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4x Games

 

06-17-17 10:22 AM
Kazerima is Offline
| ID: 1340860 | 1158 Words

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I started playing 4x games about 2 years ago with the rather lightweight Endless Space, before moving on the Civilization V, Galactic Civilization III, and more recently Stellaris. While I've enjoyed elements of each of them, I'd like to know which games in the genre everyone here is more interested in, and maybe talk about some design elements or help me decide my next purchase.

Endless Space was pretty simple compared to the others, making it a good genre entry point for me at the time, but after a while things started to feel a bit predictable and the Simon-like tech tree was getting a bit cramped. Game play boiled down to picking my victory condition and Simon slice, then relentlessly pursuing it with occasional dips into the others as needed. The best parts were the different strategic options presented before each battle, giving me more than Produce # of Unit Type X to manage combat, and the diverse racial options that felt distinct but not overwhelming. Ship design was also a fun mini-game that helped me keep some replay after the game started to lose depth. It was a nice transition from Starcraft II at the time and kept me occupied most of the summer before I wanted something a bit more complex.

Civilization V was a nice step up from Endless Space, a proper hex map with cities and resource nodes that felt more meaningful than the planets and star-lanes of Endless. City improvement was familiar, and the addition of workshop supported modding made it easier to add interesting content to keep things interesting. The biggest issue I think, though, is that after a while the game began to feel predictable. The fixed tech tree meant most of my planning went on at a single point and the rest of the game consisted of slowly implementing it, leading to my slow drop in interest. Many of the side-systems, such as religion and espionage, felt more like afterthoughts than full fledged gameplay features. Combat, while initially interesting due to the presence of barbarians encountered much more frequently than wandering pirates, also eventually stagnated as I felt myself slipping into a rock/paper/scissors mentality where I simply focused on producing the most powerful units possible when needed or focusing down on the tech tree completely. The lack of a gold oriented victory condition kept me from feeling like it was as important as Endless Dust, the most important aspect instead being scientific advancement, bolstered by production, to churn out high grade units while waiting for endgame. I do appreciate that only a single unit per tile is allowed, as it allows for a bit more tactical play than the giant death balls that I hear were frequent in Civ IV.

Galactic Civ III felt a little too similar to Civ V for my liking, and some of the systems felt clunky in their implementation, but there were some rather flavorful gems worth mentioning. The ship design system was almost outright unpleasant to work with, and the fact different models would be saved globally meant either my roster would be clogged with a bunch of special case ships of incremental power, or sticking almost exclusively to preset models despite my changing needs. The life support range and flavorful nature of what little diplomacy I had during my few early game playthroughs were definite positives, though not really enough to hold my interest. The game interface also felt kind of cramped and clunky, which while not game-breaking for a turn based game, kind of took away from the atmosphere. I may give it another shot sometime later, but it failed to really capture my attention.

Stellaris caught me off guard at first as a RTS/4x hybrid, though the ability to pause the game at any point to deliver orders harkens back to the turn based controls while allowing for time to feel more organic than specific turns. This can also punish the player a bit more for inattention, but means you're never kept waiting for computer turns to calculate or sighing and clicking the "next turn" button for lack of anything worth doing in your empire. Ship customization is diverse enough to feel interesting, though the use of specialized slots for equipment feels like both a blessing and a curse, preventing me from heavily specializing any given ship. The semi-random tech tree keeps future planning from getting too bogged down and allows for my empire to develop more organically as the situation dictates. The tile system used for planetary growth, variable resource availability, and anomaly analysis also help shake things up from game to game, as do the goal oriented research projects. Combat is a bit simplified with little control other than different A.I. Chips stuffed into your ships, but retains more depth than Civ's rock/paper/scissors system by making each weapon and armor type better against each other while still being functional. The biggest weak point of the game so far is diplomacy is more of an after thought than a gameplay feature most of the time for me. Also, while the early game is a lot of fun, towards the middle it starts to slow down a bit as the lack of diverse victory conditions means once your map fills out it can be difficult to know how and where to progress. I haven't tried out any of the DLC yet, but let me know if any of this gets fixed.

Games I'm currently looking into:

Civ 6:
Pro: The revamped army and tile improvement systems seem interesting, as does the shift to a religious victory option.
Con: $60 price tag for the base game and no hint of what future DLC may bring. I hear the A.I. Isn't much good either.

Endless Legend:
Pro: Interesting sword/sorcery setting with touches of sci fi, lots of expandable options if I end up liking the game, very different racial options and a unique looking feel.
Con: Lots of DLC can drive up the price tag of the full experience, depending on how the region system works, may have less tile improvement or exploration focus than I'm looking for.

