The pieces are slightly rethemed but they have the same function.
Rice / Buddhas / High helmets are replaced with Farms / Monasteries / Castles, since I always thought the idea of influencing a peasant with rice was silly, but offering him a farm makes sense.
Samurai / Ronin are represented by an Army (crossed guns) and Cavalry (crossed swords). Fleets are still fleets, represented by an anchor.
The swap population tile is now a plague tile, the idea being that plages cause population shift between cities. The icon is a plague bacillus. The girlfriend is a biologist and preferred a picture of bacterium to a skull and crossbones.
The exchange tile is just a spiral.
All the fast tiles have dotted borders and slow tiles are solid. Although this has still not completely eliminated confusion when playing this game with my parents.
The idea for the medals you see at the top came from this user:
You hand them out at the end of the game and it makes understanding the scoring rules a little easier.
