Someone was talking about Civ Beyond Earth recently and Potato Mcwhiskey was playing it so I gave it a shot - however, I pirated it and forgot to download the expansion pack at first, so I think I have had the unusual experience of playing the release version of the game and then the fully updated and expanded game back to back as my first impression. I have to say it's crazy how much better it is. I may have gotten a particularly boring seed the first time around where I was on my own island - and the second game I'm playing on hard, but the game feels much more alive and interesting and I've had to actually think about the AI and what I'm trying to accomplish. I don't know if it's got legs and I haven't hit endgame in the second run (it will still probably be a slog), but it's been a pretty enjoyable civ-type experience with ayylmao characteristics. Watching my little guys shoot giant bugs in the fungal forests is definitely

What I've been hearing about civ 7 has gotten me a lot more optimistic about the big design changes, ages in particular. It sounds like they took a really hard look at civ's lategame sucking because of snowballing and relative impact of decisions compared to how many you have to make and the ages system is intended to alleviate that. I imagine having fewer cities with like subordinate settlements and no workers/builders will also reduce the micro - oh! and you don't have to manually do logistics for reinforcements anymore. remains to be seen if planes will be pleasant to use.