I love this game but the little things that bring it down have become increasingly frustrating every time I try to play these days.

Simultaneous turns are forced to always on, so every turn is a race to command your units to attack, retreat, move, claim territory, everything. THis is a TURN based strategy game, I shouldn't be having to race the AI or players to do actions at the start of every turn during a war or when competing to claim land. The UI is sometimes unresponsive and won't register commands which if this game were properly turn based would not be a problem but because of simultaneous turns it is incredibly frustrating. To top this off if you and the AI finish a wonder on the same end turn the AI takes priority 100% of the time. If two players do its a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ coinflip. ONE TURN AT A TIME PLEASE.
Forced Simultaneous turns is an issue that plagues all Amplitude strategy games and is something they should at the very least make optional, it degrades the quality of gameplay and I'm pretty sure its one of the reasons all their games have horrible Desync issues.

The combat. There are quite a few people who will die on this hill but I"m sorry you're wrong, the combat is horribly hurt by every unit having its own independent AI and you as the commander only being able to vaguely suggest moves for them. You can command them to move to a tile and attack but they won't do it until you "Initiate combat" at which point all units will move one at a time in order of their initiative score, meaning that unless you have higher initiative (which you rarely will if you play on higher difficulties or play a faction plagued with low base initiative) meaning enemies will move away from wherever you planned to have your units attack could no longer be reachable and tiles you wanted them to move to could become occupied. If this happens the unit will default to its chosen "Stance" either Aggressive, Defensive or Hold Ground. The Aggressive & Defensive stance is incredibly stupid. Defensive will just run away and Aggressive will just auto-target the "weakest" target it can find, even if that target is outside its movement range and there are other targets available, meaning its an almost garunteed wasted turn and can end up meaning you don't finish off a unit. Hold Ground will just stand there and is functionally the same as wasting a turn.
Even Amplitude ended up agreeing that this system was bad and detracted from the strategy cause their latest strategy game "Humankind" created a proper strategic battle system where you personally control the movement and attack of each unit ON THEIR TURN instead of making vague suggestions for them.

I find this incredibly frustrating because instead of addressing this glaring issues in their current games they just abandon them to hop ship on to their next project. I am very hesitant to buy Humankind after both Endless Legend & Endless Space 2 were left in rather sorry states.

I love this game but the little things that bring it down have become increasingly frustrating every time I try to play these days. Simultaneous turns are forced to always on, so every turn is a race to command your units to attack, retreat, move, claim territory, everything. THis is a TURN based strategy game, I shouldn't be having to race the AI or players to do actions at the start of every turn during a war or when competing to claim land. The UI is sometimes unresponsive and won't register commands which if this game were properly turn based would not be a problem but because of simultaneous turns it is incredibly frustrating. To top this off if you and the AI finish a wonder on the same end turn the AI takes priority 100% of the time. If two players do its a fucking coinflip. ONE TURN AT A TIME PLEASE. Forced Simultaneous turns is an issue that plagues all Amplitude strategy games and is something they should at the very least make optional, it degrades the quality of gameplay and I'm pretty sure its one of the reasons all their games have horrible Desync issues. The combat. There are quite a few people who will die on this hill but I"m sorry you're wrong, the combat is horribly hurt by every unit having its own independent AI and you as the commander only being able to vaguely suggest moves for them. You can command them to move to a tile and attack but they won't do it until you "Initiate combat" at which point all units will move one at a time in order of their initiative score, meaning that unless you have higher initiative (which you rarely will if you play on higher difficulties or play a faction plagued with low base initiative) meaning enemies will move away from wherever you planned to have your units attack could no longer be reachable and tiles you wanted them to move to could become occupied. If this happens the unit will default to its chosen "Stance" either Aggressive, Defensive or Hold Ground. The Aggressive & Defensive stance is incredibly stupid. Defensive will just run away and Aggressive will just auto-target the "weakest" target it can find, even if that target is outside its movement range and there are other targets available, meaning its an almost garunteed wasted turn and can end up meaning you don't finish off a unit. Hold Ground will just stand there and is functionally the same as wasting a turn. Even Amplitude ended up agreeing that this system was bad and detracted from the strategy cause their latest strategy game "Humankind" created a proper strategic battle system where you personally control the movement and attack of each unit ON THEIR TURN instead of making vague suggestions for them. I find this incredibly frustrating because instead of addressing this glaring issues in their current games they just abandon them to hop ship on to their next project. I am very hesitant to buy Humankind after both Endless Legend & Endless Space 2 were left in rather sorry states.