Death Stranding came out in 2019. Death Stranding 2 will come out in 2025. That's six years for two games. If these were the PS2 days Kojima would have cranked out 3 Death Stranding games by now and we'd be getting Death Stranding 3: Subsistence along with a teaser for Death Stranding 4 next year.
Remember when video game trilogies used be to a huge thing in the sixth and seventh generations? You'd typically get 3 games in about 5-7 years
See: Halo, Gears of War, Resistance, Killzone, etc
There are enough 4X games I prefer over Civ, but in regards to Civ-likes, I've heard excellent things about Old World. Mind you, I'm not that much of a fan of the heavy focus on warfare/combat, but it's quite popular, especially with some older Civ fans.
I played Old World and it was pretty boring, though definitely best of the crop, maybe they improved it since release? I also don't like warfare in Civ, something like 95% of my playtroughs since original civ1 were not warlike ones. My favourite tactics was always PRODUCTIVE FORCES all caps.