Discussion on 4X games.

[Pustov 2]

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]

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]

"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]

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.

[Pustov 2]

It's only as dume as you make It. The diplomacy is eratic and the combat system needs help. BUT the way the AI buildes colonies is impresive. Maybe It's because I can switch players in a game and see what they are doning that makes it so cool. I still think It's one of the best 4x games out there. And I don't concider Civ or EU To be a 4x game If they were then I'l agree with you.I'm not saying that the AI in SEVI is beter I,m just saying that for a 4 x game you don't have to worry about history and that there are not that many out there.

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the only good bug is a dead bug = Starship Troopers

[This message has been edited by Pustov 2 (edited 16 October 2001).]

[Rhinestone Cowboy]

Out of all the games mentioned I'm surprised not to see "Star Trek Federation" (Well maybe not that surprised!)

Definitly a MOOII Clone but I believe it was the first space game to include the notion of neutral races. It also had an interesting combat engine. With all the talk of SEIV combat dificiencies, this one may be worth looking at for ideas. Basically you gave your ships a strategy to implement before each combat turn. The AI then modeled the combat in 3D and you watched it unfold.

Unfortunately the AI was not the best and repeatability suffered because of it.

Although I did have fun being the Ferengi and basically buying my way to the top!

If you like MooII and Star Trek it's worth at least a look see....

RhineStone Cowboy

" I don't do Wetwork .... um...Cheap!"

[mac5732]

I've played Moo & Moo2, but for some reason I enjoyed Moo better then Moo2, oh well, Civ and Civ2, Pax Imperia which I did like, However now with SE4, haven't played it since, The old SSI Imperium Galactica, the first one, was excellent in its time, Reach for the Stars, have the new remake but havn't played it yet, Europa Universalis I do like this one, waiting for II to come out, is interesting, has bugs & needs work but like the format, Birth of a Federation good idea just needs work, gets boring after awhile. Really enjoyed Star General by SSI only problem was buggy and I could never get the patch to load.. still, good beer and pretzel game if you can get it to keep from freezing up all the time. SE4 has become my favorite space game, Shogun favorite tactical game, with the tech of today look foreward to better & challenging games and am looking foreward to upgrades of SE4 and to SE5.

just some ideas mac

[This message has been edited by mac5732 (edited 16 October 2001).]