So after doing some further digging around (articles, forum/Reddit discussions, etc.), I'm starting to realize that I've completely misunderstood & underestimated the importance of characters in Old World.
Rather than being the proverbial gravy accompanying an already flavorful meal, they are actually a fundamental part of the game's design. Any ruler (and/or their court) with halfway-decent stats will provide massive bonuses to research, civics, culture, etc. -- far more so than any individual city (and buildings), or even all your cities combined in some cases. As such, characters are absolutely critical to your empire's success (or failure). Old World does give you the option of playing without characters, but by most accounts, you'd be playing only half the game in that case.
I'm having fun playing IS:G at the moment, but I'm definitely going to swing back around to this one again, now that I have a (hopefully) better understanding of how integral characters are to the game. I still don't know if Old World will suck me in like it has for others, but at least now I have a somewhat better idea of how I should approach it.
