The 4X Iceberg | Imperialis | Armageddon Empires

Hey Internet… 

So welcome to what I would consider to be one of the greatest computer games ever made.  I have probably written this script a half dozen times over the years.  It is a tough game to talk about in some ways, because it is probably pretty near the very bottom of the strategy gaming Iceberg… I mean, I just said it is one of the greatest computer games ever made, but according to the Steam charts it peaked at 7 players in December of 2024. It was programmed in Adobe Director, an ‘engine’ that seemed to be most often used to program interactive menus for DVDs. The developer, Vic Davis’ last appearance online that I’m aware of is when he put the game on Steam in 2021.  His website doesn’t exist anymore, his blog has been eaten by the rot that is destroying internet 1.0.  He’s a ghost. So why am I wasting your time? Why on Gods Green Earth would I be claiming an abandoned game with 39 reviews, 32 of which are positive and no more than a couple hundred people having actually put money on the table to play it is one of the greatest games ever? Sit a while, and listen…

I first came across AE in a Eurogamer review, followed it up by reading a lets play on a blog called Dubious Quality and then I bought it direct from the Cryptic Comet website by handing over my credit card details to some company I had never heard of before called BMT Micro.  Fortunately my credit card number didn’t end up getting sold and I ended up loving the game so much that I went so far as to mail order a physical copy that even came with a mousepad that I used for years until it finally disintegrated.

 It is difficult to pin a genre onto Armageddon Empires as it is a blend of very different styles of game.  At first glance it plays almost like you want to have a bowl of pretzels and a six pack on a table. It has the tokens and chits and statistics of a great Ameritrash wargame like Twilight Imperium, Fortress America or Axis and Allies. There are hitpoints to track, resources to collect, action points to manage, strongholds to build and armies to push around.  It looks and feels like a board game, but one that would be almost unplayable without a computer keeping track of everything.

It ticks every one of the 4x boxes with exploration and map control forming a core aspect of the game while expanding resource collectors, developing the capabilities of your stronghold, building (and conquering) outposts to serve as supply hubs and barracks locations to deploy units from and naturally exterminating the other factions, since the only win condition is to kill them all. It does it all at a very fast quick clip too.  A small map with two opponents can be finished in a couple of hours, with the larger maps taking no more than a handful of evenings.

An early confrontation with the Xenopods as the Free Mutants. An Independent Fortress sits beyond the Crags

Last up, Armageddon Empires is the earliest example of a 4X style strategy game that I can think of that integrates collectable card game mechanics into the core of the game.  Everything you place on the map, begins its life as a card, likely in your deck at the start of the game.  You build these decks from a massive selection of cards, unique to each faction, styled to look like a Pokemon or Magic card, including some absolutely amazing art.  The cropped images blown up from the games original 1024 by 768 resolution don’t do them justice. No roguelike meta progression, no microtransactions, no loot boxes. It predates all of those concepts by at least a decade.  Every card in the game is just sitting there in the deck builder for you to pick from.

Imperial Deck Design

In the actual game getting cards from your hand to the map requires the expenditure of varying amounts of the four collectable resources, (manpower, materiel, energy, tech) as well as a number of action points which regenerate every turn and are required for almost every action you want to take from moving armies, to drawing and playing cards or undertaking research.  AP is always limited so turns are fast paced and prioritising actions is critical.

There is always more you want to do, but don’t have the action points, or resources, or the card combinations needed to accomplish it.  It is a game where everything feels like it is in short supply, even the cards themselves.  If you lose your Leviathan tank, or Corruptor biomecha and you only had one in your deck?  An assassin took out your administrator who was giving you bonus AP? Well that’s it. No more. Dead is dead.  Better hope you have an alternative.

When units are deployed onto the map, the game transforms again into a hex and chit board wargame like something Avalon Hill used to publish.  You move armies led by generals around the map, while support heroes work in the background, researching technology cards to deploy on units and developing tactics cards to give you the edge in battles.  Your scout units will push back the fog of war, uncovering neutral factions, resource collection points and random events with the ruins of both human civilization and the war that brought it down, providing a background.

Pop culture references abound with nods to Vault 13, Mad Max, Robotech, Escape from New York and Evangelion, alongside some really obscure ones like Jack Vance’s Planet of Adventure, OGRE, and the Honorverse. Exploration is rewarded too. Finding a Trident III warhead in the tube of a submarine that ended up beached after the oceans boiled away and strapping it onto a bomber is a hell of a turning point in a game.  Your scouts also need to be trying to get eyes on enemy facilities and units.  Deep recon is a powerful ability that is available in pretty limited quantities. 

