[ndonnellan]

If you want all these things and exponential growth, check out Neptune's pride: https://np.ironhelmet.com/ for basically "diplomacy in space with a few extra dimensions". I haven't played in a few years (it was great at the beginning of the pandemic), but it was a lot of "fun" in the same way that diplomacy is "fun". Except with a space theme and a lot of anxiety waking up at 2am hoping your fleet arrives at an empty star system and doesn't get immediately obliterated.

[easygenes]

Fair warning: I played and won my first round of NP when I discovered it ~11 years ago. It required unreasonable amounts of being willing to let the game take over my life at arbitrary hours for a couple of weeks, and a couple of strategic betrayals. I don't regret it, but it was a major commitment as far as games go.

[renewiltord]

The last time we played this at the company, we lost maybe two weeks of productivity over the game period. I needed to run polyphasic sleep with 2 h naps throughout but my secret alliance got to the end game strongest and then it was a vicious little fight, and one of us took it.

[julianbuse]

IMO a better game is subterfuge, because it allows you to schedule commands into the future, which means you don't have to wake up at ungodly hours of the night to execute a command.