Good point. Hopefully they don't do away with mechanics I do like.
I have played 4 of the maps on the hardest level and beaten them but lost a few times. And also didn't bother with beginner or easy. One of the times I lost on the hardest level was when my geothermal power plant was struck by lightning. It was a stupid way to lose. Everything was no longer powered so there was nothing I could do. Sure I could have built a solar panel or 2 ahead of time so then I'd have had just enough power for a drone to repair it, but I didn't. A very non-fun way to lose.
I like to pause the game a lot when I play to assess the situation before I make a decision (wish life worked that way). When I have lost games, it was usually because of poor decisions early in the game when I didn't have a lot of nanites and wasn't producing them.
The last mission, where you need to build the colony in 10 seasons for 1000 colonist, I beat on the highest setting first time I played it. That felt good! I guess that's one of the reasons I want more randomly destructive things to happen in higher settings.
I've never played "Imperium Romanum", I'll have to check it out. I think I'd also like to see the game pause for a survey team if they added something like that. I think it should also pause during the audio driven cut-scenes. It's distracting and everything should just pause after the sound effect they use to start them.