A great Space 4x game is Space Empires 4, from Malfador Machinations. Although it has that perennial shareware feel that all Malfador games share, SE4 is a true marvel, with a level of depth and variety of content that you rarely see in the genre, where you can have anything from mind-controlling crystal ships to blackhole generators and Dyson Spheres using the entire mass of a solar system to create super-colonies.
I just bought Space Empires V from Amazon. Any good tutorials that you all know of?
I picked up Warlock: Master of the Arcane while it was on sale at Steam this weekend. It is a pretty good little 4x game. At first I was like, "Oh, this isn't all that..." and then promptly "one more turned" myself into well past my bedtime.
I installed the latest version of FreeCol... Damn where those three hours vanished?!
I picked up Warlock: Master of the Arcane while it was on sale at Steam this weekend. It is a pretty good little 4x game. At first I was like, "Oh, this isn't all that..." and then promptly "one more turned" myself into well past my bedtime.
One minor thing: it may seem tiny, but it's really getting to me to have the game constantly calling me "my lord." FFS, it is the freakin' 21st century, could we stop assuming all video gamers are male already? If they had limited voice acting, they could have picked an appropriate gender neutral term ("your majesty" or "your worship" or "my liege" for examples).
I picked up Warlock: Master of the Arcane while it was on sale at Steam this weekend. It is a pretty good little 4x game. At first I was like, "Oh, this isn't all that..." and then promptly "one more turned" myself into well past my bedtime.One minor thing: it may seem tiny, but it's really getting to me to have the game constantly calling me "my lord." FFS, it is the freakin' 21st century, could we stop assuming all video gamers are male already? If they had limited voice acting, they could have picked an appropriate gender neutral term ("your majesty" or "your worship" or "my liege" for examples).
~bows~ Yes your hind ass. ~grins and runs~
~bows~ Yes your hind ass. ~grins and runs~I picked up Warlock: Master of the Arcane while it was on sale at Steam this weekend. It is a pretty good little 4x game. At first I was like, "Oh, this isn't all that..." and then promptly "one more turned" myself into well past my bedtime.One minor thing: it may seem tiny, but it's really getting to me to have the game constantly calling me "my lord." FFS, it is the freakin' 21st century, could we stop assuming all video gamers are male already? If they had limited voice acting, they could have picked an appropriate gender neutral term ("your majesty" or "your worship" or "my liege" for examples).
Oh, and I was just teasing M'lady. ~gives a courtly bow~
Note - It is REAL hard for a Dragon to give a courtly bow.
One minor thing: it may seem tiny, but it's really getting to me to have the game constantly calling me "my lord." FFS, it is the freakin' 21st century, could we stop assuming all video gamers are male already? If they had limited voice acting, they could have picked an appropriate gender neutral term ("your majesty" or "your worship" or "my liege" for examples).Ah, it would be more appropriate for Space Empires or Master Of Orion, tough.
This is awesome. A Civ II game that's been going on for ten years!
This is awesome. A Civ II game that's been going on for ten years!
~wistles~ wow. Now I want to pull out my copy of Civ II and start playing it again.
~bows~ Yes your hind ass. ~grins and runs~I picked up Warlock: Master of the Arcane while it was on sale at Steam this weekend. It is a pretty good little 4x game. At first I was like, "Oh, this isn't all that..." and then promptly "one more turned" myself into well past my bedtime.One minor thing: it may seem tiny, but it's really getting to me to have the game constantly calling me "my lord." FFS, it is the freakin' 21st century, could we stop assuming all video gamers are male already? If they had limited voice acting, they could have picked an appropriate gender neutral term ("your majesty" or "your worship" or "my liege" for examples).Oh, and I was just teasing M'lady. ~gives a courtly bow~
Note - It is REAL hard for a Dragon to give a courtly bow.
Yeah, saying whether you're teasing or no, I'm not sure why that's supposed to be funny. Insulting but calling it teasing is still insulting in my book. What did I say that was worth mocking?
If it's a reference to something, I don't get it. I'm sorry if I'm taking this too seriously but I really just don't understand.
And if you legit got a problem with me, take it to PM, okay?
Sorry Deathquaker. My sense of humor sometimes gets away from me. No insult meant. It was a take on Your highness. Old (and very bad) joke.
Sorry Deathquaker. My sense of humor sometimes gets away from me. No insult meant. It was a take on Your highness. Old (and very bad) joke.
And I'm sorry Sharoth. I think this is a case of stuff coming off in print way differently than intended.
~grins~ One of the joys of being a smartass. Sometimes it backfires on you. ~shrugs~ Oh well. That will teach me to think before opening my mout-- ~I shove my foot into my open mouth~
1. Anyone got Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion yet? I'm curious as to how it is.
2. Been playing more Warlock. Its own devs call it a spiritual successor to MOM but it doesn't really feel like that. I can see MOM's influence--the mage portraits, the spell research victory, the other worlds--but it doesn't have that MOM feel (no heroes, artifacts, no individual city screen, etc.).
But I still felt like I was playing some other fantasy builder game I'd played before.
Then I realized what it was... with the way you improve tiles and the way your units respond when you click on them and some other, the very heavy emphasis on clearing the fog of war and fighting things, and other hard to put my finger-on elements...
I felt like I was playing a turn-based Warcraft.
(You may remember Warcraft, it was a neat little fantasy-based real time strategy. I hear tell they made a MMORPG based on its World which has apparently had some success.)
So yeah, that's how Warlock feels. The love child of MOM and Warcraft. Which isn't a bad thing, but I agree with an earlier post's assessment is that it doesn't run very deep--which is a shame as it has a lot of potential to.
