I've been revisiting anno 2205, infamously the ugly duckling of the Anno series of RTS games. I don't mind so much the fact that it's different, lacks customisation and random map generation - I'm bothered because the game is so slow to progress through on challenge settings, and it feels like a game designed just to artificially waste your time; in other anno games, you can always pull tricks to dig yourself out of economic crisis - selling off assets and surplus goods, completing quests for other parties, or taking loans. 2205 is very very confined in terms of what you can do to financially recover in the early game and forces you into a lot of military events.
Gave up on Sims too, I don't even care enough to pirate it no matter how trivial it is at this point.
I got Paralives. It's still very early, but it could get somewhere.
For now my main problem with it is it's very light on autonomous simulation. And though I like the idea of storytellers, at this point they barely do anything. I want freaking chaos in my game, and it should be more varied than just "Hey, what if sudden crush on that random person?".
The cards and progression system are good ideas though. Again, they need nore variety.