I don’t want passive point systems posing as Dark/Golden Ages, or a cast of doe-eyed governors being all bloody nice and functioning like a sort of diplomatic A-Team. The Civilization VI expansion, Rise & Fall, just didn’t speak to me it felt more like a pacing patch-up than an attempt to 4Xify the most fascinating aspects humankind’s evolution. But after 20-something years and untold in-game millennia, I’ve finally begun to feel its insatiable fantasy of empire-building subside.

I’ve been playing Civilization long enough to remember building gaudy palaces that combined Arabic minarets with Ionic columns, and the sight of pixel-drawn Stalin grimacing at me with his retinue of Asiatic advisers.