4X What's your top 5 4x games of all time?

[Igge]

The most satisfying one I played was Civilization 4 - Fall from Heaven. It was very atmospheric and also reasonably challenging, like the original Civilization 4 on Immortal/Deity.

Otherwise something like this:
1. Civilization 4
- Thea 2
- Thea 1
2. Age of Wonders 2
3. Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
4. Conquest of Elysium 5
5. Endless Space 2

One issue with 4X games is that they often have crap AI. Thea 1&2 circumvents it by not pretending that the AI is another player, and thus achieves a bit of challenge, although I guess this disqualifies it from being 4X despite its close proximity.

Not sure if counts as 4X but HoMM 3 has pretty capable AI

 

[Humanophage]

The most satisfying one I played was Civilization 4 - Fall from Heaven. It was very atmospheric and also reasonably challenging, like the original Civilization 4 on Immortal/Deity.

Otherwise something like this:
1. Civilization 4
- Thea 2
- Thea 1
2. Age of Wonders 2
3. Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
4. Conquest of Elysium 5
5. Endless Space 2

One issue with 4X games is that they often have crap AI. Thea 1&2 circumvents it by not pretending that the AI is another player, and thus achieves a bit of challenge, although I guess this disqualifies it from being 4X despite its close proximity.

Not sure if counts as 4X but HoMM 3 has pretty capable AI

Yes, but it apparently is not a 4X but simply a TBS. Eador is also all right in this respect.

 

[Igge]

4x is a pretty badly defined genre. JarlFrank came up with a decent heuristic when he said that in a 4x the cities, forts, colonies or whatever are built by the player, as opposed to being predefined provinces like in a grand strategy game. But then what do you do about MoO, where you can think of stars as provinces?

another feature:
grand strategy games are "asymmetrical", meaning that players are more bound to a specific setup and not among equally free factions in exploring and progressing the game and an open world.

 

[octavius]

To me, one difference is that pure 4X games are not story driven like AoW and HoMM campaigns and many SP maps are.

 

[Nutmeg]

Not sure if counts as 4X but HoMM 3 has pretty capable AI

No. Just no.

 

[JarlFrank]

Age of Wonders is 4X???

I also find that strange; it wasn't considered to be a 4X game at its time of release. In German magazines it was typically compared to HoMM3 and usually in some broader turn-based strategy category. I think people are calling it 4X in a revisionist manner, due to the later titles, AoW3/4 and AoWlanetfall, which are indeed close(r) to the genre.

AoW1 is not a 4X, it's closer to HoMM but is more "4X adjacent" than HoMM in some ways.

AoW2: Shadow Magic is the game that started the series down the 4X route.

 

[octavius]

SM is still quite story driven, with a more robust editor for creating maps with even stronger story/RPG elements.

 

[Sarathiour]

Might tech tree length be a good heuristic? I know it sounds stupid, but are there any 4x games with short tech tree lengths, and any non-4x games with long tech tree lengths?

Only one that would come to my mind is AoW 3, and not everyone apparently consider it a 4X.
It's also mostly because the tech tree is mainly horizontal rather than vertical.

 

[Humanophage]

To me, one difference is that pure 4X games are not story driven like AoW and HoMM campaigns and many SP maps are.

I think many players ignore the campaigns and simply play the maps. I know I do. Not a fan of missions in strategies in general, like all those missions in games like Stronghold or Caesar.

 

[Silva]

Something that bothers me in Civs is the "gonzo history" nature of it. Call me a storyfag but I need some degree of plausibility in my imaginary worlds for my brain to take it seriously. Each time I see those big George Washington and Genghis Khan heads in the same setting my brain automatically dismiss it for some silly boardgame for kids. Their AI also go beyond my plausibility threshold when it sends, say, Gandhi out of nowhere with an horde just because I'm now "leading the game".

It doesn't need to be as comprehensive a setting as SMAC's or MoM's or Endless Legend's. It just needs to a minimally cohesive one, and Civs lack even that.

 

[Trojan_generic]

Something that bothers me in Civs is the "gonzo history" nature of it. Call me a storyfag but I need some degree of plausibility in my imaginary worlds for my brain to take it seriously. Each time I see those big George Washington and Genghis Khan heads in the same setting my brain automatically dismiss it for some silly boardgame for kids. Their AI also go beyond my plausibility threshold when it sends, say, Gandhi out of nowhere with an horde just because I'm now "leading the game".

