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Hi guys, I was wondering if there are any space conquest games currently out there worth a damn to play. I'm not looking for the next Master of Orion because I'm sure its not out there. I played the hell out of the GalCiv II games and loved them but now the bug has bitten me to play one of these and I want to try something new. I don't mind if it's old or obscure just as long as it's entertaining. Cheap would also be helpful as my budget is not set to pick up a full priced game based on a weekend boredom's urge. I was on Steam perusing and saw a game called Star Ruler that seemed interesting (and cheap) let me know if that would be good enough to cure my craving. Thanks.

You might like to give "Sins of a Solar Empire" a shot. It's a real time (but very slow paced) 4x rts in space game.
Quite pretty, and there's an Excellent SW mod (SW:Requiem) for it.
It's kinda boring to my tastes though.

The Grim Squeaker wrote:You might like to give "Sins of a Solar Empire" a shot. It's a real time (but very slow paced) 4x rts in space game.
Quite pretty, and there's an Excellent SW mod (SW:Requiem) for it.
It's kinda boring to my tastes though.

It's not only boring, but unbalanced, tedious and generally irritating. Stay away from it. At least from vanilla, I haven't played any of the mods though.

This thread seems so very familiar...especially the comments about SINS

As for space conquest games, Space Empires V seemed a lauch last time I gave it a whirl on my mates laptop.

Star Ruler is sadly still a bit broken. It was a good idea, but never really 'got there'... although on smaller star counts it can be fun regardless (and I guess it's only $5 or whatever).

Sins isn't slow paced at all; if you're used to turn based or actual glacial RT games you'll be dead in ten minutes. It's also so amazingly ugly a homemade GFX mod makes it look so much better nobody who has used it can bear to play the game without it. The expansions 'fix' a lot of the problems (like the broken market, the broken pirates, the broken offense/defence balance, etc) but leave in the fact that one side gets a superweapon that destroys enemy planets in two hits from anywhere and the other sides... don't.

SOTS is more traditional tunrbased 4x, but awful UI design at the strategic level makes trivial housekeeping tasks as troublesome as possible. The combat part is interesting, but managing an empire (which for me is the 'meat' of a space empire game) is fiddly, manual and repetitive, so I can't stand it.

Honestly, since you're an 'older gamer', I'd recommend looking at some of the older games; even if they're not very good (like Ascendancy) or very pretty (like Fragile Allegiance) at least they do interesting things and are cheap.

People suggesting someone play an SE game need to take a long hard look at themselves.

Does anyone know when SOTS2 is coming out? Because it might have fixed enough of the original for you to look into it. Of course that isn't out yet anyway so it isn't that helpful.

It's a few months away. The art was never the game's problem, though. The UI looks very similar, and if the build queue screen still doesn't have a 'next planet' or 'previous planet' button it'll still suck, sadly.

From what I know of Kerberos' interaction with modders and the community, it doesn't really surprise me.

Stark wrote: Sins isn't slow paced at all; if you're used to turn based or actual glacial RT games you'll be dead in ten minutes. It's also so amazingly ugly a homemade GFX mod makes it look so much better nobody who has used it can bear to play the game without it. The expansions 'fix' a lot of the problems (like the broken market, the broken pirates, the broken offense/defence balance, etc) but leave in the fact that one side gets a superweapon that destroys enemy planets in two hits from anywhere and the other sides... don't.

I'm curious. Did this GFX actually do things like give the ships animated turrets and not crappy appearances?

Haven't you heard? Animated turrets in Sins is beyond the power of human technology.

It just replaces the effects (explosions, pew pews, etc) and changes some ship datafiles to use more/less of them. This is why in my LP for Sins the Sulaco fired barrages of flak instead of tiny yellow dots and why the phase missiles looked colour-inverted and had implosion effects.

Even with all three expansions, the stock Sins effects are complete dogshit by comparison. Flagg started playing Sins recently, and thought it was ok; when I linked him to the mod and he used it, he couldn't bear to go back. The game is still bland and the combat still static, but at least it's a bit prettier.

The Star Trek mod for Sins makes me wish someone would make a dedicated Star Trek Big Fleet Space War PewPewPew Game, so I'm not playing a mod for a game which hasn't got the best engine.

So, what IS the best game in this genre? I have tried many truely aweful ones while searching for good gameplay and I just can't accept that SINS seems to be the best one.

You can pick up the original Master of Orion and MoO2 on gog.com for chump change if you're of a mind.

