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..hotly anticipated.. by whom?
These games have gone to shit. Civ 5 was only so,so. They're not even trying. You should have a fricking globe. You should have good AI. None of that is present.
This is the most unbelievable choice by far to me. The ai genuinely plays like a 5-year old and needs to cheat its ass off to present even a mild challenge.
Civ 5 in multiplayer was a 9.5/10 experience for me. Single player is straight up tedium in comparison.
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Do you have better strategy game recommendations?
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Sometimes it feels like Alpha Centauri was the last time they tried anything truly revolutionary with the formula. I should really play it again and refresh my memory. I remember it was the singular instance of being able to design my own units, do any sort of serious geo engineering, have floating cities, seriously need to worry about the local flora or fauna, etc. Many of those features haven't been seen again. I can't recall the last Sid Meier 4X game that let you create custom units. Even the spiritual successor, Beyond Earth, didn't.
Unfortunately, the AI in Alpha Centauri is still kind of bad. It will forward-settle 5 tiles away from your cities like a complete imbecile and all the AIs band up together if the player ever gets strong.
Plus, you don't really get to choose between econ/tech/military. If you do, the ginger bitch will declare war and invade you with 50 units as soon as mathematically possible.
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My favourite part of the expansion was how war crimes against the aliens suffered no diplomatic penalties.
So you could play as a respected democratic society that upheld human rights, and still load up your units with chemical weapons and gas alien cities.
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