Yes. DF shows that with a complex simulation, emergent behaviour is enough to make for a very compelling game experience. Similar dynamics are at work in other simulation games such as rimworld, factorio and oxygen not included (obviously not in the fantasy genre). However I do think having a human involved could sometimes make the DF experience better by tipping the scales in favour of a more fun experience rather than what DF players call a "Fun" experience.
For example, recently I built a beautiful fort. Everything was working great and all my idiot dwarves were happy. Fluid dynamics worked slightly differently from my expectation and confusion around the presence or absence of a wall caused by the tileset meant that I went to fill my well I had a whole river running down through my base and slowly filling it up from the bottom with no accessible top entrance remaining. I had the choice of letting my guys drown or a massive grind to fix the problem during which probably 2/3rds of my base would have starved to death and/or gone into a tantrum deathspiral. I chose to just stop and start a new fort. An experienced human DM could well have decided to essentially change the rules of the simulation and thereby given me some out that allowed me to rescue the situation through heroic effort and sacrifice and get back on track.
This is the problem with pure emergent behaviour from complex simulation. There's lots of interesting stuff that can happen, but you can paint yourself into very boring corners also and the simulation doesn't care about that.
For example, recently I built a beautiful fort. Everything was working great and all my idiot dwarves were happy. Fluid dynamics worked slightly differently from my expectation and confusion around the presence or absence of a wall caused by the tileset meant that I went to fill my well I had a whole river running down through my base and slowly filling it up from the bottom with no accessible top entrance remaining. I had the choice of letting my guys drown or a massive grind to fix the problem during which probably 2/3rds of my base would have starved to death and/or gone into a tantrum deathspiral. I chose to just stop and start a new fort. An experienced human DM could well have decided to essentially change the rules of the simulation and thereby given me some out that allowed me to rescue the situation through heroic effort and sacrifice and get back on track.
This is the problem with pure emergent behaviour from complex simulation. There's lots of interesting stuff that can happen, but you can paint yourself into very boring corners also and the simulation doesn't care about that.