4X games

[Slylandro]

Hey all, I'm a relative newbie to 4x games. (For those who forget what 4x is, it means "Explore Expand Exploit Exterminate"). What 4x space games should I try out? I'm looking for a game with a good or at least bizarre/interesting story (it doesn't matter if it's procedurally generated if it usually works fine) and that doesn't get too deep in micromanagement. Also it'd be great if it had lots of strategic and tactical depth, while allowing for diplomacy and trade too. I'd prefer for it to be 2d or 2.5d, 3d usually makes the perspective too confusing for me, although I think I can stand 3d if everything else is great. What do you guys think? I've heard some very good things about Galactic Civilizations. I also heard about Spaceward Ho! but there's no demo for it and it's only up to version 4.0 for Windows (v.s. 5.0 for Mac), anyone who played it think it's a good game and I should wait for it? For anyone who asks, I already tried MOO. What is Space Rangers? I've heard it is a space action/RTS/RPG hybird. Is that worth playing too? Thanks a lot.

Edit: That also reminds me, anybody play The Longest Journey? Is it a good game or not? Everyone I've talked to has an extreme opinion about it, it's like either one of the best they played or one of the worst. From the stuff on Amazon it seems that the amount of text probably rivals even PS: T's.

 

[Mefi]

Space Rangers 2 I can vouch for as being a most excellent game. Not got the original though. Not really sure what genre it fits into as it spans so many. Wouldn't call it a 4x though.

Trying to rack my brains for a game which would appeal to you based on what you said. Have a look around Home of the Underdogs for some of the classics of the genre, there may be some hidden gem like Deuteros, Pax Imperia, Space Empires IV or Emperor of the Fading Suns which will appeal to you (Anachreon is excellent if you don't mind text based games).

http://www.the-underdogs.org/genre.php? ... in%20space

 

[deus]

GalCiv is basically a carbon copy of CivII except in space. The trading, diplomacy and combat were fairly simple. Trading was just plotting a course from one planet to another with income based on the wealth of the planets and the distance between them. Unless I'm forgetting something major, there were only four diplomatic actions. You could give/demand tribute, make/break alliances, buy tech and obviously declare war. On the other hand, the diplomacy was standard for the genre. Combat has no tactical depth. It's one stack of ships against another stack of ships. The ethical random events were a nice touch, but more ambiguity in the choices would have been better. Every single one had an over-the-top evil choice, and neutral choice and an over-the-top good choice. The one that I hated more than anything was how enemy civs always got preferential placement in the galaxy. They always seemed to start with 5-10 habitable planets nearby while the best I ever got was 3. There is a fair bit of micromanagement unless you let the AI take over or make a list of planet enhancements to build.

You might have to loosen you requirements since I can't think of anything that has all six. Master of Orion has all of them except an interesting story. MoO2 doesn't have a story and has a lot of micro-management that sadly can't be automated. The real biggie is tactical combat. Other than the Master of Orions, stay away from 3, I can't think of any that have tactical combat. The best I can come up with is Alpha Centauri. It is more or less a Civilization game set in on an alien planet complete with alien flora and hostile fauna. There is very little micromangement, but sadly no tactical combat.

The Longest Journey is one of the best traditional point and click adventure games ever. It had a good story and memorable characters plus it was long without feeling drawn out. It is no where near Torment text-wise since all dialogue is voiced. It comes down to how much you like adventure games. If you hate them, you'll hate the Longest Journey.

 

[Greatatlantic]

Typically 4x games don't come with stories. Notice how I said they didn't come with stories, not they didn't come with good stories. If you are buying a 4x game, its for the strategy. Anyways, Check out Space Empires IV, and the upcoming Space Empires V. They are pretty hard core examples of the genre, with no story to speak of, but it might satisfy you. And you still can't go wrong with Masters of Orion. Despite being dated graphically, the gameplay is still very good.

 

[Deathy]

Space Empires IV, is the goods.
Complex, fun, deep and infinitely satisfying. I'm still finding new strategies and bastard tricks to pull on folks, and I've been playing it for 6 years. Hopefully Space Empires V will be even better.
Find it at www.malfador.com

 

[Slylandro]

Thanks a lot. Yeah I think most 4x games don't come with a good story / any story at all, which is a shame because there is a lot of potential there IMO. I guess an ideal 4x game I'm envisioning would be something like Star Control II meets MOO meets ToEE... Something with a war spanning over a large universe that can be roamed mostly in freeform fashion, with lots of original and/or bizarre alien species, some known to humans and friendly, many others not, with interesting plot twists and ways to actually significantly change the game's story and affect its sides (the possible intervention of the Pkunk for instance springs to mind; failure to protect them results in them getting completely wiped out which makes it much harder for you to win the game), and a strong strategic and tactical element. I'll go look into the games you guys mentioned already though, thanks a lot!

