The 'feel' of a game can't be understated. I get the same vibes from KCD 2, where just walking through the environment is in itself a joy.

The thing I didn't like about Age of Empires compared to Settlers was that warfare is the main point of the game; I wish AoE had a plain city / society building mode. Actually it probably does via mods or custom maps, or there's other games that tick the AoE and city builder boxes. Settlers has war as well but I always felt it was secondary, definitely not something large scale.