Endless Space 2:
Pro: I've heard high praise for its politics system, diverse races featuring the old familiar options from Endless Space 1 along with new ones. Different combat strategies return with some streamlining.
Con: might be rough on my 2013 laptop, unsure how much substance lies beneath the pretty interface, as Endless Space 1 was kind of lightweight on the strategy compared to other 4x games. Despite robust political system, very poor diplomacy.

Pandora:
Pro: Randomized tech tree and resource availability means organic resource growth, unit creation options are diverse enough to be a game almost on its own.
Con: PvE interactivity is supposedly very limited while politics are somewhat confusing and disconnected. Endgame disasters are less hazards and more a race to see who can manage to not die before everyone else.
I started playing 4x games about 2 years ago with the rather lightweight Endless Space, before moving on the Civilization V, Galactic Civilization III, and more recently Stellaris. While I've enjoyed elements of each of them, I'd like to know which games in the genre everyone here is more interested in, and maybe talk about some design elements or help me decide my next purchase.

Endless Space was pretty simple compared to the others, making it a good genre entry point for me at the time, but after a while things started to feel a bit predictable and the Simon-like tech tree was getting a bit cramped. Game play boiled down to picking my victory condition and Simon slice, then relentlessly pursuing it with occasional dips into the others as needed. The best parts were the different strategic options presented before each battle, giving me more than Produce # of Unit Type X to manage combat, and the diverse racial options that felt distinct but not overwhelming. Ship design was also a fun mini-game that helped me keep some replay after the game started to lose depth. It was a nice transition from Starcraft II at the time and kept me occupied most of the summer before I wanted something a bit more complex.

Civilization V was a nice step up from Endless Space, a proper hex map with cities and resource nodes that felt more meaningful than the planets and star-lanes of Endless. City improvement was familiar, and the addition of workshop supported modding made it easier to add interesting content to keep things interesting. The biggest issue I think, though, is that after a while the game began to feel predictable. The fixed tech tree meant most of my planning went on at a single point and the rest of the game consisted of slowly implementing it, leading to my slow drop in interest. Many of the side-systems, such as religion and espionage, felt more like afterthoughts than full fledged gameplay features. Combat, while initially interesting due to the presence of barbarians encountered much more frequently than wandering pirates, also eventually stagnated as I felt myself slipping into a rock/paper/scissors mentality where I simply focused on producing the most powerful units possible when needed or focusing down on the tech tree completely. The lack of a gold oriented victory condition kept me from feeling like it was as important as Endless Dust, the most important aspect instead being scientific advancement, bolstered by production, to churn out high grade units while waiting for endgame. I do appreciate that only a single unit per tile is allowed, as it allows for a bit more tactical play than the giant death balls that I hear were frequent in Civ IV.

Galactic Civ III felt a little too similar to Civ V for my liking, and some of the systems felt clunky in their implementation, but there were some rather flavorful gems worth mentioning. The ship design system was almost outright unpleasant to work with, and the fact different models would be saved globally meant either my roster would be clogged with a bunch of special case ships of incremental power, or sticking almost exclusively to preset models despite my changing needs. The life support range and flavorful nature of what little diplomacy I had during my few early game playthroughs were definite positives, though not really enough to hold my interest. The game interface also felt kind of cramped and clunky, which while not game-breaking for a turn based game, kind of took away from the atmosphere. I may give it another shot sometime later, but it failed to really capture my attention.

Stellaris caught me off guard at first as a RTS/4x hybrid, though the ability to pause the game at any point to deliver orders harkens back to the turn based controls while allowing for time to feel more organic than specific turns. This can also punish the player a bit more for inattention, but means you're never kept waiting for computer turns to calculate or sighing and clicking the "next turn" button for lack of anything worth doing in your empire. Ship customization is diverse enough to feel interesting, though the use of specialized slots for equipment feels like both a blessing and a curse, preventing me from heavily specializing any given ship. The semi-random tech tree keeps future planning from getting too bogged down and allows for my empire to develop more organically as the situation dictates. The tile system used for planetary growth, variable resource availability, and anomaly analysis also help shake things up from game to game, as do the goal oriented research projects. Combat is a bit simplified with little control other than different A.I. Chips stuffed into your ships, but retains more depth than Civ's rock/paper/scissors system by making each weapon and armor type better against each other while still being functional. The biggest weak point of the game so far is diplomacy is more of an after thought than a gameplay feature most of the time for me. Also, while the early game is a lot of fun, towards the middle it starts to slow down a bit as the lack of diverse victory conditions means once your map fills out it can be difficult to know how and where to progress. I haven't tried out any of the DLC yet, but let me know if any of this gets fixed.

