I agree with most of your post fossar; but not this bit. All your yields in 5 were similar; and you could put the same improvements on almost everything; which just flattened it all out further. City yields in 6 vary far more (even before GS); along with how much rivers can be a good boundary and give more housing; and that makes placement much more meaningful.
While its true the quantity of yields was less variable in 5, there's a lot more to settling than that as I'm sure you're aware. Luxuries were infinitely more important and ensuring you had them on time was crucial (yes, happiness wasn't ideal but amenities can basically be ignored as a mechanic if you want and trading from the AI for them is so much easier in 6 to top it off). More important still was having a good
balance of yields: a flat grassland city was just as useless as a city with only 2 flat tiles to grow from. My point on relative importance of food from my earlier page 2 post explains this further. I do like the rigid dynamic of prioritising fresh water but its not like this is totally new. Rivers especially were super important as the water mill, garden, and later hydroplant are all incredibly powerful buildings in their own right and I always settle with that in mind. I'll say though that a lot of this kind of stuff can depend on how we play individually; the things I've come to think are top priority to win might be different from others so I'm less trying to pursuade you I'm right than explaining why that's the case for me.
Having said all that, I was surprised when a new Era was added after the Information era. There was some speculation at the time that we might get an era in between the Renaissance and the Industrial; and I would have welcomed that, instead of the future era we got.
Some kind of Enlightenment Era would be an awesome addition! I could really see that fitting and having it's own vibe. Lots of changing up of religion and science, less emphasis on military, and extending the Renaissance exploration themes which are always fun.
I love Cultural Victory-playstyles, but apart from the relics of Civ 6 (and Natural Parks/Rock Bands), Civ 5 on the whole was just a lot better.
Why on earth did they for example take away the wide variety of theming possibilities?
The only things you can theme now are the museums, which rules out theming Great Works of Writing and Music, as well as theming wonders (some as early as Classic Era, like Great Library which could theme Great Works of Writing).
And the museums that you can theme (which only applies to art types and artifacts), all of them follow the same logic of "different civs, same era".
BORING!
Also, I don't see why Great Works of Music are even in Civ 6, since they are so garbage by themselves.
You hardly get access to them before the Industrial Era (unless playing as Russia), and even if you do, you have practically nowhere to store them until Broadcast Centers (apart from the odd garbage-tier wonders).
To top it off, the tourism bonus that GWoMs provide is laughable.
Firaxis, please expand theming and Great Works of Music to be more like Civ 5.
I really miss spending a lot of time to shuffle my great works around and trading for missing pieces in my collection.
I agree GWoM should give more tourism. On standard speed the first GMus costs 240 points, the first GWriter 60, 4x more; GWoM have 4 Tourism, GWoW have 3, 1.33x more. Seems unfairly small. I will say I'm cool with them not coming until later in the game though. That was the case with 5 and lets be honest it makes sense to stagger the great people arriving so you don't have to deal with everything at once.
Aside from that specific point though you've got lots of concerns about cultural great people more generally. While you're right the only buildings you can theme are the museums, about half your great works are probably in museums anyway so it's not an insignificant amount. I pretty happy the process for getting museums themed is different and its not all been made easier. Remembering all the different theming requirements for each wonder (which weren't in the Civilopedia to look up before you built the wonder) so I know whether I want to build it or not was awful, seriously. Artifacts work nearly exactly the same in terms of theming as in 5 and for artists rather than having civ and era requirements they have Artist and Type requirements. I can't see how the Civ 6 theming system is any less complex for Art and Artifacts.
While having theming mechanics for writing might sound like a good idea, I think most people would quickly get bored having to try and theme 20+ separate buildings in a game, especially in the early game when writers are around and there are lots of much more important things to think about. Possibly I'm in a minority about that I don't know, however with all the other micro-managing parts of tourism (tourism tile improvements, Nat Parks and Rock Bands, managing trade routes and open borders, policy cards, the whole relic mini-game) there's more than enough to think about and optimise.
However, I want to point to a small thing, which I seem to be the only one who cares about:
Roads being built by traders. I really wish I got to make roads myself like in every other civ game. The traders don't necessarily go where I want, and I dislike having to move traders to less beneficial routes in the hope they will create the roads I need. Late in the game, I unlock railroads, and get to place those myself. However, at this point I usually don't care anymore, and it becomes just another feature I don't use.
There's a few of us that have expressed opinions on this but there are a lot of posts to read on this thread! I find trader dominated roads as annoying as anyone else but I can see why they cut builing your own roads: half the reason camel archers and other move and shoot units were so powerful was because you could road 5x5 sections of the map and cycle 10+ camels per turn firing on a city which is stupid. Reducing the number of units that can attack and move as they've done does help but not all the way.
I don't think roads should be reverted to Civ5 style but having the way traders work its very difficult to connect your empire and that's not great either. I'm a huge fan of Rome's road ability, perhaps a once-per-city project to build an overland road to the capital scaling in cost with the number of tiles (and possibly terrain) would be a good solution? The project could be pretty expensive so its not like you'd want to do it in every city and traders could still do the job. Further roads between satellite cities would still have to be done by traders.
Finally, while
@nzcamel is right that Military Engineers can build roads before Steam Power, it would be ridiculous to suggest that its sensible to road your empire with them since they're silly expensive and it costs 1 out of their 2 charges at that point in the game (according to the wiki). After that railroads are a huge drain on pretty vital coal strategics so it's unlikely to be worth connecting more than 1 city for era score if that. In other words, its not suprising you didn't realise they were a feature cos they're bad and have highly situational use cases and so rarely used or discussed.
