Well, first game done, and contrary to my expectations, my a** wasn't handed back to me, it was Ambition Victory with 6 cities instead, while coming in last in the current VP ranking, no territorial conquests or losses and one rather short but quite scary war only. Felt a little bit on the easy side, as if taking a shortcut to cut a corner, but maybe it was because Egypt? Anyway, as with anything arbitrary, those ambitions do feel a bit gamey, a bit like that Diplomatic Victory in Civ VI, although better than that one.
Do AI civs go after Ambition Victory too? And where to find those stats, meaning how close they are? While the UI is incomparably better than that of Civ VI, some QoL improvements still can be made, including some sort of strategic overview, as it is rather difficult to see the whole picture of the territory the civs possess. I also could not find an easy and immediate overview of the vassal families, except in the cities tab, where you have to mouse over their icons separately to see relations and preferred luxuries and if they are getting them - a separate tab with such info visible immediately without mousing over would be very welcome. But otherwise I'm quite happy with the UI, it quickly and efficiently gives you lots of useful information.
It rapidly becomes exhausting and demoralising having to cycle through and control units and cities one by one, turn after turn.
Yes, I have to agree that there is some truth here. I only had six cities and rebuilt an average-sized army which I then did not use, but the worker and city management actions did become somewhat tedious midgame on, especially when I decided on my path to the endgame. Having to manage a large empire or fight a midgame or lategame war does seem an intimidating prospect.
As for more Pros of this game, I'd mention the soundtrack - it is excellent with quite a few tracks where I just stop doing anything and sit there soaking in the atmosphere
Anyway, it will be interesting to play further games, now that I'll now much more of what I'm doing in respect of character and land development. I've even read half the manual in between turns and sessions and plan to continue, as it is really helpful.
For you newbies out there, I apologize in advance, but you are going to lose a LOT of units. And your going to scream at the screen, "how the hell did that unit do 10 damage, my units do like 3, what kind of bs bonuses is this AI getting!!!" But its not actually getting any tactical bonuses, its just that combat takes a while to get good at, and the difference in how you do with just a bit of proficiency is absolutely night and day.
Well, although there were something along those lines in my initial shock during the first war, I've avoided further warfare and turtled behind a triple wall of very diplomatic words. So my biggest takeaway from the first game was a bit different. Namely, the stone resource is the air, water, bread and butter in this game. You breath it, drink it, eat it and dream about it at night. And you're always, always short of it. Always.