It doesn't need to be as comprehensive a setting as SMAC's or MoM's or Endless Legend's. It just needs to a minimally cohesive one, and Civs lack even that.

I agree on this. Something generic, random-generated like John Smith, Pajeet Gautama and Tsang Lao would work much better. But I guess they wanted to fix the behavior of the computer-controlled characters to certain persons instead of their nationalities. #notallpajeets

 

[Nutmeg]

Their AI also go beyond my plausibility threshold when it sends, say, Gandhi out of nowhere with an horde just because I'm now "leading the game".

Civ 4 stopped doing this. Kinda. There is a "we fear you are getting too strong" -2 (IIRC) modifier in A.I player attitude towards any other player but it's quite easy to offset by switching to their civics or adopting their religion.

I have seen Deity games where players just turtle and go for cultural or space race victory while skillfully managing the diplomatic situation to keep the A.I off their backs e.g.

 

[Nutmeg]

To me, one difference is that pure 4X games are not story driven like AoW and HoMM campaigns and many SP maps are.

I think many players ignore the campaigns and simply play the maps. I know I do. Not a fan of missions in strategies in general, like all those missions in games like Stronghold or Caesar.

Some missions or fixed scenarios can be clever and challenging to replay but yeah it's rare.

 

[Humanophage]

Their AI also go beyond my plausibility threshold when it sends, say, Gandhi out of nowhere with an horde just because I'm now "leading the game".

Civilization 4 isn't about any kind of simulation. It's a game like Age of Empires. This is actually good behaviour from the AI. If someone is winning, it is an extremely sound strategy for the other players to pile up on him. This is what happens when you're playing against skilled human players as well. This is normal balancing. Alternatively, other players might try to use the leader to deal with some opponents. Personally, I try not to appear too strong in MP games or to deflate things like my score in relation to my real power.

 

[Axioms]

It was only in recent years that I noticed how overwhelmingly influential the three classics (Civ, MoO, MoM) are on the 4X genre.

Every historical 4X tries to be Civilization, or deliberately changes certain aspects to fix what they think is wrong with Civilization.
Every space 4X tries to be Master of Orion 2. This is the most noticeable of them all. So many space 4X are just MoO2 but slightly different.
Every fantasy 4X tries to be Master of Magic.

I think maybe it is more like games that don't do this are not considered 4X?

 

[JarlFrank]

It was only in recent years that I noticed how overwhelmingly influential the three classics (Civ, MoO, MoM) are on the 4X genre.

Every historical 4X tries to be Civilization, or deliberately changes certain aspects to fix what they think is wrong with Civilization.
Every space 4X tries to be Master of Orion 2. This is the most noticeable of them all. So many space 4X are just MoO2 but slightly different.
Every fantasy 4X tries to be Master of Magic.

I think maybe it is more like games that don't do this are not considered 4X?

No, it goes a lot deeper than that.

Consider, for example, combat. Civ clones tend to only have auto-resolve combat, or Civ5's one-unit-per-turn tactical combat that plays out on the overworld.
Master of Magic clones, on the other hand, always have a tactical combat layer that plays out on a separate map, like the original Master of Magic. This tactical layer is almost always turn based.
Same with Master of Orion clones, they also tend to have tactical battles, but here some games do it turn based while some do it real time.

It's quite fascinating to observe. Historical 4X with a separate tactical combat layer are extremely rare - in fact, I don't know of a single one (Humankind maybe? I haven't played it but I expect its combat is probably similar to Endless Legend?). Meanwhile pretty much every fantasy 4X has one because it was a major feature of MoM.

 

[Axioms]

It was only in recent years that I noticed how overwhelmingly influential the three classics (Civ, MoO, MoM) are on the 4X genre.

Every historical 4X tries to be Civilization, or deliberately changes certain aspects to fix what they think is wrong with Civilization.
Every space 4X tries to be Master of Orion 2. This is the most noticeable of them all. So many space 4X are just MoO2 but slightly different.
Every fantasy 4X tries to be Master of Magic.

I think maybe it is more like games that don't do this are not considered 4X?

