It doesn’t have the geographical discovery, but it does have many of the other aspects you see in more adventure-y games, like growing in power, overcoming obstacles, and an adaptive enemy.

Yep, I’d have to agree with that, the dice are integrated better in TI4. I guess it’s the random equivalent of ‘no plan survives contact with the enemy’, or something like that.

Very true, Murray, though I’d argue that the dice actually work better in TI4 than they do in the games I was talking about in the article. The key, again, is to capture the theme within the mechanisms. In a war game like TI4 the dice simulate the unpredictable nature of battle from a very broad perspective. They’re not necessarily the best way of doing that, but they do a decent job. More importantly, allowing swings of luck taps into a key part of the theme of the game: hubris. A massive space army building up a fleet and sending it off to try to destroy of subjugate another civilization is a ripe setting for the winds of fate to punish. Sure, it’s not ideal from a gameplay perspective but it makes more sense than something disconnected from its narrative.

That’s the thing about relying on dice; the wrong result at the wrong time and suddenly the game has been hijacked by chance. It can render your choices unimportant and at that point, the game loses a lot of shine.

Cheers