"I say, you there... I say, you there... I say, you there..."

So. Here's an article discussing what's going to be in it. Some thoughts, after a quick readthrough:

-Everything that was changed from CIV to CiV seems to be being retained. Understandable, since they're basically continuing with the same vision here.

-They're diversifying leaders somewhat, with... personality traits, I guess? The impression I get is that leaders will have their own obsessions, and you go against those at your peril.
--Per this article: "One leader might be fanatical about allying with city states. That forces you into a decision: back off from city states and potentially be friends, or compete over a state's affection and maybe come to blows."
--Well, unless city states are really good, you just back off. So the other leaders make certain playstyles unfavourable, above and beyond the norm.
--As in: 'normally, I will ally with any city states I meet. The exception is if they're allied with someone who might attack me over it. Oh, look, Murderos IV is in the game. He will attack me if I ally with city states he's allied with. Then I guess I won't do that.'

-"The unstacking of armies revolutionised the way the military side of the game played out and we’re making a similar change on the economic side of the game." What they're doing is apparently going to One City-Building Per Tile; quite how that will work I don't know.
--It suggests that cities in small spaces aren't going to be able to develop very far; there'll be no workaround to shove extra food into them, because the restriction is physical space.
--It might mean that certain tiles are only buildable-on in the late-game.

-They're playing about with research, making it so that you have 'miniquests' for each research option, which are based on what's on the map. So you can research masonry much faster if you have access to stone, for instance.
--That... sounds dubious to me. They say it's to break out of 'one way to play' mindsets, but if the boosts are significant enough to make a difference, then they're still One Right Way: 'if you have stone, research masonry; if not, don't'. Or, to quote: "[in previous Civ games] you could research sailing and navigation, even if you’re landlocked in the middle of a continent. Now you can still try to do that but it’s going to take you forever."
--That means that how you play is restricted by the map generation - which is exactly what I wrote about the city thing. Hmm. New section.

-So carrying on from 'combat using terrain features' as a central feature of CiV, Civ6 will make the way you build your empire depend on the terrain, too.
--Is that good or bad? That really, really depends on how tightly restricted you are. If the random map generation pretty much puts you on rails, then it's bad. And with the leaders also putting restrictions on what you can do... I dunno. We'll see when it comes out.

hS