All in all, the biggest takeaway is that I really like the game, and it provides that one-more-turn feel. I do feel very invested in my empire and its character, even if it's a weird amalgamation of cultures that would make some fun head-scratchers in our "real world". Here are some thoughts and areas for improvement in my opinion (which is obviously the only one that matters!! 
jk jk)
Time for some more turns...
jk jk)- Cultural Progress vs Scientific Progress still feels disjointed on some level. Granted, the pacing is much better than the previous betas, but it varies greatly from game to game. For instance, in my first game where I placed 3rd, the Persian AI had jumped from Medieval to EM, and then EM to Industrial within 20 turns. For a first full game, this was very jarring. It was one of the harder AIs too (not sure if it was an expert or not). By my third game, however, I was snowballing and able to make up a lot of ground with tech far easier. This game DOES require you to think to properly do it, I appreciate that, and you can't go on autopilot all the time to get the yields you want. But once you start snowballing against AIs, it's kinda hard to stop or for them to catch up.
- Naval Movement feels fairly slow, unless there were some recent changes between my second and third game because transports seemed faster for that one? Railroads are amazing for land movement, and then there are airports too. But Naval movement feels lacking because of how fast those get late game.
- Late Game City Building feels great thanks to settlers, construction teams, and the "colony plan" way of founding cities where a new city gets right on its legs with some free industry and all infrastructure from past eras once you unlock certain plans. This is exactly how it SHOULD be (why should I have to build ancient technology that is probably at a sufficiently cheap and advanced state in the contemporary era, after all) and a massive improvement over Civ VI late game cities, where they really struggle unless you have the gold to buy everything. Makes me feel like these newer, later cities matter.
- Territories works well as a system. I still appreciate the flexibility of Civ's culture borders, but for what Humankind wants to be, cutting down on the city spam and micro is wonderful.
- Late Game Projects and Fame Techs actually make the late game feel competitive (except in my third game where I finally was able to just blow the AI out of the water). You can really catch up and overtake other players even if you were lagging behind before, and it makes the late game feel less stale. This combined with the above makes late game more exciting than say a 30 turn slog to a diplo victory. In a close game, this helps competitiveness feel appropriately tight and tense.
- 300 turns feels fairly right for this game (though my last game I finished the tech tree in 265 because Sweden is fantastic with science yields). The final eras do get somewhat laggy/performance heavy, but it's usually not as awful as it can be in Civ VI.
- Curiosities feel more worth-it than the beta versions, but I got way too many Carracks. So many Carracks one game. Like "this bad boy can fit so many Carracks in it" meme worthy.
- Possible Bug 1: Had an odd situation in my first game where on turn 300 the Persian AI declared war on me only to instantly surrender, though he had 100 War Support, letting me take a bunch of territory I had demanded from him. Kind of strange.
- Trade and Resources: I rather like the system that we have for this, and good trade yields to good money. It makes being a mercantile and peaceful player feel viable, especially if you invest in the right infrastructure and maintain fairly good relations worldwide. Resources are INCREDIBLY important and it feels much less of a chore to get to access them with the trade relations and purchasing system. Also, the Luxury Manufactories are a wonderful nod to manufactured goods and I like that if we have a monopoly we can make them a super luxury and flood the world with our amazing ebony craftwork. They might be a bit overtuned in power, but I really like these.
- Religion and Culture feels very it-or-miss, snowball or falter. I like the systems, but it seems very easy for 2-3 cultures or religions to be the only dominant ones in territories by the end of the game. Part of this is how passive it can be to spread these, mostly more faith/influence = more religion/cultural spread. You can KIND of be strategic about it by choosing who can access your resources, placing districts and infrastructures in territory to make an area from which to build up a huge buffer to spread those, but the hands off approach is fairly limiting with what you can do. I do think it might be interesting to have Priest specialists and a generic religious district, to help religion be a bit more hands on. Influence, I'm not quite sure. I think the systems are fairly nice and interact with other systems (such as trade) rather well, but those are definitely all-or-nothing, with the Aesthetes especially winning out.
- Modern Warfare: still haven't been able to use Nukes or Air combat after three games, but I like stealth mechanics, the artillery bombardment, and especially machine guns.
- Performance has been better since the August 20th patch, but sometimes the game does DRAG, music becomes distorted, and reloading will not to a great job to have all of the assets on the map.
- City Planning is very important for National Projects since you need sufficient space for launch sites and test sites. While sometimes it is annoying, I'm pleased that this is a thing overall because it is both realistic and another layer to consider in the Contemporary era.
- Possible Bug 2 when a culture transcends eras and a new culture is not picked, the game thinks they are still in that previous era for purposes of UI display. This should be fixed (example, instead of "Mongols have entered the Medieval era and kept their traditions" it should be "Mongols have entered the Early Modern era and kept their traditions".)
- Cultural Balance is largely excellent, though most are OP in their own ways. Some highlights for me from my recent games include the Austro-Hungarian opernhaus, the Japanese Robotics Lab and Blossoming Innovation, the Swedish Research Institute, the entirety of the Harappan culture, the entirety of the Aksumite culture, the entirety of the Khmer culture, the Zhou Confucian school and power, the Persian ability, and Siamese Gatling Elephants. I still don't quite understand why you would pick the Hittites over the Myceneans though, I would love an explanation as to their power vs. the Mycenean one because the latter just seems so much better.
