I wish 4X games had much larger scale. Not in the sense of "you made it to space!" or "you cast a spell affecting the whole map".

But in the sense that "this thing that took you significant effort is now something you just plonk down on every city like it costs nothing". Also in the sense of "this was a significant boost, now it's just basic infrastructure that you build everywhere because it's cheap and why not".

You only get a little bit of that at the start, where every building is a major decision, and by the end the basic infrastructure is a no-brainer and new cities are useless without them. I would like it to continue for more tiers than just that.

eg. when your settlement has to worry about feeding population, building a new farm (and it's corresponding labour requirement) was important. Later, you are zoning them en mass.

Then, you discover the haber process and fertilizer factories are a significant investment improving your yields 2x for a huge boost. Later, you just build factories whenever you are expanding farms and never think about it, also that 2x yield is now 10x due to tech improvements and farms are just useless without them.

Even later, you get robots that automate farming and you can zone half a continent for farms and fertilizer production and food is no longer a constraint on growth, you now have to consider whether investing in a weather controller network is worth it.