First to the devs: THANK YOU for giving us the opportunity to give feedback on the development process! Amplitude has been one of the most inclusive game studios with their game development. I love it. Here are some of my thoughts on the Lucy OpenDev so far: 

Independent cities: I like how they pop up randomly on the map - it keeps each game fresh and interesting. Patronizing independent cities is much like Endless Space 2, using gold and influence to improve relations. The various meters don’t have tooltips that pop up when I mouse over them, so I don’t know what each meter means. I also wish that independent cities gave yield bonuses similar to Endless Space 2. Right now the only option is to assimilate them.

The event that gives a +7 bonus to unit strength is absolutely insane, given that most boosts are in the range of +1, maybe +2. This is completely broken: I took advantage of it to decimate an AI in one game; in another game, an AI opponent wrecked my capital with a +7 advantage and the same units as my defenders (swordsmen and archers).

I have an issue with melee combat units being able to attack units inside of a fortified city. Example: An AI put my city under siege, to which I responded with a sortie immediately. I didn’t want siege weapons coming into play to knock down my stone walls. The AI melee units (swordsmen) were able to attack units inside of my city walls even though the walls were still intact. This was an issue that I expressed with Endless Legend too. 

It might be nice to have a replay button on combat, similar to Age of Wonders: Planetfall. In that game, you can press ‘auto resolve’ and if you don’t like the outcome, you can play through combat manually. Manual combat can be replayed as many times as you like. 

AI thoughts: 

-Casual difficulty AI were more passive with military. Normal difficulty AI were more aggressive, they utilized surprise wars to great effect, and AI tactics on normal seemed stronger. 

-Normal difficulty AI were much more efficient gathering era stars than casual AI. My first game, on casual, I came in second at the end of the game. The orange AI came in first and beat me by about 1000 era score.

More as I continue playing.