1) gold diamond (free technology) anomalies are gone, and only an event brings them in - So if you don't get that event, you don't get those anomalies!
2) Farms no longer increase population - WTF, WTF, WTF???
3) Planets have a population cap of 3 billion which you can do NOTHING about in the crucial earlier stages of the game. So you cannot increase your economy like before, you just stagnate, but the AI seems to be able to bound ahead as normal! You will need to cut down whatever difficulty level you used to play at as a result.