And the same era as Musk, the current era’s Caligula.

I think Lemmy needs a higher-level sign-up procedure that hides the complexity of the fediverse. This could be a webpage with a simple, clutter-free interface that handles picking and registering on an instance from a curated list semi-automatically, for example, by asking you 3-4 questions before giving you a suggested server that fits your responses (which you can change) and a button to register there. The procedure could also handle the occasional additional sign-up requirements that some instances have.

IMHO, 90% of users will never interact with the “federation” aspects of Lemmy after that, and they also don’t need to. I personally don’t feel like Lemmy being federated has much of an impact on my user experience day to day.

Civ games at launch are often a bit of a mixed bag, and the games improve over time with patches and expansions. That being said, the game isn’t even fully out yet, and early Steam reviews are notoriously unreliable and undifferentiated. For your first civ game, maybe look at earlier titles like Civ 5 or 6. They have aged very well, I still play 6 all the time.