Any hard core 4 x or even rts games?

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Where you can acctualy lose to AI...
I played warlock, and it was decent just too easy.
so come on broes give me some hard hard 4x games, or strategy in general
thanks

M.A.X.
delightfully unforgiving and complex jet fair

None unless they cheat up the ass (and yes the M.A.X. AI cheats although prob not as bad as many)
edit: This doesnt mean you shouldnt play max.. one of the best strat games ever made and it is more challenging then most

edit again: just remembered the reason I dont play it. They used a short for unit (which includes buildings which includes platforms and roads) ID's.. this means after 256 units (buildings etc) the game crashes. So its awesome.. And sadly pointless to play if you don't want to be in fear of crashes in the mid/late game.

I guess you can play with one AI and not build roads and platforms but meh

Most rts games suck in this regard, unless you count skirmishing vs several AIs allied against you as "hardcore".

Similar with 4X games, high difficulty AI is most often about cheating and you have to counter cheating with cheese.

Hard to say which ones had actually a decent AI.
I routinely lose to the MOO2 AIs on impossible, but that may just be because I'm not that good at MOO.
I remember people got conned into thinking Galactic Civilizations 2 (iirc) has decent AI because it used to spew bullshit like: I see you're planning an obvious surprise attack over there, I woulda did something about it, but you set the difficulty too low, just sayin'. In the end, it turned up to be the same shitty thing, which relies on cheats to stay competitive.
When it comes to actual RTS games, I only remember Supreme Commander AIs being decent to play against. Not terribly competent, but comparatively decent.

AI War supposedly has good AI. It's real time with pause iirc.

In Birthright Gorgons Alliance on hard difficulty is actually hard and A.I. quite good.

Chaos Overlords?

Galactic Civilizations 1 or 2, the AI was its main selling point. Play the first, it's better despite the fact the second added tons of stuff. Kind of like MOO1 vs MOO2 comparisons.

Yeah the AI in AI War is competent, and there are a bunch of AI types that all play differently. Some of them are fucking brutal.

I'm not sure if I would classify it as a 'cheating' AI or not. The AI and human player work completely differently in AI War.

AI Wars AI CHeats by DEFINITION. It's not even a hidden fact. It's part of the game design. However the game is designed around this fact which is why its such a good game.

thought process: Impossible to make good ai.. must use cheating AI... design game around this...
result: great fucking game

also Chaos Overlords AI really may be the best Ive played against and i keep forgetting about it in these threads. that fucker is good. for the record the last difficulty option isnt the "Best" its just more aggressive. the one before it actually plays better some times

That is actually bullshit. The ai does cheat but only on higher difficulty settings and even then it does it far less than in most games. Galciv2' AI is actually much better than in most strategy games so I'm not sure by what standards you'd consider it as shitty. The bad news are it was the only good thing about it, and coding a decent ai was probably done out of necessity because the game single player only.

BotF (Birth of the Federation) is 4X turn-based and can be pretty unforgiving with difficulty turned up. Even with difficulty at normal the sheer amount of micromanagement required will bury even the most hard core 4X strategy players. After you colonize, conquer, ally-with or terraform some, say 25 systems, you will be spending probably 20 minutes per turn minimum putting down insurrections, dealing with supernovas and other random events like the fuken Borg sweeping in and killing everyone sometimes (you and all your AI/human opponents), minor races giving you shit (there are some 30 minor races on top of 5 major entities), everyone trying to sabotage you, etc.

While there might be some patterns to the AI that you will recognize after playing the game for a while (I've been playing the game for 13 years now and I haven't seen any easily recognizable patterns), the random events and the amount of micromanagement will play against you at all times.


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Difficulty by micro sounds horrible. Like some abomination best left hidden in one of the seven circles of hell

Perhaps, but the game is pretty engaging otherwise. Also, for fun sometimes I let the AI get beat down to several systems and then I swap places, take over the struggling AI controlled empire and fight against my own empire controlled now by an AI. Nothing like spending 250 turns building your empire and then going against it at turn 251. You know all the weaknesses but it is fun seeing what the AI will do. Sometimes the inevitable happens and you get crushed in 20 turns, sometimes the AI decides that you are weak/benign and skips you over in favor of fighting a different foe/empire. How's that for difficulty?

I've had couple save games that I've been playing for years. One dates back to 2004, so 8 years on that one.

