🚀 go-pugleaf

I bought 3 new 4x games this year. Anno 2070, Sid Meyer's Beyond Earth 
and Galactic Civilizations III. Oh, and one slightly older one in Age of 
Wonders III. 

Seriously: I am underwhelmed with the possible exception of the latter.

Anno 2070 has nothing much  new to offer, except for submarines and the
tech development that is more opaque than a bathrub of overcooked 
spaghetti, at least in the mid-later game. Other than that it's same 
old, same old, population-threshold triggered availability of new 
buildings and vessels. 
What it does have however is Ubisoft's Uplay and I've had that shit 
itself once so I had to find out were to download and reinstall it from,
and I've run into Ubi's servers being down and "sorry chum, you can't 
play your game right now until we get our shit together".  That does not
go down well with me. I have not touched it since week 3 or so. 
Incidentally I think 1404 was prettier and more fun.

Civilization Beyond Earth.  Yes, this is  not Alpha Centauri, that's for 
sure. I actually like the game for what it is,  it is stable, you get 
your little quests, you steer for victory.
Alas: this game is  sparse in options. There just isn't all that much 
you can do, each flavour (there are 3 flavours, purity, superiority and 
harmony)) has different looking units, but they all do the same. They 
have similar paths to victory, and if you choose one flavour you're 
pretty much tied to one path (other than conquest). And diplomacy is 
just as damn stupid as it was in Civ 2 where the senate forced you into 
peace with some maverick that kept attacking  you, over and over and 
over again. Here, the computer opponents come begging for resources in 
exchange for 'favours'. Except that favours buy you  nothing in return.
Worse, don't expect them to like you better or develop any kind of 
loyalty once you have done them a dozen favours.  Then you get some AI 
leader who's chosen purity (basically that's the anti-alien flavour) 
make a representation that you should stop killing aliens (while they 
massacre them left and right) and there are what - 4? - different types 
of aliens? Oh and 2 kinds of alien fish.  You are kidding me. Not to 
mention that they never advance from where they start at the beginning 
of the game. The only reason I am not playing Alien Crossfire instead is 
that I can't find the damned disk.

Galciv III - I don't get it. I JUST DON'T GET IT. It's bug ugly. I  used 
to  play Galciv 2 fairly well zoomed out  and you got a very good idea 
of what was going on, what you were doing, what was there -- not so in 
Galciv III. I have yet to see anything really new, any bright ideas 
beyond a little tinkering.

And all three of these are BLATANTLY OBVIOUSLY angling for you to buy 
yet another expansion at the same price as the full game, and probably 
some DLC as well, just to get some CONTENT into the game. All three are 
very short on content.

Of the  three I play Beyond Earth -- it's easy, it's predictable, and it 
works well at keeping  me at it until I am tired enough to be able to 
sleep. But really, it's nothing to write home about - unless you want to  
express disappointment.

AoW 3 is what it is. I play it from time to time. It certainly has more 
content than the other three combined, it also has  tactical combat and 
a certain rpg element in developing heroes and troups that  has more  
variety than the other above named games. However, it's not a game I 
play every day, or even every week. 

Know what? I am having much more fun with Fall from Heaven 2. Still now. 
Dwarves, Amurites, Elves ... so much variety. So much more content. 
So much more to explore, exploit, .... exterminate. Fireball casting mud 
golems! Archers with fireballs that can cast stone  wall, slow, haste.
Govannon making the  rounds teaching magic to everyone.  Ents even. 
Today one of my cities was attacked by a  King Kong sized  Orang Utan.
Don't even remember ever seeing that before... 

Pity all that creativity didn't make it over to Stardock's Fallen 
Enchantress. Which by now has two more iterations as full price games in 
Legendary Heroes and Sorcerer King. I bought the second, but I'm not 
going further, and now Stardock wants $100 bucks off me for the 
privilege to be a 'founder' for some new project.  I don't think so. 
Come to that, I'd go to Kickstarter and expect better value for money. 

What the Big Boys are turning out is extruded mass production, and cheap 
plastic.