How to read a strategy game in its first hour

Strategy games live and die on their early decisions, but so do our reviews. I've learned to spot a shallow one fast, and it usually comes down to whether early choices actually matter.

In Tideborn Dominion, your opening moves — which lane to secure, which colony to feed first — echo for the entire match. That's the good sign. A weak strategy game lets you brute-force a bad start with late-game numbers, and it feels hollow every time.

The second tell is the AI. Does it react to what you do, or run a script no matter what? I probe this by doing something dumb on purpose in match one and watching whether the opponent punishes it.

If both boxes tick in the first hour, I'm usually happy to sink twenty more into it. If not, no amount of shiny endgame content saves it.