I've been revisiting anno 2205, infamously the ugly duckling of the Anno series of RTS games. I don't mind so much the fact that it's different, lacks customisation and random map generation - I'm bothered because the game is so slow to progress through on challenge settings, and it feels like a game designed just to artificially waste your time; in other anno games, you can always pull tricks to dig yourself out of economic crisis - selling off assets and surplus goods, completing quests for other parties, or taking loans. 2205 is very very confined in terms of what you can do to financially recover in the early game and forces you into a lot of military events.
Hate is an overstatement, but the game I have most hours on steam in (and likely will never surpass) is Europa Universalis IV.
Back in the day I used to enjoy the semi-plausible alt-history scenarios that would arise. Similar to real life but different in distinct and interesting ways that often could be traced to noticeable deviations.
Nowadays, it is much more arcade-ey and soulless. By the end of the game (1800's), the entire world is basically at the same technological level of advancement, constituted of soulless blob-empires that ends up looking basically the same each time albeit with slightly different flags for the blobs.
Yeah, Paradox tends to do that. Strip all the fun weird shit from their games for the sake of "balance", and then introduce so many new mechanics in their DLCs that old things break all the time. By making every nation equally good, they absolutely ruin the fun.
HOI4 has it, Stellaris has it, EU4 has it.
Though, the games all make for EXCELLENT modding bases. All of them have really fun mods.
Stellaris traded away so much of the games soul when they removed the alternate FTL drives.
Yeah I never imagined the end game of those historical map-painters would be good; either it ends right away or, like you said, stagnation.
I've only played one map painter game and I never went back to the genre because it was too complicated for me. This was like... 7 or 8 years ago TBF. I'm more interested in ones with base building elements or economic planning - Victoria and EV ask you to look at some spreadsheets and use that to guide your nation towards greatness. I would have given Victoria at least one other go since then but I bought it on amazon and lost the install I think 😒
I can heartily recommend gicing vicky 2 a try despite its' age (kinda clunky and less polished but plays fast, a campaign can be done in maybe 10hrs). It's actually the game that got me back into grand strategy during the pandemic. Pick it up on sale like I did or via yarr, heart of darkness is a necessary dlc and not included in the base 25$ price tag, kinda insane for a 20 y.o game.
EV - europa universalis 5?
Part of the problem with Eu4 is that they in the "later" (somewhere post 2018) updates aimed to make every nation "viable".