Alright finally got enough games under my belt to at least make some initial opinions:
1) Rivers: Even without the extra yields, rivers are still good. They provide me extra food, 25% more trade, access to the watermill (which whether it needs a tweak or not is still a building i can't get otherwise), and hydroplant later on. Now it is completely true that i only build farms on rivers right now...but i don't think the river itself is too weak.
2) Gold/Trade Routes: Early gold is scarce but not terribly so. Trade routes right now are a lot of fun, i'm enjoying their inclusion into the game. Am i right that there is no way to switch a trade route until its time ran out? I found that to be a strategic aspect, sometime i would want to hold a route to get distance improvement so i could broker a new route.
I'm also in the camp that likes the base game where production is primary and gold is not mean for a lot of building/unit buying. So i really don't want to mess with the economy too much until a lot of experience has been gathered.
3) World Congress: This so far has been a lot of fun for me. I played Indonesia one game, and the congress would sometimes try to ban my special luxuries. Netmeg immoral, outrageous!
In all my games the congress gave me a decent level of interaction without being overbearing. Most of the measures that came up were interesting enough for me to care about.
4) Tourism/Great Works: I have tried a tourism game, and so far i'm just not getting it. Tourism seems very fiddly to me right now. I can move great works around....so? I can swap works with another civ....so?
Tourism seems so low in the early game that it serves no purpose...its only late game that it makes a dent and then it do so in strange ways to me.
I will say that specialists got a big boost, because now i get great people all the time with the new mechanics and have plenty of spots for specialists.
I'll need to a try a few more games here, but it seems like so many mecahnics have been added around this concept and i'm not feeling the payoff.
5) Military/Strategic Resources: Strategic resources aren't strategic. 3 games in i was routinely getting 14 iron, 10 horses, 13 coal...etc etc, and that's on a medium map.
As such i only build strategic melee units....when i build melee units at all. Ranged units do seem significantly better than melee right now.
Naval balance also fell to ranged ships, but at least they normally cost strategic resources, so in theory i should be building them sparingly.
6) Policies: Now that the cultural victory has been moved, policy balance is a little different. For example, one of traditions "traditional" strengths is how fast you could pick up the tree. Between the +3 culture opener and the free culture buildings, you can mow through that tree in short order and pick up one of your keys for a culture victory. That option is not as useful now, so you have to weigh the tree more on its individual components.
I actually like the narrowing of world wonders on the policies so far. I think the narrower competition gives you a chance at some wonders you normally just can't get.
I will say i don't mind piety early in the game but pushing the tree early is pointless. Many of the benefits requires buildings like temples, and i can fly through the policy much quicker than the tech tree. So i can pick a few policies from the tree to help me, but i really can't go deep. I actually have problem with tradition, i hate that the policy that gives you early culture buildings is early in the tree and a prereq for the good stuff.
7) Early game production vs tech. on a normal speed setting, i know people mentioned that city prod seems a little quicker. Might be but i didn't really notice. I will say that i find early game my tech choices don't matter that much. By the time i've got my early scout/worker a going and actually start building some buildings i've already got several techs under my belt. I feel that the techs add buildings much quicker than i can build them.
That changes in teh midgame where new stuff to build does start to run a bit dry. But i really do not think we need more early game buildings.
