Fantastic game, having been playing over 500+hours now and finding it still keeps getting better. IMO this is a far better construct of a game than Civ and with future updates/versions this is has the potential to completely surpass Civ in all gameplay aspects.

It falls somewhere between Civ and Crusader Kings and is a great version of both.

Feels very similar to a slow Civilization where you've installed a mod that prevents you from moving all of your units in the same turn.

Some things are nice about it. The family dynasty stuff just feels like busywork rather than anything interesting, but are the only real departures from Civ that I've noticed so far. I'll probably poke at it a little more, but it really does feel like playing a mod.

update: played some more... got to the midgame (as given by the points score) and... it's just way too slow. I'm tabbing out of the game to watch youtube while the turns crunch. Most of my cities are on auto because that's tedious, as are most of my workers. So I'm playing very little game while I'm playing the game. And it's this slow on medium setting for everything. I don't understand how it can be this slow, coming from Paradox games that simulate dozens of nations in 'real time'.

Might have been okay but to be spending *more time* outside the game than inside while playing is just silly.