[cestith]

I have never played an AoE game. In Civ, though, if you’re not at least considering conquering other players' cities and adding them to your country you may be playing the game wrong. Sure, in Civ 6 you can win on science, culture, religion, or economics. Conquest is still one method of winning, and those cities you conquer are not your subjects until they are. Cities along a border can even choose to switch loyalty based on your culture’s influence overriding theirs.

The Master of Orion series includes mechanics for your conquered planets being less productive at first if they are mostly peopled by an alien race. In the WG reboot at least, there’s even a government agency you can build on a planet to get it to assimilate faster. It also supports the idea of low-morale planets rebelling.

[animal531]

My favourite way of playing old Civ 1-3 as a kid was to build a solid circle of units that would gradually expand and move out to fill all the available space.

Eventually you'd own all the land and your units would just be camped along the beachline, enjoying some downtime.