Overall, I really enjoyed the experience and I am really looking forward for the final release of the game :)

Artwork is beautiful, together with the slight story elements and the neolithic era really creates a nice atmosphere for make belief. There are some really nice design decisions that I haven't seen elsewhere, and it's a huge improvement from Endless Legend (I even went back I played it just to make sure). The merging of outposts, more dynamic placement of districts, combos of placement, unique districts etc. Super fun.

But there are a few points I would like to especially bring out, which, when fixed the right way would make the game a lot better imho:

1) Pace of the game and AI weaknesses.

2) Culture balances and special activated abilities

3) Game rules that are hidden away, opaque, hard to understand

I only played 150 turns once, but afterwards I did try different cultures and strategies, but often quit when I felt like I was dominating too much. But I really enjoyed the early game. It was explosive. At first I thought that the game is pacing too fast, but then I realized that I personally enjoy it quite a lot, and the problem was rather that the AI was left behind really fast, because there were things you could do that would really speed up your progress, which I suppose AI doesn't do, so they almost always were eclipsed by 1 or 2 eras, and that was the fact that turned me off in the end:

 * Let's start from neolithic era, what I found out works really well is splitting troops immediately after gaining a new scout to cover more ground. That means more food, more curiosities etc. Sure you cannot take on a mammoth with 1 guy (usually, under very specific circumstances, you can, which is cool, if you can recognise them), but you can do everything else, hunt deer, pickup curiosities and ransack neutral sanctuaries. And in the last turn try to merge as many single parties who have extra food to perhaps get another pop. 

      * Also, one thing that maybe should not be allowed perhaps, is that when you spawn a new unit, you can take it out from the army and it has 4 moves, so you can use that to extra accelerate the progress. If your lucky, that guy can get another pop the same turn.

 * Skip a few turns before ending Neolithic era. Use them to get a few extra units, and some more influence, which you get an significantly faster rate compared to the very early stages of ancient era. One of the extreme cases I changed to Olmacs having 9 scouts and 160 influence at turn 11. But then I could quickly expand to 5 territories (within the span of the next 5 turns), which otherwise would have been a much slower buildup with a standard 7-9 influence income per turn at start. And after those 5 territories the influence income was some rocking 30-40 per turn :)

 * Make 2 or 3 territory cities to get them up and running significantly faster. It does hit your stability, but the extra production allows you to pump out all the buildings, districts, wonders, holy sites so much faster. Also you have less micro. Also, adding a territory to a city adds 1 pop, so you get the pop growth up faster.

 * Population - currently it works, that the more population you have, the faster the city grows assuming your food levels are the same (plentiful, sustaining, abuntance etc.). Remember those 9 scouts at the end of the neolithic? Well, you can add some of them to your cities. So instead of waiting 20 turns for your next population growing from 1 tp 2, then a 5 pop city for example only requires 5 turns for an extra population. And it quickly starts accelerating from there. That way you will have 20+ cities by turn 50, after that you can easily afford creating some armies, while at first the cost of building a troop is really significant.

 * Afterwards it is just expanding, building, etc. and you can snowball easily, since if there is no outside threat (all AI-s were afraid of me, even if I didn't field any armies), there is nothing to stop you from snowballing.

To sum up, I actually enjoyed the explosive early game, with impactful decisions and choices. The problem currently is that, the AI even at serious level does not offer any challange after you understand most of the rules and try to play optimally.

CULTURE BALANCE

So my thoughts on culture balance. And I think there is a slight difference between Ancient era cultures and the rest.

