Field of Glory: Empires, by Ageod. It's a turn-based strategy game / map painter spanning 310 BC - 190 AD, i.e. 500 turns starting from slightly before the Antigonid state collapsed.
Capsule review
+ Tall vs. Wide: This is the first such game I've seen since Civ 4 that implements a positive and nuanced disincentive (rather than Paradoxian fake "roleplay", or e.g. Civ 5's no-fun-allowed punishment-per-city) to absorbing more territory at every opportunity, because your realm's stability is tied to a "culture"/"decadence" ratio; the former requires you to build specific infrastructure such as theatres and cult sites, which usually has no economic benefit otherwise. It is also tied to the ratio of accepted-culture citizens to total population; small states can thus rack up "progress" quickly. "Decadence" arises from some otherwise-useful economic buildings such as gambling parlors and slave markets, aside from sheer nation size and (fittingly) whether your nation is already "glorious" in everyone's eyes. In an amusing spin, public schools reduce decadence.
+ Rise and Fall: Tying into the above, this is the first game set in this period in which I've seen not only the overstretched Seleucid Empire fall to the Mauryans, but the Mauryans gradually losing ground themselves to a nascent (or rather re-emergent) Persia afterwards. In other words, rubberbanding, but there's more to it: like say Rhye's and Fall of Civilization, the game attempts to make both short-term and long-term history relevant. Indeed, the "stability" criteria are tied to e.g. your current budget or army as opposed to what they were a few turns ago, so "small-scale" swings that, in other strategy games, "wide" nations can easily replace with their million build queues, will have more of an effect as, say, the Battle of Magnesia for the Seleucids of our world.
+ Buildings: Aside from them costing only opportunity and being more varied (and meaningful, although I suspect that not directly competing for build queues with military units is what ensures this) than in any Civilization game, the stroke of genius here is that the building tree is re-randomized for each province -- almost like Master of Orion 1 shuffles its tech tree -- and you can invest 1t to reshuffle the selection currently available. You can thus fine-tune your economy and yet have to rely on what opportunities locally present themselves. At least with half my current provinces, I could fabulate about their special economic character while not lying at all about the in-game differences, which is not the case in e.g. Crusader Kings 2 where every province is about the same (or can all be turned into the same stuff) apart from a nebulous preordained "base tax" and, at most, cultural levies (and trade goods plain don't exist). Dynamic trade goods / production and cross-province production chains with a trade range that can be increased further with e.g. roads/harbours (why is this not in every single strategy game) only add to this.
~ Victory Conditions: The game has something akin to Civilization's Domination/Culture victories blended into one, owing to the Legacy mechanic; Legacy is awarded both for excellent culture (see first point of critique above) and for conquest, and if at any point past Turn 50 any nation's Legacy at least triples that of its closest competitor, it wins the game. What's better yet is that peace treaties can include "humiliation" as a clause, which awards the winner Legacy (in various proportions as you choose) at the expense of the target. This sure is more historically appropriate than Rome absorbing Carthage in a single war. -- On the other hand, in my current campaign, it is Turn 73, I'm Rome, and have triple the Legacy of almost everyone else... save for Saba, which is on the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula. I suppose that "neighbour luck" is never usually that much of an element of Paradox games (apart from the early game if you start as Pskov in EU3 or whatever, edit: or if you're in the New World and Portugal thankfully plops down colonies next to you instead of Castile)
~ Romanus Eunt Domus: The flavour writers tried hard, but the game misspells what feels like every twentieth Latin proper name. We have "Garius Marius", the "Thyrrenian Sea", and I didn't care enough to remember any others but I'm sure you'd find it just as obvious.
~ Combat: The combat system is fine once you understand the basics, but I'm somewhat disappointed that army composition and a few dice rolls (to simulate "tactics", I guess) decide the outcome almost entirely. Your generals hardly seem to vary, and changing the order of battle or bringing reinforcements gradually is impossible once a broil has started; even Crusader Kings 2 with its utterly obscure need-a-wiki tactics mechanics and its rather basic "education" subsystems did this better.
- Buildings: However, choosing a building for every province every turn, with each one providing only a small (but not negligible) individual benefit, gets old and makes up roughly 80% of the game. Recommended for the SimCity crowd, I suppose. Also, for all I've gushed about the trade and production chains, they essentially run themselves if you just acquire enough clay from hapless Gauls, Greeks or Carthaginians.
- Map Painting: While I brought this unto myself by selecting a scrub-tier difficulty level ("Balanced", where the AI gets no boni and neither does the player) and even that is still more difficult than e.g. Civ 6 on "Deity", I must admit that I'm mostly playing "number go up", much as I hate that phrase (it's how some other Tyrants feel about "git gud" instead, I guess). There is another decent feature where "the Senate" (or whatever applies) rather than you yourself can designate which provinces are key to be retained/conquered in the public opinion, and for big culturally heterogeneous empires, this can be the best way to keep afloat on the "culture/decadence" ratio, adding an unpredictable source of necessary improvisation; but ultimately, I can't help but feel that I'm "merely" managing a spreadsheet rather than solving emergent puzzles.
