I started a city on Beta to see this for myself.
I can kind of see having players complete the first chapter before joining a Fellowship. But the further requirement to research Fellowship Adventures, which you can't do immediately after researching Fellowship, seems over the top. I cannot come up with any rationale for it other than slowing down progression.
Blocking beginning players from performing Neighborly Help until it's researched halfway through chapter 1 - unnecessary, IMHO.
The MA unlocks at the end of Chapter I, but crafting isn't available until halfway through chapter III. Again, a slowdown. Players will be limited in the relics they can collect, so they won't be wanting to spend a lot of them on PoP or the NH bonus. EE doesn't become available until after crafting does. Further, without the spire to gain fragments, crafting is ... less than useful.
AWs don't become available until chapter IV. I don't understand this one at all, because the initial AWs are not game-breaking overpowerful. Also, unless quest / event rewards are also tweaked, a player's inventory will be stuffed with Ancient Knowledge instants by the time they reach this point - so they will build their AW and immediately be able to upgrade it to level 2. Silly!
Tournaments, as already mentioned, not available until chapter IV. This is problematic. A player joins a fellowship in chapter II, but can't really contribute to it until this point other than FAs. Tournaments are also huge source of relics, which leads me to wonder if the idea was to put a check on goods production up until this point by restricting access to relics.
And the spire is not only pushed off to chapter V, but now also requires an additional 50 kp to open up rather than becoming available after opening Advance Scouts.
In summation, the goal appears to be to slow down progression through the early game (first four chapters). I suppose the rationale is that it will keep players interested, but I believe they have gone too far with it. I think new players will get frustrated and rage-quit.