Lost Empire Immortals is a turn-based 4x strategy game. If you've played any other 4x games, such as moo, you know the gist of what this game is about. What really drew me into this game was the level of polish and ease of use. Normally I wouldn't care to much about these two things, but in this game it allows turns to fly by while letting me focus on all the good parts. For me this would be research and hoping from system to system with a massive fleets while leaving everything in my wake either conquered or destroyed, good times.
Research is done with a series of categories each with a number of techs that can be individually researched nearly infinitely (or perhaps infinity, I've never reached an endpoint). This is a great model that lends itself especially well to the scale of this game, which can range all the way up to a 5000 system galaxy.
Another interesting feature that I find enjoyable is the leader system. Your empire can have a number of leaders (the number is determined by a tech) each with 5 stats that have a cap determined by tech. These leaders can be assigned to various jobs that benefit the entire empire. Each leaders also ages and eventually dies (their time of death can the pushed back with technology).
Combat is done by the computer, but is still very detailed and strategic. I've often lost an entire fleet to a smaller enemy fleet that scrapes by with virtually no loses solely due to bad design. Additionally there is a nifty little battle viewer that shows the entire battle in glorious 3D. At first this feature was a turn off for me, but then I realized the genius of it. This system allows for the player to focus entirely on his empire should he choose and optionally on battles that he chooses, which are played out beautifully.
The storyline in this game is also done wonderfully. It is woven into whatever randomly generated galaxy you are playing by adding two entities. These entities are great immortals who have been waging war for eternity, and as such they enlist the aid of sentient beings as the come and go. Of course you are one of these sentient beings and as such you may be contacted by one, or both, of these entities as you play. They will ask you to do missions for them through which the story plays out, and you can either accept or decline their offers.
Although this game is great it could have been much more. Unfortunately it was released in an unfinished state, and to make matters much worse the developed went out of business before it could move to a state that could be considered finished. Luckily however they released a number of patches before falling out of business. I highly recommend patching this game before playing it, it makes a massive difference.
The biggest feature that fell between the cracks is diplomacy. Although it is there, it is highly lackluster and serves no real advantage other then preventing people from attacking you, and even then there is little you can do to influence their feelings of you. This is a real disappointment to me because diplomacy is often my favorite aspect of a 4x game, but the fact that I still enjoy this game without diplomacy is a nice show of how good the other features are.
Now as for the second part of this topics subject header: due to the unfinished nature of this game and the lack of developers. Paradox Interactive is looking to the community for support and are offering to opportunity to work on this game to anyone who wishes to help. As a show of just how willing they are to recruit the community I will tell you that I was offered a the opportunity to work on this game simply for writing an email to them asking if the game is still worked on, without even mentioning any thoughts of wanting to help or any coding knowledge.
So if anyone out there finds this game enjoyable and knows how to code I urge you to contact Paradox Interactive so that you may further this great game.
P.S. There is a demo for this game, but it is most likely in a version 1.0 state and as thus vastly inferior to the current 1.0.8 so keep that in mind if you play it.
Demo download:
http://www.fileplanet.com/184936/180000/fileinfo/Lost-Empire:-Immortals-DemoMain website:
http://www.paradoxplaza.com/lostempire/?p=home
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Topic: Lost Empire Immortals {and its looking for coders} (Read 1431 times)