The catch is that good strategy doesn’t spring from the number of interactions you have with a system you’re in charge of, but from the level of dilemma and brain-gnaw each interaction demands. In Crusader Kings 3, for example, you don’t really have to interact with the game at all. It’ll do its own bleak medieval thing, and it’s up to you to decide where and how to interact, if you want to increase your level of influence on the simulation. Those decisions tend to be really interesting. On the other end of the scale, look at something like fire station placement in an old-school city builder - nothing interesting happens if you do it, but if you don’t do it, your city will be on fire. It’s a binary mitigation of a fail-state, challenging little except your ability to maintain a to-do list.
Jurassic World Evolution 2 is full of this stuff. Ranger stations need to be periodically button-clicked to refuel their vehicles; scientists need to be button-clicked to rest, so they don’t go Full Nedry. Dinosaurs will suddenly get the flu, requiring a medical truck to be button-clicked to their location for treatment. None of these things present fulcrums for decision; you’re never going to think “hang on a second, what if I don’t give the T-Rex its medicine?”, or consider the strategic potential of a “no fuel in the jeeps” policy. You just have to stop what you’re doing and click a button, or the game punishes you.
The overall sensation is of trying to eat a hotdog, but having a clown smack it out of your hand every couple of bites, forcing you to pick it up off the floor. I found myself constantly jolted out of my focus, then forgetting what I was doing beforehand. And that’s a big shame, given how forward planning, and incremental work towards big projects, are such huge parts of the joy to be found in city/park-builder games.
