I've been a fan of the civilization series since II. However I haven't played all of them due to being busy at different points in my life. Didn't play VI for example, but I did enjoy V, some of the DLC for it was good IIRC.
I'm concerned about the pre-order push, and that there is going to be a Switch version. But it does look like it could be good? No way I'm pre-ordering, but would like something to look forward to.
He's half right.
The OG leader you choose remains constant, but you change the culture/ethnicity/nationality of the empire your leader rules every new Era.
It's copying Humakind mechanics, which was another failed "Civ Killer" developed by Amplitude a few years back with the same novel mechanic.
But Humankind flopped hard despite having tons of hype from streamers pre-launch.
I haven't played it myself and don't really understand particularly why it failed. All the 4x streamers played it for a month live, then all simultaneous dropped it and memoryholed it.
I heard a lot of complaints about balance issues and the fact that changing civs so often meant a lack of identity and that there was usually an optimal civ choice that led to similar gameplay each time. Lots of complaints too that keeping track of enemies was confusing because they change constantly too.
I followed some of Humankind's development as well. One of their leads was a flaming troon.