Faction designs, like:
- One city only, creeper growth
- Gold economy, instant army building (and a Thousand Sons reboot, thanks)
- Instant teleporting between cities
Really hard, interesting mechanical variants that they have the confidence to put up against each other in a reasonably competitive game.
Using world ‘treasure nodes’ to slowly divulge mythos while using it as a hero vs faction conflict choice is very good. The global winter cycles were an interesting complication and very often create interesting dramatic stories of near-misses and just-in-time runs to safety. The global end-timer helps avoid the slow-wind-down endemic to 4X games, just as the winter cycles push towards a contracting economy and help prevent runaway victories.
And I think their UI design is really good and one of the studio’s strengths. Lots of very good functionality leaps, and the style was not conservative at time of release (it’d read as tired today).
You may consider my opinion suspect because I’m the person who actually likes Emperor of the Fading Suns, the only 4X game silly enough to run on 5 simultaneous maps and ask you to get elected Star Pope at the same time.
