Mystica Fantasy Board

In StarDrive, however, the emphasis is mainly on combat.
Diplomacy is about having enough ships for the enemy to think they can't conquer you quickly and easily: mrgreen:

For me, the unmatched 4x pattern is Master of Orion 3.

Damn, for me, however, the three was overcomplicated in relation to the two, because so what if you could look into panties for every citizen or choose a weekly menu for any kindergarten in your empire, since everything was delegated to governors anyway: badgrin:. A two is the perfect balance of simplicity, elegance and ear smoke // orc.

And it happened. Alpha Centauri installed, and a week of life off the head.

You can hide in your holes, godless commies, but the anger of the Lord will fall on you anyway like a flap on Rafa� Blechacz's fingers // pisowcy

Human Hive till death.

Endless Space: Disharmony
The game looks like a 4X fan's wet dream. Ideal.

Unfortunately, this impression wears off quickly. Every positive aspect of the game shows the other side of the coin after a while, which nullifies the advantages. From even the title infinite space - at the beginning the game seems huge, after all, we have a whole galaxy to penetrate. However, it quickly turns out that the galaxy (several different looks, but boiling down to the same) consists of only a few dozen star systems for several planets, so in fact we are still fighting under the same conditions and the game comes down to a race who will take care of the largest possible area at the beginning.
For infinite space, that's a bit too little.

Another great idea - moving - is killed by a mechanic. Well, as a standard, between the systems we can move on "threads" connecting the selected systems. These are highways that only allow you to travel one way or the other. There are also wormholes that allow (after obtaining the appropriate technology) to immediately jump to the other side (at the cost of all movement points), and then to exit from any wormholes we control. A third way to travel, achievable with highly advanced technology (space-time bending and such), is through space. This allows you to use excellent maneuvers, such as rapid concentration of troops or a sudden landing far into the enemy's territory, bypassing key defense points. However, it is a dog for a kennel, as the combat mechanics allows one attack of a given fleet per turn. It doesn't matter that we have 12 movement points, we can only attack once. So threads from lightning raids and enemy flanks, the only profitable solution is to create the maximum available fleet (command points are the limit - e.g. 20, which means that we can have 20 small ships or 5 large ones) and slowly break through fleets and systems (to be won which we need another fleet, this time focused on the siege).

The original idea for battles also fails. The fight is divided into three phases: long, medium and close range, in each phase we have the option of choosing a card-strategy operating on the principle of rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock (offensive, defensive, tactic, sabotage, engineering) and we have the necessary types weapons (ballistic, lasers, missiles), each one who can do the best at a certain distance. There are also defense systems against each of them.
At the beginning, it works great, forcing you to combine and adapt to new opponents (because the opponent constantly adapts to us), and the key is the appropriate specialization. However, it quickly boils down to a massive long-range attack, because the enemy likes to retreat. So it escapes from the battle and it is unblockable, even if we had ships several times faster.
And it is impossible not to compare the three types of weapons with over twenty from Space Empire (in general, in this comparison, the ES gets pretty bad on the butt, although the SE has a lot behind the ears).

Diplomacy, as is standard in such games, lies.

The only thing that defends itself to the very end is the technology advancement tree. It is divided into four parts and is beautifully balanced - in order for an empire to function properly, each field must be developed because they complement each other. Colonization technologies allow (surprise!) To colonize other planets, terraforming will allow you to neutralize negative phenomena or completely change the type of planet (if you want to specialize a system in the production of a given resource). Services and luxuries improve the mood (rapid expansion is not always satisfying, and no one enjoys living in a habitat in the atmosphere of a gas giant). However, all this would be unprofitable if we did not invest in technologies that improve mining or discover new resources that we can trade or create monopolies.
In order to be able to communicate with other races at all (not to mention systems), we must have developed appropriate basics in linguistics.

Overall, the game promises a lot, but ultimately doesn't stand out above the ranks of the other (unfortunately) average games in the genre.

So Master of Orion II remains the best 4x in space, and Alpha Centauri is still the best 4x in general? // spell

Go sledging, the best 4x is Master of Orion III

If you say such things, this year Ordo Hereticus will come to you instead of Logan --_-

Ha, the Dragonfall team was more for me, but de gustibus. //thinks