caylus

Agricola and Dominion fixed the problems Caylus had by adding significant randomization.

Machi Koro - light and breezy Caylus - medium to heavy Both manage to accomplish what modern Monopoly grasps at in distinctly different ways.

Technically, Caylus also randomized the initial state, but the initial random state in Caylus was minor; it was just barely enough keep you from pre-computing an opening book, the way you can in chess.

I've recently gotten into boardgames, and the ones I enjoy the most follow this line of thought (in particular Caylus and Terra Mystica).

Terra Mystica and Caylus are two examples that I would mention as having a decent amount of complexity and are deeply strategic games without being too complicated.

> Agricola and Dominion fixed the problems Caylus had by adding significant randomization.

(It's not the new "Monopoly", yet, but comes close for some circles of gamers.) Caylus is worth a look, too.

Caylus was wildly popular for a year or two, but it's rare to see people play it now.

Caylus fixed that by building a mechanism to change turn order into the game itself.

Geeks will want to graduate to Caylus, Puerto Rico and the like later on.