I have to admit, I'm convinced. I'm having fun, and even though it is amplified by the
"wow, it's new! Let's learn the mechanics!" feeling which is only temporary, I see the potential in the game. It strucks a good balance between simplicity and deeper, more "micromanagey" mechanics in my opinion.
I absolutely love the Domain Power mechanic and the freedom it brings (combined with Culture Power). There is a wide variety of things to do with them, and you just can't have enough of them, which is a good design. I realized only after a few playthrough how deep actually is the synergy between Domain Powers and the more "traditional building" mechanic in Capitals (aka Cities). You build a Building that gives a specific Domain Power, which then can be used for a lot of actions. But you need basic economy and industry to build them in the first place, and you need to decide what do you prioritize. There is a lot of variety, a good synergy and circulation in the system. Not complex enough to fulfill my
Needs (pun reference intended), but it's perfectly sufficient. Also, the fact that all Domains are useful (I was afraid that Diplomacy or Art for example will be weak or "meh", but it's actually the opposite) is excellent.
Expansion is also very good in my opinion, lots of options and opportunities. Quite simple once you learn the basics, but has enough depth and variety to be much better than brainless settler spamming. I also find excellent how there is no clear best way how you manage things. Having lots of Vassals and a few tall Capitals feels just as viable as the opposite (although I'll try to experiment with this better, so far I find a balance between the two the best, but obviously only in 60 Turns it's impossible to have a definitive judgement on this). Enchanced by certain modifiers, such as for example Kingdom "feeding" on lots of Vassals, while Imperial Dynasty government prefers more of a "tall" approach, you can focus even more what you prefer. Outposts are also a nice touch.
I like the Unrest system too. Extremely simple, but does actually have an effect. For example, I had a game where it was no problem at all, while just in my last game it actually caused me considerable pain (mostly due to the penalty to yields). I expanded quickly with lots of Regions, without sufficient army to suppress, coupled with insufficient Needs. I actually felt (and saw) how my yields go down and progress slowed down (having aggressive neighbours this is even more scary). I like when the scale is large enough that you actually feel the weight of your decisions - like ignoring Unrest which then come back to bite you. Apparently even new Nations can form from rebellions, which is just the icing on the cake for me. Combined with the other dimensions of the game, this makes good managing rewarding, which is a fantastic feeling.
Goods and resources are another example for the "extremely simple yet giving you lots of options" theme. I was desperate to gain more Culture, so turned my grapes into wine. Had to build up the infrastructure for it tho, which shifted my priorities. I had a goal, and it felt rewarding achieving that goal. I really,
really hope that there will be even more options for such customization and manufacturing, and it won't end up being "only" better yields conversion. This system has an enormous potential.
I like the innovation and the chaos meters too. Nothing amazing, but slightly expands the dynamic of the game. I would like to see better UI however there, what brings up my chaos meter (a summary of unrest for example). I'm not sure how I feel about however, that I chose an option for an event very early in the game (get a Crossbow at the expense of chaos after I cleared a barbarian encampment), yet it has effect forever (to be fair at a
heavily reduced amount after the meter fills up). I'm not necessarily against it, but feels a bit "weird".
And finally, food not necessarily equals more growth! I was wrong at first, I thought it will be the case in this game too just as for most 4X, but actually after you have your 200% Needs, it doesn't matter how much more food you have. And considering that there will be plenty of Needs (9 or 11 or something like that at the end) and they come online quite early (at the end of the demo you may need housing and sanitation for example), this actually makes city planning and managing even better! I absolutely love it!
The technology progress is nothing revolutionary, but it does its job. The alternative ages give more variety and better replayability, makes the game more interesting and dynamic, so that's an excellent idea. I just hope that they won't take the game into silly areas with Age of Aether and such (a healthy amount of "what if" is good, but it can be easily go to the extremes).
