Here is my point of view for few full games and starts only I've played

• How does your progress through the eras feel? Is it too fast or too slow?

• Do you feel your research progress roughly matches your progress through the eras? Does it match what you would expect for a game meant to last about 300 turns?

• How do you feel about the speed of population growth?

• How do you feel about the value and the growth of the different resources (Including Influence)

• Are religions still to powerful, or are the bonuses at a more appropriate level now?

• How does the neolithic era feel now? Can you still grow your population too quickly?

To me I just feel the religion system is a waste as your beginning tenets only give two choices forcing you to choose one of those two like them or not.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
How does your progress through the eras feel? Is it too fast or too slow?

Usually I can wait it out in an era until my technology tree gets to the point It's time to advance in order to obtain better priority technologies.

However: After the Ancient era I seem to obtain seven stars to advance to the Midieval era well before I'm even finished half way through the Classical research tree. Which then increases to the point that I unlock Early modern when I'm barely even starting the Midieval technology tree, with Tech costs still around 10 turns or more for those technologies. It's only if I go Joseon in Early modern that I am able to catch up to complete the research tree before turn 200. And as non science cultures, I can barely reach a one or two technologies at the middle of industrial in time before the game is complete.

Era pacing feels quite fast, compared to technology pacing.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
Do you feel your research progress roughly matches your progress through the eras? Does it match what you would expect for a game

No, for reasons already stated. But I will add that, with how stability works now, it's quite punishing to attempt to raise my research speed in order to compete with how quickly the eras go. At least when I'm not in a good position as the Joseon, who are a culture that makes research speed a trivial thing.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
How do you feel about the speed of population growth?

I do not have much opinion on it, other than it incentivizes many cities over few large cities, which I guess I'm more or less fine with. It's at an okay speed.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
How do you feel about the value and the growth of the different resources (Including Influence)

Value of money is very low, if not completely useless. The only way I was able to take advantage of money was through a vassalage income from higher difficulties, even then money income from Vassalage was only competitive with population buyout if I went as Phoenicians -> Carthaginians and vassalized two strong empires.

Influence is quite valuable early on for outpost building and such, but if I'm falling behind the a.i and can not compete with them for wonders and such, picking up the civics and religious tenets that give (a lot) of influence income per turn only incentivizes me to save influence for when I need to create outposts, build things in outposts, or maybe attach a city. A lot of what influence can be used for is tied to things that eventually run out of uses (and thus priority) when the world gets smaller as the game goes on.

Unfortunately, also, now that cities can be built instantly with influence, settlers have become quite... questionable.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
Are religions still to powerful, or are the bonuses at a more appropriate level now?

Appropriate, if a bit... not that great, outside of Influence generation and Stability generation.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
How does the neolithic era feel now? Can you still grow your population too quickly?

My first game was the most difficult in terms of growing population in neolithic. AFter that, I knew the map better, and thus could maximize the curiousities for growth.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
Tweaked era star thresholds

Did not notice a difference, pacing felt the same in that aspect.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
Cities now generate +1 Influence per population on their Main Plaza

I like this, a lot.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
Reduced economic bonuses of religious tenets and increased thresholds to unlock them

I like the increased thresholds, at least from the perspective of winning the Religious influence war.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
Commons Quarters are now more focused on Influence than Stability

Stability is what made commons quarters worth there weight in industry, without it, the Influence doesn't do much to make their priority much higher than garrisons, especially with how district costs become more expensive the more I build them.

• How does your progress through the eras feel? Is it too fast or too slow?

The pacing seems way too fast for me. 

• Do you feel your research progress roughly matches your progress through the eras? Does it match what you would expect for a game meant to last about 300 turns?

• How do you feel about the speed of population growth?

• How do you feel about the value and the growth of the different resources (Including Influence)

• Are religions still to powerful, or are the bonuses at a more appropriate level now?

• How does the neolithic era feel now? Can you still grow your population too quickly?

How does your progress through the eras feel? Is it too fast or too slow?

• Way too fast. I would suggest removing all the first era-stars of each era (The first of the 3 stars)

• Also, I would actually lower the amount of stars you need, but forcing you to have a minimum of that eras technologies as well. So for progression you need to have earned 5 era stars AND have researched at least half of that eras technologies. This would actually tie era to tech and prevent them from drifting apart.

