Alright, I've played through the OpenDev 3 times on the normal (metropolis) difficulty, and feel like I've encountered enough and faffed around with enough to get a feel of the things possible to get a feel of - as well as figuring out what things I couldn't reasonably test (and want to address, especially considering it's apparently one of the things that was specifically mentioned as being a major part of this OpenDev). First off, a basic overview of my runs. For those uninterested in hearing about them (or if the devs wanna get right to the balance/feedback part), go to the part where I spam equal signs like so: =====

In the first run, I struggled. I won, but only barely, and I was significantly behind on several factors when compared to mr. bear-face. if the game had gone on for another 10 turns or so, I definitely would've ended up in 2nd place. At first, I focused on my one city I made, attaching all I could to it, due to misunderstanding the expansionist star thinking I had to connect all the territories to one city. in the end, I did a pretty poor job of managing said city (especially when debt early game, too many territories and not knowing about commons quarters mid-game, and accidentally turning off religion late early-mid-game ended up making stability a constant issue), and my technological lead turned into a technological deficit, even as I tried to salvage the situation by making a 2nd city. This was my fault, and was really just a number of problems cascading out of control. I learned from my mistakes and went into the 2nd run doing things better.

The second run, I made sure each city only had 2-3 territories (including its own), and no more. This was far easier to manage, influence-wise, and I ended up having more pops with more production than my first run. overall, a pretty standard run, without much to say about it. I ended up with 4 cities, with a significant lead over 2nd place (I forget how much, but somewhere between 500 and 1k fame. or at least enough to be sure I wouldn't have first place snatched from me at the last second). This run I was able to handle city development better, and thought of ways to better handle a run where I try to do something similar to my first run again without making the same mistakes. I also noticed something ridiculously powerful if ran in a meme build, and I just had to give it a try. so I did.

my third run, I went with a classic One City Challenge. Because of the insanity of the run (and because I can actually remember it lmao), this part will be more in-depth. Rules are simple. I cannot make any other city besides my capital. I must let city-states die out before I can claim their land. Any cities won in wars would have to be razed to the ground (if I could ever figure out how to do that - unfortunately my one war I fought bugged out with the AI somehow forcing me to surrender despite mr bear-face being at 0 war support and me not being at 0. thankfully I didn't have to give up my territory even though it was in his demands, though. that war was really, really bugged. in the end, I didn't take any cities). First city I placed was on that one plateau you start next to, next to the mountain, on a cliff overlooking a river, a hop away from a natural wonder. y'all know the place, it's like that spot was designed to be the player capital with how good it is.

After getting the neolithic bonus of bonus science per pop, I picked the babylonians because the others either seemed to not be viable (due to anything besides scout wars not really being possible until the classical era) or otherwise didn't really have anything particularly good for my playstyle or this run. I had also picked the babylonians for the first two runs, but the reason for my doubts for this run are as follows: +1 science for each researched tech sounds nice, until you realize there's only like 50 techs and I'll be generating a thousand at minimum without it, and the district, while a critical source of science in an era utterly lacking in any real form of science generation, is otherwise pretty lackluster. And the unit I can only build a couple of IF I picked the romans in the classical era, and even then I could only get a couple out before getting the legionnaires.
For classical, in the first 2 runs I went with the romans because, well, legionnaires, and the district sounded like it would be really good. however, I didn't understand what "victorious city" was supposed to mean, and nothing in the game helped define it, especially as the district provided bonus stability when I built it, but in the early modern era stopped providing the bonus, turning it into a detriment overall. For this reason, in this run, I went with the Grecians. sure, their spearmen aren't as strong as the legionnaires, and their bonus is weaker than the legionnaires, and, quite frankly, they aren't legionnaires, but I could get access to them earlier than with the romans, they were still pretty strong, and they didn't require any iron (which I was sorely lacking due to mr bear-face and rose-face being utter nuisances), so I could reasonably field them for a while before they became obsolete. Their district was also ok, as was their legacy trait, though I only managed to build one of them before advancing to the middle ages, and I don't remember what either of them did lol.
The Medieval Era is where the build REALLY kicked off. The Ummayads seem to be designed with OCCs in mind, as the fewer cities you have, the stronger their bonus. By the end of the game, every district of theirs I built was giving me just short of 50 science each. their legacy trait is also amazing for this kind of run. their unit? don't care. unimportant. I think it was a horse unit. doesn't matter, I couldn't really fight any wars during this era anyway due to being focused on trying to get my production high enough to build all the districts before the next era (which I still had to delay for ~20 turns). I could've fought with what I had on hand, sure, but I was too busy to replace any units that might die, so I just maintained my armies in a defensive stance on the border.
Early-Modern is the koreans. unfortunately, for this run, I only had two harbours by the time I grabbed them, and time was already running out, so I didn't really manage to make much use of them, but, had the game lasted longer, they would have been very helpful with driving my tech rush even further into the extremes. also I have a soft spot for turtle ships. must be the AoE2 player in me lol.
As for industrial? dunno. doesn't seem physically possible to reach the industrial era. apparently it is judging by the strategy guide forum, but I couldn't manage it through normal or tech-rush means.

