[Baron Munchausen]

Aha! Here you've hit on my pet peeve. We have 'simulations' and we have 'strategy games' and there's not much cross-over. Do any of those 'ruler' series feature actual opponents? I played Ceasar 2 once and though you had to fight the locals to conquer a province there was no organized opposition. That's why I am hoping SE V will move in the direction of 'simulation' by adding lots of environment details (planet features like gravity, radiation levels, etc. More detailed racial characteristics that are retained when conquered. Stars with varying levels of output, etc.)

SimCity is nice but gets boring because there's no possibility of conflict. 4X games are designed for war and nothing else, which also gets boring. The design of MOO 3 was leaning towards simulation but Emrich did it wrong (not allowing the player to control things) and they had to revamp it. I'm anxious to see how much of the 'simulation' aspect has been preserved.