I finished my first complete run-through:
1) I love to plan my city wisely and that way I must only delete 3 a 5 times 1 or 2 road tiles (no more than that!) and my maximum road tiles I had at the end (bought 16 expansions) were 25, no more than that. I had at the end over 60K Deben !!
2) I could go through this run without too much destroying buildings to make place and only mostly build and re-build cult. goods buildings, depending what I needed most for the next advancement.
3) I still had some troubles to see some differences because of being a bit color-blind : road tiles and the numbers of needed good in the advancement tree are hard to see for me !
4) The long building and especially "training time" of some units make it hard to get enough loot. Especially if you've still to "learn" how to do the battles in a better way to loose lesser units ! If you loose to many units in the beginning you've to wait a long time.. That way it play not "smooth", sadly point.
5) I love the battles and sometimes I found a hard battles more doable than a normal (depends the units I had to face!)... I'm still learning ...
6) Fast units I find not that good. Very weak defense, even if they stay in Forest and get attacked by Artillery or Ranged they were fast killed, despite of having an attack + defense bonus against those 2 kind !
7) I find the impediments and the 6 removals you get doing the questline all fine. And since expanision are not that expensive I bought 4 exp. with each kind of good and had enough place to arrange my city in a relaxing way !
8) The visuals are beautiful ! I always give every house a road. On the long run this give a lot extra Deben !
9) At the end I had 6 days left, so I decided to go 2 days further on to buy up to 15 expansions, just to see all the numbers of the 16 exp "cost" for each good ...
I had 1 Procession, 1 Piramid, 3 Luxery Estates and some smaller houses for some extra population and incoming Deben to gather 30K Deben and I got the 30K Deben BEFORE I got all my good gathered ! Just with 4 hour/8 hour production times. At the end I had 3 Artillery unit barracks, 3 Light unit barracks, 1 Ranged unit, 1 Fast and 1 Heavy. All 5 slots opened on all those barracks and still plenty of Deben left!
10) I can say that I'm a player who like to re-arrange my settlement (or main city). Reconstruction Mode for a settlement ? : I will NOT use it if they implement it.
11) This is the most fun & challenging settlement to play, so I like to see more of such if you plan to bring out more. So with battles or with the choice to fight or negotiate ...