the results were... kinda insane. now, clearly, looking at the strategy guides forum, not insane enough, but maybe they were playing on easy, or maybe I just suck (probably the latter). still, here's some screenshots or my end-game stats.
Last Turn Screen
Science Breakdown
Fame Chart
Food Chart

Industry Chart

Science Chart

Influence Chart

Stability Chart

Pop Chart

Faith Chart

Techs Researched

Military Might

City Count/Proof of OCC

As you can see, my research generation was really high, and still had plenty of room to go even higher. problem was that, at some point, I realized the "balanced" setting kept causing my people to die, as it'd reassign my farmers to being merchants, and I could never get enough people to keep up with the production necessary, so I had to switch to a growth-focus. which worked amazingly well, until it didn't anymore, due to not having very many farmers quarters lol. unfortunately, my production wasn't high enough to pump out more farmers quarters AND the commons quarters necessary to maintain stability on top of making the 15 or so ummayad districts (and even then, as you can see from the 95>0 for stability, I still didn't have nearly enough commons quarters lol. procession OP). still, my production was good enough to make a district once every 1-2 turns, and I built the wonder that gives +1 food per religious follower in 5 turns, and I still managed to keep up with or exceed the AI in almost every category (except money production because I never build market quarters, which honestly seem useless to me due to no tile benefits or adjacency bonuses except for with themselves and harbours. even without them, I still had the capacity to make 260 gold a turn just from improvements and pops alone, which is still more than enough for what I needed, though maybe more would've helped with buying districts instead of building them). As for stability, well, it turns out procession purty stronk. so stronk that it effectively negates any penalty from attaching territories on its own and does a damn fine job of mitigating the penalties from districts. more on that below. But yea. turns out OCC is pretty viable. so viable, in fact, that it might be the most viable. or might not. I only did 3 runs and I'm not an expert on balance, and clearly I didn't even abuse the system bad enough if I could only just barely scratch the industrial era techs. my 3k science at turn 150 pales in comparison martinovich's claimed 7k by turn 100. even so, it felt really strong. so either balance is good enough that even meme builds can compete, or it's unbalanced to the point that meme builds out-compete standard builds, idunno, take it as you will. this definitely wasn't a comprehensive test, and I'm more than a little rusty. Civ 6 killed the genre for me, so I haven't touched it since some time between R&F and rising storm.

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Balance/Feedback:

so first off, I wanna talk about some things I noticed were either extremely easy to accomplish or seemed unreasonably strong, starting off with faith. even with only 2 holy sites (and a couple of wonders I guess, point is I didn't really put any effort into generating faith), I had no problem whatsoever with utterly dominating the world with my religion. the only time I didn't reach the 4th tenet by the middle ages was the first playthrough, where I accidentally disabled religion extremely early on (I still only had my first tenet lol whoops), and even then my religion still spread with ease, I just no longer had access to the tenet screen lol. overall, faith just seemed like something you turned on and it won on its own. maybe it's just that the AI doesn't bother with religion right now, dunno.

