As of now, the best thing to have in the game appears to be lots of land, with very few rivers, oceans, hills and lots of dense forests that can be chopped and converted to coal. This may change in the future as fishing, prismatic liquid and military combat is added. However for now, pure flat land as far as the eye can see will be the goal. When t...

What am I playing these days?
Endless Space 2 from Amplitude Studios is a 4x turned based strategy game that has been consuming my time in the past two months.. Originally released in 2017, it's had a number of expansion packs and mini releases since. The game is reminescent of Masters of Orion 2 even down to having troop invasions of planets. It has a similar feel to civ6 and there have been a few nights I've stayed up for just one more turn.

It is a typical "explore, expand, exploit and exterminate" game. Space combat has a cool battle video sequence, however, I found myself skipping these after the first battle. After destroying a fleet that orbits a system, you then do a ground invasion. The twist from earlier games is this has improvements in gear for your ground assault including better use of technology, tanks and airplanes. This actually does make it more fun.

The game has several victory conditions including science, economy, conquest, wonders and total score,  Generally, I just play until the game ends on its own. It does a good job of ending earlier rather than having tedium once it's obvious that you've won.

AI seems better on alliances and teams than Civ6
The game has a political system. I remember joining with a computer player on my alliance in Civ6 and my own computer ally had declared peace right as I was about to make major gains. This AI seems smarter in letting you obtain your gains and will send ships to your aid as well. The computer opponents seem to have their own personalities from the condescending Horatio to my favorites being the Sophons.

Fabledom developed by Grenna Games released with early access yesterday on Steam for only $15.  It is a city builder game with a cartoonish bent set in a land of fairytales. You can pick to be a prince or a princess to govern a small. Throughout the game, you will have random events that add a little fairy tale flavor that ranges from additional quests that involve giving away some of your resources to enduring spells from evil witches. Keep in mind, the game is still unfinished but offers a bit of playthrough and I spent a solid 8 hours on it. It has a very relaxing feel to it that is similar to cities skylines and as you grow your settlement, you can annex neighboring aras.

You start out with 4 peasants and have a series of tutorial quests that involve building livnig quarters (homsteads), farms and workshops (laborers huts). These are used by the populace to live. Lumber camps and stone camps employ the populace and are used to gather resources which can be turned into buildings or higher tier resources.

The game has seasonal and weather cycles which add a nice twist to the game. Crops take time to grow and there are boom and busts cycles of resource gathering which must be taken advantage of in spring and summer so that you may last through the winter. It's a nice refreshing take on a well established genre.

The set up screen has a random seed generator that is well appreciated in this style of game where you are dependant on map resources.

The game has diplomacy as well as combat however the combat system does not appear to be implemented yet, and the diplomacy focuses mainly on fairytale romance at the moment. However the backbone of the game is in place for what appears to be a rich environment for NPC interaction.