Space Empires IV would fit your requirements, but I'm not sure if it's available from anywhere. Not sure if Space Empires V is better or worse than IV, since I've not played either one.

Skgoa wrote:So, what IS the best game in this genre? I have tried many truely aweful ones while searching for good gameplay and I just can't accept that SINS seems to be the best one.

I think it depends what you're after. There are lots of games in the genre, but they all fail at something. I keep Sins around, despite it's flaws, just because the only real competition for it is Empire at War which sucks even worse. GalCiv2 was great for some time, but it's aged very badly. The spreadsheet simulator end of the genre is pretty thick, but all the games there that I've played have been boring as shit and ugly as sin.

If you pick 'action' or 'combat' or 'management' or 'multiplayer' you can narrow it down quite a bit.

I pick the first three of those. I don't care for MP and I can enjoy a game that has it's focus on only some of thos aspects, as long as the game mechanics that are in there ARE fun.
I really enjoyed Hegemonia when I played through it, but it didn't give me the long term motivation to come back that I get from TW an HoI games. Sins is ok, but for a real time game its slow (i.e. boring) and for strategy game its to fast paced (i.e. shallow). A mix of Homeworld and Hearts of Iron would be ideal, I guess. I had the opportunity to try GC2 a while ago, but it kicked my ass and consequently I had no motivation to get into it.

Yeah, HoI players are pretty much united by their need to be validated by playing a broken-ass game and 'prove' themselves by making Swaziland take over the world. GC2 isn't even hard, it just poses different challenges than 'tweak a bunch of sliders'.

The problem with choosing the 'first three' is that the game with the best combat (SOTS) probably has the worst strategy and UI, the game with the best management (depending on taste, for my money GalCiv2) has combat everyone hates and no multi, etc. The market is full of small players, and they all have very specific ideas about what kind of game they want to make, so the set of good features isn't in any one game. For you I'd recommend the ugly, clunky and obtuse SE series, since you like HoI.

The advantage of SEV is, to put it simply, it's the only game I know of where you can, on a late-game whim, systematically take apart the entire universe and rebuild it to your liking. Literally.

Yeah, that 'advantage' offsets all of the game's, lets say, less than well communicated ideas or less than successful presentation.

The SE series ACTAUL advantage for non-fucking morons is that it has a robust system for creating treaties that is far broader and deeper than in any other space conquest game around. If anyone made strategy games by combining successful ideas (rather than based on their pet obsesssions) SE 4 and 5 would be the example of what should be expected in diplomacy (of course, GalCiv2 would be the model for diplomacy actually working).

GalCiv 2's diplomatic AI was just stupendous. It did everything from alliances and trade to Cold Wars to arms treaties and a Space UN.

has anyone played distant worlds? little indie game, came out a couple years ago. its big thing was that it modeled the private sector, completely automatically, with trade ships and passenger liners tooling around. was a pretty interesting idea, i think it got heavily patched because the ai kept on getting dragged into wars due to PRIVATE INTERESTS breaking monopolies and shit.

had a bunch of bugs i think, and was pretty limited in a bunch of ways, but i dont really remember. anyone else?

Edi wrote:Space Empires IV would fit your requirements, but I'm not sure if it's available from anywhere. Not sure if Space Empires V is better or worse than IV, since I've not played either one.

Space Empires IV Deluxe is currently on sale on Steam.

Distant Worlds has some good ideas (and some awful art) but I haven't played enough of it to know how the UI stands up lategame. The high level of optional automation means you can play any individual aspect of the game without worrying about the rest, though, which is pretty awesome, and with everything set to 'suggest', you basically get pressured by the military into starting wars with everyone. The game also has extremely dynamic factions (ie, new factions will constantly form out of inhabited worlds, rebel worlds, recently conquered worlds etc) and in one game a planet that changed hands a few times simply became independent as soon as nobody was looking and started securing its own system, which is neat.

One idea might be AI Wars. It is basically a 4X RTS Tower Defense game.

Here is the youtube video of it (I picked this one fore the music):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr_oSOSTfbA

Have you actually played AI Wars? I don't feel it suits Stravo's requirements, and calling it 'tower defence' or '4X' is very misleading.

yeah, its just a larger scale space rts.

I hope Stravo isn't still looking; at this point I'd probably recommend Distant Worlds, because it's interesting if a bit cheap and nasty... wait... they want HOW MUCH for it?