Played some Galciv 4 and...nah. Diplomacy is bonkers, the AI wants 3 techs, some resources and my mom while offering like 80 credits. And whenever it presents a somewhat reasonable deal you have to take it immediately, otherwise they will reject the exact same deal if proposed by the player. Systems like crime don't seem particularly interesting, citizens with stats is TERRIBLE MICRO HELL for no good fucking reason and everything you do adds a PERCENTAGE to production/research/wealth. But my biggest issue is with the map generator that seems hardcoded into assfucking the player. Absolutely no planets that aren't tech gated EVER spawn within reasonable distance of earth, meanwhile the AI colonizes everything, no problem. Random tech draw is quite irritating because some techs are clearly OBVIOUSLY meant to be researched first, but then RNG screws you and offers you a bunch of mid game techs instead. Leaders are also fucking weird, a guy has bonuses as governor, you give him a governor job and suddenly he becomes butthurt (-20 "I have to manage things"), like WTF, nigger that's your fucking job! Ideology and executive orders are also very gamey mechanics, even if I actually approve of the later. But ideologies are just fucking nonsensical. "Compassion", "Innovation", "Authority" are simply too abstract to be the foundation of an ideology. Clearly SD devs never played SMAC OR they learned nothing from it. Heck, even the simplistic good vs evil system we had before was still miles ahead of this garbage.
The good part is...the game runs really well? I mean, it looks nice and I had buttery smooth FPS at all times, but then again I never made it into the late game (or mid game, for that matter). I also think the new distinction between colonies and core worlds is a step in the right direction, military technology is MUCH better (no more Laser I, Laser II...) and the flavor text for events is mildly entertaining. I also think the new system for assigning asteroids and shipyards reduced some tedious micro. But for the most part this game doesn't innovate much from previous entries and when it does innovate it's a step into "WTF, why, WHY!?" territory.
Anyway, on to Stellaris (never played it, wish me luck).
