It's just not fun to be in constant war all the time

[antisocialmunky]

Does it count as 4x if 3 of the x's don't work? Does simply claiming to make a 4x game count as having made a 4x game? If I sell you a 85' civic but claim it is a new car, does it count as a new car just because I say so?

THIS.

TW was never about 4x or atleast not any sort of traditional 4x. To be honest, the closest to 4x that TW has ever come to was STW. You had clear variables(resources, man power, production) and were able to plan around them. That's the defining trait of a 4x is that you can actually plan, optimize, and execute massive overarching strategies, etc.

You didn't have to worry about all these extra doodads that were added to artificially make TW feel more organic. You don't have these purposely obfusicated resource models etc.

I mean, seriously do you even have ANY idea how much income you're going to get or how fast its going to increase after building something? Its been like that since rtw with squalor and corruption and all sorts of crap. There's too many weird little variables to keep track of and the game is TOO RANDOM with the AI war declarations and other crap. And ontop of all this weirdness, things haven't been reported accurately since MIITW.

All the strategy in TW is build tons of eco, try to gauge out how much is enough, build units, attack. Build more eco if you eco starts to slip, build more armies, more eco, more armies until you get bored and quit. THAT is all the game there is.

EDIT: I just realized that that's exactly how the TW AI works. :-p