I love the art of the game, the units, buildings, different pictures are absolutely gorgeous in my opinion. It's a shame that the lack of a coherent UI, fragmented interface and often frankly just abysmal icons spoil the experience. Just having an incredibly simple shield icon for example would be a thousand times better than the current "tent in the woods" icon for 'guard' command for units (skip turn likewise with a bonefire). The red trash icon for deleting units is - I'm sorry for saying this - something unbelievably horrible. If it's not possible to hide it (how often will you delete your units anyway?!) then please, please change it to something else. A lot of icons walk in similar shoe, I really hope that there will be an overhaul (or better quality remake) for many icons and art assets. The card theme of units and buildings in the city screen is also weird a bit, but I can live with that, no big deal. (similarly the worker screen, which could be much better, but not the end of the world)
I also really like the improvement system, especially how it's synergized with other aspects of the game economy. I'm not a huge fan of a worker unit placing an improvement for 10 Turns. But being it a tiny panel at bottom left is... it must be an oversight. It's one of the core elements of the game and it's borderline hidden from the user. Often I was like "oh yeah, there are improvements in the game lol". That interface element should be 10 times bigger considering the impact it has (and it'd still be not too big, it fits very well into that part of the screen).
National Spirits are decent, even if they are ultimately "just" a social policy tree from Civ5. There is a good variety of them, offer flexibility and some even have very cool ideas and features (just one example: hunters reveal elephant resources on the map, and their archer unit can harvest wild animals). If there is a good balance between them and clever / interesting ideas, it'll be also an excellent dimension to the game. (my biggest concern however is that you can go from a peaceful "knowledge focus" Nation to a world conquering threat with just one click by picking the "mongols" in Age 4...)
I personally don't mind the graphics, I find forests even actually quite pretty (lots of trees with variety, densely populated). The hills however could get some (= a lot) love, those plain, low quality grey textures are ... ugh. Other than that, I find the game visually perfectly acceptable. How cities and tiles develop and get additional features (I assume throughout the ages even changing and improving) is fantastic. I use banner view for units however, I find the game much-much better that way (not just because 3m tall leader units are... silly, but generally it feels better, like you actually control armies and not 15 men). Thank you devs for having this option!
I find the battle screen rather amusing than annoying. As others have pointed out, defenders running out from behind the walls and attacking the besieging units is... yeah. I hope a
quick combat option will be included. Speaking of combat, I found no relevance of army composition at all so far. I really,
really hope that at least some degree of tactics and warfare input will be included (anything, like you can choose your stance, or focus, I can imagine a lot of opportunities (focusing on attacking the enemy army's morale) that would spice up this aspect of the game). What we have so far is okay, but extremely anaemic while the potential is there. I'm also curious how naval warfare, aerial warfare (and a combination of these) will unfold later in the game.
My biggest concerns are the lack of proper immersion and consequently the replayability factor, and how the mid- and lategame will look like. I'm desperately curious about the Faction mechanic, which we know nothing about so far. I really hope it won't be just a " Ideological Needs fulfiller for Regions" and it'll have more depth. Diplomacy feels a bit shallow, the basics are there but the place is there for expansion and improvements (could also be done in DLCs and expansions). Also, there is no religion in the game? At all?
The AI feels okay in the demo, they often get ahead of me in tech, they expand rather decently and create some armies. I'm a little bit concerned how clever will they ultimately be, there was no developer video about it or mentioning if anything special was done in this field. But, it definitely feels decent so far, the automatic battles and not 1 unit per tile mechanic also helps them, so I think we can be optimistic.
The sounds and musics are decent so far in my opinion, the throat singing - shamanistic sound in the age of stone is excellent, later I found the musics a bit more generic and uninteresting, but it can be improved easily. For example with culture-specific musics, changing musics depending on what's going on (just one example: being in war. Note to myself: let's try it in the demo if there is actually a good "war pumping" music). The sound effect of some UI elements are weird and not fitting too well, but that's probably just a personal taste.
Overall, after playing several runs in the demo, I like what I've seen so far. Simple yet relatively deep, functioning mechanics and lots of options with a healthy amount of variety. The game won't take the torch out from Civ's hand in my opinion (which ARA tries, from the impression what I've seen from them), nor it implements truly revolutionary ideas such as Old World (which is a perfect example in almost all aspects: familiar, traditional 4X elements coupled with tons of new ideas, salted with beautiful art and fantastic UI (personal opinion) and interesting content. Shame that it's Classical Age only

). It does not have the capacity and the ambition (and the budget) either.
But for me it feels like an amazing game so far, and definitely has the potential to be a good alternative for a Civ fanatic like me (especially with good modding support). Considering this is just a demo, balance changes can be made (as others have pointed out, Raiders for example), notifications can be added
(a LOT should be added), and the fact that many of my complaints can be easily improved, I'm quite optimistic. With a reasonable price tag I think this will be a good deal. Fingers crossed for the developers!
(I'm back to the demo for experimenting and min-maxing things)