I just played a game as Indonesia, Epic Speed, Huge Map on Emperor difficulty. 13 civs, 26 city-states, Continents Plus. Other settings standard. Community Events mod for more events. I played until late Industrial (turn 338).
Most of the game felt great! Stars and Sky is now genuinely a good pantheon again - in this game China used it to great success. I do wonder if the Ancestor Worship change should be reverted as it doesn't feel particularly strong now. Happiness is challenging (as I expect it to be on this difficulty) without being insurmountable. With such a large map, I was able to found 12 decent cities without having to capture any. Stayed between 50% and 90% happiness most of the whole game. Policies in general felt fairly well balanced to me. Statecraft is quite strong, but that's partly because I have so many city-states in my games. The Zulus were also in this game and they did decently but weren't leading the pack so that feels good to me. The Inca were my neighbours and didn't do that great even with lots of hills and a handful of mountains so they certainly aren't OP either. City-states were OK, although I think faith city-states should still be stonger in the Classical Era. The new works of art are lovely, thanks for those!
On the trade AI, I quite like that the AI approaches me for deals more often. I was able to get several defensive pacts in this game and that would never have happened if I had to approach them myself. I didn't notice the AI particularly conquering city-states any more than previous patches. It's true that the AI asks you for bad deals for strategics a bit too often, but at least strategic tiles aren't a gold mine any more - that felt exploitable and also kind of messed up map balance. I did notice war brokering was somewhat popular, and in particular the weakest civ tends to get ganged-up on (first it was the Inca, then me, then someone else). Which I guess makes sense strategically - you get a strong diplo bonus for being at war with a common enemy. If feels strange though, and I'm not sure I like alliances forming around who is easiest to bully. It did calm down a little once Defensive Pacts were available, but the Inca didn't really have a chance to play anything but defensive in this game. I would suggest simply reducing the AI's willingness to accept bribes. I saw Gandhi declare against someone he had no interest in being at war with, more than once.
With regards to science, I agree: it does feel too fast at the moment. Not game-breaking, but worth adjustment. Touching briefly on ancient ruins since that was discussed, I got a few in this game and it felt fine. I'm pretty sure the AI benefitted from them at least as much as I did. The events in this game were good too (with the events mod). I like the comet passing one because how you can react changes depending on the era. I'd like the one with a skeleton being dug up to be more common, that's interesting and I don't see it very often. I'd also like the natural wonder related events to be more common, I enjoy them a lot. I'm ambivalent about the events that reward you for saving up money, as the game generally does not encourage having gold reserves (particularly once spying becomes available).
Forts feel good! A little too good, actually. As I mentioned in the relevant thread, there are points in the tech tree where forts are exceptionally strong and it's simply not balanced. Specifically, they should not have been given double yields on Chemistry or Electronics. It gets a bit ridiculous.
Iam playing India on an Oval map, have chosen Cathedrals and Mandirs, but no other pressure increasing option. Never have used any prophet to spread.
My capital has a pressure generation of 450. The far most east city of the french (capital) gets a pressure of 300. Not sure if this is intended
I noticed this too and it is currently my biggest issue with the current version. The range and power of passive religious spread is just silly. Especially for civs with two religious buildings. In my game it was the Huns, and their religious influence steamrolled everything in their path. Things started out very evenly. From there were five major competitors emerged (Myself, the Maya, China, The Huns, and Siam). However, over time The Huns gained dominance and much of the rest of the world had no major religion. Only the frontrunners survived, and even then just barely - in my case by repeated use of inquisitors. I believe that over time, the Huns would probably have the only religion left - even newly inquisited cities of mine that were subject to their influence soon fell to them again.
I believe a key component of this is religious spread via water. The Huns were quite a distance from me, and yet my coastal and island cities were subject to overwhelming religious influence. My land cities also faced heavy influence, but given I was neighbours with several other founders (including The Maya), that is perhaps more reasonable. Note the extreme difference between the influence in my holy city and a coastal city right next door. Notably those who were able to resist the Huns' influence were myself and those with a religious building or the Orthodoxy reformation. Ironically, the King of passive spread - Ghandi, lost the religious game before he had a chance to compete. I think probably from Chinese missionary spam. I initially suspected that the Huns had achieved dominance through their founder - Ceremonial Burial, which gives a great deal of faith. This may have been the case initially, but I think the fact other religions had to struggle to compete comes down to the passive factors.