related to religion, there's a specific civic that is single-handedly the most powerful civic I could find - procession. it's absolutely ludicruous. stability at a modest 0 because you attached too many territories/built too many districts? host a parade, BAM. 100 stability. EZ. it effectively counteracts any stability penalty almost perfectly. each territory reduces stability by 20 (or 10 if it has a natural wonder). each territory houses 4 people by default. procession gives +5 stability per person. 5x4=20. net ±0 stability. districts cost 10 stability, but provide 1 person. net -5 stability. a wonder or two, some holy sites, and making the medieval equivalent of manhattan is more than enough to cover that. sure, it costs money to do that, but, like, I ignored money entirely and still had no problems keeping it running. if anything, I had more difficulty remembering to turn it back on than ensuring I had enough cash to do so. granted I pretty much never had enough money for rushing production and couldn't always upgrade my troops the turn they became obsolete, but it was still more than enough leftover money to be comfortable. maybe that's balanced, maybe not, I don't know. but I do know that it's so incredibly powerful that it'll kill you if you accidentally turn religion off. which, by the way, the tooltip for the irreligious civic is bugged. the left civic doesn't say it turns off religion, but it does. oh boy it does. pretty much the only downside to procession is that it makes you dependent on it, so when it disappears you just die. are they serving crack at those parades? they must be lol.

inversely, the irreligious civic perk has got to be the worst civic you could grab. I don't know why anyone would ever want it. for starters, grabbing either civic makes you suffer withdrawal symptoms - er, I mean, makes you lose the procession perk. and 2nd, you lose access to all the other neat features your religion provides. or maybe you keep the bonuses but just can't pick your tenets anymore? dunno. either way, it just seems like a terrible decision. and state atheism just seems to double down on that. at least with SoC&S you no longer generate religious grievances (not like I ever was to begin with), but state atheism's only bonus is that your cities... convert to other religions slower? that's the bonus? religion is already turned off as is. what benefit would that even grant?

overall, religion just seemed super simple and super easy to dominate with. there's no real interaction besides building holy sites (which you do more for the bonuses than for generating faith) and wonders (which, again, the bonuses), no real competition from other religions, and it's way too easy to reach the end of the tenet tree early on as a result.

next up, iirc, you guys (e,g the devs) said that naval gameplay was significantly reworked in this patch, and that you wanted feedback on it. my feedback is that there is none to give. not that I have no complaints, but that I couldn't even engage in it at all. my first run, the only ship I had was the one I got from an event, and it didn't get very far before the game ended. 2nd run, I built a ship (event never fired), but, again, didn't get very far before the game ended. third game, I made a ship and then the event fired, and this time I made a harbour on the west coast, so I managed to find the new world, but that was about it. I found the 2nd continent, and then the game ended. there's pretty much 0 incentive to use boats in the current build. the AI doesn't even build them (at least, not from what I've seen), though they did start embarking towards the end of the game to colonize a couple of the surrounding islands. but for the most part, unless the player goes out of their way to make a ship (and it's very much out of the way), there's no way to gauge the changes made to naval gameplay. and even if the player does make a ship... they're the only ones with a ship. and why would anyone make a ship? every player is on the same continent. the resources are better spent into spears and bows than oars and sails. if it was an archipelago map, or if half the players were on the old world and half on the new, then an argument could be made for building a navy. but as it is, aside from the achievements of sailing around the world or discovering the new world, naval gameplay just doesn't exist in this build. and by the time it could possibly appear, the game ends. now, from what little I've seen of it, it seems like it should be fine. transports determine embarkment rules, and ships themselves should function more-or-less like land troops, but wetter and without hills. but without some reason to use boats, almost all of what happens will be on land, so there won't really be any way to see.

