Below are my thoughts after finishing my first game of BERT. Where I criticize, I try to give suggestions, in the event a Firaxis person reads this. Sorry that it's a long read, I just love this game series, and I have put this out there.
Caveat: In my old age, I don't play to "win" in the fastest time frame that I can. I just do what I think is fun until I get bored, then I go for a victory condition. Apologies if this stuff is repeated elsewhere (especially the gripe about diplomacy notifications).
Positives:
*I really, really like the new diplomacy system. Contrary to what others are saying, I felt like the leaders do have individual personalities, and interacting with them is completely worth it, both as a sort of minigame, and to get benefits for my civ/faction/colony. I have a few reservations, see below, but generally this experience is far better.
*I really like the recolored and reconstructed interface elements, the look of the new oceans, the new units, and so on. The new art was outstanding, and the gameplay feels really smooth.
*Spy satellites. If these were actually there in vanilla, my bad for not noticing them. However, as a new feature, they're very welcome. Especially as Supremacy - I can actually explore the map!
*Artifacts. I enjoyed this new system - it encourages continued exploration way later than you might otherwise. The perks (like secret wonders) are fun, and can be seriously OP. However, I couldn't tell if the AI was using this system at all.
*Hybrid affinities are a welcome layer of complexity, providing far more choices, and they often had unexpected, spooky results. I'm still not sure what Hellions, Vorticies, or Aquillions are, but I sure enjoyed using them.
*Ocean cities are gloriously weird, formidable, and quite flexible. They definitely reproduce how ocean cities felt in SMAC, with curious new features too. I have one reservation, see below.
*I played my first game as INTEGR. Don't change them - they're amazing, and their unique power definitely helped to learn the new diplomacy system.
*Overall: Far more "depth" (lol ocean pun). Way more options in every part of the game, so many so that I probably overlooked a lot. I didn't get bored until far later in the game, and even then the unexpected DOWs from other powers kept me on my toes the whole game. There's so much more *stuff* in the world! On land, at see, everywhere, it's great!
*The AI has a
slightly better idea of how to handle naval warfare. They still give up at sea pretty quickly, but at least they try more than once, and they keep their ships in coherent groups.
*No obvious bugs that I saw. At least, nothing crashed, nothing graphically glitched, nothing was clearly wrong in a way that didn't seem to be a design choice. If something in my "negatives" section below is actually a bug, I would feel better about it.
Negatives:
*Loss of some parts of the old diplomacy system. As others have observed, there is no way to cynically bribe Civ A to attack Civ B. You also can't pay a Civ that hates you for ROP. My suggestion: Permit us to buy DOW and ROP with lump sums of diplomatic capital. That is, after all, what "diplomatic capital" is - having sufficient "leverage" that other people do what you ask.
*Loss of ability to gift away cities. I don't mind losing resource-trading, we have loads of new ways to get resources. However, cities is a big problem. Why on Earth (pun?) can't I trade these away?
*Too many diplomacy notifications from advisors. My advisors wouldn't shut up about available agreements, frequently ones I'd known about for ages, and that I couldn't afford. They quieted once I had 5x active agreements, but it was rough before then. Please let us disable these.
*Too many diplomacy notifications from other leaders. I
love that they're chatty, snarky, and endlessly commenting. My suggestion: please don't change that. But, at least give us one or more of the following: The option to turn off the pop-up notifications. The option to change their size, or move them to elsewhere on the screen. The option to turn off the beep. The option to have
only new messages pop-up on the screen.
*Suddenly unlocked buildings. Things like Holosuite, Neurolab, Xenofuel Plant, Xenonursery and so on. These used to require having a workable, developed source of a resource
near the city. Now they're just suddenly unlocked, I think either when you have such a resource somewhere in the empire, or a trade route brings you one. I kinda enjoyed having access to these everywhere, but it didn't feel like this was meant to happen. My suggestion: Please either remove this strangeness, or change the tooltips on the buildings to explain what is really happening.
