In Dominions, there is a very expensive-to-cast spell called Wish. When you cast it a text box appears asking what you want to wish for. Want infinite money? Okay. Want to steal someone's god? Of course.
Looks like... Civ on the ground and space 4X in space in one game...? Okay, that's... quite a pitch.
Yeah, considering the new upcoming expansion Civ VI Gold is basically a must have.
ES2 is legit great now. Was not hot on it at launch but they've put in a bunch of work. Similarly, Stellaris is way better now, but I'm eagerly watching the next major patch/expac - they're finally revamping planetary development! No more tile micromanagement. ONce that's done with, all that's really left in terms of seeping wounds from launch is the really terrible Federation system.
Oh man, SotS2. I wanna say that era was really rough for indie strategy games, between SotS2 and King Arthur the Roleplaying Wargame 2. Stardock's Elemental: War on Magic might have been in that same period too, now that I think of it...
Honestly, I liked all of them okay at the time, lol. Was a beta tester for Elemental to boot!
Elemental sucked. Fallen Enchantress was alright once patched up but wasn't super exciting.
Actually that latest large DLC that introduced Behemoths and such is a bit meh. I bought it but play without it as it turns into the game of who can build Behemoths faster for that "WIN" button which kind of makes game the end game useless.
I think its perfectly fine to play it without Inferno. The majority of my time with the game predated that dlc so in my mind at least it is hardly essential. Shadows and Shifters are the two most important dlcs in my opinion, I link so much of Endless Legends unique identity as a 4x to the winter mechanics that it weird to think of the game without them in.
There a few years (3? 4?) between the last expansion and Inferno. Inferno was a surprise because everyone assumed EL was abandonned by then and Amplitude was working on 2 different DLC for Endless Space 2.
Warlock: Master of the Arcane is the first one that jumps to mind. What I saw of Gladius reminded me of it a lot. It's like Civ5 if it was purely combat. Heard some bad stuff about Warlock 2, but never played it for myself, unfortunately.
LeGuin pop/building optimization is a game in and of itself, honestly. There's so much going on! So far, I had been going for early Monument, but a recent early loss has me considering an Alloy factory for my first open building - it's such a bottleneck if you have aggressive neighbors.
Probably not the game for you then. Though don't think it's CIV with everything cut out but the bland combat. The combat is leagues better than Civ with lots of options to research and mold your army. I am on my third game and have only played as the Space Marine faction. Each game my army and tactics have been different enough that I still feel I am learning that faction.
Stellaris is trying to bridge 4x with Grand Strategy. With the new economic update there is a lot more micro that might be polished later on, but no idea how the will implement it.
Current top list of desired system fixes/improvements/features:
There are no games since Victoria 2 that hasnt been supported by Paradox for a long time!
