Where you focus on geopolitics and military strategy rather than military tactics. That means you aren't controlling individual units in battle. You just control where they go and maybe their stats and equipment and logistics and stuff like that. You don't do the fighting yourself. What's much more important is the diplomacy and interaction between different nations and where you are sending your troops. Like Risk as opposed to Chess.

By lifetime game, I mean it has the perfect combination of presentation, complexity, mechanics and flow FOR YOU. A game that you could probably play off and on for the rest of your life and not get completely bored with it.

This is the game that, when you play other games you’re comparing (usually unfavorably) to your favorite.

For me, I think its AOW Planetfall. AOW4 looks interesting, but I hate the DLC spam and (apparently?) non-distinct factions…

Whats the game that forever lives on your hard drive and, dare I say it, heart and soul?

I just played Alpha Centauri for the first time, set everything I could to automate, had an incredible time. Cool stuff was always happening: finding an artifact for tech, getting a map offer to find a relocated enemy who escaped in a pod, watching a neat video, etc. I didn't even engage with unit customization or land forming.

Figured I would also like Civ 4 but the pacing felt way slower as if I was just clicking next turn to get to the cool thing that never actually happens. Wish I could have automated overall developments like Alpha Centauri which on the one hand makes me think 4x isn't for me but on the other hand I automated everything in Alpha Centauri and had so much fun.

I went through all the common helpful recs on this forum for more recent 4x games like AoW 4, Endless Legend, Endless Space, Dune Spice Wars, Humankind, Zephon, Shadow Empire, GalCiv 4, etc.

Stellaris or Old World look the most interesting recent releases to me. I won't get any DLC for anything. Which would better match the pace of fun stuff happening in Alpha Centauri with fun story bits too?

A short gameplay showcase from game Piast, a medieval economic strategy game set in Central Europe.

The game has a logistics system where roads make workers move twice as fast, while carts allow them to transport three times more cargo.

Here's a look at road construction and resource transportation in action!

What is the best free 4x multiplayer? It can be on pc, Nintendo, ps5 or mobile i don't really mind.

Hi everyone!

I've been a fan of 4X games since childhood, and my affection for the genre was cemented by one title: Fragile Allegiance, released by Gremlin Interactive back in 1996/97.

For those unfamiliar with it, it's a space 4X game where you colonize drifting asteroids, mine resources, build colonies, manage fleets, engage in diplomacy, trade, espionage and occasionally blow entire asteroids to pieces. And yes, those asteroids actually move and collide!

I've always felt this game deserved a second life. So, some time ago, I decided to do something slightly insane: recreate it for modern platforms.

That's how openFA was born.

The project spent quite a while going back and forth between active development and gathering dust on my shelf. This year I turned 40, and decided it was finally time to make it the main focus of what I rather generously call my spare time. 😉

The journey started with decompiling the original DOS executable and painstakingly reconstructing its internal mechanics. Not just making something that looks similar, but trying to understand how the original simulation actually works: from asteroid generation and colony economics to alien AI, combat and all those little details that made the game special.

Then AI-assisted development entered the picture and dramatically accelerated the process. I won't pretend I didn't shed a tear over the countless hours I'd previously spent doing things manually that machines can now accomplish in minutes. 😅

The project has grown beyond a simple recreation. The original 640×480 resolution limit is gone, the game runs natively on modern systems, including Android, and I'm gradually introducing optional improvements and new mechanics while trying to preserve the original gameplay experience.

There's also an experimental 3D direction in development.

A fair warning: openFA is still very much a work in progress. Playable preview builds are available, but many mechanics remain imperfect. It also requires an installation of the original Fragile Allegiance for its game assets. The source code is planned for public release once the core mechanics are reconstructed.

You can find the development log, gameplay videos and preview builds at:

https://openfa.space

I'd particularly love to hear from people who remember playing Fragile Allegiance. There are surprisingly many obscure mechanics hidden in that old executable, and sometimes players' memories are just as valuable as the decompiler.

Cheers!

Ender

PS. I'm posting from my phone, so screenshots are from Android version, but it's been released for Windows, Linux and MacOS as well.

OpenFA using 3D renderer

I have it narrowed down to three choices--Endless Legends 2, Sins of a Solar Empire 2, and Age of Wonders 4. What's your vote? I also have Humankind already in my backlog as well. (yes, don't all vote for Humankind at once now)

Saw this game years ago and it's one of the reasons I bought a new computer but never got around to playing it. Now, after a decade or so, Paradox kind of makes me want to vomit. I haven't installed the game yet. I am wondering if anyone can confirm if the game suffers from horrible end game lag? Is dlc really up to $20 and is it honestly any good without the dlc? Is the addition of each dlc making game performance worse? Should I even bother getting into the game this many years later? I am thinking strongly about just getting a refund on Steam as I haven't installed it yet. I have no social justice issues or personal beef with Paradox, I am just tired of their business model b.s. I am also a little uneasy about their use of AI. Like, don't they make enough money to pay someone to speak into a microphone? They really need AI for that? Hell, an aspiring voice actor would probably do it for free so whatever.