No, it goes a lot deeper than that.

Consider, for example, combat. Civ clones tend to only have auto-resolve combat, or Civ5's one-unit-per-turn tactical combat that plays out on the overworld.
Master of Magic clones, on the other hand, always have a tactical combat layer that plays out on a separate map, like the original Master of Magic. This tactical layer is almost always turn based.
Same with Master of Orion clones, they also tend to have tactical battles, but here some games do it turn based while some do it real time.

It's quite fascinating to observe. Historical 4X with a separate tactical combat layer are extremely rare - in fact, I don't know of a single one (Humankind maybe? I haven't played it but I expect its combat is probably similar to Endless Legend?). Meanwhile pretty much every fantasy 4X has one because it was a major feature of MoM.

Actually a really great argument. I mean I knew that was the case but I didn't think about it much.

Did MoO have a ship designer? I assume so. Whereas Civ and MoM did not have unit designers and rarely do their successors.

 

[Galdred]

The most satisfying one I played was Civilization 4 - Fall from Heaven. It was very atmospheric and also reasonably challenging, like the original Civilization 4 on Immortal/Deity.

Otherwise something like this:
1. Civilization 4
- Thea 2
- Thea 1
2. Age of Wonders 2
3. Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
4. Conquest of Elysium 5
5. Endless Space 2

One issue with 4X games is that they often have crap AI. Thea 1&2 circumvents it by not pretending that the AI is another player, and thus achieves a bit of challenge, although I guess this disqualifies it from being 4X despite its close proximity.

Warlock had a DLC with end game invasion, and warlock 2 had this mode by default. The asymetry made these iterations work much better than the base game for me.

It was only in recent years that I noticed how overwhelmingly influential the three classics (Civ, MoO, MoM) are on the 4X genre.

Every historical 4X tries to be Civilization, or deliberately changes certain aspects to fix what they think is wrong with Civilization.
Every space 4X tries to be Master of Orion 2. This is the most noticeable of them all. So many space 4X are just MoO2 but slightly different.
Every fantasy 4X tries to be Master of Magic.

I think maybe it is more like games that don't do this are not considered 4X?

No, it goes a lot deeper than that.

Consider, for example, combat. Civ clones tend to only have auto-resolve combat, or Civ5's one-unit-per-turn tactical combat that plays out on the overworld.
Master of Magic clones, on the other hand, always have a tactical combat layer that plays out on a separate map, like the original Master of Magic. This tactical layer is almost always turn based.
Same with Master of Orion clones, they also tend to have tactical battles, but here some games do it turn based while some do it real time.

It's quite fascinating to observe. Historical 4X with a separate tactical combat layer are extremely rare - in fact, I don't know of a single one (Humankind maybe? I haven't played it but I expect its combat is probably similar to Endless Legend?). Meanwhile pretty much every fantasy 4X has one because it was a major feature of MoM.

Actually a really great argument. I mean I knew that was the case but I didn't think about it much.

Did MoO have a ship designer? I assume so. Whereas Civ and MoM did not have unit designers and rarely do their successors.

MOO had one indeed, but the tactical combat was streamlined, and all ships of a given design were stacked together. You had 5 or 6 design slots iirc.

I don't know whether it counts as 4X, but Imperialism had some tactical combat.

I liked the way it was abstracted in Call to Power with support and flanking slots.

Field of Glory: Empires kind of lets you resolve battles in FOG2, so it could count as a historical 4X with combat.
I suspect one reason for the lack of tactical battles is that most historical 4X kind of follow the civ Formula of covering a huge timeframe in which warfare changes significantly.
having the same tactical combat module with WW2 units and ancient units would make little sense (and it is also one of the issues of 1UPT: it makes sense in a WW1+ settings, but it is ridiculous in previous timeframes where battles were ponctual affairs, and not fought over a front of several dozen kiolmeters.
Both Imperialism and FoG:Empires actually feature a very narrow timeframe compared to most other historical 4X.

Most space fleet combat is modeled after WW2 fleet battles, and in these, it would make sense to have the battle be a singular confrontation. Same for fantasy 4X, who are modeled after medieval battles + magic, so here too, having battles take place on a limited time and space makes sense.

