Brief introduction: I'm big fun of the Civ franchise, and I have 1000+ hours of gameplay just with Civ6.

That said, here are my thoughts so far on this OpenDev:

Strong points:

- Battles: I really liked the concept of battles here, very tactic and with the possibility to use reinforcements, also sieges become very interesting:

- Map: beautiful art, it makes me want to explore more and discover what's beyond the fog;

- Diplomacy: more stratified in respect of Civ, more interesting choices

Problems:

- Game speed: the game feels to fast, it is too easy to earn era stars, I think you should like double the values needed to get them (double the influence, the gold, double the building time for districts, ecc.). Basically the problem is the same with Civ: the era goes too fast and you have absolutely no time to build units and buildings nor research all the techs...at least there should be a slider to adjust overall game speed;

- Territory names: there should be visible in some way, it makes very difficult in diplomacy to interact with AI;

- Land units: I feel the game lacks a certain number of land units, for example catapults (classical heavy weapon unit), medieval light cavalry, industrial era anti cavalry...

- Mini map: we definitely need one;

- Trade routes: it is unclear what's happening, where are my resources going? How much I'm earning from each trade route?

- Line of sight: after a few games, I still dont completely understand how it works, sometimes my gunner units are able to fire, some others not...it should be made more clear;

- Notifications: sometimes they are somewhat vague: for example foreign wars, who's fighting?

- Unbalance: in general, some game mechanics are very unbalanced (2 examples above all: religious tenets, wonders effects)

Overall I think this game has a lot of potential, with new interesting concepts and ideas. Maybe finally we have found Civ's heir? Finger crossed!