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Recently I've been having a good time with ICBM and Capitalism Lab. The former is a small indie game where you balance between researching technologies (satellites, two kinds of radar, SLBMs, ABM or MIRV tech) and producing those weapons, so you can dish out more megadeaths than you take.
Capitalism lab is probably the most detailed and intricate consumer run-your-own business game. Build farms, factories, stores, trade stocks, research products, borrow money and advertise, import and export goods between cities... It's very much a creature of the early 2000s graphically but I find it quite charming.
Both have a couple of mods that add huge amounts of extra content. In the case of Capitalism Lab's 'Real World Mod', too much content. Does there really need to be separate categories of 'cars' 'luxury cars' 'cabrio cars', all using the same inputs? Are pistachios, oysters and ducks really needed as agricultural goods? In ICBM, there is Dawn at Midnight and Parabellum that adds armies and special forces, superweapons, ASW helicopters... The AI can't really use armies and they don't really fit the style of the game - ICBM is about nukes and nukes hard-counter slow, unstealthy, vulnerable armies. These mods are fun to play but they're not a really coherent experience.
Nevertheless, I think it's a sign of quality for a game to get people so invested in it that they make all this extra stuff for free. I think the difference between a soulful game and a soulless one lies in how dedicated people get about them. For instance if you go to the Civilization V or VI Steam Workshop, it's a barren wasteland in terms of high-effort content. There are a few quality of life mods, things that add a little extra flavour, cultural unit packs, a few techs here or there. One half-baked Game of Thrones mod for Civ V.
None of it holds a candle to Civ IV. There are true total conversions there - stuff like Realism Invictus, History Rewritten and the Fall From Heaven family that stripped out and replaced every unit and technology along with half the game's mechanics in a thoughtful and intriguing way. And then there's the final boss of bloat, Caveman2Cosmos! They put in buildable aquariums, Cislunar O'Neill Cylinders and Tamed Llamas into a 4X strategy game that's really just supposed to be about 6,000 years of history on Earth, not hunting prehistoric animals or going to the Big Bang to start the universe. It's basically unplayable in its slowness and complexity yet it still inspires awe in that real people thought a game was so good that it needed all this extra stuff. Better that a game entrance and mystify the somewhat-autistic people who make these works for free than mildly entertain the great masses of the people, those of us who'll never make high-effort mods.
Anyway, that's my two cents on soulfulness in video games.
I'm drunk and didn't read half of this. Not that it will stop me from making a comment..
Civ 4 is indeed the big boy pinnacle of the Civ series. I spent many a shift reading Sulla's comments on the civfantatics forums over 15 years ago. The consolisation of games continues its steady march, crushing the thinking man's games under it's treads.
The slow fall of Civ games as the standard-bearer of big picture strategy gaming of course also tracks the ascent of the Paradox map fillers as the inheritor of the same mantle.
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