Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth. There are other less then stellar games in the Civ franchise that I haven’t played like Starships. Beyond Earth, though, was a day 1 purchase for me, and it wasn’t -terrible-, but it left a lot to be desired.
If you’re looking for something in the same vein as Dwarf Fortress, there’s Rimworld. It’s the game I hit 1000 hrs played the fastest, thanks to the ridiculous amount of mods available on the workshop.
Civilization 2. I was watching my brother-in-law playing it, thinking this must be some sort of simulation that was part of his college homework. After all, I had played F16 Fighting Falcon in my middle school science class as part of an assignment.
But, no, it was a game for fun. I became enamored with it and it began my love for 4X games that continues to this day.
Return to Moria does look interesting. I’ll be watching to see how it shapes up.
Agree on stealthy Gollum gameplay possibly being interesting in another game. It just doesn’t feel like a strong enough premise to shoulder an entire game. Let alone one with a $50 price tag.
LotR: Gollum was a bad step towards this, but we’ll see how the new Magic: the Gathering set coming out in the next week does to push this along. One thing that they’re lacking in the world of tabletop is a strong RPG presence. There’s a new one that JUST came out last month, but I’ve not heard much demand (if any at all) for it, and I run a decent sized FLGS in SoCal.
It’s an iterative process, going from messengers, to telegraph, to phones, etc. All in the pursuit of interconnectedness and information exchange. It’s kind of hit it’s peak with information exchange, being near instant. I can see virtual worlds being the next step (definitely why there’s a push towards things like the Metaverse) to achieve even more interconnectedness. An environment where you can be whoever you want and look however you want has appeal. It’s still too early for it to catch on with the masses, and also to know what the ramifications will be from people who will look to always be in that world.
Joke answer: Third Impact/Human Instrumentality Project
This is the exact same thing they’ve done for the past couple editions, so Legends as a thing isn’t new. I see this more as, hey, these models are old as hell, aren’t made anymore and we don’t want to spend time making sure they’re balanced for tournament play, so here’s rules for you to play them in casual/Crusade games, have fun.