Hex Empire

There are times when a soul craves the strategic command of RISK without all the messy player interaction, political machinations or time-consuming play. For these shipwrecked specters, Hex Empire serves as a soothing tincture.

Players spawn into a randomly generated hexmap populated with four rival fiefdoms (Redosia, Violetnam, Bluegaria and Greenland), each occupying a corner of the world. The goal is to spread outward, colonize the lone cities and ports which are ripe for rule, and amass an army powerful enough to crush any would-be usurpers. Each occupied city produces a modest number of soldiers loyal to your cause, which can be combined with other units to make more powerful platoons. Gather enough soldiers together and they’ll transmute into an artillery battery or tank squad.

While there are no special perks to choosing one kingship over the other, players will note that some city capitals –- effectively your national base of world-conquering operations –- are more equal than others: An unfortunate byproduct of the random tileset, some nations are placed closer to the lion’s share of defenseless cities. This is either a source of challenge or an imbalance, depending on your point of view.

Hex Empire lacks online multiplayer, so the novelty of crushing the AI may soon wear thin. But for a pocket Napoleon, it provides a worthwhile lunch-break’s worth of totalitarian rule.

Special thanks go out to Boogle for suggesting today's featured time-waster. If you'd like to recommend a free browser-based game for [b]Act Casual[/b], send us a link and a brief description via our handy-dandy [b]Contact Form[/b].

Comments

I've been meaning to get around to this for a while. Is there a chance it could be dangerous to someone who gets addicted to Sid Meier games?

Yes. Its like the most basic you could imagine, but at the same time the AI varies it enough to make it interesting.

I particularly enjoy how the AI will tend to go after other countries. I sat back once and watched as Violetnam and Redosia squabbled back and forth. Then I made a move on one of their capitals. Worked out pretty well, if I do say so.

Then again, you'll see instances where they consolidate their march against you, and you're battling back two armies. And a gang of tanks. That said, the game does have a few one-use items (treaty, speech, capitulation) that affect stats briefly. I can't say I've ever used them, though.

I hate to get all Rabbit up in this place, but an iPhone/DS port of this would be pretty swell.

That was pretty cool for a free flash game.

Spaz wrote:

I hate to get all Rabbit up in this place, but an iPhone/DS port of this would be pretty swell.

Aye. Downloading it and using a netbook will have to do for now though.

I will have to give this game a try. Sounds a lot like Empire Deluxe.

Spaz wrote:

I particularly enjoy how the AI will tend to go after other countries. I sat back once and watched as Violetnam and Redosia squabbled back and forth. Then I made a move on one of their capitals. Worked out pretty well, if I do say so.

Then again, you'll see instances where they consolidate their march against you, and you're battling back two armies. And a gang of tanks. That said, the game does have a few one-use items (treaty, speech, capitulation) that affect stats briefly. I can't say I've ever used them, though.

I used the speech once to Boost my morale enough to get my army to take an enemy capital, and help another couple armies push back another attacker.

I managed to win that game with all 3 enemies fighting me (although two of them were fighting each other to some extent too). Nothing better than seeing 2 enemy 99s coming at you and having them take each other out.

Sank a hour into this thing. Good fun.

Spent some time with this and enjoyed it.

I did notice some strange behavior on a map with alot of water. Two enemies would spend all their turns moving their boats in circles on my shoreline but seldom land even if I had no defense in place.

Great game, awfully reminiscent of the more simplistic Dice Wars (and the online multiplayer version of it, kDice).

Good fun. An effective strategy seems to be to choose a starting location next to a close opponent with a slight disadvantage and take them out as soon as possible, then take over the world from there (much like my Risk strategy...maybe it's just me).

Is there a version of this you can play multiplayer?

Minarchist wrote:

Good fun. An effective strategy seems to be to choose a starting location next to a close opponent with a slight disadvantage and take them out as soon as possible, then take over the world from there (much like my Risk strategy...maybe it's just me).

On the map I played, one of the empires was on an island isolated from the other three, and near a piece of land with a bunch of cities near it. Needless to say, I established a nice defense quickly and allied with the first person who sent boats my direction. Worked like a charm.

I'm really liking this simple, yet strategic and addictive game. I've played it 4 times over the last couple days (won 2, lost 2). I just finished a particularly enjoyable game. After eliminating 2 of the 3 enemies, I toyed with the final enemy for a bit. I took this screenshot before my final move in which I took the last capital with my 16/16 soldier instead of one of my many tanks, just for sh*ts and giggles.

IMAGE(http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/2789/hexempirewin.jpg)

That's a lot of tanks.

Hard ot play drunk.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Hard ot play drunk.

Also hard to type drunk

You don't know me!!

I tried this in Hard mode and felt like the game came apart. The AI players seem to fall all over each other, trying to expand without attacking other AIs.

If you go to the developers site you can download it. I'm going to keep this one on my usb thumb drive.