• 
  

Do you feel your research progress roughly matches your progress through the eras? Does it match what you would expect for a game meant to last about 300 turns?

• I was playing only Science cultures and still fell behind a lot for the era I was supposed to be in. IF the game has a limit of 300 turns I would expect for the average culture to complete all early modern techs by around 200, that is currently not possible. But I liked the tech pacing, just maybe more for a 400 Turn game. For tying era progression to it, see above.

How do you feel about the speed of population growth?

• Felt about right. regularly hit the point I couldn't feed everyone anymore.

How do you feel about the value and the growth of the different resources (Including Influence)

• Influence is at first scarce and later abundant. First you need it a lot for expansion, but later you should create more uses for it, like special policies you can enact for x turns. Or territory diplomacy to trade lands without war.

• Money was never a problem and I havn't build a market once. I think that's not as desired.
  
  

Are religions still to powerful, or are the bonuses at a more appropriate level now?

• I actually didn't care about religion at all and still got the largest follower base. But the tenets felt coming in quite late.

How does the neolithic era feel now? Can you still grow your population too quickly?

• It feels fine IF you progress as soon as possible, If you spend extra time there you can snowball population quite big for that early era.

I think agarian stars should only count population inside cities, not units as well. Right now population in general eat more food than they produce which mean the best way to achieve agarian stars is building military units to reduce the size of the population inside the cities which lead to faster population growth. To me agarian stars should be about farmers and food, not about spamming military units and maintain minimal population in the cities.

• How does your progress through the eras feel? Is it too fast or too slow?

• Do you feel your research progress roughly matches your progress through the eras? Does it match what you would expect for a game meant to last about 300 turns?

• How do you feel about the speed of population growth?

• How do you feel about the value and the growth of the different resources (Including Influence)

• Are religions still to powerful, or are the bonuses at a more appropriate level now?

• How does the neolithic era feel now? Can you still grow your population too quickly?

1. How does your progress through the eras feel? Is it too fast or too slow?

The Era progression is lightning fast, particularly for the AI. (AI is pretty broken right now)

1. Do you feel your research progress roughly matches your progress through the eras? Does it match what you would expect for a game meant to last about 300 turns?

The research might be adecuate but the Era progression gives a sensation that you're so far behind when you're probably really not.

1. How do you feel about the speed of population growth?

Population growth is not in a good spot, farmers can barily sustain themselves when in reality the whole idea of agriculture is that few can sustain the many and right now if you want to grow a city you need to put everyone on food while at the same time investing in a ton of improvements and districts. It's really pointless to go for food, making agriculture cultures rather weak. 

1. How do you feel about the value and the growth of the different resources (Including Influence)
   Food: contrary to some feedback, Ive tested and watched people play on Humankind difficulty and even though perhaps the food balance might be better than other OpenDev's it's still no right.
   Production:I didn't feel any major issues with production, overall it seems fine but i could be wrong.
   Money: Money got nerfed to the ground, to the point where its really not worth anyone's time to focus on it. Money oriented cultures now feel really weak, which is a shame because it could be so interesting. The biggest issue is that the Market district is SO SO SO SO boring. Overall I think the whole district play is very dull. Lucy OpenDev had a much more interesting district gameplay.
   Science: The science growth seems to be close to where it should be. Unfortunately it suffers from the same ailment of the district gamplay, that it's very dull and boring. There's barely any interesting adjecency gameplay so yeah.
   Influence: It's probably fine,it might not scale very well after hitting the early modern era however. Because at this point you probably generate too much influence and the amount of things you can dump it to get reduced.
   Faith: Extremely dull and confusing resource. It has close to no player engagement. As a player you just sorta make your holy  sites and perhaps wonders and you just forget about it. The main reason why this resource is dull is because the Religion gameplay is also pretty dull. There's no interaction at all, it simply is there and it gives you stuff but there's nothign else to it. You just hope you have enough to beat the AI's output, which that in turn is also pretty dull. No reason to even consider other religions for strategic purposes or anything. Perhaps the most dead resource when it comes to fun  and interaction.
2. Are religions still to powerful, or are the bonuses at a more appropriate level now?