In other news, I am really, really tired of greater fire elementals.
In other news, I am really, really tired of greater fire elementals.
We all are, my good lady, we all are. Good men and women have been lost to them upon an ill-fated planar teleportation.
I felt like I was playing a turn-based Warcraft.
(You may remember Warcraft, it was a neat little fantasy-based real time strategy. I hear tell they made a MMORPG based on its World which has apparently had some success.)
World of Warcraft? Non-MMO? That sounds familiar. ~looks through my old DOS games, then pulls it out~ Yep. I have heard of the non-MMO WOW.
Lies and balderdash. The Warcraft RTS is, in fact, a heavily modded version of World of Warcraft.
Empires of Eclipse is a social 4x game. You play with lots of people and supposedly takes a couple weeks to finish a game. $2 subscription fee though.
Not a computer game, but I'm picking up a copy of Eclipse tonight. It's a 2-6 person board game that looks similar to MoO, without being too complex and able to be played in a single evening (twilight imperium is similar, but more complicated and much longer).
Civilization Gods and Kings expansion is pretty damn good so far. I need to play more deeply to get the whole feel, but I really like how religion works. When you develop religion you pick out gods/tenets/special doodads that benefit you and other followers of the religion in some way, so there's something behind there being different religions--each one in the game ends up providing different effects and benefits. Faith is a resource like gold or hammers, and you use it to build missionaries, improve your religion, and build special religious buildings.
Haven't gotten to play with espionage much. Reviews are mixed--some find it cool, others find it a bit annoying.
The AI seems to have improved. It could improve even more but it's better.
There's some new units, including a bunch of new ranged units, and ranged units exist now beyond crossbowmen. There's some 1st generation modern units like "landships" (early tanks) and stuff added as well. Also, the "garrison in city" command has been taken away--any unit in a city is considered garrisoned so you can fight with your city unit without losing garrison bonuses (but garrison bonuses have been decreased because of this, but I think that's reasonable).
Moreover naval units are stronger, and some have a melee ability that allows them to take over cities. Embarked units are a little tougher. This will make the archipelago map the challenge I think it was meant to be, and it gives more of an advantage to naval-based civs.
New techs to go along with new units, and I've noticed some things change how you play some stuff -- you can't build wealth or trading posts until you research Guilds, which comes after Currency. This means you can't early Trading-Post-Spam on a river to earn masses of gold in the beginning.
City states are more complex now--there are two more kinds, religious and something I forgot the name of because I should be in bed by now, which generate faith and happiness respectively. They give you more quests and provide other opportunities so it's easier to earn influence in other ways besides just bribing them. You can demand tribute from city states now as well. And a little thing, but they've changed the display a little so it's easier to see where you are with their influence. Militant city states also can build unique civ units if the civ that has that unit in the game and they have the appropriate tech. For example, if America's not in the game, a city state might produce minutemen if they have but are not far beyond the Gunpowder tech.
Lots of new leaders/civs, many of whom of course get religious bonuses or other benefits based on the game's new features. There's Boudicca/Celts, Maria Teresa/Austria, William/Netherlands, Haile It'sLateOkayIdon'trememberhisname/Ethiopia, Pacal/Mayans, and Atilla/Huns that I can think of off the top of my head.
I haven't seen it yet myself, but apparently Maria Teresa is overpowered, as she can "have political marriages" with city states with which she's allied. If she's allowed to, she can absorb city states very easily and become very powerful, and you cannot liberate city states she gained by political marriage. I love the idea of the ability, but I have a feeling they're going to need to nerf that a bit in a patch.
Some policies and buildings have been tweaked for the various new game mechanics. For example temples now generate faith.
So far my own complaints based on my personal gameplay are quite minor--
- for some reason they made the Ethiopians the same color as barbarians (red on black) so I find that really confusing
- The Huns have a cool unique unit called the battering ram. It's an early siege weapon that gives them an edge in conquering cities in the early game. Why is this a complaint? It replaces spearmen, and the battering ram yet cannot be used as a melee unit, only to attack cities. When I started a game with the Huns, I had my starting game warrior walk into ruins to find "advanced weapons" before I hadn't researched many techs yet. Normally it would upgrade you to a spearman, but of course with a Hun you get the battering ram, and suddenly I'd lost my main melee unit. This was very early game, mind, and I could build more, but it was annoying. It also means you need to beeline for iron working and/or horseback riding (the latter I guess obvious for the Huns) so you can get some melee units better than Warrior. Just a very small thing--the RNG got me as much as anything else.
That's a fantastic review, Death Quaker. Much appreciated!
I might be tempted to get that Steam offer including both the base game and Gods & Kings now.
Big fan of Builder-Games since Sim City 1 on the Commodore 64 (yes, it was a terrible version...)
On my HD at the moment (not regularily played, but my HD is comfortably large...)
- Anno 2070
- Anno 1404
- All Stronghold Games
- Children of the Nile
- CivCity Rome
- Grand Ages Rome
- Imperium Romanum
- Settlers 7
- All Tropico Games
- Tycoon City New York
- Civilization 4+5
- Warlock: Master the Arcane (a good fix for fans of Masters of Magic)
- Galactic Cicilizations II
- Sins of a Solar Empire
- HoMM V+VI
- Kings Bounty Series
- Elven Legacy Series
- All X-Games (not pure Builders/4x games, but closely related)Most played: Tropico IV, CivCity Rome, Civilization IV+V, Galactic Civilizations II, recently: Warlock.
That is a pretty nice list. Some of them I have never played. I will have to give them a shot sometime.