*Units not revealing nearby invisible units properly. Some units claim to be able to reveal nearby invisible units, but moving next to a tile where I know a submarine just fired from doesn't reveal anything. I can't move into the tile, so I know something's there, but I see nothing. What the what? Also, toward the end, anything could reveal submarines just by moving next to them. I'm not sure what's going on here. Maybe I didn't understand the explanations as they were written?
*End of War problems: I don't enjoy being forced to annex cities that I don't want in a peace deal. My suggestion: Please let the victor
dictate the terms of victory, rather than being stuck with terms they don't want. Also, at one point, I was up 3000 to 200 in a war, but the other guy wouldn't give up. Perhaps because the unalterable terms of victory required him to cede to me six cities (that I didn't want). I'm not sure how to phrase a suggestion here, but surely you can see the problem?
*Wild fluctuations in strategic resources. One turn I'd have 9x Firaxite. The next I'd have -1. The next turn I was back up to 9x. No event notification explained what happened, and I didn't queue up any production involving that resource. I expect this is the result of other peoples' trade routes with me expiring and being renewed. Please at least give us a notification on the far right that I can mouse over explaining this. (Not necessarily for every trade route, just ones involving strategic resources!)
*Ocean Cities require roads for internal trade network bonuses. Yeah, sure, I'll just dig a highway through the Marianas Trench. NOPE. This is silly, Firaxis. Please just let us connect the cities by water, even if we have to build a Harbor or something.
Ongoing things that still bother me, dating back to CIV/CIVBE:
*The AI still doesn't do much. It's either "the Runaway" or a potato. This first game of BERT did feature a lot more AI activity, including far more unexpected DOWs. However, only one or two civs ever posed a serious challenge to me. The rest just puttered around for a while. Not sure what to say about that.
*Virtues balance. I still see no viable alternative to going Prosperity, at least in the early game. Extra colonist, and extra health can't be beat. (This may be my playstyle, I'm kindof a carebear builder!)
*Outer tech tree is largely irrelevant. You get what you need for your victory condition, and that's it. Unless you're just playing to Time victory... If the Contact victory is in play, the game ends even sooner.
*Satellites: Two things. First, please give us the option to voluntarily de-orbit a satellite. If there is one already, please educate me. Otherwise, why can't we? Second, I really don't understand why we can only put up a satellite within a certain distance from our bases. I know it's a gameplay>realism thing, but this is so grotesquely unrealistic, that it erodes my suspension of disbelief. My suggestion would be to let us put satellites wherever (though keeping the minimum distance between them), and just make the shoot-down radius larger. This would also help with the unrealism of not being able to see at least the shorelines of the map, without taking the special loadout at the start. We could put spy satellites wherever, and see the map much sooner. Just my two cents, moving on
*The Mini-Map: It's good like it is, but please give us the option to make it larger. (If that's already there somewhere, please educate me.) I just want to gloat over a large map of my empire
*Air attacks: Please let us attack with more than one air unit, from the same starting tile, at the same time, like in Civ4. Having to individually do each different unit is a mindless bore, especially when we have to watch them fly the whole flippin' way there, and they sometimes fly around a few more times than they need to.
*Final Victory Screen: I actually really liked the new Supremacy victory movie. I agree with the guys saying it's minimally animated, but it fit the aesthetic of the game very well, and was far more interesting than before. However, I include this in the list of "bother" things, because there is no excuse for this not being in the game the first time around.
Overall Evaluation: A very positive experience, a definite upgrade from CIVBE, and a great evolution in the series. After the mess that was launch-day vanilla CIV, and the comparative disappointment that a lot of us felt with CIVBE, I don't expect to buy a vanilla, launch-day Firaxis release again in the near future (I already skipped Starships). However, the last several patches, and now BERT have confirmed that there will always be hope - Firaxis is definitely capable of patching and expanding its vanilla games into excellence, even if it takes a little time
) and getting techs that you don't actively need is also an investment that has to have some payout to be worth it. 
