Another subtle thing that should help is in EL all the resources/luxuries were so foreign that they didn't really mean anything but a number, having these replaces with 'copper' or 'incense' should play out much better.
I can relate a little. I go way back to the original Civ and Master of Magic, the latter of which, if you didn't play it, was a fantasy skinned version of Civ. I liked it, but couldn't get into it as much as with Civ, since all of the resources, factions and so on were foreign. It never got a sequel, probably because it was too similar to Civ, yet foreign. Its sister game, Master of Orion, was also foreign, but did get several sequels, probably because the gameplay was quite a bit different than Civ. Anyways, I just find it kind of interesting that Civ was adapted into a fantasy game and, now, nearly 30 years later, an existing fantasy game (though not from Firaxis) is being adapted into a Civ-like, historical game.
One more thing that did really stand out for me in EL compared to other 4x games was the combat. Army units are stacked, and when they run into another army unit the stacks spread out on the existing map in a battle zone for turn based battled. It made for a nice balance between Civ I-IV's stacks vs Civ V-VI one unit per tile, where you get rewarding tactical combat but not in a way that lets you abuse the AI and always win even with an inferior force.
That sounds nice. That reminds me of another early 90s game, called Centurion: Defender of Rome, that I loved. It was like RISK, but with the addition of tactical battles. You'd move your army "stack" to a neighboring province and then get taken to a battlefield, where you'd see the size and make-up of it represented before playing a mini-game battle. For 30 years, I've kind of wanted to see something like that in a Civ-like game. Maybe I'll finally get the chance.