Hello! First of all I'd like to congratulate you for the great game you are making! We really need some fun oldschool city builders out there.
I also really like the unique take of this game and how it differs from Caesar and Anno. However I'd like to share some of my experiences I had on a long game.
- I used a medium map with low threat level since from earlier playthroughs the game devolved into a standoff unless I were lucky and acquired bronze, after that it's a curbstomp.
- Despite the medium map none of the islands have silk, wine is pretty rare, in my opinion this is pretty annoying when I take mining into account where only 1 of each mine can easily build up a full level empire, not sure what you wish to do in future updates, but I think this imbalance is worth a look. Wolves are just annoying and I straight up ignore them since they don't give any meaningful buff compared to the chore it takes to set them up.
- With 14 settlements and 1958 pop the lag became really bad (hit space 10 times to pause level bad). Even worse when the waypoints or settlement stock stats are up. Considering I play the dame on a pretty decent desktop PC I can't help but feel sad I have to give up building decent sized villages. (I can provide a save file if needed)
- Some of the building sprites feel really out of place, mainly that there is only 2-3 wood like buildings, all others feel like they jump from clay to stone. Blocky buildings are a bit hard to tell apart, thinking about the warehouse house trade depot combination, they could use some love.
- Trade ships could use a "wait till cargo is full" option so I don't have to micromanage them.
- Some buildings could take up more space, making them more unique visually. Branching upgrades could provide some interesting choices.
- For now the most optimal size for a village is at 85-99 pop, efficiency really suffers from the need to provide meat and you really don't need to get above 99 unless you wish to make a megacity, this isn't a bad thing, Anno has a similar mechanic, but Anno rewards you for it.
Thank you for reading my rant, I hope you find some use for it and I eagerly wait the next patch.