You might like 4X games.

If you like the space theme, Eclipse is my favorite of this genre. If you want to go full hardcore, try Twilight Imperium.

If you like Norse mythology and want to play a game more about battles and less about ressource management, try Blood Rage.

Inis. It's not resource management but it's an incredible dudes on a map/area control game. It has great strategy, it can swing nicely so the winner isn't obvious and one great play can secure victory, the artwork is beautiful, the expansions make great changes which meaningfully change the feel and flow. There's a kickstarter and the late backer of a new big box version is great value although it's not available for shipping until December. 100% recommend

The board game industry has come a long way since Risk, and the war game category is pretty broad. The board game geek website can be a good starting point to look into new games. You can sort by different types of mechanics and categories of games. If you go into the browse all boardgames section, you can sort the top games in the war game category.

If you're looking for something in a similar vein to risk, but are interested in sci-fi or fantasy themes, you could look at War of the Ring (Lord of the Rings) or Star Wars rebellion. Both are considered some of the best war games ever made, and closely follow their source material.

If you're looking for something that is less strategic and more tactical, you could consider something like Memoir 44 (this is out of print, but is getting a new re-implementation in the Star Wars universe called battle of Hoth). The company of Heroes board game is another excellent choice in this category, but is very expensive.

Root is a unique twist on the war game genre where you play as different woodland creatures battling for territory, that is quite popular and has many unique factions that are interesting to play.

The undaunted series is also kind of a unique world war II themed card drafting tactical war game that has become popular recently and has different variations of games.

These are just a few examples of popular games, but there are tons of options out there and these suggestions don't even scratch the surface of what you can explore like hex and counter or block games.

War Chest is on my board game GOAT list. It's sooo good. Have all the expansions including Nightfall. We mostly play 2v2.

Yeah it could definitely be a challenge, but OP did ask for more complexity. I think the difficulty of Root is also heavily dependent on the player and the faction. If you only stick to one base faction to start, especially the cats, it's not as bad. The first time I played Root I had very little experience with board games outside of risk and Catan. Based on my research of the game prior to learning to play, I was expecting it to be way more complicated than I actually found it to be once I started learning it. Trying to learn all the factions and how they interact from the start would be terrible, but learning it little by little as you go certainly makes it more manageable.

2 players under 90 minutes: "Iron blood snow and mud". Amazing chess like wargame with cool mechanics and twists.

2 players in the 2-3 hour mark: Dune war for arrakis

3-4 hour mark: Star Wars Rebellion

4+ War of the Rings

3+ player games: Root, Inis, Eclipse, Bloodrage, Ankh, Cyclades

That's fine but for the record, I never placed them in the same category as undaunted, nexus ops etc. You did. Don't be that contrarian guy on the Internet who imagines conversations. I was simply contributing to the conversation. OP asked for suggestions and I offered my opinion.

And additionally, Inis definitely has calculated risk, area control and directed aggression. It has all of those things. You may not like it and that's totally fine but please allow others to to offer opinions without feeling like you must shoot them down

If you’ve got a whole day to burn, and a case of megalomania, you might want to look into Twilight Imperium.

If you're looking for a fun but very different take on war games, Cyclades is a good one; with the new version out, 1st edition is fairly cheap, though I do recommend getting either the Hades or Titans expansion to go with it (mind you, the two expansions are not intended to mix with each other). Alternatively, the "Legendary Edition" was released recently which reworks the game with a mixture of ideas from the expansions plus some new features.

Scythe has area control, resource management, and is a step up in complexity from Catan.

Risk

Root. Different factions with unique play styles and abilities battle for territorial control. There's cooperation, backstabbing, and cute wooden meeples. Plenty of expansions available, and a new one that was recently funded on Kickstarter.

Azul, wingspan, cascadia, splendor, everdell are some lighter games that I enjoy

Terraforming mars, spirit island, brass Birmingham, root, castles of burgundy are all heavier but very fun once you learn the .

Boargame geek is a good place to start to see rankings, weight, and mechanisms

Boardgamegeek is your friend.

Try Orleans. Its bagbuilding instead of deckbuilding.

Power Grid

There are literally hundreds of of other great "strategy" board games with literally dozens releasing each year.

Since this is on the Dominion sub, I'll specifically highlight Agricola, since I feel it shares a core appeal with Dominion. In Agricola, you get 14 cards at the start of the game. You have to create your whole strategy around those 14 cards; you will never draw more, just like creating a strategy around the 10 cards available in a Dominion Kingdom.

You can also look at other games designed by the designer of Dominion, such as Kingdom Builder, which naturally share some similarities with Dominion.

I want to play more Onitama.

2 player and very simple rule set.

In my opinion...

Northern Pacific: Great for 4-6 players. All about group think and shared incentives. Takes about 30 seconds to teach.

Dominion: It has been around for a long time, but base set is still fun to explore with a new group.

Modern Art: I have taught this to a lot of people who aren't too into board gaming, and it has always been a hilarious hit. Pure auction game with a theme that really pulls people in. Easy to understand the rules, but becomes increasingly complex as players naturally begin to understand the economy of the game (although I suggest printing out an auction type player reference for everyone so you don't need to pass the rulebook around).

