Turn-based 4x game, somewhat similar to the Civ series, nevertheless different in many aspects from the Civ series (and the Civ series I -VI, in February 2025 VII, spans already a wide range of different game mechanics).
You play a nation on a map. The nation consists only of a name (like Germany, India, etc.), a flag, a list of appropriate city names and a small starting bonus (that even can optionally be changed), so it is pretty much white paper - it has no characteristic properties, and this is strongly intentional. During the course of the game you choose 4 times so called National Spirits (permanently), which add character to your nation, and 4 times governments (temporarily), which also shape your further development. For me, this game feels like the RPG among the 4X games, my nation being the character to be developed.
The game goes through 10 age slots (the first two are Stone Age and Bronze Age, but in age slots 3 to 10 there can occur different ages with (partly heavy) rules and changes to the game play. The technologically leading player (players can leave technological holes behind, though, so a player that goes fast to the next age, may have less techs than a player that has done more technologies per age) decides, which the next age is going to be (as long as she/he meets the prerequisites of the respective age). There are different victory ages with different victory conditions.
You can found vassal and non-vassal regions (both have a capital city and can have a certain number of smaller towns). Vassals can be promoted to non-vassal regions, but that comes at a cost. Vassals give you a comparatively small amount of income per turn, however, you can get them without investing too much. Only in the capital cities of the non-vassal regions you have a building queue which you fully control. You can build civil and military units as well as buildings and some projects that convert production to improvement points, culture, knowledge, or even some other things. Within your non-vassal regions you can improve tiles with the help of so-called improvement points. You can build some commodity chains (like turning iron ore (which in raw form give a small amount of production) to iron bars (giving a medium amount of production) to tools (giving a big amount of production).
You can collect points in 6 different domains: Government, Exploration, Warfare, Engineering, Diplomacy, Art. You can spend the points in options of the respective domain, and those options become more numerous during the course of the game. Culture is collected in a culture meter; if it is full, you gain access to a so-called culture force. These culture forces have main game-driving functions. These mechnisms gives you a growing and in the late game huge span of options to adapt your play to the challenges at hand.
There is a diplomacy system which is still a bit intransparent and a bit too basic. You can have alliances, open borders, peace, hostility, war. With an embassy you can have different sorts of treaties.
There could be said much more about this game, but these points seem the most important to me. There are still some weaknesses in the game - for example, tutorial, tooltips and infopedia are far from doing a perfect job to give you all necessary knowledge, the AI is bad (but imo not worse than in similar 4X games) and the game is still a bit unbalanced. And if you are mainly in for wonderful graphics, this game may be not for you.
Hope this helps. Sorry, apart from Stellaris I haven't played the games you played.
