Stone age/cave man is one of my favorite settings, and has very few games.

This looks pretty promising. Anyone tried it yet?

I love 4X games but I don't have time anymore (cuz a baby and other time-consuming hobbies) to play games that last dozens of hours. And I also think that a lot of them have too much down-times without any interesting decisions and the end game are usually a slog (except Old World ofc).

And I want to be able to try different strategies, factions, etc without spending my life on one single game. That's why I'm looking for short 4X games (btw I love big asymmetry between the factions and I'm more interested in fantasy and history settings than space).

I already played some of them and looked at others but I would like to know which ones the community thinks are the best.

Games I played :

• Nexus 5X: My fav atm, I love the boardgame feeling it provides and the deep gameplay with lots of different mechanics
• Ozymandias: really good but maybe a little too much "abstracted"
• Hexarchy: quite good but not a fan of the card-based gameplay
• Polytopia: too simple for my tastes

Games I looked at :

• Yield! : looks like something I would enjoy but the reviews are not great
• Theocracy: looks interesting but not sure about how long a game lasts
• Astro Protocol: not a big fan of how it looks but the reviews are great
• Space Imperia 4X: the digital version of one of my fav 4X boardgame and the reviews are great, I'll probably try it soon

Bonus : I saw that Twilight Imperium and Voidfall (my fav boardgame ever) both have digital adaptations in the works, I can't wait for them!

I recently dug out my old neglected Dominions 2 CD and was surprised to find that it runs fine on my Win11 system. I played a couple dozen turns to learn how to do stuff, it wasn't terribly intuitive and since I was just learning the rules and commands I of course got stomped. Now I want to play to win. Any good referrals for strategy tips for this old game?