- Workers are now called Builders and have a set number of build charges.

- Settlers, Builders and Traders increase their production costs after a while. Settlers and Builders increase production costs based on how many were produced prior.
Traders increase production costs based on tech and civic advancements

- City districts are introduced which must be built on the map within 3 tiles the city center.

- A new Civics tree is available, which works similar to the Tech tree. It's researched using Culture.

- Newly founded or conquered cities no longer increase the Science and Culture costs for techs and civics, respectively.

- Social policies are now researched via the Civics tree instead of having a specific policy tree.

- Social policies are not permanent and can be customized as soon as you research a new civic.

- Governments from previous civs return and provide bonuses as well as specific slots for social policies.
The higher tiered your government is, the more slots for policies you can obtain.

- Global Happiness no longer exists. Instead, Amenities are a per-city basis.

- Roads are no longer built by workers and cost maintenance. Instead, traders and districts build them automatically.
Military engineers can be trained later to manually build roads in unusual areas.

- Continents are now randomly generated in map generation instead of simply being based on landmass.

- Crabs and Copper resources are now considered bonus resources instead of luxury resources.

- A new Religious Victory is available. Diplomatic Victory also becomes unavailable unless you get the Gathering Storm expansion.