Nobody will care but I was re visting my past 'goty' lists (not that I'm a fan of them) and I realized I did an immense errror with Kingdom New Lands, which should have been placed way higher, if not on top.
I blame the fact I was distracted by other commitments/beta/various impediments back in the days and I feel I'm giving it proper justice/gameplay time just now.
It's probably one of the best games I played, and I don't even like that much 4X.
Finally unlocked a tons of new stuff in island 4, it's incredible how many things they add later on probably knowing very few people will see those.
Islands feel almost a puzzle with multiple solutions now, and they managed to step up difficulty noticbly every island avoiding frustration with new secrets to discover every time, secrets that ease a lot the previous difficult parts (opening new ones, of course).
So elegant and atmospheric, even a year later.
Superb.