REVIVE!!!!
So I've been watching videos and news about this game and the more I watch the more I approve of all their big changes.
1. You have cassus belli for wars now, just like Paradox games:What this basically means is that you can war for specific reasons and targets (holy war, reconquest war, surprise war, etc.) and they carry different or even no warmongering penalties. Finally you don't have to get penalized just for defending your allies or whatever nor do you have to conquer all your opponents cities just to end the war. Apparently the severity also changes depending on the time period where wars in the ancient era don't even cost any warmongering at all.
2. Unstacked cities:I think this is a great change and the way they made it so you get a lot of adjacency bonuses makes city planning actually fun and completely different based on where your city is. No longer do you just have carbon copy cities everywhere. Also being able to see wonders being placed properly on the map is great!
3. Roads built by trading:I never knew how much I wanted this until I heard about it. Now you don't have to slowly chain your workers to build connections to your cities, but rather trade caravans will automatically build them between the cities they trade with. This also means that if you trade a lot with neighbouring civs, you end up with roads connecting your cities naturally. Nice!
4. Diplomacy looks more interesting, since information is now going to be a premium commodity:So from what I understand, they're changing it so that you won't necessarily know what's happening in the rest of the world as stuff will be hidden behind rumours that you have to decipher. Additionally, it seems they're amping up the agendas system so that the civs are more clear cut on what they want to do and they have goals that are more interesting than "conquer the world" or "win a cultural victory". Now they're interested in stuff like declaring war on anyone who is a warmonger on their own continent or having the largest navy or stuff like that.
5. Units can be stacked again:Not completely though. Looks like they went with a middle ground which is fine by me. I was okay with both versions but I did like the tactical choices you had to make when you couldn't stack.
6. The civs are so distinct and different:Holy cow just watch those civ introduction videos. All the different guys are so completely different from one another. And I know they've always been distinct but this time it feels like they turned it up to 11. I know when I watched a few of them I kept going "that sounds incredibly overpowered" but it looks like they're doing the Dota school of balance by making everything overpowered in their own unique ways.
7. Great people are all unique, dependent on the era, with their own abilities and you have to compete for them:No longer will Archimedes be the same as Da Vinci!!!! They're different now! And that you have to fight with the other civs to get the ones you want, oh man that's incredible.
8. You don't just buy city states any more:Now they use an envoy system (so you don't have to constantly refresh your bribe to them like before) and the civ with the most envoys with a city state is the suzurein. I much prefer this as I really disliked the stupid quest / bribery system from before. Also all the different city states are now unique in their bonuses unlike the 4 different types we used to have prior. Heck yeah!
Anyway, here are some videos:
1.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA7LgQX01Ng2.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIS_6yoz__s3.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKCYmRF_DMQ