Ever heard of Civilization? Master of Orion? Perhaps the height of gaming is Endless Space? Nah, Endless Legend. Maybe Master of Magic, broken as it was. Galactic Civilizations? Upstart Thea: The Awakening? Or the beloved yet ugly and obtuse Distant Worlds? Or maybe the upcoming At the Games? No, Aurora 4X is the only game you play? I knew it! Alpha Centauri, Sword of the Stars, Imperium Galactica, Total War, Stars!, Star Ruler, StarDrive, Warlock, Age of Wonders, Dominions, Stellaris, Space Empires? They're all welcome here. I'm even willing to talk about the hybrids or grand strategy like Sins of a Solar Empire or, well, most of Paradox's games a la Crusader Kings. Perhaps Heroes of Might and Magic fits here?
This is the place to talk about all the 4X games in existence. Space, history, fantasy? Doesn't matter. Someone probably played it.
Oh, and in case you aren't sure what the heck 4X is, well, it's strategy games where you eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate. Turn based, real time, real time pausable, tactical combat and so on. As long as you're lording over something it's likely a 4X game.
Has the genre become stale, as Rob Zacny presumes? eXplortimate has some thoughts on it.
Yesssssss
Has anyone every played Overlord (aka Supremacy) - I wonder if you would classify in this same genre?
Veloxi, what are you doing here? Shouldn't you be in the space game thre......oh. Duh.
athros wrote:I'd certainly follow and add to a general 4X thread more so that here. Too many of the space 4X's fail to grab me whereas Planar Conquest has its hooks deep into me.
Huh, Planar Conquest is basically Worlds of Magic but rejiggered for mobile. Need to get myself a new iPad.
Actually it's an updated WoM, and will be coming to Steam for free to all of the backers of the Worlds of Magic Kickstarter and I think (but don't quote me here, I'd have to go digging to find it) free to people who bought WoM on Steam as a gesture of goodwill. It really wasn't dumbed down, or streamlined (or whatever the latest PC Master Race horsesh*t term is) just because it's on the iPad first. That sh*t makes me crazy.
It's really really close to Master of Magic. I'm finding differences, but I like them thus far. Overall, it's crazy good. The TA thread is pretty active, along with one guy writing strategies out in this thread. I'm working on a parser To extract unit/spell/other info from the internal files for the manual.
I vigorously applaud your choice of hero image.
Following for space games only.
Thanks for making this, Garion.
I bought Planar Conquest for some on the train 4x but just keep staring at it - this weekend I'll summon the mental energy to start learning it's systems (I never played MoM).
Hm, I really want some turn based space again, I'm not really into the real time stuff which is why I think I bounced off all the recent games. Real time is just too much for me to keep track of.
Unfortunately that Lord of Rigel quote says turn based tactical, but the webpage says fleet combat is real time. I'll follow it anyway and hope.
If I can add to a 4x wishlist:
I want a near future 4x game where the players play non-governmental entities (corporations, political movements) while the big politic stuff happens in the background.Meanwhile the game never moves beyond the solar system. It would allow for random events to occur though AI players (playing governments and other corporations) and more detail in how to set up your orbital bases and planets. The corporation aspect can allow players to lease assets instead of owning them.
A good way to move the genre forward with interesting gameplay aspects with the means to create a great story.
Thanks for making this, Garion.
I bought Planar Conquest for some on the train 4x but just keep staring at it - this weekend I'll summon the mental energy to start learning it's systems (I never played MoM).
It's a solid 4X - check those threads I linked if you get stuck (especially the manual).
Regarding the end game issue that you linked to in your OP, I always thought it would be cool to play a 4X game where the world starts dying in the late-mid game. Imagine Civilization where in the late-midgame the world begins to die. Grasslands turn into desert/tundras and resources begin to disappear. You're forced to shrink your empire and abandon cities, relocate towards the few resources and viable tiles that remain, fight your enemies for what little they have left, and make a beeline for your victory condition.
Isn't that kind of where At the Gates is headed?
Master of Orion! Back in student days (mid-late 90s) I had no console of my own for a few years, all I had to to play games solo was a mac clone. Games available for this platform were limited to say the least. Probably owned just three games over it's 3-4 year lifespan. Needless to say these games were played to death... Fallout, not relevant here, Heroes of Might and Magic II (maybe relevant? it's been a while) and the one game that probably sunk most of my time into, 100s upon 100s of hours over those years was 4x Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares. A common occurance was getting home from pub, sticking it on and the next thing I knew the sun was coming up, properly sucked me in that game did.
Apart from a lil bit of one of the Civ games years ago, I've never really had the time or by sticking with macs for work, in many cases the hardware for 4x since... this thread might have let loose a little itch to revisit in a more responsible and restrained manner a more modern game of this type and with Steam, mac game availability has improved a bit... though a lot am guessing still not available to me... Any suggestions on a good place to start? ta!
Apparently I won a steam key for Galactic Civilizations 3 from pc gamer, so I guess I will be checking that out over the weekend. I think I tried to play 2 once or twice back in the day but I don't really remember much.
I want a near future 4x game where the players play non-governmental entities (corporations, political movements) while the big politic stuff happens in the background.Meanwhile the game never moves beyond the solar system. It would allow for random events to occur though AI players (playing governments and other corporations) and more detail in how to set up your orbital bases and planets. The corporation aspect can allow players to lease assets instead of owning them.