Actually, a side effect of the tactical resolution is that most games with tactical battles will end with one side obliterated afterwards (even though there is a retreat option), while abstracted civ like combat may have stacks slug it out over several turns and be reinforced during their confrontations (except in civ 1 in which the whole stack would get obliterated in a single attack).

 

[JarlFrank]

Did MoO have a ship designer? I assume so. Whereas Civ and MoM did not have unit designers and rarely do their successors.

MOO had one indeed, but the tactical combat was streamlined, and all ships of a given design were stacked together. You had 5 or 6 design slots iirc.

Most modern MoO clones are inspired by MoO2, whose ship designer they copy almost verbatim (although sometimes adding a bit more complexity to it with more control over slot placement etc). The combat of most space 4X games is directly inspired by MoO2's combat. Even the ones with real time combat feel similar to MoO2 because mechanically they're so similar: Space Empires V, Star Drive 2, Astra Exodus. Even space 4X games that don't have manual combat tend to have ship customization, like the Galactic Civilizations series.

Unit customization is rare outside of space 4X, because it wasn't a major part of either Master of Magic or Civilization. There are a few curious exceptions though, which are usually a result of cross-inspiration - Elemental, Fallen Enchantress, Sorcerer King were made by Stardock Entertainment, the company behind Galactic Civilizations. They feature Master of Magic style gameplay but with Master of Orion style unit customization. Since the company behind these games made Master of Orion clones before, it makes sense that they'd transfer some of those features to their non-space 4X games.

But there's also Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri as a notable planetary 4X game with unit customization. Despite its cult classic status, it hasn't been cloned very often, even though the unit customization feature is something a lot of people liked about it. This could easily be implemented in Civilization style games. History with all its weapon and armor innovations lends itself perfectly to the concept. Start with simple clubmen, research spears and shields, upgrade the equipment of your units. Kinda like how Fallen Enchantress does it, but history instead of fantasy. Yet nobody does it, because it's not part of the Civilization DNA.

There is at least one Alpha Centauri clone out there - not just a planetary sci-fi 4X, but an explicit Alpha Centauri clone - that has unit customization. Pandora: First Contact.
And it has that feature precisely because Alpha Centauri had it.

All these examples show that the average 4X development process is extremely cargo culty. "If the game that directly inspired our game had this feature, we will implement it too!"

I don't know whether it counts as 4X, but Imperialism had some tactical combat.

Not really a 4X, more of a grand strategy game.

I liked the way it was abstracted in Call to Power with support and flanking slots.

Yeah Call to Power uses a superior style of auto-resolve battles than Civ's single unit vs unit combat, but it's still an auto-resolve rather than tactical combat with direct player input.

Master of Orion clones and Master of Magic clones usually have tactical combat with player input, either turn based or real time.
Civilization clones usually have some sort of auto resolve combat, or large scale 1-unit-per-tile tactical combat on the world map (rather than a separate tactical map) - but that style of combat only popped up after Civ 5 came out, again proving that most 4X games just clone what the big names in the genre are doing.

One could easily design a historical 4X with Master of Magic style combat, but it's rarely done because MoM clones and Civ clones exist in their own bubbles with little cross-contamination between the two.

Field of Glory: Empires kind of lets you resolve battles in FOG2, so it could count as a historical 4X with combat.

Field of Glory: Empires is not a 4X in any way, shape, or form. It's a grand strategy game that has more in common with Paradox titles or Total War than it does with the 4X genre.
Check my previous post on features that should be in a 4X game and notice how many of those are missing in Field of Glory: Empires. No terra incognita exploration, no free city founding on an open tile map (it has pre-determined provinces), not a big focus on resource exploitation.

I suspect one reason for the lack of tactical battles is that most historical 4X kind of follow the civ Formula of covering a huge timeframe in which warfare changes significantly.

There are historical 4X with more narrow timeframes that also don't feature tactical battles, because it's not part of the Civ formula.
You could easily cover the stone age to the American Civil War with tactical battles, but it's not being done. Meanwhile, as you correctly observed, the Civ5 style of 1upt grand strategic combat doesn't really fit the "stone age to future" model either, but it has become a common way of doing combat in historical 4X games. Not because it's a great way of doing combat, but because it has been done by Civilization 5, and games that clone Civ5 also clone its combat system without putting any thought behind the hows and whys.

