A Renaissance of 4X Fantasy RPGs

[Vaeliorin]

That's the one

Basically a rock, paper, scissor thing with more than rocks, papers and scissors. And obviously those choices not saving you if you only have a colony ship and the other person has a huge fleet

Yep, that's a pass for me, then.  If it was MoO2 style combat, I'd be all over it, but the whole card thing just doesn't interest me at all.  Definitely looking to pick up Endless Legend and Dungeon of the Endless whenever they're on a decent sale, though.

[IndiraLightfoot]

I just realised that you can customize your own faction in Endless Legend! Just click Add faction, and then you get to start making your own based on one of the graphical templates via a point-buy system. It's very fun and intuitive. Thank you, Amplitude, for that!

[TrashMan]

I have to admit, Amplitude's games intrigue me.  I stumbled across Endless Legend watching videos on Youtube, and I love the art design.  The gameplay looked ridiculously easy from what I've seen (as in, I saw a guy fight 3 battles against minor faction enemies, and then win a diplomatic victory without being challenged at all), but it's possible the videos I've seen were on an easy difficulty.

 

Endless Space I recall being interested in, but isn't that the game where battles just let you play a couple cards and then watch what happens?  I know there was one sci-fi 4X that I as interested in but that feature turned me off completely.

 

Endless Space was meh. The combat was uninspireing as was the ship design. Other stuff was pretty good tough.

I do notice that Endless Legend has unit design, but I wonder if it's any better than ES. I find it hard to believe it is better then FE: LE unit design, since that really let you customize it in detail, even in appearance.

 

that said, I hope Sorcerer King has the unit design from FE..and I hope you get to design your hero, because quite frankly I hate the current one.

[TrashMan]

questions to you playing SK:

 

Can you design units or heroes?

[IndiraLightfoot]

SK, in the present beta version I'm playing, you can't do much at all. It's very barebone. The only thing customizable right now is changing the name of your city.

But the plan is this:

-You get to pick between 8 Sovereigns - your special demi-god leader, if you will, your character on par with the might of Gandalf.

-Each of these Sovereigns have three-pronged tech trees.

-Then you get Heroes, and the plan is to have them unique for the Sovereign you've picked. IIRC, you will be able to recruit more heroes during the game.

-Each hero also has a three-pronged tech tree. However, the biggest customization comes from crafting and items you find. The crafting system is simple, but it will be pretty varied.

-Unlike in FE:LH, I haven't seen any hints at units or heroes being customizable from scratch. Perhaps they will be. Quite a few have requested that feature, and the same goes for being able to customize the bad guy, the Sorcerer King, as well.

[TrashMan]

So neither the Sovereign or the heroes are customizable (and I don't mean equipping stuff on them. I mean, looks, specialization, etc..)

 

Dissapointing,

[Chilloutman]

Are those games something like king of the dragon pass?

[IndiraLightfoot]

I haven't played KotDP, sorry. :/

[samm]

Are those games something like king of the dragon pass?

Doesn't sound like it, no. SK maybe a bit...

 

You could try the Banner Saga (http://www.gog.com/game/the_banner_saga), but it's very small in scope in comparison and not really managing a tribe/village with a group of leaders, but rather moving around with your caravan and make depressing decisions.

[archangel979]

Best 4x fantasy game I played is Master of Magic. Best 4x space game I played is Birth of the Federation.

I bought Elemental War of Magic because it marketed itself to be like Master of Magic. It wasn't, not even close. So they gave me Fallen Enchantress and Legendary Heroes for free to make up for it (they gave that to all early buyers of Elemental: WoM). Both games were still not good enough to be a successor to Master of Magic. This Sorcerer King does not look to be one as well. I might buy it in some 75% off sale for 10$ at one time, I don't trust Stardock anymore.

 

What I want to play is Worlds of Magic, a real Master of Magic successor. It will have most things like MoM but in modern engine and graphics, better UI and d20 OGL as base ruleset for combat.

 

As I loved Master of Orion 2 and Birth of the Federation I looked for new good space 4x games. I found Endless Space last winter sale and enjoyed good 40 - 50 h of playing it. It is first space 4x that has space combat similar to Birth of the Federation which is awesome. It is done by Order cards. Combat has rounds where both sides fight at same time for 10-15s. The player gives certain orders to whole squadron which are good vs some type of ships and their weapon as well as enemy orders but bad vs others. Birth of the Federation was bit more complex than this but Endless Space is good enough. Combat goes fast, you still mostly win by having better ships but how you set up your 3 combat rounds does make a difference depending on your ships and which Order cards you give them each combat round.

