Recent reviews by Nova

Cute Artstyle, lots of fun and a 1.0 that is not only branded as such, but actually brings new content worthy of the label

Not only requires battle.net acc but also phone verification on that

After playing the first round with friends, we were all positively surprised by the gameplay as we expected worse.

Good:
-The new way expanding Cities works is a nice change from having to constantly build and/or micromanage builders
-Combining Barbarians/Citystates cool too, as the barbarians are less annoying now
-Some rivers are boatable now
-The core mechanic of changing the civ with each age is good in a way that you have a unique bonus each age
-The exploration part of only going to a new continent in the next age ist kinda interesting as you now are actually incentivised to build cities further away, unlike in VI where you just lost them to loyalty bs

Neutral
-Reset at the end of each age, can set you behind in unexpected ways (eg. 1 turn till city settle and then the settler is just gone instead)
-Having to remake your cities from towns every age is somewhat annoying
-Unlocking content through playing (personally I like this as that gives a bit more meaning besides just playing for the sake of playing to every round, but I see where people dislike this. Up to personal preference ig.)

Con
-No ability for teaming
-No research queue
-No City renaming
-No Religion renaming
-Forced to declare war on allied opponents, but not being able to go to peace the same way (and if you do not interact with the enemy because they are far away, they still do not like to make peace)
-Only offer option in peace deals are cities(not resources, gold etc.)

Resumé:
The core gameloop is solid and when the missing QoL features are added it will be good, better than VI certainly, BUT:
The game was released at full price, which means it HAS to also have the full features at release. Additional flavor can always be added later, but things like teams, reasearchqueue, renaming etc. are elements that have to be in the release especially at that price.

Very Assetflippy on the environment and core mechanic part, but with the unique twist of being able to collect the cards yourself

Matchmaking is none existant

Cute little game to relax

Decent Price, lot's of fun, for an early access game more complete than some AAA-Releases

Very pleasantly surprised about the Multiplayer Stability for an early access game.
Worked flawlessly so far.

Sadly the game became reality

Stop overhauling Systems. If something is in the game, don´t touch it, thanks