Aggressors: Ancient Rome and Imperiums: Greek Wars use old-style Civ combat, where you send individual units against each other and the fight is autoresolved. It's the Civ4 style of combat.
Meanwhile Old World uses Civ5 style combat.

In most cases, it's not even a question of "What style of combat would serve our game best?"
I don't think devs really ask questions like "How would tactical combat impact the strategic game, considering that a good player could wipe out an enemy stack completely and enter a victory spiral?"
They just accept the conventions of their particular subgenre and roll with it.

Civ-like = auto-combat (old Civ style) or 1upt grand tactical combat (new Civ style)
MoO-like = tactical space battles with ship customization, either turn based or real time; planetary ground combat is auto-resolved though
MoM-like = tactical combat, usually turn based

 

[Axioms]

Did MoO have a ship designer? I assume so. Whereas Civ and MoM did not have unit designers and rarely do their successors.

MOO had one indeed, but the tactical combat was streamlined, and all ships of a given design were stacked together. You had 5 or 6 design slots iirc.

Most modern MoO clones are inspired by MoO2, whose ship designer they copy almost verbatim (although sometimes adding a bit more complexity to it with more control over slot placement etc). The combat of most space 4X games is directly inspired by MoO2's combat. Even the ones with real time combat feel similar to MoO2 because mechanically they're so similar: Space Empires V, Star Drive 2, Astra Exodus. Even space 4X games that don't have manual combat tend to have ship customization, like the Galactic Civilizations series.

Unit customization is rare outside of space 4X, because it wasn't a major part of either Master of Magic or Civilization. There are a few curious exceptions though, which are usually a result of cross-inspiration - Elemental, Fallen Enchantress, Sorcerer King were made by Stardock Entertainment, the company behind Galactic Civilizations. They feature Master of Magic style gameplay but with Master of Orion style unit customization. Since the company behind these games made Master of Orion clones before, it makes sense that they'd transfer some of those features to their non-space 4X games.

But there's also Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri as a notable planetary 4X game with unit customization. Despite its cult classic status, it hasn't been cloned very often, even though the unit customization feature is something a lot of people liked about it. This could easily be implemented in Civilization style games. History with all its weapon and armor innovations lends itself perfectly to the concept. Start with simple clubmen, research spears and shields, upgrade the equipment of your units. Kinda like how Fallen Enchantress does it, but history instead of fantasy. Yet nobody does it, because it's not part of the Civilization DNA.

There is at least one Alpha Centauri clone out there - not just a planetary sci-fi 4X, but an explicit Alpha Centauri clone - that has unit customization. Pandora: First Contact.
And it has that feature precisely because Alpha Centauri had it.

All these examples show that the average 4X development process is extremely cargo culty. "If the game that directly inspired our game had this feature, we will implement it too!"

I don't know whether it counts as 4X, but Imperialism had some tactical combat.

Not really a 4X, more of a grand strategy game.

I liked the way it was abstracted in Call to Power with support and flanking slots.

Yeah Call to Power uses a superior style of auto-resolve battles than Civ's single unit vs unit combat, but it's still an auto-resolve rather than tactical combat with direct player input.

Master of Orion clones and Master of Magic clones usually have tactical combat with player input, either turn based or real time.
Civilization clones usually have some sort of auto resolve combat, or large scale 1-unit-per-tile tactical combat on the world map (rather than a separate tactical map) - but that style of combat only popped up after Civ 5 came out, again proving that most 4X games just clone what the big names in the genre are doing.

One could easily design a historical 4X with Master of Magic style combat, but it's rarely done because MoM clones and Civ clones exist in their own bubbles with little cross-contamination between the two.

Field of Glory: Empires kind of lets you resolve battles in FOG2, so it could count as a historical 4X with combat.

Field of Glory: Empires is not a 4X in any way, shape, or form. It's a grand strategy game that has more in common with Paradox titles or Total War than it does with the 4X genre.
Check my previous post on features that should be in a 4X game and notice how many of those are missing in Field of Glory: Empires. No terra incognita exploration, no free city founding on an open tile map (it has pre-determined provinces), not a big focus on resource exploitation.