The best thing though in BotF is that saved single player games can be turned into multi-player games and vice-versa. (something that few if any games do) You can invite human opponents to take over AI, or once your human opponents leave a multi-player match AI takes over thier spots and game reverts into single player (if there are no human opponents left).



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Rise of Nations, easily.

I don't know how it was for others, but if you and the AI got further and further into the game it became a total grind to win anything. The more AI, the more ridiculous it became.

Well what else do you play a 4X game if not to be challenged by the AI? I actually don't even understand all the edgy bullshit about it being the only good thing about it. In that case then MOO has nothing good going for it as it has a shittier AI and everything else contains more or less the same stuff. What exactly is so crappy about Gal Civ 2? The early game is as tedious as in any other 4X game but it has a survey ship to pass the time. It has planetary improvements, diplomacy, ship builder, all the basic stuff, though with Twilight of the Arnor they added a lot more variety to tech trees and the whole 'good/bad' thing is something that others don't do. Only thing I can really think is that the combat is pretty basic but I thought that was just cause the game was focused on other aspects rather than fucking waiting half an hour for 100 ships to have their turn firing as in MOO2 which is far more boring. If people don't like it, fine. A lot of people here like JRPG's while I don't. What I'm really curious about is just what exactly is it about this particular game that pisses people off(here mostly, as elsewhere people tend to love it) as I've pretty much played every single one of these games ever made and it sits pretty high up on my list even as some things are crappier than those of others or have a different focus.

Oh and the AI in Gal Civ 2 only cheats above 'intelligent' level and just with production bonuses, and in the last expansion the whole economy system has been tweaked to make it just that little bit harder to easily paint the galaxy as well. The game may not be everyone's cup of tea, and I can see that the macro feel may make it seem a bit 'dry' and soulless but for me it's much more like a game of chess. You don't exactly play that for the emotional engagement.

I also like the fact that in Gal Civ they made a storyline with scenarios which deal with particular strategic situations and let you try and do something perhaps in ways that you wouldn't normally do if it was a standard conquer the galaxy type game. I like being forced to make do with early tech in some scenario and work out a way to defeat some fucker with just corvettes. Provides a nice change from the standard race up the tech tree and economy hoarding before sending out the steamroller which is standard in every 4X game.

What I dont like about GalCiv2? Combat is horrible and could as well be abstracted to final screen. Ship design is non existent and all components are boring. Colony management comes to selecting specialization for the planet. Unique planetary traits are really boring (something like 700% production bonus, while helpful, isnt something I'd call unique...). Whole economy fucking sucks as everything boils down to the supremacy of money. Technology is a goddamn JOKE right there, with tech design that piss me off and techs being hurrdurr lazer +2. GREAT. At least other games try to hide this. Diplomacy is rather classic, races too. Visuals, well, not my style but its not that important.

So what is there to like? Minor races are cool. Game is so simplistic it manages to have a competent AI. Stations are a cool idea, even if the execution is somewhat lacking.

GC2 is a good game if you dislike innovation and imbalances and want chess in space. Of course you have to build your race around economy bonuses and most features can be safely ignored (like 3 weapon/defence types - just max out one type) but the game wont surprise you (adding events kind of changes that, alas they are so rare). It may be fine for competitive multiplayer if you dont mind playing against cloned races.

Also why do I play 4X games? Well, I like building space empires, I like feeling the massive scale, having fleets in the thousands of ships and colonies with billions of people. I like terraforming planets, moving stars, discovering funky techs, death-staring planets, playing as alien floating telephatic brains or lithovre crystals. I dont need balance in my fun, I just want to feel the richness of the galaxy, to scout the unknown, face the ORI or other enemies from beyond reality. 4X games are a single player experience for me. Its BUILDING (so there has to be a lot of stuff to build, preferably with unique requirements) its EXPLORING (so there has to be stuff to explore other than +200 gold or a tech to be found) its CONQUEST (of a worthy foe) and its RESEARCH (building of techs with same requirements as with buildings ie varied and unique).

I never got any of this from GC2.

Hey mang, it's totally cool to enjoy GalCiv2, you're not going to lose any kool kredits for it. I actually have to give it its due for the ship editor and diplomacy. Which were pretty decent, and I would like to more of this stuff in other 4x games, although they were superficial.
Actually, superficial features was what turned me off from GalCiv2. While I had lots of fun with ship design , it actually had no actual gameplay effect. Same goes for the weapon systems, the system looked as if it were complex, but actually wasn't. It still boiled down to get the best weapon in the category and build as many as large ships as you can. Again, looks complex but little actual complexity in gameplay.
And if the features weren't superficial, they were usually sterile and uninspired. The research tree is a fine example of this.
Finally, there's the story driven campaign and morality choices stuff. I found both half assed and unnecessary, but hey, if it floats your boat.

