Ascendancy! Great Soundtrack

licker wrote:
Sword of the Stars became my favorite.



Sadly SotS2 kinda failed it's launch, but we'll see where they get to with it in time.

i was so dismayed to notice that within 3 weeks of the launch, they had patched over 7Gb's worth, when the original game was only 4.5GB

Sm31415 wrote:
i was so dismayed to notice that within 3 weeks of the launch, they had patched over 7Gb's worth, when the original game was only 4.5GB

wow how is that possible. is it playable enough yet or should i hold off on it some more

Master of Orion II



The rest: Civilization, Master of Orion, Ascendancy, Civilization II, Alpha Centauri, Space Empires IV, Civilization IV, Galactic Civilizations II.

I'm a SOTS fan myself..

I am rather fond of MOO2 myself. The game is presented in a simple manner, but is also complex because you can build with those simple blocks. Rather like legos, in my opinion. Sword of the Stars is also enjoyable, though I am looking forward to trying SOTS2 Complete around five years from now.

MoO2 but Es has it what it will take it to dethrone it.



Pax was good to.

Sins of a Solar Empire was different but ok in its own way.

SotS 1 was ok but nothing special.

SotS 2 sucked bad.

MoO 3 from Atari was an big let down.

Pherry Rhodans 4x forgot name, was kinde interesting but nothing for me.

Star Ruler had big potential was long time my fav of the "new" 4x games.

Distant Worlds, the game that played it self....

Ascendancy was quite good acutaly like pax came both close to MoO2

Alpha Centauri and Space Empires had been to much like an civ game duno feelt just wrong.

Galactic Civilizations both parts have been good in there own ways but i never had em perceived as an real 4x in MoO style.



But what ever will happen i will never delete my MoO2 copy on the hd never!

Anyone remember a game on the Amiga called Deuteros? I loved that game so much.

maceman wrote:
OK. Endless has got me all needing to scratch my space itch. I'm hankering to go back and revisit some good 4X in the name of research and to refresh my memory on what they actually brought new to the genre.



I've played some current titles and their expansions plenty but, are they really innovative? -- Sword of the Stars, Sins of the Solar Empire, Armada 2526, Gratuitous Space Battles (ok that one is 1X), Distant Worlds, Galactic Civ and... Star Wars:Empire at War... and I'm sure there others i've forgotten (probably not a stellar ringing endorsement then!)



My question from such an able body of obvious Megalomanic, galaxy scale control freaks is what were their favorite classics? And why?



A few of my memories...



MOO -- Gold standard 4x Deus Ex Machina (II good, III not so much)

Ascendancy -- ancient vague memory

Emperor of the Fading Suns -- Loved the volume and variety of units, space and ground combat, biological units w psionics, character positive negative traits, psycho church faction ... with a subpar AI. I even remember the music.

Imperium Galactica Real time 4x?

Pax Imperia actually i can't remember which was pax and which was imperium anymore but i liked one of them.

... i know i'm forgetting some other good ones



so any other good classic options that were innovators rather than clones to recommend? I'm not afraid of DosBoxing oldies.

Well... 1X-2X since its mainly a space ship micromanagement game that offers great tactical play in real time, but... Nexus: The jupiter incident is good stuff

Sword of the Stars is supposedly good too

And well, i dont know. Most of the big names you already mentioned. MoO2 is probably the best. I also worship Imperium galactica, but no cant really think of anything.

Homeworld was bought up by others as well, so im passin

Sins of a Solar Empire: Decent, but lacking a compelling storyline or campaign. He never really caught.

Sots 1: Intriguing and with many add-on released in time.

Sots 2: Lots of ideas, one of the worst releases of the story, a compelling work in progress, but that had to be done before the release.

MOO 2: A worthy heir of the first chapter. One of the best space strategy games ever.

MOO 3: Innovative on many fronts, but with a few "epochal" drops of style

Star Ruler: Promising but with an interface too skinny and not very deep.

Distant Worlds: Beautiful, Innovative and with many promises. But much is lost in terms of involvement.

SE4: Very beautiful and complex, immense possibility for modding. Extended community of modders.

SE5: Some valuable innovations, but not as good of SE4.

Galactic Civilizations: A fine opportunity to create the shape of spaceships, painful to the rest (I was never taken seriously)

Homeworld 1-2: Spectacular and exciting (very advanced for the time) high modding possibility, extended community of modders.

1. galcivs

2. sots (1)

3. soase

4. ai war



I wish i would have played moo when i was younger.



not 4x but space

1. Space Rangers 2

2. X-series (x3 for example)

3. Minerwars

moo2 and Ascendancy are my two favourites

Emperor of the fading suns is also quite fun.

Thinking way back I have to say that Birth of the Federation was my first 4X, though not my first space game. I also think it had many good points but at least just as many flaws (like the play time limit because more and more borg would spawn). I still have the CD, even though I didn't bought it myself, got it from someone else.



Played GalCiv 2 for a while but the game had as well quite a lot of flaws, I finished maybe like 2-3 skirmishes. Never managed to get hyped about it.



Now Space Empires 5 was different. There was this huge, detailed and awesome tech tree, nice star systems and good music and... It had so many good points. And while it didn't have a lot of flaws, those few flaws it had were absolutely fatal. The rounds would take several minutes to compute, and that on a strong PC. There was micromanagement in places where it didn't belong and several smaller balancing flaws, like having to build high researched high level buildings on new planets making it harder instead of easier to make new colonies later in the game (well there were ways to make it easier but... micromanagement in the wrong places). The patch system was bad and the AI wasn't exactly perfect as well. For me the final nail in SE5s coffin was that even though you could virtually mod everything, a few of the simplest and most idiotic things were hardcoded, making me finally turn away from this game.



Then I found Star Ruler, a lot of the games systems are really awesome but at some time I just lost my interest because some significant things were missing and no one could help me to mod them into the game. Maybe some day I will look back into it to see what has changed but I'm not thrilled about it for now.



The one 4X game I'm really hyped about now is obviously Endless Space because so many things are different. Even in the first alpha version I got I managed to get along with nearly all micromanagement systems with ease. And the fact I'm playing an alpha I can influence and improve myself only makes everything better.



There is only one more game I'm similar hyped for and that would be X Rebirth. I understand they want to do it right and it's better to take some time but I finally want to play it or at least pre-order it to have anything.



Legends of Pegasus has some nice footage, but frankly the name is just stupid for a space game (in my opinion). But now that I'm involved with ES other 4X space games are going to have a hard time really catching my interest.

Anybody remembers Reunion from the same company as Imperium Galactica

Imperium Galactica 2 ... never seen a better 4x

Master of Orion 2

I'd say MOO2 and GalCiv2, which I was actually in the middle of a big GalCiv2 game when I discovered Endless Space on Steam and I haven't touched GalCiv2 since buying this.

Master of Orion 2 and GalCiv2

I started with MOO2. Then tried to replace it many times with other games such as Pax Imperia, Galactic Civilizations, Ascendancy, but in the end i kept reinstalling MOO2.



Endless Space is currently the game i love to play the most. And i am looking forward for the final version, which will be fantastic.

My favorites of all time. The topic doesn't specify "space"



Civ 2 plus all the interesting extra stuff

Civ 4

GalCiv 2 (never played 1)



Those 3 are almost always installed on any pc I have





This reminds me...



Anyone remember this? Sci Fi part of Civ2 ?? That's what I first thought of when playing Endless Space. Check it out if you haven't.