 * I would say that it is fine if the power level of Ancient era cultures is quite large, why? Currently because of how the neolithic works. Ideally I can get to 5 pop by turn 5 or 6, but then I just have that, 5 pop, very little influence. I could choose and adopt one of the more powerful civilizations, but then struggle a while to get going. Alternatively I could boom in the neolithic and take whatever is left, but I can then grab 5 territories easy, boost my capital to  7 population, get fast religion and so on, and actually surpass or at least equalize with the guy who settled down earlier. Now of course that assumes that there is someone who picks a good culture turn 5, and that person or AI knows what a good culture, but theoretically these two things could balance each other out

 * In the later eras however there is much less of a balance choice you could do. If you manage to be the first to get to the classical era and pick Huns as they are now, well, everyone else (at least your neighbors) are pretty f***ed. And there is little reason or a positive side to leveling up later (maybe farming fame, but since how fame works is quite confusing, I'm not sure about that). That means if you get a OP culture in Classical era, you probably can snowball from there and get an OP culture in the medieval and so on. So the balance is much more important there.

 * Also I really like cultures which are situationally good. Like Zhou, which benefit from cities near mountains because of their special district. Actually that's it, the rest are much less situational, since rivers, and coast are quite common etc.

 * Cultures that rely on market or farmer's quarters currently suck, because so far I can hardly justifying building either, the farmer's one is probably due to the bug of the luxury resource, which makes trying to push for more food completely unnecessary

Special activated abilities

 * influence one is good

 * science one is good

 * industry one I don't see myself using, especially when I am not racing for wonders, because industry is usually stronger than science or commerce anyways

 *  merchant one is barely noticeable

 * War one is also quite useless, since I have no production issues so I would rather spend my pop on good soldiers not militia, + the militia raising is someone who defending from you might need out of desperation or something.

 * Expansionist one sounds good on paper, but currently feels too awkward to use, you need open borders? The opponent cannot be standing on it? I'm not sure if it works while you are at war, I thought it didn't, if it did, it would be an OK ability to help you get around the negotiation limitations, but you could just ransack the outpost and then claim it to yourself for that as well. Propably cheaper and takes less turns. Also, if it happens to you, is there a way to counteract? Maybe by throwing some money against it yourself?

 * Food ones are really good, except for the fact that you cannot use them, at least not while they are good, one play-through I picked the food culture in ancient era, had quite a lot of food left over, but only got to 25 % ready to be used for that ability by the time I hit classical, so by these terms, it is completely useless.

Completely broken civs

 * Huns and Mongols: their special unit is broken, because it can just easily replicate it self through ransacking, battle etc. This just easily gets out of hands. I would say they are easily hands down the most broken things in the current game. Especially the huns, as you get them earlier.

 * Joseon: Their science bonus under certain circumstances, like when you've played as carthage, is just so broken. It can easily triple or quatriple your science, making it a non issue as you push through the science tree with the speed of light.

 * Moghuls: I didn't try them myself, because they looked boring, but I saw the 10 k industry cities others made, albeit you don't need that much industry, it actually doesn't give you much of an advantage over someone with 1000 industry or 500 even, or someone with 5 k gold income, it is still ludicrous.

Things that were really opaque, that I didn't understand at first how they workd, or I never understood how they work:

 * How does the fame point rewards decay for your era stars?

 * The fact that some wonders are also holy sites, cos I was wondering for a long time, why I cannot build additional holy sites even though it said picking a tenant,  + 1 max holy sites.

 * The population growth formula

 * Is there a way to transport troops faster than 2 tiles per turn with the exception of settle, who seem to move faster on water anyways?

 * Trade, and trade related buildings, was dutch special building buggy? If someone buys someone else's resource, can no one else buy it? When someone buys my resource, do I just get 1 time money boost, or does it increase my income other than through buildings? How to get an overview of my trade and all the rules related to it?

 * Influence and religion spread. So far I dominated at least my own continent in all games, weather I tried or not, probably because of the snowballing, so I didn't quite understand how the formulas there work either.

 * During one game one of my territories flipped some other culture at some times, and I got a decision regarding some policy. I didn't understand why it did it even though it showed I had 99% influence. I suspect that was due to the influence ability. So if someone uses that on you, maybe that should be more noticeable, like an army invading your country or something.

Overall, great game, lot's of potential if the AI is improved or harder difficulties introduced and some balance issues are fixed, and a few things are made more clear.