I like the game. But,

Religion is undercooked. It's as tedious as 6 while being less fun. At least 6 had some great effects that made me want to interact with the system; here, abilities are weak both thematically - I have no reason to even spread amongst my own people - and mechanically. Just relic generation, basically.

Diplomacy is good. Interacting with other leaders is not. The leaders face each other instead of the player, which is already lame, but made even more baffling for the fact that the player leader never, ever speaks. The game is weirdly silent. And the curtains with the map in the background is uninteresting.

Alliances feel ephemeral and not very meaningful. I would like it to have greater impact and not constantly going from great friends to war.

The AI is atrocious. It's particularly frustrating when their actions negatively impact me, the player, whilst also being just such an obviously poor decision for their own game. Hiking across an entire map to settle right next door is one example. Aside from that, they often don't know what to do with units - occasionally settlers will just hang about for an entire age, and they don't know how to use commanders.

Towns were meant to reduce how much clicking I have to do, but it doesn't really. I get reminded about specialization constantly, and growth events eventually become annoying. I STRONGLY feel that instead of this gold upgrade system, the game at a certain point (say, 9 rural pop) forces you to choose right there to either specialize as a town or become a city (permanently). Letting you make the choice whenever does add some min-maxing depth, but it's not enough juice for the squeeze. Have us make the choice and commit, and then towns would feel much less tedious. Personally, I would take this even further; if you choose to specialize, make growth autonomous as well. After a certain point, I find the choice of which tile to grow to becomes largely meaningless, as they are mostly the same and I have long since secured resources and contested tiles. And you could still buy buildings to manipulate things yourself.

Damaged tiles suck. It's not threatening at all, but it is insanely annoying. It feels like every turn I have to go pay 20 coins (oh no!) to fix some tiles, and it sucks. Thematic? Sure. Pointlessly tedious? Absolutely. Maybe just have damaged tiles be disabled for X number of turns but repair automatically, to counterbalance the long-term yield gains. Speaking of; why can't tile yields carry over to the next age? it affects everyone equally, so just let them stay, man.

Crisis events do not feel impactful. I often forget they are even happening. The crisis cards are even outright helpful occasionally, which feels strange. Very little is done to make it feel like an Event, and the sterile UI does not help.

UI. Everybody knows it, but real quick: no map search & pins, ugly, no information, no tech queuing... the list goes on.

Some more minor notes: the wonder completion animations are too slow; tech lines getting repeated for masteries is lame; great works are generic; map size & advanced setup is lacking; poor, blocky map generation; many bugs, some game breaking; Patrick Stewart is not the narrator.

Despite post length I swear I actually really do like the game. I just had to vent. I don't regret my purchase, but let's be clear - this is an early access title in all but name.