At risk of sounding like a shill, have you tried Age of Wonders 4? Or AoW Planetfall?

I long burnt out of Civ (especially with how dumb the AI/combat got), but I find them refreshingly creative. Like it distilled clunky systems, and fleshed out/overhauled other systems so the gameplay is actually fun. They aren’t perfect games, but now I can never go back to Civ.