There is a simple but effective supply system that tends to channel meeting points, and expanding that radius is essential either through hero cards that offer a straight bonus to supply range or by capturing or building supply depots.  Units that start their turn out of supply are exceptionally vulnerable with their combat statistics being halved and being limited to a single move point per turn. Sometimes, if you have a big nasty army bearing down on your HQ, the best course of action can be to try and seize a supply base and cut them off.

Getting caught out of supply is a real problem.  All of my units’ combat attributes are cut in half and rounded down.

When armies meet, it turns into a card game again as the units line up in two ranks and trade fire back and forth.  Terrain, initiative, and defensive works all play a role in combat.  Generals can use fate points and tactics cards to manipulate dice rolls, while units themselves will often have special abilities like counterattack which allows them to deal damage if the enemy misses an attack, or shock attack where if an attack hits it commits the target unit, which can be a critical way to lock down a powerful, high attack unit.  Some of these get pretty exotic too, especially when you start deploying technology cards with nuro-toxins, energy weapons, nanite swarms, AT Fields, tactical nukes, and even psykers among the Xenopods making appearances.

A late game mechanized army going up against the Free Mutants.

One way that Armageddon Empires is vastly different from most other 4X games is how it handles research.  There is no tech tree.  Instead, you can recruit scientists (as well as tacticians and other support heroes) to conduct research.  You will also need to make sure you have deployed a laboratory (or military collage) at which point your scientists can spend resources to try and roll to create a new card that can usually be attached to a unit to give them some sort of benefit.

Machine Empire Tech Research and Infantry Training

The four factions in the game are distinct, with notable strengths and weaknesses, while at the same time being familiar enough from one to the other that it doesn’t feel like you are playing a different game.

The Empire of Man draws inspiration from all sorts of post apocalyptic fiction and relies on a balanced mix of human soldiers, armoured vehicles and extremely potent air power combined with powerful research opportunities to enhance our squishy meat bodies to the point that we can reliably go toe to toe with death robots and alien beasts the size of buildings like John Conner after Judgment Day.  Your bog standard infantry might be pretty weak, but give them laser rifles, genetic modifications, and a tactical nuclear weapon in their back pocket and suddenly the 20 story tall death robot doesn’t seem so scary.

The Machine Empire relies on slow, attritional warfare with durable units able to grind down an enemy force crushing enemy armies under the treads of their war machines.  If the Terminator references were there among the humans… Well, these guys are Skynet.  Their infantry even look like the T-800.  Powerful tech cards make their units even more durable and they are entirely capable of operating without human resources which can be helpful.

The Xenopods can unleash hordes of greebly critters inspired in equal parts by H.R. Geiger and H.P. Lovecraft to feed on the remaining biomatter that exists in the wasteland.  Their mastery of genetics makes them the only faction that is able to reliably build armies out of units that did not begin in their deck.  Exceptional heroes, round things out but they are crippled if the map seed generates limited human resources.

Last up, the Free Mutants are the most exotic faction.  They were created by the Xenopods who experimented on humans to create shock troops.  They also got dinosaurs out of the deal.  This gives them fast, hard hitting, but fragile units that rely on hit and run tactics to control the map and push for victory.  Think Fremen, but with more limbs, less hair, and tank cannons on the backs of sauropods’ instead of sandworms.  Lots of fun, but in my opinion probably the most challenging faction to play.  They benefit a lot from powerful tactician heroes and extremely powerful spies.

In addition to the playable factions, the “Cults of the Wasteland” expansion (which is included) adds 5 ‘mini factions’ that can be included in a game to provide unique challenges.  There is a doomsday cult that wants to blow up the world, a powerful warlord with jump troops that makes the centre of the map where his stronghold is located a very dangerous stretch of territory for all the factions. There is a cult that spreads a highly contagious plague, infecting units and heroes that can be cured by your geneticists, a group of post apocalyptic hippies that just want to spread love (by taking control of your units) and of course, a giant tentacle beast named Kabaah! that you can bribe into leaving you alone by feeding it human resources with the caveat that any time it eats, it gets bigger and nastier.

