You start zoomed in, in one portion of the game. It plays like civ.
You learn how to build provinces. These provinces are AI-run, but you tell them what to do. This splitting into provinces keeps your empire maintenance costs down.
As you gain technologies, you gain better meta-management of these provinces.
As the eras progress, more and more such layers of abstraction occur. The game supports "zooming out", and resources that are useful on later stages of the game are rarer (and larger).
The entire world is actually mapped on a 1 hex = 1 km scale, with about 1/6 of a billion tiles total (160,000,000), or a 12,000 x 12,000 map (roughly), with a 2,000 x 2,000 zoom-out for the provinces era, and a 300 x 300 global tactical map for the modern era.
You learn how to build provinces. These provinces are AI-run, but you tell them what to do. This splitting into provinces keeps your empire maintenance costs down.
As you gain technologies, you gain better meta-management of these provinces.
As the eras progress, more and more such layers of abstraction occur. The game supports "zooming out", and resources that are useful on later stages of the game are rarer (and larger).
The entire world is actually mapped on a 1 hex = 1 km scale, with about 1/6 of a billion tiles total (160,000,000), or a 12,000 x 12,000 map (roughly), with a 2,000 x 2,000 zoom-out for the provinces era, and a 300 x 300 global tactical map for the modern era.