Reiner Knizia’s entire legacy seems to be “deep games with minimal rules overhead.” Tile-laying games like:

• Tigris & Euphrates
• Babylonia
• Samurai
• Through the Desert

And classic auction games like:

• Ra
• High Society
• Modern Art

One of my favorite games of all time, but I don’t think most people would describe it as “short”—and honestly only hobby gamers would describe it as “simple”.

Summoner Wars for sure

You probably know more board games than me, but ticket to ride, power grid, Belfort and Pandemic are all top strategy board games Ican tthink of 

I liked Polytopia a lot. Just because it was so accessible. I don’t think it’s what you are looking for because it’s not that deep. It’s almost exclusively combat. Has a mild tech tree. Still fun and easy and free.

Spirit Island

Try Concordia. It has al the resource grabbing and building/expanding like in Catan, but with almost no luck involved at all.

Maybe Tyrants of the Underdark could work for you

Arnak is way less interactive than Dune. I think Clank! is a lot more like Dune; it's from the same creator.

Lords of Waterdeep plays similarly. Also, Troye.

You should try Andromeda's Edge. Ticks all your boxes :)

This is my favorite as well for similar reasons. My runner ups would be: Blood Rage … and maybe Inis. I think both these games fit your criteria and you should have a great time with these if you can find some other players. Blood rage I like with 4-5. Inis is good even with 2. I’m sure there are others. Both relatively mid weight and easy to learn, and have taken similar amounts of time on playing in person, depending on player account and how fast the other players will make a move versus socialize.

Great collection, look like we have similar taste with lot of in common games. Imperial is basically financial game in disguise of war game that way should be played. I was interested to Rise & Fall but it looks like it was just Kickstarter game and never distributed to the retail. Also, I am looking for new reprint of Tigris & Euphrates, MarraCash and Gazebo.

Not really in the same boat with game tastes, but I always appreciate people not overpopulating just because there’s empty space.

Although Zoo Vadis looks like an intersecting point - how do you like it? Anything you like better in the same realm?

Ha! Wife hates that I’m too picky to add anything into our collection, trying to keep it small.! Especially getting rid of expansion boxes and cramming everything together 🤣

Tons of overlap with my tastes, I love to see it. Especially Pipeline, Age of Steam, the Estates (and all other auction games). Even down to the fillers like Arboretum.

You'd probably like Pax Pamir.

Other than that, no notes.

My group played THE SH*T out of the base game. We ended up getting the Flight expansion, which was cool but by no means necessary; it mostly adds more cards. I've heard good things about Climate, but I think it changes the game much more drastically than Flight.

I would say on the easy side to teach, most of the complexity comes from interactions between the cards and players. Quick summary: You start with a species You get some cards You sacrifice a card to add food to the food bank You play the rest of your cards to either: add the card's trait to a species, upgrade the size or population of a species, or spawn a new species Everybody eats as much a they can Repeat

So, as you can see, mechanically pretty simple; what kept me coming back are questions like "which traits to play and which to discard for upgrades?", "do I add population and score more food, or add defense?", and of course "when is it time to starve the food bank and go carnivore?"

Evolution and Power Grid both saw the table A LOT with my group for a couple years.

Evolution goes very fast with 6 (end condition is running through the deck). It might be more tactical than strategic, since you've kind of gotta roll with the cards you draw, but it's got great replay value, since the ecosystem changes every game based on player choices. At 6p you also usually take the first half of the turn simultaneously.

I don't think the math in Power Grid is cumbersome, but I've heard that as a criticism. What it does have is the best rubber-banding mechanism I've ever seen (leading players at a disadvantage for buying resources and accessing the board).

And since they're both (relatively) older games, they're pretty easy to come by!

Have you looked into Rallyman GT and Dirt? The company is defunct as of earlier this year but there is still stock (for now) as I was able to grab copies a couple of weeks ago.

One thing is there can be significant downtime between turns while other people plan theirs so this might not be an acceptable game for your needs.

Captain Sonar is great at 6-8 players, simultaneous play, and easily done under an hour with a lot of depth and strategy due to how the game is designed.

Twilight Imperium 4th ed. + Prophecy of Kings expansion.

1 hour

... yeah, that's possible I'm sure.

Heat

Libertalia

Citadels

Zombicide (2 hours maybe)

Mission Red Planet

Secret Hitler

6 players one hour is a hard ask. There are lots of 6 players games out there, few with that playtime.

Lost Ruins of Arnak has the same deckbuilding/resource collection component. It's pretty easy to grasp but more difficult to play well. It doesn't have the "cards do three different things depending on how you play them" aspect of D:I, but that's the next step up in complexity (that and the Conflict).

Clank is a much easier teach that also introduces the deckbuilding concept, but lacks worker placement. That might be a good bridge too.

Try Clank maybe? It’s a little heavier then Catan but not much

I would consider a decbuilder and a worker placement game to introduce both of those concepts separately. Lords of Waterdeep?

Concordia is probably the next step up for Catan players for any higher complexity games.  It's awesome in its own right, so savor that.