After finishing a conservative, culture-oriented game as Egypt, I have to say that I'm feeling much happier with the Social Policy aspect of the game. As others have noted, which social policies you choose and what strategy you decide on will mutually influence each other, to the point that you are likely to get very different games depending upon the mix you evolve. It will also depend upon how much culture you generate, since Social Policies derive from culture rather than science-driven Techs. This is one reasonas I noted earlierthat culture is nicely integrated into CiV, rather than just being a border-changer or dull exercise in piling up points. Regular players may more strongly resent how limited their choices are with SPs as compared to Civics, which were easy to acquire and highly flexible to mix to match, but I think RFC players will be more sympathetic, and will find SPs a nifty way to custom-craft their civilizations so that the desert-locked Egyptians aren't playing the same game as the island-bound Japanese or the steppe-swallowed Russians. So, I'm thinking SPs are a definite advance on Civics.
I can't say my mind has (yet) changed about the 1upt rule, since this game was on a map that for some reason let units stack. But I wasn't as much bothered by the archers' super-range as I thought I'd be, maybe because it was a Huge map and that made it easier to swallow the scale. Still, you could stand in Normandy and shoot arrows at anyone in Kent (and vice versa), and Morocco and Spain fell within range of each other. Perhaps a patch-tweak is in order: Ranged units cannot fire into water tiles or over them until you have the embarkation-promotion tech. You wouldn't have to embark in order to fire into the tiles, but it would "explain" the new ability if you knew your units could break out small craft. Firing across the English Channel while standing firmly on your side of it would be akin to making a quick raid in the boats and then hightailing it back to safety, rather than making an invasive landing that requires the preparation and logistical work suggested by full-on, two-turn embarkation and disembarkation moves.
I was still playing on Chieftain, so I wouldn't make too much of the military situation, which surprised me because I got thru it without once going to war. Oh, the AI were eternally at war with each other: China conquered Russia and the Middle East, and Songhai took all of Africa except my quarter and went on to conquer Roman Europe (which was Italy, Spain, France, and Germany; the latter two had themselves been conquered by Rome). But I should have been easy pickings: I had only 3 cities and felt like I didn't have much of an army; for most of the game I only had 3 melee units and 1 archer unit, which in previous Civ games I think would have been an invitation to get stomped. But no one ever molested me, even though I had no alliances or pacts of any kind, and only limited Luxury trade agreements. Late in the game I built up to 3 artillery pieces, 5 melee units, and 1 cavalry, and was astonished when the demographics screen told me my army was larger than average, and only a little less than half the size of China's, which was busily swallowing up Eurasia. I'm reluctant to infer anything from this except astonishment. Have other players had similar experiences?
The ending screens are awful, though, at least for time or cultural victories. No replay? WTH? Like the removal of the map trading option, it smacks of FU from the developers.