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[Melanthius]

I want a free-to-play 4X game.

[Nirur Torir]

Galaxia: Remember Tomorrow is pretty good if you like space.

Did you check the free games list sticky at the top of this subforum? There might be something in there.

[TheDarkStar]

There's FreeOrion, but that's still in development. Are MoO, MoO2, or Master of Magic free for download (yet)? Those are good 4x games that are inferior to more modern games in graphics only.

[Shadowlord]

MoM crashes all the time (but was pretty good if it didn't, so maybe there's a user-made patch to fix it now, who knows), and MoO2's AI is not good enough to handle the game's complexity, so you have to play on Impossible to have a real challenge once you're good at the game (and then it's only challenging because it cheats like hell, not because it knows how to counter what you're doing or play well).

I don't recall MoM crashing anywhere near as much in actual DOS as it seems to do in DOSBox.

Also, none of them are free, but they are on GoG for fairly cheap.

[Draxis]

Aurora 4x is a good space one, if you're into the complexity, and Freeciv is a decent Civilization 2/3 clone.

[Shadowlord]

Aurora and Freeciv are good games to play if you want to learn how not to make UIs for games.

[Ozyton]

There's a free games list as a stickied topic, there might be something in there worth looking at.

[Bien]

There's FreeOrion, but that's still in development. Are MoO, MoO2, or Master of Magic free for download (yet)? Those are good 4x games that are inferior to more modern games in graphics only.

I thought FreeOrion was dead? Also it's probably already mentioned but Aurora's good if you can get past the complexity and obtuseness of the UI. It's basically Dwarf Fortress in space.

[Shadowlord]

I looked in on FreeOrion a few months* ago, and it has advanced through several milestones over the 10+ years since I had last checked, but still didn't appear to be an actual game.

* may have been more than a year, I have no idea.

[TheDarkStar]

From the little time I've played it, FreeOrion appeared to play decently well, but it still took a long time between turns in the later game when everything is visible.

[Zireael]

Does Aurora have a wiki anywhere? I'm a sucker for complexity.

I used to play FreeOrion, but it's not complex enough for me

[Robsoie]

My problem with Freeorion was the interface, easy to get lost with it, funny on how i had less problem with DF own interface.

I wish they would have been inspired more by MoO1 and MoO2 instead of MoO3 for making Freeorion, the 2 original MoO were so great in so many ways i still play with both from time to time, while MoO3 was nowhere near to being half as great.

The 1st MoO1 is still impressive today in how the AI can deliver a challenge without cheating.

Now for good free 4X , there's Open IG , a java open source remake of the 1st Imperium Galactica.
https://github.com/akarnokd/open-ig
There was a trailer for it a few years back and improvements still continue even now (there was a new release a day ago)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnlIEwW2OkM

[Bremen]

Does Aurora have a wiki anywhere? I'm a sucker for complexity.

I used to play FreeOrion, but it's not complex enough for me

http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

Can't speak for how up to date it is, most of the game I learned by Osmosis. There's also an eleven hundred page thread for it on this very forum.