The whole realism versus fun thing is pure bullshit perpetrated by people who for some reason want to paint anyone who enjoys realistic games as some sort of bizarre backwards lunatics that hate fun.
I dunno. I think I worked out the all core mechanics of Civ 1/2/3/4/AC, both Master of Orions, GalCiv2, and AI War in about an hour each, and was disgusted by Spore. Is that enough "can play complex games" street cred for you?
Malkari was a lot closer to the hyper-realism being described here, I think, with all your bases being on asteroids that orbited at different speeds (and each had different value to different guilds/races) with different characteristics, and a ship-designing and research system that still rivals the best other commercial and indie games I've ever seen. It took a ton of time to pick up, and it wasn't that great in various other ways, so it was a big time investment that didn't pay off. Also, look at Aurora. If I ever bought a game like that--even if it was highly polished and not buggy--I would be SERIOUSLY pissed, and return it, because once you get too far into simulation of fiddly little details, it's not a goddamn game anymore.
I'm just saying that I have enough time in my life to commit to maybe one DF-style game in a blue moon. Super complex games don't sell all that well because...well...even among people like us, we have enough time and capacity to figure out twenty Halos in the same time it would take to pick up two Dwarf Fortresses. Money is spent accordingly.
Er, yeah, that went seriously off topic.I'm sure that E:WoM will fit comfortably within my acceptable complexity zone, and I seriously look forwards to it. I'm not pre-ordering it right now because staying up until 4 AM playing a beta is not good for my new job.