Beard of Stone
Beard of Stone is a fantasy turn based 4x that tell the story of a world’s creation all the way to the twilight of the gods. Not exclusively a turn based strategy game, real time bidding mechanics keep everyone actively involved. Who is up for their next turn is constantly in contention! The game is fast paced and quick enough to be played in a single sitting.
Players take the role of Gods, bending the prophetic destiny of the world to their ends. Every event and action in the game is public information from the very first turn, displayed on the Prophecy Track. Players spend their Influence currency to gain control of these prophecies in real time. Anyone can bid and be outbid before a prophecy arrives as the current turn. Prophecies span a wide range of actions, from the creation of the continents of the world, the birth of all the various races, disasters, military campaigns and more.
As Gods, players are not playing as any specific race. They strive to make the warriors and nobles of the land believers in their faith. As the races expand and worship each God, the Influence invested is redistributed to the Gods to be bid on further prophecy turns. Having the most believers in the most prosperous races will lead to one of the Gods dominating the world and winning the game.
Read More: Best 4X Strategy Games.
Rising Constellation
Rising Constellation is an awesome game which is mixing strategy and role play at a perfect level.
It offers many distinct gameplay based on factions and its agents mechanics - however, remind it’s strongly depends on team play!
Indead, this game is part of those who are perfectly designed to work in cooperation with your mates, but definitely not alone.
Use Siderians and rule your teamates, just because you’ll get the economy power - or perhaps you’ll prefer bite everyone using large fleets lead by Navarques.
– Real player with 933.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best 4X Co-op Games.
Rising Constellation is 4x RST game still in developpment.
Created from a small team of Swiss developper, I was a player of thier first MMO RTS 4x game: Asylamba.
I see RC (Rising Constellation) like an MMO RTS 4x game based on Agents (Navarques – Ereased – Sidérians).
I really enjoy the game for is background story (lore can be added by players participation) , B&W graphic style and is MMO possibility !
There is now 1 mod to play : fast flash 2H gamemode , this is quite small with 1 or to 2 games per week with a small cummunity.
– Real player with 837.1 hrs in game
Empires of the Void II
Conquer the galaxy - or befriend it! Empires of the Void II is a beloved board game with deep strategy and a compelling story that you write yourself. This is a digital recreation of that board game, allowing you to play with friends (or strangers) in the same room, or across the world. Choose a race and befriend the native species, or crush them under your merciless heel. The power card deck contains dozens of missions that connect to the deep story underpinning the galactic fringe. Save innocent lives from a gigantic rampaging beast, kidnap the leader of your enemies, or gamble with space pirates. Every playthrough feels unique and interesting. Minimalistic graphics and atmospheric music set the tone without getting in the way. Create your own adventure at the fringe of the galaxy!
Read More: Best 4X Strategy Games.
Master of Orion
One can fix the bugs, glitches and even contents with enough patches. However, one cannot fix bad gameplay design decisions no matter how much one can pour its money and time. The new Moo is the prime example of the latter.
I had been maintaining weapon mod list thread in the official Moo forum until I gave up on the game.
This game massively suffers in three areas: combat, content, and game design which is terrible.
I am not even going to talk about the tactical battle being real-time instead of turn-based, or staranes instead of free movements, because those issues are actually trivial issues compared to what I am going to discuss here.
– Real player with 277.8 hrs in game
Pretty but Dull.
Because of the fixed and predictable tech tree each game tends to unfolds the same way.
Your opponets don’t have any unique and destinctive tech, they have what you have, or will have or use to have. Hardly makes it woth spying on them.
Combat is dull:
You start over here, they start over there and you charge one another. As there is very little input from the player you end up being a spectator in your own game. yay
You don’t decide what to shoot or who to shoot at, the AI does that for you.
– Real player with 259.3 hrs in game
Sword of the Stars II: Enhanced Edition
Recommended? Sort of.
I bought this at a steep discount years ago (less than 10 bucks), and have alternately loved and hated it ever since.
