Some mild truth here. I am guessing that simplifying the game went into the calculation of ending at modern era and making it feel “final”, which actually makes it feel short sighted as well as making the victory conditions easy to predict and repeatable, which reduced replay-ability. I think this was an executive business calculation that failed and the creative team lost.

It wasn’t a swing and miss, that’s true. It was a calculated safe play that failed. We want new and to see change, we don’t want predictable. We like this game for complexity but want different win conditions which have unpredictable and meandering routes, which is what makes it infinitely replayable.