[jamesgeck0]

The second paragraph here seems like it can be summarized as, "reading about things the game doesn't tell you about is good because you'll learn about other things that the game doesn't tell you about."

What if the UI was good enough that it exposed some of those gavelkind inheritance implications?

[notahacker]

It does supply you with warnings for stuff that might go wrong. It's just that there's a lot of things that might go wrong, may of which need longwinded explanations, and you're probably never going to love micromanaging all that stuff (never mind enough to buy shiny add ons giving you more symbols and options!) if you don't like reading manuals. And the whole point of differentiation from the Civilization series is to start off with an enormous choice of unbalanced real life historical scenarios which may need immediate attention rather than a blank slate to gradually build up. I mean, the UX is terrible in many other respects: but the first this looks like it's designed for people that enjoy complexity glance probably reveals more about the games than anything actually intuitive could!

Fair to say it's targeting a different market from mobile games where you see a screenshot of something that looks like Tetris crossed with Scrabble or Solitaire with poker hands and instantly understand the rules and what a good strategy might look like.