 

[galsiah]

You should definitely check out Space Empires. I haven't played since SE3 [it really is possible to spend a lot of time playing - too much], but I imagine things have only improved. Its very involving, highly customizable, and has a lot of depth. SE3 had quite a few mods to expand the number of tech upgrades / weapons etc., though most of the techs were just bigger + more powerful versions of existing weaponry etc.

One or two aspects of SE3 could have been better. For instance, the AI was sometimes a little silly about the timing of declaring war - e.g. declaring war due to overall strategic considerations when you "happened" to have major fleets waiting next to some of its most important planets.
Another problem I found was that the story, graphics and sound sometimes weren't involving enough - I could play for eight hours straight, just drawn in by the intellectual challenge. However, what eventually stopped me was usually a brief thought of "Hang on, what is all this for? Why am I doing this? ... Jesus! Is that the time!...".

If there were a little more story, and involvment on an emotional level, rather than purely on an intellectual level, I probably would have been stopped by "Is it dawn already?!?". Perhaps the lack of story is due to health considerations for sleep deprived gamers.

Anyway, whatever the whys and hows, if you're into 4X, it would be criminal to miss out on Space Empires.

 

[Mantiis]

If you like tearing your hair out you could look up an oldie called alien legacy. That one had a kick arse story but was very hard to be successful otherwise Galactive Civ is good.

Civilisation 4 is a big step up from Civ 3 but it is obviously not in space.

 

[obediah]

I played Alien Legacy a few months ago, and it is a great but frustrating game. If you want 4X w/ story hit the underdogs now. Expect to take a few plays through to get the hang of it, and even then, rotate through many save slots if you want to avoid getting stuck

SE IV is a good 4X space game - I've spent almost as much time with it as MOO and MOO II. I tried galcive, but didn't like it because of 2 things:

1) It was way to min-maxy for my tastes. After having more trouble than I accepted on moderate difficulty settings, I viisited the forums, and found THE expansion strategy - which involved sliding some toggles from one extreme to another at various stages - and all the sudden I was doing 10X better. It wasn't like I had a stupid strategy for space expansion before, and this made more sense - it was just rox0ring the game mechanics. The great thing about the other Space 4X games are the very different, viable strategies (at least in SP).

(2) No ship design. It's not a 4x space game if you don't get the joy of deisgning ships, and rushing production on your new dreadnought so that the paint is still fresh when it engages and destroys the invading armada.

 

[Section8]

It doesn't quite qualify as 4X, but it's closely related - Has anyone ever played Iron Seed? It's a bit like Star Control 2, with a few notable differences. There's far more detail when it comes to resources and what you can actually synthesize from them, and it's all done on-board. Diplomacy/Communication is done with a text parser, and combat? Well I haven't ever managed to find something hostile.

If anyone hasn't played it, it's worth a look over on the Underdogs.

 

[Crnobog]

Try Ascendancy for some bizarre/original alien designs, the game itself is nice too except maybe the dumb AI. There's a patch that somewhat fixes that though.

Emperor of the Fading Suns is the fucking bomb, play it.

Space Empires IV is great and it gets even more fun once you have access to stellar engineering - creating planets, ringworlds, killing stars, collapsing black holes, FUN

GalCiv 2 is supposed to come out in february, looks pretty sweet so far.

 

[galsiah]

Try Ascendancy for some bizarre/original alien designs...

...But avoid it if you don't like some very annoying aspects [perhaps some of these have been patched??].
1) No planetary construction queues.
2) Rotating solar sytems. Why is this bad? Because the planets rotate, but the ships and star lane entry points stay fixed. Therefore you can leave a system with your ships perfectly safe, wait a turn or two, and find that they're being shot at by planetary defense guns, because the planet rotated into range. This is very annoying.
3) Combat is pretty stupid, since only one ship can attack per turn, yet every ship needs to use energy to power its shields every turn. What this means is that if you've got seven ships in a system, by the time three have attacked, the others have probably spent all their energy powering shields. Annoying? Certainly.
4) One ship, however powerful, can never damage an enemy planet which is sensible, since the planet can always start a construction each turn (costing only time), which is then destroyed by the ship. All a single ship can do is prevent anything new from being constructed. Combine this with an absense of construction queues, and you have a situation where if there is one enemy ship near your planet, you need to go to that planet every turn, tell it to build something, then watch it get destroyed, then the same next turn...
5) Star lane travel is depressingly slow. You can send your first ship down a star lane to Boldly Go etc. etc., but quite possibly its star lane drives will be so weak that it'll take anything up to about thirty turns (in extreme cases) to come out the other side. It'll probably be overtaken by your newer ships with better drives, before it reaches the other end.

Having said all this, the graphics are good (for the age of the game), and the races etc. are quite interesting.