I collaborated on some mods and reviews so I have some context on the high-level (scripting) part of the game, which comprises mostly everything that is not engine related. Feel free to ask any questions.
It's a passion project with a lot of attention given to historical acuity.
This release saw a lot of balance fixes (that didn't get much love in the trailer) and a process to release in faster (6-months) cycles - compared to 2 years taken from a23-a24.
It established a baseline for great improvements coming on the next version, in particular faction (civ) differentiation and faster gameplay.