Enter Hexarchy, an indie game on Steam for 20 bucks, minus 20% until November 2nd. It looks very similar to a Civilization game, but adds a card element to it. You can't do anything you want on your turn, but are limited by the actions on the cards you drew, and the resources you have, mostly the "hammers", which serve as a sort of action points. That has the advantage of seriously speeding up your turn. Combat is a simple matter of the unit with the higher points winning, but losing as many points as the losing unit had. Maps are relatively small, and the typical "collect 100 victory points" condition results in a game that is just about 1 hour long. The whole thing feels like Civilization on speed. It doesn't have the same depths, but if you want a quick dose of a history 4X game, this is just the ticket.

Note that the speed also makes Hexarchy immensely suited for multiplayer games. And if you, like me, aren't into multiplayer, there are a bunch of different single-player game modes that keep things interesting. The different cultures have not only different bonuses, but also a few specific cards in their deck, which change things up nicely. For example the Greeks get a card that for just 1 hammer produces 1 or 2 science, which speeds up your technology development a lot during the early game. Technology cards add new cards to your deck, and you can "burn" old cards you think you don't need anymore to keep your deck slim. That makes the game overall more strategic and less random than you might think from the card drawing aspect.

Overall this is a fun little game, which I can only recommend.