Turn the difficulty down, the game is normally designed to be pretty brutal which might not be what you are looking for if you want a typical city builder.

Then with various DLC packs add so much more to the game! You can sell slaves to the empire who later give you a shiny cube, worship the sacred cube, form cults dedicated to the cubes embrace, build spaceships to spread the cubes love, create an army of undead ghouls to protect the eternal cube, create an army of clone child soldiers to man the artillery that annihilate all that dare taint the cubes glory by their presence!