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It’s really not as complicated as you might think. If you just start playing you will understand the basics very quickly. The game also mostly drip feeds you the new mechanics as you play and unlock them, and you start with a single planet so it’s not overwhelming at first.
The only thing that gets really complicated in my opinion are the ship armament matchups. But if you autogenerated or specialize your ships you don’t need to know much about it, just look up a basic fleet comp for numbers of frigates, destroyers, etc.
The only time that really matters is if you’re taking on the end game crisis or sleeping empires or whatever, because specializing your craft against that threat will give you at least double your fighting efficiency or more. Feels fucking awesome.
I recommend you dont play a hivemind or robots on your first playthrough. I really enjoy interacting with the different species and cultures as my civilization expands, and you can do that with an iron fist or with an open hand.
Look up project brutality or brutal doom. Those are great doom mods with a lot of fun gameplay. I used to play that for hours.
The Anno series is pretty cool. It’s like playing crack. I’ve been playing 1800 recently and it feels like an instant classic.
The elder scrolls games are great for this. The further back you go the more replayability there is IMO. Morrowind is goated.
Dungeon keeper 1&2 are both a lot of fun, and have lots of custom maps. The original dungeon keeper even has a full engine rewrite which is really good.
If you want to try map painters, Crusader Kings 3, EU4, and Victoria 3 are all excellent and in depth games, with a lot of replayability stemming from all of the different ways to build up your nation in the sandbox.
Rimworld, dwarf fortress, etc. Have fun!