The religion bonuses are probably better balanced than in Victor OpenDev, but honestly I couldn't tell you because the whole religion system is pretty boring. It only gives some bonuses and some minor interactions in diplomacy. I wish it was more impactful and had more interesting interactions. I would strongly suggest studying Paradox Interactive's Crusader Kings III, they have an awesome faith system. I would like to see Holy wars or using faith to add more options to the game such as inciting revolts on other player's cities. Also would be cool if the tenents were not just some bonuses for the other resourced but more powerful interactions such as a "crusader" tenant that lets you raise a holy army for an amount of turns for reduced Money cost. Stuff like that.

1. How does the neolithic era feel now? Can you still grow your population too quickly?

The neolithic era's population growth seems to be at a good spot. 

The keystone for everything and how it breaks the game

What is the keystone, you may ask, but I'll tell you.

Population is the keystone.

Let me explain. With population you can achieve everything by using it as a farmer, worker, trader or researcher.
Especially in the early stages of the game, using them gives you more profit than exploiting the land.
It is also a key part of building armies. And now they also produce influence.

But now that the consumption of food has been increased, it is no longer possible to achieve high population numbers in cities unless you choose an agricultural culture. Then you no longer have the problems, the whole thing is amplified at the highest difficulty level when an AI chooses this.
After two rounds in which the AI had chosen the agricultural culture first and had built up a high population thanks to the additional massive bonuses, it will become almost unstoppable and is successful in all aspects of the game. It reached the classical age already in the 25th round, while another AI had to advance to the ancient age a few rounds earlier.
Of course, the AI chose another agricultural culture and from that point on, the whole thing just snowballed and the AI was unstoppable.
The lack of enough production of food and influence in the early game due to the increased consumption and more actions that require influence make the agrarian cultures and aesthete cultures stronger than before.


here are some other points

Ransacking and forest clearing should have a fixed maximum turn duration: suggested 5 turns.
Currently this takes too long compared to the yield you get from it.

extragtors should always take only one round to build or be instant purchase.
i like the idea to buy them with influence but then please also in cities,
but i don't know if that would only add to the above mentioned problems.

Getting and using money is very slow and not really impactful unless you specialize in it by choosing merchant cultures, then it's ok.

The obtaining and use of industry is ok and if you specialize in it by choosing builders cultures, really good I think.


From the previous Open Devs it was that you had enough at the beginning and too many yields at the end.
through the current changes you now have too little in the beginning and the end was only pushed further back.

it would have been better to increase the basic yields and to reduce the later additional yields through technologies and infrastructure and districts,
so that you always have a decent yield and never too much.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:

• How does your progress through the eras feel? Is it too fast or too slow?
• Do you feel your research progress roughly matches your progress through the eras? Does it match what you would expect for a game meant to last about 300 turns?
• How do you feel about the speed of population growth?
• How do you feel about the value and the growth of the different resources (Including Influence)
• Are religions still to powerful, or are the bonuses at a more appropriate level now?
• How does the neolithic era feel now? Can you still grow your population too quickly?

• How does your progress through the eras feel? Is it too fast or too slow?
  Way too fast
• Do you feel your research progress roughly matches your progress through the eras? Does it match what you would expect for a game meant to last about 300 turns?
  I feel 300 turns isn't enough. I ended my game around turn 160 and had just about researched all era 3 techs. The research speed felt good, but the game should last more like 400 or 500 turns to really get the most out of it I think.
• How does the neolithic era feel now? Can you still grow your population too quickly?
  Feels good to me

coloneluber wrote:
I'll also add here that I feel gold was overnerfed. Carthage is basically mandatory now if you want to use gold in a functional capacity, and stability nerfs makes it really hard to justify getting commercial quarters when you really need that science, production, and food. It seems food production may have been nerfed? A little overdone in my opinion. You're getting the double whammy of needing more people producing food, and having to commit more precious stability to agriculture quarters.

Stability does indeed feel very punishing with not many tools to combat it. Commons quarters are extremely weak and basically almost anything you do reduces stability by A LOT, districts seem almost not worth it sometimes because of the low reward vs high stability hit.