I do have one thing to say about the navy, though. why are embarked units slower than when on land? traditionally, sea travel was preferable because it was faster to go via sea than land. and, certainly, if you build a normal ship, it does move faster than infantry moves on land (well, the ships I've seen do, anyway, can't remark on the early ships. even then, they only go as fast as cavalry), but embarked units go significantly slower. they're already really weak if attacked while embarked, I don't see the need to make them move at 2 tiles a turn, too. personally, I'd have them move 6 tiles a turn, with dedicated ships moving at 7-8 tiles a turn. as for early sailing boats before the caravel, have ocean tiles consume twice the movement. so they can chase down weak embarked units, but can't use the new speed to circumnavigate the globe with a trireme. like this, players would have to choose between traveling by land and keeping their units at full force, or traveling by sea to get to their location faster but risk getting attacking by the enemy navy en route. they could build a navy to defend the embarked units, but then those ships aren't defending against enemy embarked units, and if the enemy didn't build a navy, it's a sunk cost. that's tactical depth there, and would give players in the early game reason to build ships even when they can't reasonably cross the ocean.

anyway, in all, the opendev was really fun. I'd have played more of it if I wasn't in the mood to play warband/bannerlord lol. looking forward to the final release putting the final nail into Civilization's coffin.

EDIT: and here's where I'll include all the stuff I forgot about after I wake up. but before I sleep: civics. in general. I've found it's very easy to rack up civic points, but end up with nothing to spend it on. granted, procession tends to make that pretty easy, but I generally never need or even want more civic point generation because I already get too much as it is, with no events firing to grant more options. I get that the civics are event-based, and chances are half of them aren't even implemented yet, but if there could at least be hits for how to unlock civic options, that'd be nice. like, there's a civic that fires when you found your 2nd city, so a hint when you hover over it saying "own multiple cities" or something would be nice. many of the things are things you'd probably expect players to do, but even then, hints would be nice. there's a civic for professional armies that fires early, but I don't know what triggers it. one game, I got it immediately after entering the ancient era (long before making any units). another, I didn't get it until after making my first non-scout troop and already being at war with someone. considering the bonus of reduced cost or bonus strength is desirable, it'd be nice to know how I go about triggering it, even if it's a given that I'll definitely trigger it sooner or later. and other obvious civics ended up taking me a long time to trigger, like ones regarding trade or, ironically, city-building lol

EDIT 2: oops didn't realize I was supposed to place it in the game design section, sorry. moved

two more things. making an additional post instead of an edit because of its size. sorry for the bump.

1. map painting (and war in general). now, yes, I get the whole grand strategy thing about frowning upon the basic enjoyment one gets from painting the map their colour, big colour makes lizard brain go brrrr, yea yea. so I can understand, and, to an extent, even support trying to steer away from erasing all competition with relative ease. however, as it is right now, unless you're razing outposts to the ground, there's little point to actually engage in a war (ignoring the obvious vassalization cheese, I've personally avoided abusing that lol). with a limit of 100-200 war score from actually winning the war, at most you can claim a city or two before you have to let the war end. that's fine if it's just me fighting for territory or resources, but if it's a war of enmity, and I fight until I lay waste to all their cities, a city's not gonna cut it. if I'm going through all the effort to conquer another player, I should be able to actually conquer them. it's even something that, historically, happened a lot. the romans didn't just beat up the Carthaginians and then go home for the day, no, they completely took them over, razed their capital to the grown, salted the earth so they couldn't rebuild, and then rebuilt it themselves just to prove they could. this wasn't just a war for a bit of land or resources, this was a war to eliminate competition and, quite frankly, a war of spite. and in the end, to quote wikipedia, "All remnants of Carthaginian civilization came under Roman rule by the first century AD". not just a bit of land, ALL of it. and not just the land where they once stood, it was the civilization itself that was absorbed. and that's not the only instance of wiping out neighbors. when most people think of "painting the map", they think of WWII and the cold war, with germany painting europe black and russia painting asia and eastern europe red. but they weren't the first to do so by any means. even the romans weren't the first. the grecians did it before them. even the ancient era was filled with map painting. and, if anything, painting the map is often what made many of these civilizations famous. so while I get trying to make the game not devolve into "win by conquest", the restrictions are pretty arbitrary and illogical. and no one likes arbitrary restrictions. currently, there's no way to eliminate the thorn in a player's side other than to completely surround them to prevent them from leaving their last territory. at that point, the player has lost, as they cannot expand, and so there's no way for them to win anyway. why keep them around? are they a pet or something? if so, they're a very annoying pet. and, correct me if I'm wrong, it doesn't even seem possible to surround players in the first place. it looks like every territory has sea access. that... is not a very good thing.