The game was originally released in a mid-alpha state, resulting in a lot of the rage evidenced in some reviews. After a free expansion, about 50 mid-sized patches and over a hundred micro-patches, what you have is basically a game in permanent mid-beta.
Most of what could be fixed without a complete redesign has been. What remains is an extremely time-consuming, mostly rewarding game that will occasionally infuriate you.
– Real player with 2953.3 hrs in game
3/24/2014
I currently have over 1,000hours in this game.
Here a list of things within the game on a scale of 1-10
Individual race design- 8/10 (each race still feels completely unique and fresh like they did in the first game)
Artificial Intelligent race design- 10/10 (this was actually done flawlessly and very unique compared to
other artificial intelligent races created in the same and even other sci-fi genres. It’s a very fresh new look on AI playable races)
Story- 2/10 (there is no story, other than the lore you get from either the forums or within the encyclopedia their really nothing else.)
– Real player with 1290.7 hrs in game
Demise of Nations
This game is very interesting it’s really fun and it reminds me of Age of Empires 2 and Rome Total War. I love how you expand your borders by moving across the map that is so cool. One thing I really don’t like about the game is unit health; I will use RTW as an example. In that game it is pure strategy like using the higher ground or using a pincher type move and so to win a battle instead of how much health your unit has. I have a few suggestions for the developers. 1) There are far to many farms and not enough other resources. In order to get a decent amount of other resources available in the game the whole map is nearly all farms. So my suggestions is to have a capability of making areas into resources like example prospecting a mountain or how dense a forrest is. 2) Put in Trading land and cities. 3) Have a capability of building roads for trade routes to other factions similar to RTW (Basically I will suggest them to play RTW to get some ideas). For trading to other factions have some things on the map like wine, textiles, and other stuff to trade to other factions for gold or for other important resources you need that you can’t obtain in the areas you control. 4) Have factions return if a place revolts if a faction has been defeated and add more factions that would be cool to. 5) Have each faction have a couple of unique buildings and units that other factions can’t get. For example the Celts can have druids and since Gaul is similar barbaric people they can have armored swordsman or something like that.
– Real player with 465.3 hrs in game
When I first got this game, I liked it, but thought it was just an ok game. I was wrong, the game is absolutely amazing (unless you hate strategy games).
It is a little difficult to see, but the graphics are pretty good, especially in-game. There are lots of different factors and numbers, such as groundwater, which either you like, or you can ignore and still play the game fine.
I like strategy games however, and I think this is one of the best ones on steam. It is very straight forward if you want it too be, yet there is a lot of content that you could pay attention to if you wanted. I also love one of the developer’s other games.
– Real player with 296.6 hrs in game
ENDLESS™ Legend
Good game, but I will give more preference to endless space 2 with more mechanics and more elaborate gameplay.
– Real player with 364.9 hrs in game
Pros:
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Great strategy experience
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Interesting fantasy theme
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Enjoyable equipment mechanics
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Heroes add an interesting strategy layer
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Tweaking a faction to your play style is awesome
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Complicated subsystems that make the game always interesting to optimize
Cons:
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No in game encyclopedia to learn game terms and mechanics (tooltips aren’t enough)
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Game speeds other than standard are imbalanced
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Subsystems need better explanation
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Too much and too costly DLC
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DLC should not radically change the way the game is played (here it feels like what should be an update is DLC)
– Real player with 228.6 hrs in game
ENDLESS™ Space 2
Edit2: Running in a max sized galaxy that is now fully colonized down to the last planet and has eight well-developed factions at war on around turn 675. Still playing, only complaint is that the ‘end turn’ gets a bit bumpy due to so many ship battles being resolved in the background - but it’s still far faster than in early access. The AI is serviceable, good on 3 factions, meh to idiotic on the rest - Riftborn are by far the hardest, Vodyani are the dumbest always puttering around one system, definitely needs some work. No game killing bugs thus far thanks to that last patch. Enjoying the competitive/cooperative multi-faction quests, I’d like to see a lot more of that in future content.
