So, I have to ask, I just bought EU3, but have been seeing a lot of posts about Space Empires IV, and it sounds pretty sweet. I did buy Star Ruler, but I haven't really gotten into it yet, but am looking at buying Space Empires IV? I mean, hell, its only ten bucks right?
See, I've always loved the idea of the slow paced 4x type games, but god do I suck at them and haven't put forth enough effort to fully understand the gameplay to really get into them. I don't know if I'm just retarded, or have ADD, or just suck at strategy. But god damnit I'm going to brute force me way to be decent at at least ONE of these titles... so which one would you recommend I concentrate on?
You sound exactly like me before I started playing SE4. I played the MOO series and I played the Galactic Civ series, and even tried more modern titles like Sword of the Stars and Distant Worlds. I could never really get into any of them.
I have always been a big fan of Civ 2. Not Civ 3,4 or even 5. I realized that the reason I liked it so much was because it was so easy to mod. It didn't require me to learn Python or model in Maya or anything like that. I just needed to Notepad and Paint to do anything I wanted. SE4 lets you do the same thing.
Aside from modding, I also like that SE4 lets you play the game exactly how you want. You can research any techs you want, in any order that you want, or you can simply not research anything at all and sit on your laurels waiting for the aliens to come to you. There are a lot of events and techs that allow you to change the galaxy in huge ways, like destroying planets or even entire systems. This makes the game feel pretty epic, especially coupled with multiplayer where you can smash your friends.
I don't really see the point of 3D rendering in games like SotS, Star Ruler, SE5, and Galactic Civ 2. They really do nothing for the game-play and I find myself getting distracted by it, rather than concentrating on the game at hand. SE4 runs on any system (in fact, you can easily run multiple instances on one machine) and I've never had the game crash on me. I can leave it for hours and come back later without worrying about a memory leak or overheating my computer as a 3D game might do.
The only part of the game that is relatively weak is combat. It's pretty clunky, but it still gets the job done. Oh, and the AI isn't all that great (although the TDM mod improves them), but at least there's multi-player to give you a challenge.
I think the Space Empires series is a pretty underrated game that has been overshadowed by the MOO series. I personally like it more than MOO 2, simply because it does everything MOO2 does, but gives you even more freedom and customization (and doesn't require DosBox).
Author
Topic: Looking for nice slow games (Read 3179 times)