I would argue that AoW4 being a fun 4X game helps a lot, the toy box portion in this case is simply a nice flavor aspect. Stellaris tried and failed to do the 4X part, because while the explore part is fun, the expand (dealing with potentially dozens of newly conquered planets and a slow expulsion/genocide system is boring) and exploit (with the pop AI being absolutely retarded) part are tedious and the exterminate part is the only way for the player to improve the game performance, not really part of the fun, but something the player MUST do to enjoy his game. You can't have massive space battles across multiple fronts without the game slowing to a crawl.