So I fired this back up after the conversation on the stream Friday night and had a nice time with a couple of skirmish games. I have a couple of concerns about replayability, though. For one, the AI doesn’t seem to be very active, and (as far as I can tell) there don’t seem to be difficulty settings for the AI opponents? I’m not playing particularly well, I don’t think, but I seem to reliably win anyway - that’s not ideal.
The other thing that bugs me is that the victory conditions seem all over the place in terms of challenge. I’ve been playing clan Stag, which I gather should be the “Fame Victory” clan from the description, but I’ve found it much easier to win commerce victories since all that’s required is the points. With fame, you need points too, but also need a certain amount of territory and to build a special building. Map specific conditions also seem to be oddly simple in a lot of cases - much easier than the normal ones.
Maybe these two things go together and if the AI were stronger these victory conditions would be more of a challenge? I don’t know.
All that said, the new skimishers seem pretty neat, and I love the supply and economic model in this game. I’m hoping I’m just missing a setting somewhere for the AI…