My quick first impressions on the changes after <100 turns with Elodie

Overall this is my least favorite change to the vanilla game so far. The biggest reason is that I feel this is a step away from the play the terrain principle as virtues give affinity points. Sure it's only a small amount but enough to make you choose a virtue based on gaining an affinity level and not the other benefits. Also my personal view of virtues is that they are more about cultural and social growth of the society and should not have direct effect on the weaponry your armies use.

There are some great changes to the classic virtue bonuses, my favourite being the +50 diplomatic capital instead of science from completing expeditions. I do miss the +3 explorer modules (+1 currently) but I can see why so many modules would be too powerful with that diplomatic boost. I also miss the virtues giving bonuses from working basic resources. The first slots giving just a free virtue is a strange solution as I can't see a reason why not to pick them all with the first virtue that you get, adding meaningless extra clicking to the virtue trees.

To me it also seems like most of the affinity bonuses are just gone or moved to the new virtues. I feel that this makes the affinity progress way too trivial as the impact on and of your playstyle is mostly just the different unit bonuses. So affinity progress would just be about military might and not so much about adapting to the new environment on the planet by the means of different technological approaches.

Sorry that this came out so negative. Am I just missing the big picture of these changes? Would be great to hear Machiavellis reasoning behind the changes to see where this mod is going to.