I suspect one reason for the lack of tactical battles is that most historical 4X kind of follow the civ Formula of covering a huge timeframe in which warfare changes significantly.

There are historical 4X with more narrow timeframes that also don't feature tactical battles, because it's not part of the Civ formula.
You could easily cover the stone age to the American Civil War with tactical battles, but it's not being done. Meanwhile, as you correctly observed, the Civ5 style of 1upt grand strategic combat doesn't really fit the "stone age to future" model either, but it has become a common way of doing combat in historical 4X games. Not because it's a great way of doing combat, but because it has been done by Civilization 5, and games that clone Civ5 also clone its combat system without putting any thought behind the hows and whys.

Aggressors: Ancient Rome and Imperiums: Greek Wars use old-style Civ combat, where you send individual units against each other and the fight is autoresolved. It's the Civ4 style of combat.
Meanwhile Old World uses Civ5 style combat.

In most cases, it's not even a question of "What style of combat would serve our game best?"
I don't think devs really ask questions like "How would tactical combat impact the strategic game, considering that a good player could wipe out an enemy stack completely and enter a victory spiral?"
They just accept the conventions of their particular subgenre and roll with it.

Civ-like = auto-combat (old Civ style) or 1upt grand tactical combat (new Civ style)
MoO-like = tactical space battles with ship customization, either turn based or real time; planetary ground combat is auto-resolved though
MoM-like = tactical combat, usually turn based

I agree with nearly all of this for sure. And especially the "gameplay bubbles" aspect. It really does seem like that. MoM vs CiV vs MoO. Even when certain aspects get changed like adding crises or adding characters or w/e, several "primary loops" remain preserved in amber from the 90s.

The CoE and Dominions games are iconic precisely because they did not fall into this trap.

 

[Axioms]

Unrelated, but MuHa really needs to give up their MoM remake and make MoM+Thea. A Thea/fantasy 4x hybrid is just begging to make piles of cash.

 

[Silva]

Civ 4 stopped doing this. Kinda. There is a "we fear you are getting too strong" -2 (IIRC) modifier in A.I player attitude towards any other player but it's quite easy to offset by switching to their civics or adopting their religion.

Not exactly. While the modifier is there in practice it doesn't avoid the AI taking such behavior all that much. In fact the example I've cited (Gandhi coming out of nowhere with an horde due to me becoming leader) was exactly on Civ 4. Weirdly, I think Beyond the Sword seems to have made the AI more arcadey here. I don't remember this behavior much in base game.

 

[Silva]

The CoE and Dominions games are iconic precisely because they did not fall into this trap.

How is Dominion battle?

 

[v1c70r14]

I feel like the 4X genre is a solved problem, people are going to mention one of the Civilization games, the first or second Master of Orion, Alpha Centauri and one or two games that are either in the same mould but more obscure or one of the more recent mass simulation efforts that just ups the scale like Distant Worlds, to which I guess garbage like Stellaris sort of counts.

Birth of the Federation is a very cool game that's more or less just Master of Orion in a Star Trek suit. That'd be the one quirk of my list.

Don't want to hijack the thread, but as much as I love Civilization, Alpha Centauri and Master of Orion, are there any innovative games in the genre that don't feel like inferior copies of the originals from the 90's and also don't just ramp up the scale? I always wanted a move more towards a board game experience and less a progression to more detailed and finnicky systems and a larger scope.

What would you guys recommend someone that liked MoO precisely because the planets were heavily abstracted and you didn't have to babysit production lines of individual buildings? Did anything new come out that innovated in that direction?

 

[Nutmeg]

Civ 4 stopped doing this. Kinda. There is a "we fear you are getting too strong" -2 (IIRC) modifier in A.I player attitude towards any other player but it's quite easy to offset by switching to their civics or adopting their religion.

Not exactly. While the modifier is there in practice it doesn't avoid the AI taking such behavior all that much. In fact the example I've cited (Gandhi coming out of nowhere with an horde due to me becoming leader) was exactly on Civ 4. Weirdly, I think Beyond the Sword seems to have made the AI more arcadey here. I don't remember this behavior much in base game.

Surprised to hear this. Were you playing with BUG plus BULL? They do wonders w.r.t. making it easy to ascertain your relationship with the AIs such that it never really should be a surprise when they attack you.