Space Empires 4x

ThirstyMan wrote: Nah, sorry guys.

There is only one 4X PC game and that is Galactic Civilisations II [...]

Which is heavily influenced by MOO2.

I decided to check out some of these video games you're all talking about here, from reading I decided I'd like either Galactic Civilizations 2 or Space Empires 4, I went with SE4, the white text on black BG tutorial is killing me.

I didn't like it very much. It felt bland and generic and it took too long for anything exciting to happen since movement is so slow in the beginning. Maybe the expansion would turn it into a decent game, I don't know.

repoman wrote: Space Empires 4X is very old school war game in feel and by that I mean:

1) Hex based board, movement points, chits and lots of em, combat while not terrible isn't exactly streamlined.

2) Accounting and book keeping can be a pain in the butt. You have to update your resources, keep track of your space money, the level and what type of tech you have AND what fleets have what level of tech on board. This is all done in a very 80's type way by using paper and pencil.

The game has far more in common with Throne World than it does with either Eclipse or TI3.

I am not a very big fan of the game. I found that if playing with more than two, it suffers from the same problem a lot of multiplayer war games have suffered from in the past. Two players fight and weaken themselves and then the third player pounces on a depleted foe and wins by having had more patience than the other two (or three).

In two player games I found that most games followed the route of several turns of exploration and build up followed by player one flinging his ships against the outer shell of defenses of player two. If he breaks through, he rushes in for the kill and wins. If he fails, player two takes his shot. If he fails to break through the outer defense, the game then devolves into a stalemate.
...
As to computer space empire games Sins of a Solar Empire was very good.

Repo is spot-on on all this. Space Empries is actually a pretty good *solo* game [purpose-built solitaire, not just a lonely wargamer masturgaming in his basement], which none of the others can possibly claim. I haven't played it with another human [nor have I played with the expansion yet]; that said, I can't actually imagine wanting to play it with other people. For 1 it's challenging; for 2, I suspect Repo's right that it's kind of on rails; and with 3 or 4, the dynamic is different but then you're into territory covered by a goodly number of other games.

And, on the PC side, Sins of a Solar Empire is really good--as are Galactic Civ II and AI War [with all the small DLC expansions]. All of them, however, are on the "digitally fiddly" side (especially AI War--it's got a bit of a "SPI's Campaign for North Africa" feel to it in that you may need a cadre of staff officers to deal with all the various subelements. Masters of Orion II seems to have been the last 4x-type game that sought a modicum of simplicity in its design....

M A S T E R O F M A G I C

bar none...

Sorry to post in such an old topic, but given the lack of Space Empires fans on the forum, I felt like I had to step in:

For me, Space Empires is the best team conquest game.

We have dropped Free For All conquest games because more often than not, these games are decided by the meta and the table diplomacy, so the efforts to optimize your economy and the complexities of the combat system only detract from the core gameplay (that is why Diplomacy combat was so simple in the first place I suppose).
That is why Twilight Imperium never clicked with us. I think SE4X would have the same problem in FFA actually, as too much would depend on getting other to do your work. However, unlike Twilight Imperium, SE4X we designed from the beginning to be played in teams (even though many don't play it this way).
I'd rather play a game entirely designed around this kind of interactions (like Republic of Rome, Games of Thrones, or Diplomacy) than an hybrid.

Before I got this game, our rotation for conquest games was Starcraft, Nexus Ops, and Quartermaster General. We tried Conquest of Nerath, but it felt like a fiddly Nexus Ops. Eclipse felt beautiful mechanically, but it felt more like a game of optimization (actually, I got a stronger accounting vibe from Eclipse than from SE4X!).

Now, Space Empires 4X is the only game we have played for the last 20 sessions or so.

The reason why it worked so well with us is that it forces you to plan for what your opponent might be doing. The hidden information adds a lot of fiddliness (the accounting itself is no real problem. It is miles easier than leveling up in most RPG, or even visiting a shopkeeper. the real problem is keeping track of your groups on the board, if you don't want to turn each counter several times in a turn.), but adds a tension I never got in any of the former board games.

You have to find out what they have been doing (with scouts or just deduction), while hiding what you are building up so that they don't have to counter it before you inflicted a lot of damage.

We lost one game because we didn't press when we had the advantage, as we suspected our opponents had a large advanced reserve fleet, when it was mostly decoys hidden in a nebula.

Unlike other games, SE4X never let you easily know whether you are ahead or behind your opponents.


The game is all about balancing economy with defense and aggression. It really plays like an RTS (much more than Starcraft: The Board Game), in which you first have to either prepare for a rush, or scout to be sure none will come, then decide which technology path to follow, and balance fighting with further development, and prepare the counter for what your opponent is building.
Where you attack is also very important of course: You can go for neutral aliens to pick some forward bases (and technologies if playing with the expansion), harass some planets and retreat, or go for the head and try to raze the homeworld of your opponent directly. You also need to decide whether to help your battered ally or try to destroy an opponent before your ally goes down.

In another game , we had both of our fleets in an opponent home space while theirs were rushing towards my ally's homeworld. We had to rush a fleet through a blackhole to blockade their homeworld while the bulk of our fleet engaged the defenders on its way here. Unfortunately, we lost too much to the blackhole, and a sole surviving defender managed to prevent the blockade, which lost us the game.

But in order to shine, the game needs to be played with all the advanced rules (Carriers, Raiders, and mines), otherwise, there is not much to guess (as players can only choose between stronger ships or faster ships).

Compared to the Computer game of the same name, SE4X can be played in 3h (1 vs 1) to 4-8h (2 vs 2), while Space Empires 4 takes usually several hundred turns to complete. I actually much prefer the "denser" decision making of the board game.

I don't have anything to say about your last post, btw, having not played the game. But I really appreciate contributions like this.