– Real player with 1806.8 hrs in game
TL;DR: This title is -by far- the best 4X on the market. Each aspect, exploring-expanding-exploiting-exterminating is a constant challenge on higher difficulty levels in single player and multiplayer can be quite the expierence if you like very quick thinking and immidiate punish of mistakes. Each race is very different, demanding rather unique playstyles but offer a different strategy option. Best UI i have -EVER- seen. Right click to go back. Brilliant. I look dumb now trying this in other games. Collour coded sheets and unified symbols. A pleasure. A lore-universe to be hooked on and the occaisional humor to keep it fresh. Go Sophons! For Science! One Sentence: Its worth every penny. Guaranteed.
– Real player with 484.8 hrs in game
ENDLESS™ Space - Definitive Edition
I fell in love with Master of Orion II when it came out first (1996) and since then I look for a worthy successor. Played several 4X games and they had their pros and cons. Endless Space is one of the better 4X games and absolutely worth buying, in my opinion. Wouldn’t have played 300+ hours else, heh. I am reviewing it including Disharmony expansion.
Galaxy: Endless Space offers some variety of galaxy shapes and sizes, some favoring defensive players, some favoring offensive ones. Additional finetuning of the galaxy is possible. I miss the opportunity of creating a REALLY huge galaxy, but maximum size with just one opponent works ok as a sandbox mode. During exploring you will find nice bonuses, a few pirates, wormholes (basically dividing the galaxy until you can travel through them) and finally different wonders, so exploring is actually fun.
– Real player with 352.8 hrs in game
Review: Endless Space
_“Come, my friends,
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world. . . .
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.”
Alfred Lord Tennyson_
The universe with it’s endless amounts of galaxies, stars and planets was born out of what we call “the big bang”. It took billions of years before the first life was given and further billions for the new rulers of space to conquer every star they could reach: The Endless. They traveled through wormholes, became masters of time and space, built outstanding monuments and structures and oppressed every lifeform that stood in their way, all with the help of a special gift called dust. The only ones who could make them fall were the Endless themselves with inner conflicts and arrogance. Millions of years later other empires arose from the stars. The Endless were gone but their technology, wisdom and Dust is still there, waiting for new conquerors. Which faction will dominate the others with science, war and dust? Hopefully yours.
– Real player with 196.1 hrs in game
Pandora: First Contact
This is a solid game in its niche marked of 4x games, and more specifically, 4x games with space age human colonization. With its only direct competitor being the blatant AAA cash-in Civ: Beyond Earth, it is clear that this dev does not have much to compete against.
Let’s start with the bad, because everyone else starts with the good, and I’m a unique and interesting individual, as well as a special snowflake, so I go out of my way to be different in ways that try to be clever but miss the mark entirely.
– Real player with 245.6 hrs in game
A great 4X game, what I used to cure down my hype in waiting for the release of Beyond Earth.
Although the game has quite a steep learning, REALLY took me alot of playthroughs and restarts (“rage quits” you might call them) to get things going right in the game (e.g. Prioritizing the wrong things).
TL:DR;
Like it or not, Military is VERY IMPORTANT in the game; you arrive on this new planet, Pandora; peaceful at first (depending on your alien agression difficulty), but eventually the planet will become very hostile towards you (and other factions). Aliens (Native Wildlife) in the game behaves similarly to Barbarians in Civ, their main purpose is to cause trouble and possibly wreck havoc in your new cities (with the exception that Aliens can actually raze entire cities in a turn). However, Barbarians will always attack you, but their not that strong, usually a good combination of 2-3 units can deal with most of those issues. But for Aliens, they won’t attack you right from the start (that’s why exploration is safe and actually a necessity); but when they do, they can be really troublesome; barbarians quite often invade in individuals, but aliens invade in large groups. Have a bad military and your city is prone to destruction. Other more powerful aliens (e.g. Galeths, Aspidochs) attack you much later in the game, prioritize the right things (e.g. research on weps) and you can deal with them (with the lost of a few units in some cases); otherwise be prepared to lose a few cities. Keep playing longer, then there’s a third type of alien invasion that can even be more of an issue for unprepared factions (having little military), but I’ll leave it for you to discover.
– Real player with 92.3 hrs in game