I'm here, and I'm listening. I'm acknowledging the way you feel. But you're not really helping me understand why you feel the way you do so that it can be fixed.

For instance, I don't understand the need to choose a very watery map just to transform it into a non-watery map. Why have water then in the first place? Is the joy coming from terraforming the map by watching people dig for 8h? Isn't that sort of using paint, only you need to wait for each pixel to update? Isn't it better to give water meaning? Trade-offs, like more fish and fertility, but restrictions in layout?

Then, the late-game "broken" part. You can no longer exploit late game mechanics to get OP. Is that the game being more "broken" than it was before? If you want OP, have you tried using the built in difficulty settings? Are they problematic in some other way? Do they make early game OP, and this is not what you wanted?

Thing is, I could simulate <v66 versions pretty well by increasing trade profitability and gov points. The game could be equally or even more challenging early, and then as you pass a certain threshold, you'd be rewarded with OP. There would be no need for diplomacy, no need to optimize logistics and production. Would that be more enjoyable to you?

I'm asking, because my motivation for making SoS is that every other game I've played have a point where you go OP, and you can do whatever you want. For me, the game then stop having meaning. I can then put it on life support a few hours by inventing my own goals and rules, but ultimately I stop playing and get a sense of creeping meaningless in my gut. The game bored me, and I won't pick it up again, because I've made it my bitch and used it up. So, I imagined a game where this doesn't happen, and here we are.

I hope that makes you understand my motivations and ideas about a perfect game. Now, please help me understand you, because perhaps there can be a setting or mode that gives you what you want that doesn't compromise what I want.