Honestly I'm a bit worried about the current state of the game. I had fun but there were a lot of problems. I played three games (only one full one). The first was on civilization but I quit to turn it down. My second was on empire, but I had to quit because of a bug. My third was on nation (which ended up being way to easy for me) but i finished it.

Bugs:

1. On my second game sometimes one of my armies wouldn't be able to move or even skip the turn and it told me I had to use my army to end the turn. I keep having to save scum in order to fix the glitch and I had to make sure not to make my army go back to that same area. My third game and first didn't have this glitch though.
2. On that same game I had to quit because the game told me I had to give the enemy their surrender terms in order to end the turn. I wasn't able to cancel picking the terms or confirm the terms no matter which ones I chose. My 1st and 3rd game didn't have this problem.

Pacing:

Oh boy, the pacing was really rough in this game. The AIs kept advancing to the next era way to quickly. In my third game I didn't have a problem with techs because I went with 4 science cultures, but on my other two games the research speed felt way to slow compared to my era progression. For example, I'd be fighting AIs who are in the Early Modern Era when I just started the medieval era even though I have more fame than them and we'd be fighting with swordsmen and horsemen. The black AI reached the contemporary era around turn 190 on Nation difficulty, what are they gonna do for the other 110 turns when the game releases. I'm honestly pretty worried about this.

Combat:

Combat was really fun, that's if you actually get in a real fight. The AI makes a ton of one unit armies that retreat when you attack them and if you actually get in a fight with one its way to easy to win. The sieges are really fun though and I like them especially compared to civ6.

Naval Gameplay:

This was one of the most disappointing things in the beta. The only ships that are useful are naval transports because they are needed for colonization of the new world. The other ships are useless because the AI never builds ships to get in a fight with.

Exploration and colonization of the other continent: 

On a more positive note, I had a lot of fun exploring and colonizing the other continent as the Vikings. I just wish the AI would also compete with me in colonization. That would probably also make naval units more useful and naval combat actually existent.

Conclusion:

I had a lot of fun playing the game and I really love the terrain and its vibrant colors. The systems are overall very good but just tend to get slightly ruined with poor AI.

This is a helpful review. Your comments about pacing are consistent with what many players are experiencing.