The Civilization board game was similarly boring. Most of the time there were no wars, and everybody was just trading and dealing with disasters and barbarians.
The 3d art just looks like a console game aesthetic - it's extremely kitschy - I guess I'm just not in the target demographic.
Maybe there could be a "Civ for adults". With just way less content, shorter games and a more mature art style.
Civ 1 didn't have: culture, religion, great persons, great works, armies, ranged units, luxuries, strategic resources, building placement, unit xp/promotion. Civ 1 didn't even have an improvement for forest tiles.
Civ 1 did have as extra: home city for units. Marine units had to be transported by ship - but that added an interesting mechanic, you had to protect your super important transport loaded with 7 very expensive units. Terrain improvements took a really long time so you had to have multiple settlers work on the same tile. Some superfluous things like fortresses. Small city spam ruined Civ 1.
However, if you want, you can play very war like, or avoid war quite well. Snowballing early with a push is a viable strategy.
Rushing tech to get the first cannon and pushing then as well.
It depends on what civilization and what special units and buildings you have.
Which one? There are at least two different ones, with the same name, based on the computer game franchise. (And, of course, the Avalon Hill game predating the computer game, but that doesn’t seem relevant.)
Civilization is on the easier / simpler end of 4X / Strategy... and believe me, this is a good thing!! Things get really complicated. Paradox games (Victoria, Hearts of Iron, Crusader Kings, Europa Universialis) are the "complicated" games, technically realtime but the underlying simulations "feel" turnbased. (Hearts of Iron progresses the simulation in 1-hour increments. They're "realtime" only because it'd be too boring to hit "next turn" so often, but you can hit the pause button and really think about a situation at say: September 1st 1939 @ 1pm if something terrible is going on)
Romance of the Three Kingdoms is also a strategy game: war, tactics, resources, diplomacy, etc. etc. The elements you'd expect.
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"Tactics" games that focus on a singular battle as the core gameplay loop. Fire Emblem, Wesnoth, Wargroove, Advance Wars, Heroes of Might and Magic, Panzer General, Starcraft, Age of Empires.
"Strategy" games approximate the battles and focus on larger scale elements.
A good rule of thumb is that Strategy Games have an element of siege and supply lines, while Tactics games often just "teleport" the resources where needed. Tactics are about maneuvering your troops to get an advantage, Strategy is about finding / securing resources (ex: placing your defensive Pikeman on the enemy's mine in Civ2, or in their districts in Civ6)
Civ leans towards the simpler/tactics side, but is just barely enough "Strategy" that I'd group it in the strategy side of things.
Civ I’d say (while relatively simple in most versions) is very much on the strategy side. While maneuvering units in the battle theater matters, wars are mostly won or lost by the tech and economics and diplomatic situation going in, and the timing of the decisions to start and end the war.
Civ5 and Civ6 has moved more tactical. I'm spending more and more time thinking about where to place units, because they no longer "stack up" with each other. Collision detection for the human means that I need to put more effort into deciding where to move and place my units.
Yeah yeah yeah, people were confused about "stack kills" in Civ1/2/3, and without stack-kills, Civ4 combat grew dull. So maybe removing stacks all together was a solution (the current direction for Civ5 and Civ6).
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Somewhere along the line, combat was no longer a guaranteed killer. (Civ1/2 was definitely a "win you live, lose you die" for every combat). Civ6, now I'm thinking about movement points, where to retreat to, how to save up HP again and recover, whether or not I can cutoff the opponent's retreat. These are more tactical elements.
I feel like Civ6 has pushed "strategy" through its government card system, which is pretty abstract (Oh, you just got a new government card! Time for a new war! I'm going to equip +100% pillage bonus and +4 Strength bonus). A lot of Civ6 is about abusing the multiplicative bonuses of these cards at the right timing.
Wargroove's AI is a bit dumb compared to Adv. War's Days of Ruin however. The game really shines as a competitive player-vs-player setting. But if you're not used to the mechanics of Adv. Wars, you probably need the easier AI to learn how quirks of Adv. Wars style / Wargroove style play.
Nintendo is remaking Advance Wars 1 and Advance Wars 2 ("Reboot Camp") for the Switch. I'll be revisiting these originals-remakes as they come out in a few months. I remember the CO-powers being incredibly overpowering (while Wargroove's special "grooves" are quite powerful as they are, they are no where on the level of CO-powers or CO-superpowers of the original).
RTS games even today limit players to ~200 pop each.
You are still playing with low 1000s of units, and this has been the case for a decade. The AI is also not really much better.
Even on strategy map level it has been simplified.
You couldn't see as much of the world at once, and units and terrain became more difficult to discern.
I wound up playing in the strategic overlay, with mods that relieved some of the claustrophobia, but it never felt as slick as the earlier 2D / isomorphic view.
Other classic strategy games from that era followed the trend, favoring to showcase gorgeously detailed models enabled by their new 3D engines, over equipping you with a clever and efficient UI to conquer the world.
Anyone care to recommend a favorite turn-based strategy game with a pleasant interface which you think I might enjoy?