>It’s the games job to create an on ramp to understanding.

Its the games job to present their unique style of fun to the market, and let the market sort it out. A game made by 2 blokes has to have a set of priorities, and their priority has always been the simulation.

>It’s not mine to spend 200 hours grasping every concept before I can play “the real game”

I mean, ignore Dwarf Fortress for a minute, this is exactly what Paradox has built its little empire on. I was at 300+ hours of Crusader Kings 2 and had only a sort of intuitive grasp of most of the games systems. And at the time, most of the safer european powers were at risk of just getting rolled off the map by the golden horde mid game, and the work arounds for that were quite insane. I still dont reckon I have the war/conflict systems mastered. Paradox does tutorials, they just suck immensely and you end up on the forums or wikis anyway.

Dwarf fortress has managed to create a game with that kind of skill curve with 0.0001% of the resources.

>that’s just shitty game design.

I feel sorry for you, I get the impression that this hostility is coming from a place where you really wish you could share in these fantastic games but haven't quite got the gumption to stick with them. I get it I really do, I mod Battle Brothers to make it easier, because I love the texture of the game but I haven't been able to master the combat or save scumming required to play at a real difficulty.