Discussion on 4X games.

tesco samoa · #1 October 16th, 2001, 04:35 AM

Would battles of desteny make it any where on this list?

All time fav. 4x games

Stars, MOO, MOO2, SEIV, SEIII, Overlord, Lord of the Relms, MULE, Star Control (2).

There was another game I used to play. Cannot remember what it was called. Came out in 96. You basicaly designed your ships and sent them out on patrols etc... You could really control them. Very detailed. Mostly space combat. I will have to look in the old game boxes for the name. I have tech tree infront of me but it has no name on it.. ( remeber when games came with tech charts... what I would give to see game shiped with the manuals like from the aces series or early janes games.)

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Inter arma silent leges

Puke · #2 October 16th, 2001, 07:09 AM

i have said it before, i will say it again:

Imperialism I and II, by FrogCity and SSI. Games for the Thinking man. empire building and warfare, with unheard of things like solid (bordering upon god-like) diplomacy and economic modles. sharp AI (SSI meets a 4x game, you know the AI has to be good) both strategically and diplomatically. it knows all the tricks and you cant get away with dicking it about like the unfortuneate AI in space empires (and civ, and alpha centauri..)

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"...the green, sticky spawn of the stars"
(with apologies to H.P.L.)

chewy027 · #3 October 16th, 2001, 03:06 PM

well if we're going down that path what about Europa Universalis. That is another great game and the sequal is coming out soon to. Should be even better now. Diplomacy is awesome i especially like the way alliances are done. I think thats the way se5 should go it would make it so much more realistic and make treaties so much more important.

Pustov 2 · #4 October 16th, 2001, 03:51 PM

Reach for the stars. (by ssi) Did not reach to far. And I have to say that the AI in space Empire IV is one of the best I'v ever seen. The best is moo. moo2 is alright but I think SEIV is better

Pustov 2 · #5 October 16th, 2001, 03:56 PM

And by the way Pustov and Pustov 2 are the same I just got stuck in some kind of profile thing whith a change off aderess and passworld so I got a new one

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the only good bug is a dead bug = Starship Troopers

Master Belisarius · #6 October 16th, 2001, 04:12 PM

"And I have to say that the AI in space Empire IV is one of the best I'v ever seen. "

Are you the Aaron's brother?

Although I admit that:
1) The SEIV AI was really improved from the original release.
2) Modding the AI scripts you can improve a lot their behavior.
3) The SEIV AI doesn't cheat.

Honestly, Pustov, I'm far to believe that the SEIV AI is one of the best... After hours and hours and hours testings SEIV AIs scripts, I still can feel the frustration, looking how dumb the SEIV AI can be.

Taqwus · #7 October 16th, 2001, 04:57 PM

Hrmmm. 4X games, eh? Let me think 'bout this... which ones have I played, hrm.

Civ II, VGAP, SMAC, HOMM III, MOO II, SE IV. Perhaps less true to 4X: Strategic Conquest, XConq, EU. Even less strictly 4X: the old BBS doors Solar Realms Elite and Barren Realms Elite, and the old Mac game Bolo, and Netrek.

Of those, hrm. Civ II was pretty good, albeit it had a lot of misfeatures that really, really irritated me (stubborn AIs that demand tribute from a position of weakness; blatant cheating; nonsensical air unit handling; broken GOTO...).

VGAP never grabbed me that much. Dunno why. Maybe because I was the only one who had even the demo on the BBSes I frequented, heh.

SMAC: decent, but far too much 'former micromanagement needed. Again, inane AI diplomacy and cheating, and too little thought went into the design -- e.g. airport equivalents, but they were basically useless.

HOMM III: better, but hero-chaining bothers me. RoE Campaign easy for a novice to get into.

MOO2BAA: Fun. The joys of ship design (read: interesting design. SMAC's unit workshop was largely a joke, relatively speaking.) And the delight of wreaking terrible vengeance for all those Antaran raids.

SE4: Fun. Complex and flexible, not that usual of a combination. AI diplomacy needs a lot of work, 'tho.

Strategic Conquest: Along with the original 'Empire' (mainframe-ish? 'A/a' for army, O for city, etc), granddaddy of many a nice wargame. Expand by taking neutral cities, and then cities belonging to others. Xconq owes a lot to it design-wise, but is far more flexible.

EU: OK. I eventually hated the interface and the diplomacy, however -- especially the asymmetry of bribery (how every pipsqueak country needs bribery to be your friend), the inanity of it all (e.g. being Austria and +200 w/ Spain, Spain not wanting to join alliance, but countries which hate me (-50 and worse) do join?), and the rather blatant AI cheating (e.g. fleets never attriting).

SRE/BRE: Not really 4X, but more Hammurabi-style. Grow your domain, develop it, form pacts with those on the same BBS, and go after other people. The theme lives on in certain web games like 'Utopia'.

Bolo and Netrek: Team-play games where you expand your territory for resources and range, and crush the other guy. Not really 4X at all, but fun. Both require good tactical skill to do well, and both are old games that survive to this present day.