Akalabeth

Combat in Civilization to me will never really be that great because the railroads are fundamentally broken. I remember launching a massive amphibious invasion in Civilization 2 or 3, with 6+ transports loaded with armour and mechanized troops and after quickly capturing a coastal city and digging in, two countries worth of Dragoons which were located on the same continent attacked me the next turn. Basically every unit in the enemy empire that was available for combat could be instantly transported to the front lines via railroads with no loss of movement, completely devaluing any concept of strategic positioning. I then focused on destroying the Railroad infrastructure to slow their approach, but with 3 movement the Dragoons could easily and instantly get into combat the turn they were built. Meanwhile my own ships had to sail back to my continent for 3 turns both ways, load up, etcetera before bringing another load of troops. Conversely, the AI in Civilization has never been able to launch any sort of meaningful amphibious invasion. At best in the older games you'd get a few troops in transports, like 2-3 in a ship that holds 10 and they'd get trounced. That tactic works in the age of sail, not in the age of world wars. I've heard they've ignored that in recent civilizations by giving any unit the ability to become a transport once it hits the ocean. Civilization was great fun in my youth, but recently when trying to get into the newer games it no longer appeals to me.

Could never get into Alpha Centauri myself despite slavishly playing Civilization 1-3 and Colonization as well. Even tried again recently to once again dive into the game after all the hype from the podcast but I have to say I just cannot stand the game for more than half an hour. I suspect it's a combination of visuals and audio, particularly the audio for the mindworm attack which sounds vaguely like a vacuum cleaner.

I don't personally understand this universal acclaim for Master of Orion 2. Having played a ton of the first Master of Orion when it came out, I recently tried to get into MOO2 but frankly found the game completely unbearable. My typical game is about 2 hours of empire building followed by the stark realization that my empire is so backwards compared to all of my neighbours to the point where my fleets get completely slaughtered. My empire typically ends up with one or maybe two hospitable worlds who are so focused on food production to support the mineral rich, but barren or worse worlds I've colonized. Despite having 70% of my homeworld growing potatoes my worlds are often still starving and all the while so few of my citizens are focused on technology research. In the early game there's so little exploration, so little to do beyond building things that I found myself just clicking next turn repeatedly waiting for things to happen. If one compares this to Civilization, in the early game of that while your city is trying to build up you have other units like workers imrpoving the area or warriors wandering about exploring and looking for ruins to pillage. In MOO2 there is no such multi-tasking to keep interested. Your explorer ships are sitting idle. Your colonies are waiting to build units, some of which take some 30+ turns to complete. It's simply boring. And really for a space-faring empire, why would they ever need 70% of their people creating food? In North America the number of people farming is 2 percent. TWO percent. Admittedly world-wide its 60 percent, but that begs the question why an interstellar empire has third-world food production efficiency. I much preferred the first Master Of Orion's more abstracted representation of worlds and much higher fleet limits which made one feel that they were always building things even if only a stockpile of obsolescent units. Also I rarely found that I was ever unable to at least cause an enemy some trouble in the early game. If Master of Orion 2 is the gold standard for 4X space games, then 4X space games are in a bit of trouble from my perspective.