I've been playing some of this for the first time since well, probably March there, there was a big Fall update, they redid a bunch of the mechanics of the climate stuff, the expanded endgame is actually pretty fun and cool and the game doesn't just hit a point where you're burning turns to a definite loss or whatever. I was able to nearly pull off a late game science victory switch run but needed two more turns to avoid defeat. Couldn't have done that since Civ VI released.
The climate stuff is not ratcheted endless in one direction no matter what, you can slow it down, and the AI now actually realizes this. Related to that there's also now a disaster slider basically, so you can turn them down to only really get the bad shit like volcanoes or hurricanes and less annoying floods that do nothing but make you repair your tiles for a couple turns. That doesn't turn off say the climate change floods but just the semi-random ones that would wreck a tile or two. They still happen, especially in areas marked "FLOOD PRONE" but not all over the place for no reason anymore if you turn it down.
There's now workable governments (and even better, policies!) past Democracy/etc. and they slightly dragged out the military tech tree so you don't smash into the end of units in the 1880s as much anymore.
The diplomacy is still nonsense, the war has never been figured out for the AI on these single units on a tile so the same strategy since the start of Civ V is still the one you want to use. They went too far in turning down the irrationality of the AI so they had to go back in the other direction and make it so certain trade offers you make are now marked as "demands" to the AI so they get upset again. In launch Gathering Storm, and really a bit after Rise and Fall, you really could just gift the AI random useless shit and make them be friends again no matter what lol
A lot of the confusion from stuff is just gone now, it's clear what stuff will or will not do, they added more pop-up tips from your adviser to make clear what in the hell these sets of icons are supposed to mean, etc. (The new city suggestion icons now you can mouse over and it'll show you why it's recommending that location but also what the location is now lacking for a perfect city like you can plant at the start of a game so you can judge whether you don't care that it has no special resources you just need another population center or if you need a coastal outlet or whatever) That said, some of the refined screens are even more confusing even if there's more information. The trade route screen is still hilariously awful and worse, DOES NOT SHOW ACCURATE INFORMATION NOR EVERY POSSIBLE ROUTE, so it's pretty much still essential to install the mod for this or else when you build a trader you want to send him around to each city to see the actual possible routes and their values. I don't mean like it's off by a couple gold, I mean it can be literally wrong and there's not actually a route to that city or even that civilization.

I was losing it trying to setup trade routes to the proper civs in order to get the tourism boost for a cultural victory this weekend. Just gave up and sent them to the best cities in the end. Which reminds me how the bug that's been in the game from the start about cultural victories is still there. It STILL notifies you that you are "ONE CIVILIZATION AWAY" every time you "lap" a civ you've already conquered, so the thing is utterly useless at figuring out how long you have to win. You really can't play for a cultural victory alone as you need a score and/or science and/or diplomatic backup probably just incase that thing that says "9 turns" actually means 35 turns or whatever. I don't mind when you can tell one of the turn counters is off by one because of rounding so it takes an extra turn, but it shouldn't really change every turn like it's using RNG for half of the value. (Even if it is! Tell me then!)
I hope they do a 2020 patch that's comparable to what they did for this last one. Then they can fully move on to 7. I would say another expansion isn't needed, save those ideas for 7, but another broad patch looking at everything could be good for when I come back again while waiting for 7 to release. The reason I picked this up again may in part be because I'm getting unnecessarily and overly hyped for
Humankind...