Swedrami: Yep, this would be a hell lot more appealing
WITH the "busywork of 4X gameplay" intact and present.
Well, sometimes tactical battes in strategy games may be repetitive. So having strategy but not tactics is OK. Some games do without it or make it very abstract.
eric5h5: Slipways is also a streamlined 4X game (minus an X), and is very good. This isn't trying to be yet another huge long 4X game, and it's not priced like one either. It's more like a board game, which is fine. I mean, there's a demo right there, you could actually see for yourself.
Or you could [...] make bogus complaints about "buzzwords," your choice. 95% positive on Steam so far, with a number of comments about good AI, which made me take notice more than anything else. Not sure yet about the lack of procedurally-generated maps, but then games like Massive Assault didn't have that either and I spent a lot of time with those.
This makes sense. Also, handcrafted maps can be very interesting. Total War has no procedurally created maps, either. In Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, I played always in the Map of Planet. It makes sense to have the real ancient world map, or fragments of it, in this game. Surprises might be scattered differently , maybe, more or less like in King of Dragon Pass: some locations are always special and have a chance to trigger certain special events, while other elements were more random.