sea access is a very important thing, and in large part because not everyone has it. wars were literally fought over access to the sea. there are even strategic benefits to not having access to the sea, such as not having to worry about being navally invaded. try sending a spanish armada at switzerland, see how well that goes. it may generally be a good idea to have as many fields of war available as possible, and ships are indeed very powerful tools of war. but sometimes it can be a good idea to limit what fields you have available to you, especially if you happen to be particularly good at the remaining fields of war. And we all know how good the swiss were at war on land. that said, in most cases, people want access to the sea. and so, it should be seen as a resource. one with less supply than there is demand. one more recent example would be the Polish Corridor. at the end of WWI, Poland wanted sea access, to ensure their independence. This sea access split east prussia from germany (which was part of germany at the time). This sparked enmity between the two nations, leading to the ultimatum of 1939. now, granted, germany was trying to dominate them to begin with, and would definitely have declared war on them anyway if they continued to refuse, but it did give them a technical reason for the war. in summary, poland wanted sea access to ensure their independence, and germany wanted that land to maintain border cohesion (and to ensure poland remained dependent), and it was this conflict of interests that started WWII. all of that interesting stuff vanishes if every territory has access to the sea. WWII straight-up wouldn't have happened if you could just take a boat from krakow to new york, and that's just a silly premise.

finally, war itself seems very simple and difficult to actually influence. let's say you have a neighbor, and after some scuffles early on, you eventually settle on some borders and enjoy a kind of peace with them. or at the very least you two aren't trying to wipe each other out. then, as time passes, you discover they have gunpowder. and you don't. and it turns out gunpowder's kinda important to having guns. maybe you could trade for it? but if they're technologically behind, they won't be mining it yet. and even then you'd be giving them money for it, and they'd still have gunpowder, and they could even make demands of you due to your dependence on their resource. so, chances are, you're looking to start a war... except... you kinda can't. both you and them are at 50 war support. since your borders are relatively fixed by now, there aren't any ongoing skirmishes to be had, and no grievances to be generated from settling on borders. sure, you could just declare a surprise war on them, but then you're just revealing to the world how much of an asshole you really are, and we can't have that. and while, yes, historically, there were leaders who did just that, most of the time the wars had some kind of legal justification to them. A way to convince others, and your own people, that those other guys probably deserve it. right now, though, there's no way to fabricate a claim. no way to spark enmity. no way to instigate them into declaring war first. no way to drum up war support. unless they specifically make some weird slight against you like mistreating your believers in some backwaters outpost on the other side of the continent and you decide to hold it against them (and they don't just give you the territory, which they probably will. and then you have to deal with "being part of their sphere of influence", which is annoying), there's nothing a player can do to create tensions. it may sound weird to justify to others and to the general populace that "no, we're totally not just doing this just for the resource, it's definitely because they looked at me funny and that offended me", but... we did it all the time. hell, we still do it now. it's only after the wars are over that people go "wait a second... that country had oil, didn't they". of course, if you want to be seen as a bully, surprise wars should still be an option, but there should be more subtle ways to bring about wars as well that take more time.

2. spheres of influence. this system is incredibly unintuitive and doesn't seem to really make any sense. one game I'm dominating mr bear face, making his people blue. later on, he's constantly pushing into my territory... despite me having a 75% hold on it. and I'm constantly being told that my city will convert to my population in 3-5 turns... and then 3-5 turns later after they convert I'm told they'll convert to my population again in another 3-5 turns.... what? and all the while the people get upset because I didn't pick divine right. you know, in the early modern era. I tried to fix that once by building more wonders or commons districts, but that didn't help. so I tried to build them inside that territory, but that didn't seem to help either. and from what I've read of other posts, that seems to... make it worse? as influence structures inside of my cities but in someone else's sphere of influence actually spreads their influence, and not mine. what? there also doesn't seem to be much, if any, information in-game as to what affects it. my capital can be generating 200 influence but the territory 3 zones away is only getting 70. and then another 5 from some other territory I never built in? some more transparency in how this whole system works would be very much appreciated.