I'm not going to convince you that GalCiv 2 sucked cock. I played it a bit back in 2006 then went back to MOO2. It didn't agree with me for the reasons stated above. And possibly more, but I honestly can't remember because I found it sterile and forgettable.
You like it better, more power to you. I also didn't get any of the expansions, it may have gotten better with time. Dunno.
My biggest gripe was that it promised a lot (like the AI), but failed to deliver. Maybe calling the AI shitty is too much, I give you that, but I don't have too high an opinion of it.

Ground Control maybe??? competent ai overall but got feeling it lets you win [never tried max diffculty so dont know for sure-did not try coz not enough time to play my backlog] game old but made right and with attention to details so maybe it will be worth your time

Oh well that's partly the problem there: With the latest expansion they really threw out the mirror image tech trees and race balance to give a more unique feel for each major race. Sure it kind of forces you into a certain playstyle, but that's the whole point, isn't it? Research trees are now unique for each race, but still are constant. They also redid the economy and AI. It's a much better game than it was at the start. Ship building had no real effect at first because it was put it to appease all the people clamoring for it. I always got the impression that it was a tacked on thing but it is more useful now. Even so the tile based 'shoot at each other until a unit dies' combat makes it seem that its a minor change and really if you want a 4X with good combat you won't find it here. I dunno, if you can find it (ahem) in the complete version, you should give it a go. I don't understand the whining about the story missions though. It's not like they stripped the main sandbox game for it. I like to think of it as a nice extra. Imperium Galactica II went the other route with basically 3 story campaigns and only later did they go fora random map.

Maybe I'm just easier to please but unless a 4X game is a total mess regarding interface(Space Empires series) or has a real bullshit AI that you steamroll in a few turns, I can usually find something interesting in most of them(Distant Worlds I really like for the hands off style with just tweaking here and there for example, being the 'hidden hand', even though that pretty much makes the game play itself for the most part).

Fuck it, it's all good.


Malakal Appreciate your reasoning even if I think you're being a bit unfair, but hell, everyone plays what they like. I even enjoy the occasional turdburger in the form of COD(though of course I don't reward ActivZion with real money for the pleasure )

Chess in space, that's not a bad way to describe it. To all the newfags that played GalCiv2 only (there sure are many!) you might want to give GalCiv1 a try. It gets rid of the 3 weapon types, of some of the planet building, of ship editor, of the alignment system and of some of the races. It's all about the competition and how everyone adapts as quickly to what's on the map. You could say GalCiv2 sold out on its vision to reel in the MOO2 crowd, and it worked. The thing is that if you want to be impressed by the AI, then the game can't bore you with RPG options like designing your ship exactly as you want. And usually this type of complexity means the AI is just worse anyway. Either you shoot for a 4x with RPG elements like MOO2 and call that the model, or you shoot for a strategy game 4x that's built around diplomacy like GalCiv1.

Oh and for the OP, can't give much more advice about 4X games but if you want challenging RTS type games well there's the Theatre of War series. The challenge is as much to do with the realistic weapon management but you'll be surprised at what the AI can do at times. Men of War is also challenging, but more due to the canned situations and scripts.

That's what made me turn to Gal Civ in the first place: the way that a peaceful cultural or diplo victory could actually be detailed and fun to achieve rather than be a sad afterthought like with so many other 4X games. It was a great change of pace. Otherwise you said a lot that I forgot to mention that I agree with.

Same reason why people hate MoO3. It's too complex compared to MoO2. It has you plan on how to build up this or that planet (while in MoO2 you just spam the same set of buildings on every planet), it has you think about how you'll go with economics and research - whereas in MoO2 it's a very linear stuff. Diplomacy is rather complicated too.

Early MoOs are simple. You build bases, you spam ships, you beat the crap out of the enemy which is mostly AI.
Same reason why XCom is more popular than JA and SS which offer much more.


A disclaimer for morons: no I do not hate your precious MoO2. And I dislike GC2. But I dislike it because whatever it does is rather about number-crunching on large scale and gets microintensive, lacking automation.