You know, maybe 1.5X would be enough...

[geoschmo]

Space Empires IV. One of the greatest, if not THE greatest 4X space game ever. But exactly how fun are all four of those X's anyway?

Exploring? Well, maybe a little. It's fun finding out where the other people are and planning your attacks and defense. But just scouting out empty systems for future colonization? Meh, not so much. Score = .5 X

Expanding? Am I the only one not waiting breathlessly for the log report that I've started another 5 colonies this turn? Score = 0 X

Exploiting? Hmmmm, let's see. Should I build four mineral miners on this 92% mineral planet, or use it for reseearch instead? Jeez, what am I an accountant? Score = 0 X

Exterminating? Oh yeah! Score = 1 X

So that's gives us 1.5 X all together by my count. What SE5 needs is a decent set of ministers to take care of all that other stuff. It would even be nice if you could setup a game, tell it how to run things, and then auto-run the turns up till when you make contact with someone else. Up to that point my brain is usually on auto-pilot anyway.

Just mindless wandering this evening. Feel free to disagree.

[Fyron]

Not all Xs are created equal.

[spoon]

And the best part is, if you do lose, you can blame it all on the lousy ministers!

[Puke]

I agree, but you are describing a tactical wargame rather than a imperial strategy game. somehting with fixed number of units, and canned scenarios.

part of the challenge in the 4x game is how people expand and exploit differently. for along time, crystiline was thought useless. now its in vogue. weapon fads come and go. you might have one formula now that you want a minister to follow, but someone else has a different formula.

and the trick - the fun of it - is discovering and inventing new methods to play.

MOO3 was supposed to have some of that customizeable AI that does what you want. but you know how well that turned out. SMAC was supposed to have a brilliant AI as well, but brillian AI never quite turn out to be. and they can never exploit the same range of options that humans can.

the are sometimes needs that come up where you are forced to build a rad extractor on a 45% radioactive world, because you are in shortage. by and large you can make sweeping judgements about tactics, but the challenge comes in the one-off situations where you have to improvise something different with what you have got.

those may be few and far between, but its what keeps me playing.

[Aiken]

geoschmo said:
Expanding? Am I the only one not waiting breathlessly for the log report that I've started another 5 colonies this turn? Score = 0 X

Exploiting? Hmmmm, let's see. Should I build four mineral miners on this 92% mineral planet, or use it for reseearch instead? Jeez, what am I an accountant? Score = 0 X

Both of these items are scored as 1X for me. As in any strategic game SE4 players could be divided into 2 faction: Warriors and Builders (and various mixes of them). I'm a Builder, so both exploiting and expanding are important for me.

[geoschmo]

aiken said:

Both of these items are scored as 1X for me. As in any strategic game SE4 players could be divided into 2 faction: Warriors and Builders (and various mixes of them). I'm a Builder, so both exploiting and expanding are important for me.

That's a good point. And I'll admit when I first started playing this game it was all fun, even what I now consider the boring empire managment stuff. I guess it's just that I've been playing this for what, four years now? Or maybe I've gotten into somewhat of a rut. I still get a huge kick out of the tactics and strategy of the wars, it just seems like the 30 turns at the start of the game have gotten too predictable for me. That's why I was saying it would be cool to have the option to fast-play through those turns and get to the good parts.

It's also why I enjoy taking over abandoned games on PBW.

[David E. Gervais]

I dissagree on the exploration aspect. I like to explore, but I don't like seeing the whole map and only finding out what is in them. I would much prefer that I start off only knowing the systems I own. and as I explore the new systems get added to the map. I'd go so far as to say that I shouldn't know the mineral content of a planet until I sent a ship in orbit and made a full scan of the surface. I think the reason exploration is a tad dull in se4 is that the 'fun' aspect has been stripped away for simplicitie's sake. I want to scan things, to probe things, I don't want to know what all the planets in-system have revealed to me as soon as I enter a system. Not that it will ever happen in the SE games, but I loved the planet exploration aspect of Starflight, and another game called Alien Legacy.

