding strategy could probably be viable but it doesn't feel like that's what the game is designed for. The game to my understanding didn't really have any punishment on the number of units (for instance unit maintenance), or then I missed it, which could be beneficial.

- Despite the thousands of different culture combinations I found myself always picking one or two of the same cultures in a certain era as certain unique buildings felt kind of overpowered (Baray most definitely)

- Quarters are really unbalanced. I would typically spam makers quarters and never build the commerce quarters. Early buildings that enable construction not adjacent to the city or quarters adjacent to the city such as the canal network also felt quite strong in the early game. I kind of liked the idea of the hamlets in not being able to expand too far within the territory before reaching them, and limiting construction only to tiles next to the city or quarters adjacent to the city would certainly add some more complexity in choosing city locations.

- The citizen system appears rather neglected. The -1 population on unit production is understandable and takes some toll really early on but the impact quickly diminishes. At least due to certain overpowered quarters I found that I could easily be up to around 60 pop in cities and with 600+ production pumping out several units per turn without my population suffering notably. Maybe scaling up the unit population cost with eras or tecnhology could by something to consider. I also found (probably due to certain overpowered quarters) that the yields from population is rather meager compared to that of quarters/extractions etc.

- The stability system is good but I felt like it wasn't sufficient. I felt like I rarely had to give too much thought to quarter's construction, especially once commons quarters were available. A hexagon of Baray's with a commons quarter in the middle would give insance yields with net-zero stability if I understood it correctly.

- My overall largest concern with the game (of course based only on the opendev) is that after a few 100+ turn runs the game felt extremely repetitive. I'm not sure what you have in store for the future but a victory based on 150 turns of play and highest score wins feels kind of dull. As a player I like to try and play as efficiently as possible and for me this kind of takes some of the value of the idea of having a lot to choose from. This is of course mainly true against the more predictable AI and not so much pvp. Victory conditions/types would certainly give some more flavour to the game. I also came to the point were after 80 turns I would simply be spamming all infrastructure in the build queue as I grew tired of managing building construction as all things would be complete in 1-2 turns anyway.

- The AI is really easy. I was stomping the hardest AI on my second playthrough. They seem to have a tendency to give over territory very easily just by making a claim and having some scouts. Didn't really try to figure out if there is some system for the AI feeling inferior militarywise and thus handing them over easier but if there is it is probably not very balanced.

- The system with vassals seems a bit broken. An AI vassal was claiming territory next to my border which did not cause grievances and I could not attack them. I attacked the AI ruling the vassal which still wouldn't let me attack the vassal although I think the diplo screen said we are at war.

- It would be good to get some more guidelines somewhere in the game on what are the requirements for being able to place a quarter.

- An always show constructible option would be nice, did not really like clicking it every time I was looking to building something new in a city

- The auto-explore function could do with some fine-tuning as I keep getting unit killed in the sea due to the lost at sea function

- The game really really needs a quick move function or then I am just bad at looking

- The enemy retreat system seems a bit odd and couldn't quite figure out how it worked. I sometimes found the enemy retreat into my territory although I was technically blocking them and they just ran around.

- I also had my wonder ransacked by an enemy after which it disappeared, which seems rather stupid.

- I could not figure out if there was a way to remove quarters. The AI had built a quarter on an iron deposit and I was not able to improve it after that.

- Embarked unit movement points appear to be one more than the maximum, the visual shows a maximum movement distance once hovering but after clicking it goes up by one.

- I couldn't get the hang of naval transports. For instance cogs say that they can transport units but once combined the unit movement goes down to that of the land unit

- I started to get lags on the game towards the mid to late game on one run when I started filling my tiles with Barays. My computer should not be an issue, I'm well above recommended requirements. Saved and restarted and it worked fine again for a while.

- Had some bugs on religion with weird display names showing up and the religion disappearing completely

Of course there was a lot of good with the game and I have really been looking forward to it for months now. The combat system was arguably my favourite part although the AI unfortunately didn't put up too much of a fight. I really hope that there is much more to the game as the opendev actually left me a little disappointed. With the current implementations on the victory system and city improvement construction in general it does not feel like a game I would put more than 50 hours on and I was really hoping for this game to become a solid option to the Civ franchise (where my hours are in the thousands).

I realize I may sound a bit harsh on the comments but I am really rooting for you guys!