Games I'm currently looking into:

Civ 6:
Pro: The revamped army and tile improvement systems seem interesting, as does the shift to a religious victory option.
Con: $60 price tag for the base game and no hint of what future DLC may bring. I hear the A.I. Isn't much good either.

Endless Legend:
Pro: Interesting sword/sorcery setting with touches of sci fi, lots of expandable options if I end up liking the game, very different racial options and a unique looking feel.
Con: Lots of DLC can drive up the price tag of the full experience, depending on how the region system works, may have less tile improvement or exploration focus than I'm looking for.

Endless Space 2:
Pro: I've heard high praise for its politics system, diverse races featuring the old familiar options from Endless Space 1 along with new ones. Different combat strategies return with some streamlining.
Con: might be rough on my 2013 laptop, unsure how much substance lies beneath the pretty interface, as Endless Space 1 was kind of lightweight on the strategy compared to other 4x games. Despite robust political system, very poor diplomacy.

Pandora:
Pro: Randomized tech tree and resource availability means organic resource growth, unit creation options are diverse enough to be a game almost on its own.
Con: PvE interactivity is supposedly very limited while politics are somewhat confusing and disconnected. Endgame disasters are less hazards and more a race to see who can manage to not die before everyone else.
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06-17-17 09:08 PM
geeogree is Online
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I absolutely LOVED the civilization series which I personally think peaked at 4 (but that's just my opinion). Something about this style of game that I've always enjoyed. I do wish there was more depth sometimes (like food or resources having a more limited supply but moveable between cities).

However, as much as I've tried to find a good Space version of these games I find most of them to be either too simple and therefore boring or so complicated that I give up after a couple hours of trying to figure out what is going on and then getting destroyed by some other group.

If you know of a space 4x game that you think is properly balanced and fun and what not I'd love to hear about it but so far I haven't found one that I've thought was anywhere near as good as Civ 4.
I absolutely LOVED the civilization series which I personally think peaked at 4 (but that's just my opinion). Something about this style of game that I've always enjoyed. I do wish there was more depth sometimes (like food or resources having a more limited supply but moveable between cities).

However, as much as I've tried to find a good Space version of these games I find most of them to be either too simple and therefore boring or so complicated that I give up after a couple hours of trying to figure out what is going on and then getting destroyed by some other group.

If you know of a space 4x game that you think is properly balanced and fun and what not I'd love to hear about it but so far I haven't found one that I've thought was anywhere near as good as Civ 4.
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06-18-17 01:27 PM
zanderlex is Offline
| ID: 1340942 | 41 Words

zanderlex
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Not a big fan of 4x in general outside of Civilization. I remember playing the demo for Civ V over and over and I loved it so much. I have IV, V, and Beyond Earth. Really do want to get VI.
Not a big fan of 4x in general outside of Civilization. I remember playing the demo for Civ V over and over and I loved it so much. I have IV, V, and Beyond Earth. Really do want to get VI.
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06-21-17 10:24 PM
Kazerima is Offline
| ID: 1341250 | 159 Words

Kazerima
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I hear a lot of people really liked Civ IV, but, I'm not so certain how I feel about the infamous "death balls" where you could stick a ton of units into a single hex, then just steamroll anything in your path using them. Civ V's "one unit per tile" rule seems a little more tactical to me, as you have to at least position your units in waves to get the most benefit from them. I like Civ VI in concept, though I don't own it, if only because you have the option to concentrate your forces for more firepower, hybrid them for diversity in combat type, or spread them out to easily surround your enemy.
I think so far I'm going to wait for the DLC for Stellaris to come on sale, then buy the two that add actual gameplay elements, as I hear they help fill out the middle portion of the game much more nicely.
I hear a lot of people really liked Civ IV, but, I'm not so certain how I feel about the infamous "death balls" where you could stick a ton of units into a single hex, then just steamroll anything in your path using them. Civ V's "one unit per tile" rule seems a little more tactical to me, as you have to at least position your units in waves to get the most benefit from them. I like Civ VI in concept, though I don't own it, if only because you have the option to concentrate your forces for more firepower, hybrid them for diversity in combat type, or spread them out to easily surround your enemy.
I think so far I'm going to wait for the DLC for Stellaris to come on sale, then buy the two that add actual gameplay elements, as I hear they help fill out the middle portion of the game much more nicely.
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