It's not quite the same, but you might want to check out Arcen Games' The Last Federation.
You play as the final survivor of the advanced alien race that once dominated the solar system. Your goal is to bring peace and stability to the other planets. You've only got one ship, so you mostly need to approach this indirectly, though you can also jump in and get directly involved in the dustups. A lot of the gameplay is about swaying governments indirectly, or assisting a particular race with research or construction to give them a boost.
Curious about that Planar Conquest. But that price tag, woof. iOS sticker shock.
Does it make any concessions at all for being on tablet? Will it make me wish I had a mouse or cause me to squint at small description text/UI?
Curious about that Planar Conquest. But that price tag, woof. iOS sticker shock.
Does it make any concessions at all for being on tablet? Will it make me wish I had a mouse or cause me to squint at small description text/UI?
I don't have any problems reading text on either my iPad or my 6S+.
Some screenshots (from my iPad):
Having a mouse also isn't something I'm missing for anything other than the usual suspects (tap once to select, tap again to move, be sure to tap somewhere else to deselect). There are some long presses that aren't explained very well (for example, if you move an army onto a feature, but don't have enough movement points to interact with it, on the next turn you need to long press on the tile and the interact screen will pop up). But overall, the text is crisp, and the UI is pretty well done. Here's a screenshot of the UI fully open (on my iPad again. I'll try to get the phone in a bit).
EDIT: 6S+ Screenshot:
Hey kids, don't forget Polaris Sector is coming out next week
http://slitherine.com/games/polaris_...
I'm really excited about it, gonna run home today and put the first of a few preview vids together of the latest beta.
Not sure why, but lately I've had the itch to fire up MoO2 again, and well... it holds up surprisingly well. The visuals are ancient, sure, and the controls are funky (I don't know why, but mouse control in old games on my PC is just really funky and inaccurate), but the gameplay is still rock solid and enjoyable. It's been so long that I have forgotten enough to make it challenging to get started again -- not that I was ever a pro-level player or anything of the sort.
It also hammers home that there's just something about the balance of the various gameplay elements in MoO2 that the devs nailed, and which has not quite been recaptured by any other space-based 4x since then for me.
Anyway, everything about Star Drive sounds like it was cribbed from games before it. Will anyone come up with some new s**t to put in space 4x games? That reminds me, Star Ruler 2, I will play you again.
More or less, yeah, but he (the Star Drive 2 dev is a solo shop) does a really good job of putting everything together. This game is pretty much the only 4x I currently play, and the new update is pretty fantastic - it fixes a lot of little niggling issues with the previous strategic and adds a lot of flavor to the game.
I thought Star Drive 1 was fun. Space and land combat needed a bit of balancing though as certain combinations dominated others. If they increase the art base, ship designs and quest/rpg events then I'd be happy.
As for Thea - it truly has a lot of interesting new concepts in the 4X setting and will keep you hooked for 20 hours + as you learn the systems and events, but the card style resolution to everything gets tiring pretty quick and you end up auto resolving once you get a feel for your deck's relative strength. I recall one GWJer's complaint that Endless Legends suffered from bigger numbers syndrome with technology and weapon upgrades - this is also prevalent in Thea.
As for Thea - it truly has a lot of interesting new concepts in the 4X setting and will keep you hooked for 20 hours + as you learn the systems and events, but the card style resolution to everything gets tiring pretty quick and you end up auto resolving once you get a feel for your deck's relative strength. I recall one GWJer's complaint that Endless Legends suffered from bigger numbers syndrome with technology and weapon upgrades - this is also prevalent in Thea.
I was intrested in Thea at first glance when it released, but it was the weirdness and grind of the card game part that turned me off.
I loved the 25 or so hours I put into Thea, really worked for me. Lost motivation once I'd grokked it, but happy with my experience.
I thought Star Drive 1 was fun. Space and land combat needed a bit of balancing though as certain combinations dominated others. If they increase the art base, ship designs and quest/rpg events then I'd be happy.
If you're talking about Star Drive 2 ... Sector Zero space combat is much more balanced. He was able to rein in the mass drivers late in the previous release cycle, so now each of the weapon lines is viable depending on how you like to fight and what your ships can support. In Sector Zero it's also easier to get shields through various means other than research.
There are still issues though. The combat design still favors large numbers of long-range weapons, although mass driver domination has been corrected. Unfortunately, the default AI still does not handle this well, and you have to crank up the difficulty to get a reasonably even fight. He did even up the fights to the point where it's quite difficult to escape a fight without losses though. There were AI mods that helped address this, but I don't know what their status is with regard to Sector Zero.
The tactical ground combat is basically the same - laser rifles still dominate. However, the tactical combat is now just for the flavor missions. Invasions have a different mechanic that takes a number of turns to resolve based on the number of troops. It's more balanced, and frustratingly so - you actually need to get ground troop tech and equip your ground troops with it in order to succeed.
After lurking the space games thread and now here I am thoroughly confused about which new 4x to pick up.
I am pretty green to the genre. Never really got into MOO and maybe played several turns apiece between VGA Planets back in the day and Neptunes Pride. Oh I loved Endless Space for the first week I had it but petered out on that one fairly quickly too.
Stellaris is actually looking quite nice but I am literally judging off trailers and screenshots!
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