My main concern: there's a ton of research to be made, right from the beginning. I'm fine with having different layers of complexity getting branched out as I continue to play and understand a game. But I find it a bit overwhelming having to decide on a bunch of research items (being some of them very similar to each other), right when I'm starting to build my civilization.
For example, why separate Farming, Orchards and Beekeping? These are all food bonuses for my cities. If I have one city with an apiary, another with orchards and another with fertile land, I need to do every bit of research for these food bonuses, while research requirements increase every time. In the meantime, there's military to consider, and education, administration, taxing, housing, mining, advanced mining, etc, as well as magic and adventuring research, etc, etc... This is more of a hassle and less of a fun factor in my opinion.
Better, intuitive research is needed. New players who are oblivious to the game mechanics will find this a frustrating learning experience, with the AI most likely beating them to a pulp... for the wrong reasons...
Suggestion 1: add a recommended research feature.
Suggestion 2: add a 'food production' research to encompass all the different food bonuses. A city with a certain food resource will be able to harvest it immediately. However, only the pioneer unit can upgrade that food resource to its fullest potential (as in the civilization adapting to that resource and learning how to increase its output) taking a greater amount of turns for the first upgraded resource, but less for the subsequent ones of the same kind (message on first upgraded resource: 'Your civilization learned how to fully develop Apiaries! Next upgrades of the same resource will be much faster now!').