 

As for Endless Legend, I would like to try it. Hopefully I can get it on a sale as I am too poor to buy games at full price :D

From what I seen it looks better than what Stardock has been giving us.

Edited November 19, 2014 by archangel979

[Chilloutman]

Best 4x fantasy game I played is Master of Magic. Best 4x space game I played is Birth of the Federation.

I bought Elemental War of Magic because it marketed itself to be like Master of Magic. It wasn't, not even close. So they gave me Fallen Enchantress and Legendary Heroes for free to make up for it (they gave that to all early buyers of Elemental: WoM). Both games were still not good enough to be a successor to Master of Magic. This Sorcerer King does not look to be one as well. I might buy it in some 75% off sale for 10$ at one time, I don't trust Stardock anymore.

 

What I want to play is Worlds of Magic, a real Master of Magic successor. It will have most things like MoM but in modern engine and graphics, better UI and d20 OGL as base ruleset for combat.

 

As I loved Master of Orion 2 and Birth of the Federation I looked for new good space 4x games. I found Endless Space last winter sale and enjoyed good 40 - 50 h of playing it. It is first space 4x that has space combat similar to Birth of the Federation which is awesome. It is done by Order cards. Combat has rounds where both sides fight at same time for 10-15s. The player gives certain orders to whole squadron which are good vs some type of ships and their weapon as well as enemy orders but bad vs others. Birth of the Federation was bit more complex than this but Endless Space is good enough. Combat goes fast, you still mostly win by having better ships but how you set up your 3 combat rounds does make a difference depending on your ships and which Order cards you give them each combat round.

 

As for Endless Legend, I would like to try it. Hopefully I can get it on a sale as I am too poor to buy games at full price :D

From what I seen it looks better than what Stardock has been giving us.

 

Master of Orion 2 is hand down best 4X space strategy so far - hope it will someday have some decent successor

[archangel979]

MoO2 had way too much manual combat and you always started first. As a result it was too easy. Only thing it had over Birth of the Federation was ability to make custom ships which I personally never cared about (and also considered it a bad part of Elemental games - and I seen Sorcerer King removed that).

[Chilloutman]

MoO2 had way too much manual combat and you always started first. As a result it was too easy. Only thing it had over Birth of the Federation was ability to make custom ships which I personally never cared about (and also considered it a bad part of Elemental games - and I seen Sorcerer King removed that).

 

not true, one who starting combat is one who is attacking. Manual combat was quite fun even tho i think there is place for improvements. Designing your own ships was my favourite part of the game

[archangel979]

 

MoO2 had way too much manual combat and you always started first. As a result it was too easy. Only thing it had over Birth of the Federation was ability to make custom ships which I personally never cared about (and also considered it a bad part of Elemental games - and I seen Sorcerer King removed that).

 

not true, one who starting combat is one who is attacking. Manual combat was quite fun even tho i think there is place for improvements. Designing your own ships was my favourite part of the game

 

Yes, and I made sure I always attacked in combat that was important. Manual combat took forever and became boring after a while. It didn't help that you could craft your ships that in first turn would wipe more than half of enemy ships, and the fight was just cleaning up after that.

Otherwise it was a cool game but not as good as BotF. In BotF you could not design ships but each of the 5 factions played much differently and using spies and sabotage was a legal way to get an advantage. I have yet to see a 4x game that had such a good spy system.

Edited November 19, 2014 by archangel979

[Humanoid]

My biggest complaint about MoO2 was the repetitive and flavourless buildings. e.g. build this thing that gives +25% research, then build this other thing that gives +50% research, then build this thing that gives 5 research points per turn, etc, etc. Made colony development late-game an exercise in absolute tedium. Would have strongly preferred an obsolescence system where newer buildings would incorporate the benefits of early-game ones.

[Gorth]

There seems to be some misconceptions about ship to ship combat in MoO2 here...

 

Attacker doesn't go first. Unless you leave all settings on default that is, but who does that???

 

"Ship Initiative" means ships attack in initiative order. Smaller, faster and higher tech ships move first, slow, lumbering low tech behemoths last.

 

"Auto" button turns on AI for both player and opponent. 'z' key Speeds up auto combat. I.e. pretty close to instant resolve combat if you dont want to micromanage your fleet in this encounter.

[archangel979]

I don't remember any of those options. Maybe they came in a later patch?