

Not even their collective dyslexia was ever cured. There were attempts to do so by Swedes and Russians, both failed to uplift them from their squalid and barbarous existence.

The squat pseudo-asian hobgoblins called finns who inhabit the damp forests filled with puddles have never been properly civilized. If they're going for more of a "clean off the cobwebs" approach to game design for this *latest* rerelease then the least they can do is clean up the netcode and fix pathfinding, and also introduce some quality of life features like having idle villagers be more visible.

There are ways to be screwed over early on but also ways to bounce back, so that you easily stray into uncharted territory. Gold is less restricted in the late game, and Messy games, where I lose my initial base to a tower rush while also screwing over an enemy player with a tower rush, are the best way to promote this. I like the games where I have to improvise the most and where novel situations arise most commonly. It's less of a problem in team games where there are trade routes, but single players games or team games where there aren't safe trade routes (messy Nomad games) always, eventually, degenerate into this situation. You're going to be making trash anyway due to lack of gold, and at that point the best synergy you get is with ranged artillery that sits behind the trash safe from being expended. My biggest complaint is that late-game gold exhaustion funnels most civs into the same "trash + siege weapons" strategy.
