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Author Topic: What defines a game as a 4X game?  (Read 618 times)

Toxicshadow

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What defines a game as a 4X game?
« on: November 24, 2012, 05:54:21 pm »

I see the term used every here and there, yet I'm not really sure what it means. The only 4X game I've played is Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion (It was absolutely horrible. I hated it. MAYBE multiplayer would have been ok, otherwise it was terrible.) But, what defines a game as 4X and what are some examples?
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Hugehead

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Flying Dice

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Re: What defines a game as a 4X game?
« Reply #2 on: November 24, 2012, 06:15:07 pm »

You don't even need wikipedia, just the four words that named the genre. "Explore, expand, exploit, exterminate."

Civilization, Galactic Civilizations, SoaSE, Aurora, Master of Orion, Sword of the Stars, and so forth. The only real divisions tend to be with grand strategy (i.e. every game ever made by Paradox) and RTS (Starcraft, C&C, etc.). 4X games are longer-term than RTS (and can be either turn-based or real-time) and tend to have a different focus than grand strategy (mainly in that grand strategy games tend to start with predefined historical scenarios as opposed to tabula rasa and proceed through a complex evolution of minor diplomatic and political changes rather than discovering new star systems or fighting enemy fleets).
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Azated

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Re: What defines a game as a 4X game?
« Reply #3 on: November 24, 2012, 07:24:29 pm »

X-plore your surroundings.
X-pand your empire/civilisation/race/collection of gumdrops.
X-ploit the resources around your newly expanded empire.
X-terminate, X-terminate!
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