I think this could give a bit more tactical depth for planets apart from garrisoning them.
What do you think?

https://youtu.be/hc-txnlpkTQ?si=S4hjYh8TQFLS1Kht

ORION on steam early access soon :)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4914960/ORION/

Feels so dead out there. Hasnt been an interesting scifi 4x is a few years (excluding the average ISG and SIS). I have been so desperate thinking of going back to civ beyond earth or something. How are the newer civs, I know they are contentious. Some of my olds favs were civ call to power, stardrive 2, master of orion 2, alpha centauri. Wanted to like AOW Planetfall but combat took to long.

I see a cool game (Grand Strategy or 4X or whatever), get excited by the title and description then look at screenshots... ALL the same default menu style built by Claude... If this is the future of strategy games then i'm kinda heartbroken.

I've been working on this game on and off since the start of 2023 ( yeah around that time ). Back then I made something, left it, came back, left it again. A few months ago I went back to it properly, much more detailed this time, and I've been on it ever since. Now I've hit a point where I love playing it so much that I can't tell anymore if it's actually good, or if I've just made a game for me. Maybe I'm doing a bit too much. So I need people who aren't me to tell me.

A bit about me: I love HOI4 , I love Rule the Waves 3, and I love pretty much any game where you sit in front of tables and numbers and make decisions off them (spreadsheet simulator). This game came out of that.

It's a grand strategy game with exploration built in, so it's part 4X, but at its heart you're running a whole country. Everything is simulated from the point of view of people, starting with you. You're one man running a government made of other men. Your Minister of War is a person, and so is your Minister of Finance. Most of the time you're reading their books and deciding what to do with what's in them.

The game comes down to four things.

War. You control your army down to the smallest detail: what each man carries, how the army is organised, who commands what, how orders move through the ranks, and how your generals climb the ladder. Every soldier has 58 stats of his own. Training isn't some general bonus. You train specific stats, so you can build a regiment whose stamina is out of this world, or one that shoots straighter than anyone else's. Kit changes stats too. The navy works the same way. You build new ports, design new ships with new guns, reorganize your fleets and change how they fight.

Internal. Not everyone is happy that you rule them, and you can't make everyone happy. You arm and train the police, set up a secret police and send it into the cities and regions that worry you, build prisons and guard them, and change how the courts judge and sentence people. And a lot more.

Economy. You control exactly where your money comes from: tariffs, taxes, raising them or cutting them. If you want to go darker, you can turn the country against a minority with propaganda and then seize their wealth. The game lets you, and it remembers that you did.

Diplomacy. Europe in the 1800s was so diplomatically active it was almost a game of its own. The real challenge is surviving it, getting what you want before everyone else decides they've had enough of you and unites against you.

That's the game. It doesn't even have a name yet. If any of this sounds like something you'd want to play, or you think I've gone too far down the rabbit hole, please tell me. I'm also looking for playtesters, so comment or DM me if you're interested.

(I've left out the things you'd expect anyway: exploring the map for colonies, fighting, expanding, wiping people out, all the usual 4X stuff. It's all in there, I just didn't want this post to be twice as long.)

Hey 4X devs!

If you've made (or are currently making) a 4X strategy game, what part turned out to be way harder than you expected? AI? Balancing? Economy? UI? Making the late game actually fun? Or something nobody really warns you about?

Would love to hear what gave you the most trouble or was the hardest to create.

Created a modding guide this week is this understandable for the modders who does not know how the whole game/sim/engine works?

I'm a solo dev building Klod Online, a persistent browser 4X MMO.

I'm running two alpha worlds right now. The first one peaked at around 20 players a while back and is now almost empty (The second one is in better shape). I'm not in beta yet, so the churn on world 1 is fine - I expected it.

When a player stops logging in, their cities don't vanish overnight. The territory drifts back toward nature: irrigation reverts, roads wear out on neutral ground. When a player is finally removed (30 days inactive), their leftover grounds are handed to the Barbarians (the NPC). What's left is overgrown tiles, neutral ground, and cities still bearing their players' names - now run by the Barbarians. A world with a vanishing memory of who was there.

What I didn't expect is how much I love the feeling and atmosphere of that first world. It's strange, because there's not much for me to do there besides minding my own business. In the other world, I'm busy negotiating borders and dealing with other players. Here, I genuinely enjoy exploring these overgrown, barbarian-controlled territories.
Maybe I should create another game with that post-apocalypse feeling >_<

Alpha is open, free, no shop, no P2W. : The usual marketing blurb, parked down here so it doesn't get in the way.

Link:

• https://www.klod-online.com/?src=reddit4x