I also like the formula given all these games I keep playing and buying but I also think that its fundamentally broken too. The fact that each game takes hours of investment mean that its been unable to benefit from online play as much taking away the problems of AI because of how hard it is to get other people to commit to that. This means the game is less stress tested for "fair play", which results in it being less balanced along with Immortal/Deity being a hack (+1 free settler, +2 free settler, plus a bunch of flat +% to research/production).

I just think _somewhere_ there's a better receipe.