Got to finish my first game on this version [Emperor difficulty, Epic speed, Standard map size, 8 civs, 16 CSs, No ruins, Communitas map with strategic balance] with the hotfix, no CTDs or major bugs so far but a couple of minor annoyances.
Had an okayish start, neither amazing nor terrible on a coastal tile with a couple of short rivers with Jade on flat grassland as my primary luxury and 3 horse tiles within the range of 3 tiles from the capital (animal husbandry was the very first tech i researched) so i went Shrine first then god of open sky and got progress which retrospectively may have not been the correct policy as i think i could have done much better with authority.
My continent was nicely separated into two mini continents connected by a narrow stalk of land, on the northern part Me and The Maya my immediate neighbor to the east with space enough to settle just a single city between the two capitals (Spoiler alert: i got forward settled yet again), The Huns and Spain on the southern half.
The four of us on my continent managed to found a religion (The Maya first followed by the Huns with their wine monopoly then Spain then the Ottomans) leaving the ottomans with an effortless to half of the game .... to no one's surprise all of the good stuff was taken, Hero worship and Reliquary were snatched first, Mosques and Cathedrals were also taken but Orders were not so i Founded with COE and Orders.
Most of the early wonders were snapped before i got to research the appropriate tech anyway so i played like an authority civ ditching my plans to play it a bit slower and spike in the medieval era since i was not really going to be able to compete with the Maya in particular with my production-lite cities anyway.
The first war i waged was on the ancient era after the Maya settled a city at the bare minimum distance from my capital breaking the connection between it and my other city, I barely managed to take that city and signed a peace deal ASAP since the Maya already got mathematics and their first skirmishers and Atlatists were on my borders.
Waged another war on the Maya in the classical era after razing the crappy forward-settled city i captured earlier then resettling on a better location and settling two more cities on western part of the continent were the huns also settled two more cities ...... Pushed through the Maya defenses thanks to some nice river tiles around their capital then captured it and another city then signing a peace deal.
Started to bee-line my Mandekalu Cavalry after which the game was just some sort of a joke, took the rest of the Mayan cities but one to force them to capitulate, Spain and the Huns declare a Joint war on my right after that but neither of them were any match to my 20 Mandekalu cavalry ripping their armies apart taking the 7 cities of the Huns eliminating them from the game and capturing the 5 cities Spain had on the main then forcing them to capitulate leaving me alone on the continent with 22 cities and more land and population than my closest competitor.
Took fealty as my medieval tree since my cities were kinda crappy at that point, then got Imperialism which kinda made my empire float on yields thanks to the puppets, got most of the Renaissance era wonders then almost all of the Industrial era ones.
Got my ideology around the mid industrial era choosing order and beelining Nationalization, got firaxite minerals corporation (the oldest trick in the book, i know) then i just ran away at that point; there was not really a competition once i got into atomic then info era within a couple of turns and the AI did not do nothing beside mass denouncing.
Funnily enough when i started building the spaceship the ottomans DOWed me but was not even able to reach my coastal line and his frigates were being sunk by my heavy bombers, GDR soloed one of his island cities in the ocean which was kinda funny to watch.
Finished the Space ship at turn 472 epic speed (around turn 310-320 normal speed) at 1882 AD with a tech lead of roughly 25 techs ahead of the Iroquis.
The only issue i noticed this game was land ranged units unable to attack embarked units using the RMB unless you choose to perform ranged attack then select the target.
The change to lighthouses and harbors is kinda okay that coastal cities does not feel as fortresses for land units anymore tho i have not actually used the navy at all that match so i cannot comment on it's effect on naval sieges being easier.