In a game against empire difficulty, i managed to keep up with the AI, but surpass them once I got to early modern era. The main issue I found was that my culture was progressing far faster than my tech could. I was putting some pretty good effort into science, but I was at the English longbowman tech by the time I had just reach the industrial era. 

ritchiaro wrote:

The problem here is that after turn 130 the choices that the player makes become completely irrelevant. Every few turns I just queue up an arbitrary list of buildings, districts and technologies, move my units to another place and wait for the next turn. I don't even have to think about era stars since they will be earned basically automatically.

I pretty much agree with this assessment. The only difference I have is that I never think about era stars. If you're playing, you will get them (the game has a strong everyone gets a trophy mentality). Every time I play, I win. On the other hand, I am still unable to really explore the map fully before I win. I can't really build cities. There are no naval battles. I can't engage with the other nations except to hear stupid comments about my haircut. The latest fiasco was some dead AI spawning scouts in my nation that I had to remove from the game every turn. This game just feels directionless and buggy.

I would like to make a point about unit- tech and pacing. The most unit technologies are out of the way in the tech tree, and choosing for a unit tech is often at a steep technology cost. The techs to boost your sceince are on the other part of the tech-tree (like the research district) and unit techs are often skippable. Both AI and players are still using tier 1 units in the early modern age and it seems really slow down progress to get towards age appropriate units, making it harder to get to the age appropriate units a era later. This is a shame as i really enjoy the diversity of units in the game. I've tried to focus on strong technology income early, but i found out that the scaling of technology (or other economical progress) in the later era's is so large that the investments in the early eras don't really matter. I would suggest that the gains in later era's would be more related to choices made early.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
How does your progress through the eras feel? Is it too fast or too slow?

I think progress speed felt fine. You really get to enjoy each era before advancing to the next one. However, I'm not sure if being able to reach the contemporary era before turn 150 is appropriate for a game that is supposed to last 250-300 turns.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
Do you feel your research progress roughly matches your progress through the eras? Does it match what you would expect for a game meant to last about 300 turns?

I feel this aspect of the game is the one that needs the most work. I don't think I was bad at playing the game. In my run, I ended up in first place by a lot and never felt I was behind technologically in relation to the AI (Nation difficulty). However, I was always one or two eras behind from my own era progress, even while picking a scientific culture during the ancient era. Admitedly, I focused more on food and production, as those felt more important for the early game. But even when my science exploded by picking the Joseon in the early modern era, I was so behind, I only managed to get two or three industrial era techs by the time I reached the contemporary era.

This has obvious implications for the game experience. To give some examples, my first overseas colony was established only by the end of the industrial era (and I don't even think the AI discovered the new world) and I was never able to build my emblematic unit during the corresponding era. Obviously, I didn't get to experience late-game warfare, as I didn't even come close to getting a plane.

Maybe the story could have been different if I had focused more on science during the early game, but I feel you shouldn't get as much lag as I did if you don't focus on science early.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
How do you feel about the speed of population growth?

This part felt satisfyingly natural, with some effort being required to grow a city early on, but not too much once it's developed. Yet population didn't spiral out of control as in previous OpenDev iterations.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
How do you feel about the value and the growth of the different resources (Including Influence)

Food - Value = King, Growth = Fine

Industry - Value = Very Important, Growth = Fine, but spirals way out of control for the rest of the game if you pick a builder culture once (or maybe Maya legacy is too OP)

Science - Value = Important, Growth = Way too slow

Money - Near inconsequential (built my first market quater in the industrial era just for fun and never had any issues), Growth = Shrug?

Influence - Value = Important, only because of its many uses,  Growth = Too fast. Even with civics requiring influence, I often found myslef with a lot of unused influence.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
Are religions still to powerful, or are the bonuses at a more appropriate level now?

I don't think the religious bonuses per se are bad, but religious management still feels too passive. Just build a holy site whenever available and reap the benefits. The opportunity cost of building a holy site is very low, especially considering the stability bonus it gives, it's a no-brainer to build one whenever it's available.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
How does the neolithic era feel now? Can you still grow your population too quickly?

Feels perfect for me. You get to explore the map a little bit, but not too much, and you don't get to grow your tribe as much (which is a good thing imo).