If you have stuck around with me this long, might I also mention the exceptional AI.  There is no multiplayer, so the AI is critical and one of the things AE does extremely well (better than many high budget games in the genre) is having the AI use the tools it has available, even if they are complex.  I have had my stronghold attacked by missile barrages from hidden Free Mutant armies.  I have had spies infiltrate my HQ and disrupt my ability to deploy cards, move armies, and other things.  I have had generals killed by assassins, and had battles disrupted by effective use of tactics cards. It will also respond to provocations appropriately.  If you start blowing up resource collectors or assassinating scientists, it will send recon to find you. If it sees a powerful army, it will try to retreat and re-enforce.  If it sees an opening, it will go for it quite viciously.  There are ways to exploit it, there are aspects of the AI deck design that I think hamper it and it’s no human, but for strategy game AI it is top notch.  

If there were a major problem the AI it is that oftentimes their decks are simply too big.  Deck design is a whole thing that would take another 1000 words, but my philosophy has basically been to treat it like a competitive CCG and make your deck as small and efficient as possible.  I generally aim for less than 50 cards.  The AI decks are very broad; there is ‘some’ of almost anything, which means it can be difficult for them to get key heroes and other critical cards like labs out and their ‘builds’ lack focus.  It would be cool if we could play against our own decks, but apparently that would break the AI so that’s sad.

Beyond that limitation though, outside of a few optional difficulty tweaks like giving the AI bonus starting resources, or requiring the player to expend energy to use mechanized units. The playing field is even. The AI will always operate under the same rules as the player and there are no other difficulty settings.  The AI has no map knowledge, no ability to pull specific cards, no extra AP or resource generation and no alliance. I have hundreds of hours in this game and the AI will still surprise me sometimes.

Humans sending spies and Free Mutants flinging missiles at my HQ.

Now, I will say that there are issues. The age of the game is part of that, with a limited resolution and very little in the way of modern conveniences. There are no animations, almost no sound effects and only two songs in the soundtrack, a quiet orchestral piece that mostly fades to the background and a more animated track for combat. The UI can be awkward, especially when trying to access special abilities and sub menus and your right mouse button will get a heck of a workout. These issues might be a challenge to overcome and find the fun as it were, especially if you find older games to be more trouble than they are worth in general. If you want to take the plunge though, my recommendations to help come to grips with some of its quirks are:

1. If the dice are rolling slowly, try rebooting your computer.  It’s built for 32 bit systems and has issues with accessing all of your system RAM.  I think it’s why Adobe stopped supporting Director.
2. The F key is ‘accept’.  You can also use it to roll dice.  This will save a lot of clicking. Why F? I dunno.
3. If you are ever confused as to how to access a submenu, try right clicking on the card or the unit/facility on the map.
4. If you want to rename an army, hold down the ‘home’ key and click on the army name.

So anyhow… there is my contribution to the 4X iceberg.  It’s a hell of a game.  If you like the idea of a complex system with interlocking mechanics and don’t mind dealing with some honest ‘indie game jank’ from before indie became a marketing term, then the passion and the love poured into Armageddon Empires is something that is pretty rare to see in the modern gaming environment. Game preservation only works if people care enough to preserve the games they love and for me at least, Armageddon Empires certainly fits the bill.  It’s not one thing, it’s the combination of the board and card game DNA, the resource scarcity, the tightly designed factions, the customizability of the decks, the fast pace, the tone and theme all tying back to the whole that makes it great. For less than the price of a combo number 3 off the value menu you can get a lot of value out of your dollar.

It even works remarkably well on the Steam Deck if you are OK with using the touchpad mouse controls and rebinding a few buttons like the all important F key.  I’ll even cast it onto my TV sometimes using a little bluetooth mouse/keyboard doohicky that I bought off Amazon a while back.

Also (because I can’t seem to shut up), you might have noticed in my screenshots that the resource icons in my version look different than the default. I have a colourblind mod installed that used to be available on Vic’s website that he actually wrote at my request.  I archived it on google drive and included a link if you find yourself in a similar situation as I did.  I’ll upload a few decks that I have designed over the years if you want to take a crack at them as well. 

Colourblind Mod and Decks 
Link to my Empire of Man playlist from a couple years ago

eXplorminate

The best, most passionate 4X site on the internet. Quality reviews, in depth discussions, excellent podcasts, a super discord and so much more.