I feel like my last words could be ‘just one more turn’.

Wasn't that meme initially created by players talking about Civ games?

yes.

Yes, exactly I had to stop myself starting the game after 7 else I don't sleep

Can we settle for Factorio and 2028?

where do people derive replay value in factorio? I found It got entirely formulaic after my first run, and with SPM as the common measuring stick- its just "who sank the most time into a map."

I understand many people self sooth using it, and thats fine. Doesn't make it a good game for replay.

-- Somebody with more hours in ONI than Dosh has in Factorio

For me its optimization and scale. Make resources farther, recipes 8x or whatever scale, try and make a factory that can eat and spit out insane amounts of materials. Try to keep up with the expanding need for raw ore and power against the increasingly powerful biter raids. Also there are some achievements for like not using lasers or using mostly solar, or go all out with the technically optional nuclear power plants.

1) getting enrichment spun up stings a bit.

2) I guess I can see how some people would like that. But, that's adjacent to what killed factorio for me- It feels like a "Low Code"/"No Code" programming solution to me.

Slightly tangential but recently I've gotten into the Ilwinter Game Design games Dominions 6 and Conquest of Elysium 5. I was surprised how similar but how different they are to Europa Universalis and Civilization respectively. Very interesting studies in horizontal game design where every faction has dramatically different gameplay strategies.