I've played Hegemonia. And yeah, it was far superior to Sins of a Solar Empire simply because the game moved at a comparatively hectic pace. Which is really sad, considering how well Stardock made Galalctic Civilisations I and II. You'd've hoped that Stardock learned from the mistakes of other games and the successes of others, but no, apparently not. It seems that someone should mail them a copy of Homeworld and say "More like this." Oh, but wait, they did learn from Warcraft III how to make Heroes work in RTS games. They stole that aspect completely, minus the items they could hold in Warcraft. Alas, they copied from the wrong game.Unknower post=9.70145.682512 said:
Well, it's called 4X because of exactly what Eldritch Warlord said. I'll refer you to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4X, because they explain it fairly consisely. And, just to cap it off for the lazy people who don't want to go to Wiki, I'll quote GameSpy [http://goty.gamespy.com/2006/pc/index6.html] for you.Asehujiko post=9.70145.682675 said:
They tend to be turn based (but not always), tend to take many many hours to play a single game, and tend to have deep customisation of your territories. So you'd usually start off with one territory, a homeworld, a capital city, whatever, and go from there.GameSpy said:
eXplore
You'd have to explore the surrounding, possibly fending off neutral hostiles who'll try to crush you early. It's all fog of war at the start, so knowing where you are is very important. How else can you know where to strategically place your next city, or your finest legion?
eXpand
Once you've got the lay of the land (or a stellar map), you'll have to set up some new cities or colonise some new worlds. This usually requires moving a relatively expensive and fragile unit to where you want your new base, having it set up, and then defend it from the neutral hostile AI. These guys are often things like wolves and bears or barbarians and pirates. Or their Sci-Fi equivalents. Sometimes they even have their own cities, and sometimes they can capture yours. So it's not just about expansion, but holding what you take.
eXploit
Once you've expanded your empire/business/kingdom/whatever, you need to exploit the natural resources and upgrade your territory to provide whatever it is your going for (which is usually happiness for your people, or money, or both). This upgrading stage is often allowed due to the huge number of territorial improvements you can place, and the large number of city/world upgrades available to the player.
Also included in this stage (though also in every other) are the often vast research trees incorporated into the game. If you think the tech tree in an RTS is complex, forget it. There are usually 4 or more paths to research down, and they don't always cross over to help you upgrade quicker. You could focus on economics, diplomacy, offense, defense, speed, or a whole host of other things. But once you've raced ahead of your opponents in technology, your victory is assured.
eXterminate
The final stage is the simplest to explain. You attain, using your highly developed/efficent/powerful empire, one of the victory conditions. Usually stuff like "Exterminate all enemies", or "Win the election to lead the world/galaxy", or "Research down the Tech Victory tree", or "Have influence over X% of the world/galaxy". Stuff like that. You win the game by getting one of those.
That's what a 4X game is. Perhaps you can see why people don't go for them now? They're big, frequently unwieldy, and require lots of thought. Most people don't want that from a game.
