re: immersion
I feel the word is used wrongly in 90% of cases in these discussions. People are talking about a believable world and call this immersive. But immersion is (at least in psychology), among other things, completely subjective and an embodied sensation. It has some sense to it to talk about immersion in the way it is used here for some kind of games in which you interact with the environment more „naturally,“ e.g. a first person shooter or assassin‘s creed. But the way you interact in civ - what do you feel like being? In best case, you are immersed in playing a board game. Almost by nature, everything is abstracted to a degree that it completely depends on the player to create any kind of belief whatsoever - maybe you feel the world is believable. But the game and situation reminds you all the time that you are not actually Augustus or leader of Rome or at your current tech level, etc. If something as basic and unnatural as having turns and a grid doesn‘t stop you from finding the world believable, I think it is mostly a familiarity issue for what you find believable or not as a player. But I honestly don‘t see where immersion comes into this. It has become a common catchword for criticism or praise of video games on a personal basis (because no one can argue that you are wrong), but broadly misused in what it actually means. For example, it‘s perfectly realistic to be immersed in a task (such as playing a game) without this task to be particularly immersive or believable.