Collecting my thoughts on this after playing most of yesterday and all night. I have the day off and wanted to get down what I thought before getting some rest.
Two things are certainly clear to me.
The first is that the game really needs a balance pass. Internal trade routes are just flat out broken. The majority of the food and industry output of your cities comes from the trade routes, and the majority of the culture and science comes from buildings. Sure, you have some citizens out there working tiles, but it the real benefit of the city is the city itself, and not the land that the city claims or the improvements on that land. Health is very easy to manage in wider empires once you get some technology, and in my current game I have around +30 health and cities everywhere without even trying.
Which brings me to my other point-the game doesn't have an AI setting that is suitable for Immortal or Deity Civ 5 players. Experienced Civ players will roast and toast the AI even on Apollo. Part of that is due to the above trade route abuse, but even without heavily abusing that, the AI is just too passive. You don't need to spend time managing it like you would in Civ 5 on Deity, and in general it lets you do whatever you want without much fuss. The only time it has bite is if you settle too close to Brazilia or ARC. Otherwise it's usually happy to send you caravans and let you simcity as you see fit.
I'm in love with the super dense nature of the game and its turns, but until the above two items are fixed, this game is really just a really enjoyable distraction, and not a skill testing experience.