IMHO exploration when done right is worth 1.5 points on your scale. Expand? well, that is actually a part of exploration and not really a 100% separate entity. It scoores .5 Exploit, is another gray-area X-factor, do they mean exploit the enemy? exploit the mineral rich planets? I give this a 0.0 And for Exterminate, Well, all I can say is "There can be only one!" definately worth 2.0 points.

My total is 4.0x but with the interest balanced to my liking.

Another fun part of SE is the research and dev. Which 'X' is that tied to? Exploit? if so then it might merrit a full point for technology exploitation. which would make the Ideal 4x game actually 5x

Just some thoughts, Cheers!

[Arkcon]

geoschmo said:
Exploring? Well, maybe a little. It's fun finding out where the other people are and planning your attacks and defense. But just scouting out empty systems for future colonization? Meh, not so much. Score = .5 X

I still find this fascinating. After a while, you get used to the planet images, the storm in every system, etc. But each system is different -- rich planets too close to warp point, all poor planets, planet in perfect spot for resupply base, dead end systems, double empty systems(perfect for sneak attacks from a well supplied fleet) etc. So I'm usually pretty excited.

Expanding? Am I the only one not waiting breathlessly for the log report that I've started another 5 colonies this turn? Score = 0 X

It takes a bit for the colony ship to arrive, so I have to revist my plans, see what's changed in the interim, so that's fun for me.

Exploiting? Hmmmm, let's see. Should I build four mineral miners on this 92% mineral planet, or use it for reseearch instead? Jeez, what am I an accountant? Score = 0 X

Otherwise known as the 5thX - eXcel, as in spreadsheet. I dunno, but looking at all my planets in tabular form gives me some sort of rush. Sort of a powermad pleasure at all that info at my fingertips. Ignoring this is why n00bs end up bankrupt, once you've played the game enough so it's intuitive, maybe its not so important.

Exterminating? Oh yeah! Score = 1 X

This never stops being fun. Evenly matched, some small benefit, overpowering force, its all fun. Barely surviving an outmatched force, or hey, just slowing them down -- its all good.

I dunno what to say, I wait with baited breath for SE5 -- more complexity, more micromanagment, confuse me with the rules -- Bwa-ha-ha-ha, I deserve it.

[Fyron]

Arkcon said:
Otherwise known as the 5thX - eXcel, as in spreadsheet. I dunno, but looking at all my planets in tabular form gives me some sort of rush. Sort of a powermad pleasure at all that info at my fingertips. Ignoring this is why n00bs end up bankrupt, once you've played the game enough so it's intuitive, maybe its not so important.

Interesting. I have never once calculated anything to such a degree. Never tabulated data in a spreadsheet, never calculated how many ships I could have available in 20 turns if I followed plan A as opposed to plan B, or anything else like that. I just build as much as I can each turn and try to stay as close to 0 in each resource without going under. At least in the earlier stages of the game where sudden "world wars" are not very likely to occur, so trade income is fairly stable. Later on a bit of a buffer is handy, though I am usually the one starting the wars, or at least I have a good idea of when it is going to start... . Of course, I prefer to reduce political savvy and place the points in resource aptitudes, so these losses from trade are less than they would be otherwise... Always worked out well for me.

[Arkcon]

Imperator Fyron said:
Never tabulated data in a spreadsheet, never calculated how many ships I could have available in 20 turns if I followed plan A as opposed to plan B, or anything else like that.

Umm... me either. It's just that's how some people criticize 4X games, like Civilization, or MoO. It was posted on this board years ago -- how the author thought the distribution of "points" -- be it crystals, gold, research points, etc. to achieve a goal was over-simplistic. A galactic overload should be able to demand a ship, or a technological development, or heads would roll.

When we get threads from new players who can't afford ships, or can't keep up with research, I consider the possibility that they have never checked the empire tab to see how they're growing.

I got a friend. He works in the financial markets. I gave him my SE4 Classic CD. But he can't figure the game out against the A.I. I was sure that if he monitored his growth, he'd see an improvement. But he likes twitchy, puzzle solving games better. Next year I'll loan him my Diablo disks -- they're useless to me under Linux.