I'm a bit torn. On one hand it seems like a step back from the Civ 6 cartoon garbage. On the other hand the ground textures still look like blurry paint vomit. It's kinda weird because the foliage and mountains / rocks seem to be in a higher resolution and much more detailed. I guess it might be WIP and a remnant from Civ 6.
The unit sizes also seem gargantuan? I guess that part would not be as hard to fix via mods but that was already a compatibility nightmare before, especially when the mod authors quit.
So, graphically it might be a buyable Civ game again, but...
Picking a new civ or mismatching leaders makes me worry though, because that sounds awfully familiar to another game that had a similar terrible feature. The Aztecs turning into France while being led by some Japanese dude just does not feel right.
The FOMO unlocks to bait you into signing up AND buying the cartoon shit are a hard pass for me though. Selling that as a "thank you" is nothing but insolent.
No, you got it backwards. I don't play obnoxious eye cancer games that cause me migraines and look ridiculous. When you go from Civ V with diversified & smaller units that shows basically big armies, to some World of Warcraft-esque eye bleeding mobile game like art style that shows units as a single big cartoon unit, then that's just not what I want from a game like this.
Are you seriously claiming Civ 6 does not have a cartoon art style..?
And no, Civ V had a much better unit scale & diversity, especially with certain mods.
From what I saw of the gameplay is that civilizations are sorta locked on a path, but you get a choice of similar civilisations. Unless you play in the style of a different civ and unlock certain milestones you could unlock other paths. At least from what I understand.