- Population Rushing shouldn't be autoblocked with Labor Charter. That is not a good design choice IMO to just cut off the tool at that point. Rather, it should be a Civic choice like Nukes, and you get to pick to keep it (for say reduced stability), or remove it for some small bonus.
- Nature Reserves are kinda cool, but they don't seem super useful except for some high yield anomaly tiles.
- Cultures: it hard to tell who is playing who, so I think that popups should display player (culture) so that way the information is a bit more clear.
- Post-Battle Round Retreat: Not the biggest fan of the only possible retreat being pre-battle. It feels forced, though I'm not sure how the AI would handle having a post-battle round retreat option, and it is fairly unrealistic and leaves a bad feeling in my mouth that it has to be all or nothing, which results in some brutal battles every now and then. I think there should be a post-battle round retreat option (you have one time to select it each round, and if you leave the battle you can't go back and say no), and maybe it costs more war support for retreating that way? (i.e. instead of -5 from pre-battle it is -10 for mid-battle). And perhaps applies a "disorganized" status on units for a turn or two to reduce CS.
- AI Personality Difficulty and Traits: REALLY should be explained up front since they have traits and difficulty levels and i had no idea until 2 games in.
- Wonders: Simply feels like there's too few. i fully expect this to change as DLC is added, etc., but having a lot of players makes them very hard to get sometimes.
- Allies can't really intervene in battles and that is disappointing. I'm sure it's just an AI limitation or something but sucks to not be able to help my friends or hinder my foes.
- The world fills up and little to no land is left unsettled by game's end, and I really like that. The world feels appropriately full and populated by the end, and that is super important to me. I think the territories system really helps with this (oh and not having city flipping for new cities being as punishing as it is in Civ VI, since there is little to no city flipping to my knowledge).
- Large and Small Cities ranging from one territory to many both feel viable, and any combination of one to multiple territories can work based on what you need. Of course, having a lot of territories attached to one city is usually more optimal, but if you're cramped space-wise it's not bad to have a couple single territory cities either.
- Events feel fairly repetitive and not impactful in the late game. I hope more are added and there's a bit more of a rework with these.
- Defeat Notices on Allies is just plain nonsensical. Can these be disabled for Empires you are allied with? It makes no sense to hear I am losing a war I am not in against an Empire I have perfect relations with.
- Unit maintenance jumps up comically large between upgrades and if your economy isn't prepared for it then you will suffer. By my third game, I had figured out the FIMS balance a lot better, but dang it feels astronomical sometimes.
- Buyout costs are better than the Beta, but still feel fairly large unless you have a sizeable gold income. I think it works well right now, but districts do feel a bit cheap compared to units an infrastructure (which I find a tad silly, but the persistent units/relatively cheap upgrades and the free infrastructure for later cities does help balance this).
- Bug: both my past two games had AI stuck besieging cities (especially noticed with independent people) that never ended. Even when they could assault. This just traps AI units, and is a whole hinderance to the game from an immersion standpoint AND locks down an entire portion of the map. This needs to be addressed (I have all of my save games if needs be, devs).
- Diplomacy is in a weird state. While the AI behaves fairly sensibly and the treaties make sense, having my ally with full treaties repeatedly spam me with a single demand, have it refused, withdraw, then drop to "hate filled" and cancel our treaties is super wacky. Also, having a demand refused leads you straight to war apparently, unless you withdraw? I like it but that was jarring at first because it means things can get spicy REALLY quick between powerful allies if you're not prepped to back up your demands, unlike unbreakable allies in Civ VI.
- Tactical Combat AI: Is fairly good at using cover, high ground, and staggering of armies for reinforcements. It also knows when to pick its battles in the overworld, so from a combat perspective it is very satisfying. Sometimes it does do suicidal things (like it feels like, most of the time, it MUST cause damage every turn), leaves its walls when defending to be clobbered, and forgets archers exist. Thankfully gunners make this less of a problem by mid game, but i can win with enough archers on hills and some melee to hold off. I do see them get used, just feels like the AI overemphasizes melee units, or its cultural unit.
- Nomadic Tribe legacy trait: does this only fire under certain conditions? I feel like I don't get it all the time.
- One More Turn button (i.e. continue game button after end) makes me happy to see.
- Population snowballing is really what can help you run away. Food is so important because specialists are so important. Thanks to infrastructure making specialists feel valuable, having enough people is really key to playing well (which I think is very important). IMO this means playing an agrarian culture at least once a game will help you out a lot, or at least emphasizing food if you aren't given the opportunity. Your cities mean nothing without their people, which makes sense and i appreciate from a design standpoint.
- Bug 2: Armies can sometimes just disappear under weird circumstances. In my most recent game, there were two such instances: the first was when I had to get off and I was being ransacked by an Independent People. Upon reloading, those armies were just gone. Second, was after I auto-resolved a battle vs one unit. My main army engaged a Scout Cavalry, and there was a reinforcement army in my battle zone (with Organized Warfare, mind you). This was my entire combat force, and afterword the reinforcement army simply vanished. I was furious since I was in the middle of a tense war. I loaded an autosave which fixed it and placed my armies back, but I was not happy. Wasn't even invisible, just gone.
Time for some more turns...
I bet it could be implemented fairly easily, just making the same calculation as the original retreat based on combined strength score, or it could look at the damage per turn dealt by both sides and do a simple prediction of whether it will be in a better or worse place than its opponent after one more turn. Different personas could have different risk tolerance.
