Join Rob, Nate and a special guest as they discuss the news on Civilization 6, Birth of Civilization, Stellaris, Dominus Galaxia, and then try to tackle the whole “What is a 4X Game” question.
Notes:- Civilization 6 update – 01:24
- Birth of Civilization update – 03:12
- Stellaris Dev Diary – 05:17
- Astra Exodus Dev Diary – 07:34
- Dominus Galaxia update – 09:12
- What is… Project Haven? – 11:24
- Topic: The evolving nature of 4X games and what it means for its definition – 14:16
- Crossing the Rubicon: Defining the 4X like Genre
- Revisions to the framework
- 4X Game database
- Age of Wonders Steam page
- Results of the perception survey
- Northgard Steam page
- Sorcerer King: Rivals Steam page
- Star Dynasties page
- Alliance Of the Sacred Suns on Steam
- Master of Orion 2 Steam page
- Total War: Rome 2 Steam page
- Offworld Trading Company Steam page
- Driftland: The Magic Revival Steam page
- Thea: The Awakening Steam page
- Thea 2: The Shattering Steam page
- Civilization 6 Steam page
- Endless Legend Steam page
- Endless Space 2 Steam page
- Jon Shafer’s At the Gates Steam page
- Stellar Monarch Steam Page
- Distant Worlds: Universe Steam page
- Stellaris Steam page
- Armada 2526 Gold Edition Steam page
- Pandora: First Contact Steam page
- Europa Universalis 4 Steam page
- Crusader Kings 2 Steam page
- Star Ruler 2 Steam page
- Catan on BoardGameGeek
- Armello Steam page
- Fort Triumph Steam page
- Dominus Galaxia webpage
- Trials of Fire Steam page
- Astra Exodus Steam page
- Stellar Monarch Steam Page
- Starbase Orion for iOs
- Planar Conquest RR
- Children of Morta
- Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Steam page
- Age of Wonders: Planetfall Steam page
- Crying Suns Steam page
- eXplorminate Discord server
- eXplorminate Patreon Support page
Ladies and Besalisks, this week is craaaaazy over on this side of the large pool, so the Notes will come later today. Mercy, I ask for, mercyyy!!!!
While we always eagerly anticipate & appreciate your notes, Joe, I don’t think anyone would ever demand them. 🙂 Take your time!
Some really nice ideas here about interesting directions 4X can go. More focus on economy and diplomacy yes please!
Distant Worlds Universe, Star Ruler 2 and Stellar Monarch have some very interesting mechanics yet these games are lacking in some other areas so I don’t find these games interesting as a whole product. It’s a combination of it’s parts that makes a good game. Accessibility and presentation also play a role in here.
I think making a cohesive full 4X game as one man developer or a small team is pretty hard. 4X is especially demanding in this regard because of all the player expectations for what a 4X game must include so if the developer doesn’t have a unique vision for each of these elements some of them end up feeling like they were just tacked on. More focused games like Thea are much easier to do well.
Notes are up!
Thea is not a 4x.End.
Thanks for an good pod cast. Some interesting ideas on the nature of 4x games.
I thought I might add something on the win conditions which (I think) hasn’t been mentioned all that often: the Civ IV mod Rhye’s and Fall of Civilizations had custom victory conditions for each civilization, inspired by what these cultures had achieved or tried to achieve in history. There is also a modmod with randomisation options where a variant of these conditions is retained.
Now, clearly, those goals are somewhat confined to history-based games. However, abstracting from there, an interesting approach could be to have a series of discrete high level objectives that factions need to pursue and they get awarded victory points for achieving them (first). Maybe sort of like a beefed up version of Risk, so board game inspired. One could add some flavour to make it less gamey, e.g. package it as scholars writing about the deeds of great empires and factions literally wanting to secure their place in the annuals of history/galactic chronicles.
The advantage is that such a system could be very dynamic (if balanced well) and make it feel somewhat more natural to win that some end-game achievement or set of achievement that supposedly ends the game. The disadvantage is it would seem to add a whole meta layer for an AI to cope with in which objectives to pursue. Building an AI that is efficient in building and maintaining and economic engine and waging war is tough enough. Taking into account which objectives – e.g. being the first to circumvent the map, control a star cluster, build a particular (combination of) wonders, destroy/subjugate an enemy faction – is most achievable with its geo-strategic set-up seems super hard.
But, just a thought. To an extent, Humankind’s star single victory point system seem a bit like this, barring in mind how little we know at this point. If so, it would seem like a good opportunity to package stars into something more narrative.