If you think that's the worst of it, you're in for a surprise! But yeah, people do lose out on a shitton of science and production because they think generating Great Merchants doesn't come with a completely random opportunity cost to their science and production. Nonsense game design decision.
Also, one thing not included here is the AI problem. The 4X games with the best and most challenging, clever AIs, perfect for training competitively when you can't get together with all your friends, are also single-player. Ditto for 4X games that randomize tech trees and policy trees and the like to make the game more principled.
Civ 5 was fun but despite its harsh review Civ 6 is kind of better in every way. The lekmod for Civ 5 is so pervasive and totally changes the game, which is necessary for balance and so the game is a bit more reasonable. Civ 6 on the other hand has the BBG mod which changes far less and remains basically the same game. Civ 6 also makes certain things more intuitive, like movement. Initially, moving from 5 to 6, it had a lot of trouble with the movement but once it understood it it loved how intuitive it was. You can only move if you have enough movement points left. Simple as that. No "ending on a hill" or other counter-intuitive tricks you have to remember and do in Civ 5 every single turn.
Civ 6's big big flaws are that on release it was broken due to infinite production exploits they wouldn't fix, and it came with spyware which they did not apologize for so you shouldn't buy it or anything from Firaxis from that matter.
Civ 5 was fun though. it wrote a huge, one hundred page document on how to play it well to catch its friends up. A lot of it was just detailing random counter-intuitive bullshit. That's the big issue. Both games are fun, but their limitations require just so much patience it isn't really sustainable and pretty soon, competition becomes more frustrating and a chore than fun.
it was super into this game as a teenager and it still comes back to it after getting a philosophy degree. Really, really bizarre experience.
Use it/its, please!
Arcs is too new! Not appealing to the tastes of a patient gamer! But also, it is a bit biased against Cole Wehrle :)
Will check out those two games some time, thanks for the recs!
Use it/its and not you/your, please. its heard Stellaris has great narrative elements but it's very hard to play in a reasonable amount of time and there's some balance issues that can make competition feel really unfair. Maybe will still get around to it some day.
Thank you to both you and @db0@db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com for discussing this. This does match with what others have said. That said, it's okay with roleplaying too, it often hosts roleplaying-only Twilight Imperium IV games, or one-shot TTRPGs (D&D is banned, Pathfinder is banned, any other system is okay).
But yes, a much bigger hole in its heart is competition. Girls just like to have fun, and for some girls, that means merciless (but trauma-informed and respect towards boundaries around competition) competition.
There are some multiplayer roleplaying video games. Baldur's Gate 3 has been quite engaging. Sometimes just one of us watching the other play Disco Elysium is enough. But competing strategically without it becoming unpleasant...that's a harder find outside of board games.