izigame.me

I do love this game and lemme tell ya, I had a blast playing it- but there is a LOT of work that needs to be done in order for me to say that this is a good game.
One of the biggest issues is perhaps the core gameplay system, its gameplay loop and how the player interacts with it. You've probably heard that the game is very micromanage intensive and that is absolutely true. There have been excellent updates to automate some of this process but the player is quickly overwhelmed by the many, many things they have to keep track of which is somewhat by design. The game is designed to provide the player with the many interwoven pieces of a civilization- and they're responsible for overseeing all of it. I personally enjoy this as a concept but as it is executed in the game, you spend a lot of your time rifling through production lines ensuring everything is in check. People have been saying it compares to Factorio and this is very much true. However, this is like if Factorio was all menus and all of your time was spent interacting with UI's. When playing this game, I rarely feel like I am growing a city: I am instead feeding an excel spreadsheet inputs that causes numbers to increase.
Another consequence of the core gameplay design is how little your decisions feel like they have an impact over everything. You go through all of this labor intensive micromanagement improving your production queues and the player doesn't really feel like that much has changed. Most of how you interact with your cities is by plugging in supplies, amenities and goods all of which increase the effectiveness of what ever you are trying to improve by like a small percentage. Eventually, stacking your small percentages is what causes your numbers to skyrocket but there is very little feedback as you build up to that point. The small increments are fractions of a fraction to start and eventually your city production is so high it barely registers in comparison. Every time you unlock a tech and plug it in to your empire, you are rewarded with small increments and this goes on ad nauseum. Because of this, it feels like the player never really decides what direction they are taking their empire, they're just progressing forward one small barely noticeable increment at a time.
This also segues into my biggest personal complaint in that build variety just isn't a thing. There aren't really any "builds" in any sense that you may find in other 4X's for a variety of reasons. The first most obvious one is Leader abilities change very little about the game. Just like before, they are all just small little bonuses that stack with all your other small bonuses. There is an equivalent of Governor Titles and Pantheons that Civ VI players will be familiar with, but you can only slot in 5 paragons at a time to give differing empire yields and all of them provide bonuses that are not unique and share a pool of like, 5 different traits. The religion system also lets you improve niche aspects but as with everything else, most of these are just super small fractional bonuses. There are a few exceptions but they are probably part of the balance issues that plague the game. Certain technologies are just far superior compared to other unlockables for the age and multiple runs will see you taking largely the same techs. Although you won't use all the goods/amenities unlocked by techs due to being outclassed by other options, you will probably build every building available to you. Because of this, every run sees the same power spikes, ideal scenarios, and city layouts.
So, what improvements would I suggest? Well, individual civilizations really need to have features that are truly unique and aren't just a handful of small bonuses (THAT CAN BE SHARED WITH OTHERS) and an ability to use one or two things 50% better. The leading competitor, Civilization allows leaders to break/create mechanics or introduces new and unique features. The most obvious iteration I think this game could implement is unique amenities. Some leaders could unlock some powerful alternative amenities that shape how they play. Egypt gets a unique grain store that provides bonus production for every arid/floodplain region. Sappho unlocks poetry which improves diplomatic relations and gives QoL for each alliance/trade deal with other nations. There's still more complicated changes that could be made to help with this issue but I think just the introduction of this Leader Amenity mechanic would make them feel significantly more unique than as it is right now. Another improvement would just to have certain items have a use other than "slight improvement to previous technology." How do candles have so many uses and then once you get electricity (2/3 unlocks you can get from another tech option), light bulb's only function is to replace candles as supply and provide just 1 more knowledge? Barrels and Plastic Bottles provide the same value but only some can be used in some buildings while the other can't but often times there is a lot of both. There are some good amenities in the game that deviate from the "increases QoL" such as the stove, eye glasses, and newspaper. However, for every interesting feature, there are 25 boring/uninteresting options. Obviously, there's many other improvements I could suggest but there is no need to go on such a long tangent.
Anyways, although I have enjoyed my time playing this game, I've also felt like the game play and its loop is just not simply as fun or interactive as other games, especially others in the same civilization builder 4x genre. Like Humankind, there is something unique here and the potential is massive, it just so happens that the execution of these ideas simply isn't refined in any way and probably needs a massive overhaul to truly stand out as a good game.