Pigs In Space

On February 19, 2007, in Games, by peterb

This week, I’ll be surveying a number of space strategy games, from old classics to recent entries in the field. Often known as “3X” or “4X” games (for “Explore, Expand, Exploit”, and sometimes “Exterminate”), this is a genre that has been around for years, and has remained popular.

Up for consideration this week are Delta Tao’s Spaceward Ho!, various iterations of Master of Orion, Stardock’s Galactic Civilizations 2, Reach For the Stars! from SSG and Matrix Games, and Space Empires V from Malfador Machinations and Strategy First. I’ll be covering each of these in their own articles.

There are a few strategic elements that are common to most of these games that distinguish them from other types of wargames. Most of them derive, in some sense, from the truly ancient Brøderbund game Galactic Empire.

As you might expect from games marketed towards people who think that outer space is nifty, all games in this genre deliver massive amounts of technological pornography. Giving money to scientists, in these games, always results in spaceships that are faster, fly farther, shoot bigger bullets, take more damage, are cheaper to build, and never result in the scientists scheduling lots of boondoggle conferences in Honolulu while their grad students decide which model PC will be best-suited to playing 3D Tetris. I guess that’s why they call it “science fiction.” In any event, it’s a truism that in addition to spending money on your fleet, you’ll be spending money on weapons research.

One World Or None

Every empire needs a good logo

Secondly, 4X games have a hopelessly colonial model of government. You send hapless citizen-slaves off to distant hostile planets and whip them with taser-rods until they start making money for you. Since games are often won or lost on the basis of resource acquisition, choosing not to emulate this model is, essentially, the same as choosing to lose the game. Some of the games model colonization in an abstract way (“This colony will lose money for 130 years, and then will become more and more profitable over time,”) whereas others get down to a level of detail requiring the player to decide what buildings are constructed. This, more than almost any other aspect of the games, controls the amount of micromanagement the player will be doing.

Thirdly, most of these games involve space combat. This is often the place where the games distinguish themselves from each other. Some of the games resolve combat automatically, some have the player move pieces around a board, and others choose a middle path and have the player make operational fleet decisions in between combat rounds. Some of the games model diplomacy, which is the question of whether you and an opposing civilization will be killing each other today, or tomorrow.

With that introduction, I think the stage is set, and we are ready to talk about which of these games will provide the most satisfying simulation of brutally murdering your way across an entire galaxy. See you tomorrow.

Read next article in this series, 4X: Spaceward Ho!

 

9 Responses to “Pigs In Space”

  1. Chris says:

    “…this is a genre that has been around for years, and has remained popular.”

    I’m curious, what does ‘popular’ actually mean in this sentence? I’d be inclined to suggest the genre stubbornly refuses to die out. >:)

  2. Tim F says:

    No list is ever truly complete, and I notice you left out Delta Tao’s “Spaceward, Ho!”. It is of course one of the most stripped down successors to Galactic Empire, and I sure wouldn’t bump one of your other review titles for it.

    I would, however, like to take a moment to thank the Kinko’s corporation for paying me $3.35 an hour to play it almost nonstop for over a year as overnight guy back in school.

  3. psu says:

    Spaceward Ho! is right there in the second paragraph…

  4. Looking forward to this series. And I agree with Chris – this subgenre is more long-lived than popular. ;)

  5. Toby Hede says:

    It is indeed a very long-lived genre.

    I loved GalCiv 2, because it managed to make some of the complexity easy through awesome interface design.

    I did only play a few games all the way through, the games are very drawn out …

  6. peterb says:

    I think “popular” is a perfectly fine description. They’re not the most popular, of course — we’re not talking first person shooters, here — but compared to, say, the traditional adventure game, they do quite well. As near as I can tell an entire company, Stardock, has succeeded and grown based on the sales of their 4X game. That qualifies as popular to me.

  7. fluffy bunny says:

    There are quite a few companies that thrive in the adventure genre as well, though. Telltale Games, Kheops Studio, et.c. They make nothing buth adventures and seem to survive quite well. Stardock makes/made a lot of money on developing utilities as well.

    Though I wouldn’t really disagree that the sub-genre is popular. I doubt it is as popular as traditional adventures, though (if you consider the worldwide market). ;)

  8. [...] This is the fourth in a series of articles about 4X space games. Read the introduction here and the previous article here. [...]

  9. Philip Chalmers says:

    Many thanks for this series of articles. I’ve cited a couple of them while adding material to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4X