after playing about four complete games (i quit two a hundred turns from the endgame realizing they weren't possible to win at the difficulty) along with a few quick speed test games on settler (i usually do this with new games/expansions/mods/etc. just to learn the new mechanics)
my conclusion is this, i hope there is one more expansion and they don't stop at three because this game continues to be underserved in so many ways
there are so many mechanics where their "fix" is to just make them accumulating values and display them, like the diplomatic points now, I have zero clue how these actually are supposed to work, but the AI really wants them and I have no other use for them except to give them away to the AI
it's like religion points if you aren't a religion founder, you're totally out of that subgame and those are just free points to spend on crap... if you don't give a shit about the World Council's garbage like going after certain religions or civs or banning trading gems to city states, you just accumulate these endlessly and the AI civs all want them, at some pretty high prices too, you can get strategic resources (that you extra need now) like iron, oil, etc. for them straight up in trades, the AI sometimes will even send you gobs of gold per turn for these
the governors continue to be useless for anything except boosting cities
the best thing about this is the highly expanded endgame now, no longer are you researching SOCIAL MEDIA forever for the last hundred turns or whatever, there's new stuff, new hypothetical governments, etc. science doesn't stop at launching crap into space, etc. it's arguably the farthest they've ever taken this in any of the games
the climate change thing is totally busted, there's literally no way to halt it or reverse it or anything by yourself... which, this is accurate enough, BUT, none of the AI even cares about this and they're all the CO2 producers because I PLANNED AHEAD and they don't
the fucking Dutch in my last game went from a world power to totally underwater because the climate change couldn't be halted, and I was the only Civ to even think about building the WALLS on the coast that prevent your lands from submerging if they fall below the sealevel...and I only had one city and some good resources in this position, the fucking Dutch had THEIR WHOLE CIVILIZATION in this position and DID NOTHING...they were also the fucking second highest CO2 producing Civ
it also seems like the tweaked AI no longer cares about certain world wonders as they're always there, to the endgame, never built...and many of these are ones like an extra policy, extra great people, etc. so you can really fucking boost your civ into the stratosphere
which brings me back around to the deterministic part of Civ VI, that pilon accurately noted...I mostly hate it when I realize I can't win the game, but I'm also realizing that there are many games where my win is all but locked in, it's just a matter of the turns going by so I accrue enough tourism or unlock the space race stuff
the U.S. in my last game launched a war at me, I think to try and stop me since they were the second place team in both science and culture, which is great, much better than the random wars from base game... but they they didn't have the units, literally to pull off even pillaging my closet city, i used my huge warchest of garbage to buy a bunch of units to stash on the border and blast away everything they sent for a few turns
then when they stopped coming, i sent them into U.S. territory to try and force a peace treaty...it wasn't until I had captured New Orleans and had like three other cities ready to capture from being bombarded for turns that I could finally force a peace treaty out of Teddy, in which he gave me New Orleans, like a hundred gold a turn, all sorts of resources, a bunch of art, etc. this was what HE offered when I said "what will you give me for peace" for the twentieth time
so he launched a non-sneak attack against a powerful civ in hopes of derailing my victory train, then got his teeth kicked in and only when I was about to take half his civilization away did he finally give in and write himself out of the running for winning the game
who's fucking running the AI, the Kaigun from the 1940's?
but it's still Civ so... time to start putting the mods back on