Much of the new world-domination mode of play feels equally tired. Mad Doc has swiped a page from the Big Huge Studios playbook that the developer used to make Rise of Nations, dropping the typical scripted campaign for a freeform option where you try to conquer the globe. It plays as a cross-genre experiment, with you making moves on a global map in turns and then seeing how they play out in real-time skirmish maps. The only problem is that it's all incredibly bland. Provinces are designated as imperial, economic, military, or research sites based on the amount of each turn-based resource that the region produces (you actually make this formal designation, but there generally isn't much choice since you're given set numbers for each category), but there is nothing to characterize these areas. You don't get to hear that, say, Southern Europe is a great conquest because of its fertile farms and philosophical Greeks; you just see that the province gets good numbers across the board. The only plus is being able to custom-outfit your civilization with various imperial, economy, and commerce world techs like roads and infrastructure, supply lines, and superior intel. You get to directly play most of these techs on provinces, too, which gives you a feeling of actually developing an empire.