What PC sandbox games allow players to create and evil empire or destroy the world?

[DEAD34345]

You seem to be more interested in a different kind of game, but as mentioned earlier the Paradox grand strategy games really do fit your description to a t.

In my last game of Crusader Kings 2 in fact, I built an empire in the eastern steppes, and sacked Rome, Venice and Constantinople... Repeatedly. As for evil, I spent the first 10 or so years of one of my characters' reigns systematically blackmailing and murdering most of my vassals in order to prevent them from being able to organise against me, I assassinated 2 of my own brothers in order to steal their land, and I eventually ended up imprisoning and executing my wife and all 3 of my sons.[footnote]To be fair on that last one though, she tried to kill me first, and one of those "sons" of mine was suspiciously a white Norseman.[/footnote]

That covers sandbox, creating an evil empire, and possibly even destroying the world, doesn't it? You can at least destroy all civilization with your barbarian hordes, at any rate, if you wish.

 

[Therumancer]

I know some games let you run an evil empire, but none that are sandboxes. The closest game I've found to this is Minecraft, as you can raid others on PVP servers, but it's nigh impossible to create an actual empire or destroy much of the world, due to how vast and sparsely populated the world is.

As a general rule there aren't many games that let you be totally evil like that, probably because a lot of people find the idea to be disturbing, and to be honest while I've been called "Evil" a lot and deal with some guilt at times for some of my own thoughts, even I don't believe in malevolence for the sake of malevolence. It's more that I tend to believe in doing a lot of bad things in pursuit of what I see as a greater good, basically in a world that sucks the biggest bastard wins, so you need to make sure that's your own people.

That said the closest I can think of are various 4X games, "Master Of Magic" and the recently released "World Of Magic" (which is more or less a direct sequel/update). These are empire command games, where you have a randomly generated world with X number of enemies you need to defeat. Depending on who and how you play you can be over the top malevolent. For example "World Of Magic" has an undead faction that builds on land that you corrupt, various kinds of magic allow you to enslave populations, sacrifice the people in dark rituals, and other assorted things. If you say decided to look like the lich, commanded the undead, and then proceeded to genocide every other living thing on the planet except for those enslaved for higher production and/or running dark rituals (dead population for extra magic power for you) that's pretty close to killing the world. Heck if you didn't conquer anyone and just razed everything except for what you colonize you could literally wind up with there being nothing alive on the planet and it's connecting dimensions, just you and a whole lot of undead minions.

Some space empire games allow similar things by say giving you the option to be a purely malevolent species in a similar kind of open universe, though lacking undead you can't really make the academic argument for having destroyed everything by ending all life... though I suppose a machine intelligence race comes close.

While not as sandboxy the old "Dark Crusade" Warhammer 40k game allows you to play old school Necrons whose objective is basically "you awakened us on this planet, we want to kill everyone else and go back to sleep until more life arrives for us to annihilate" if I remember.

While not sandboxy at all I suppose a Zerg victory is also kind of grim as their victory usually amounts to the only things being left are Zerg and Zerg poop.

Warlords Battlecry 3 is likewise not a sandbox but has a strategic component (sort of like Dark Crusade) and let's you play to the end as factions like Demons, Undead, or Plague Lords (fond of oozes and stuff) none of which end well for the world.

 

[Scow2]

You're looking for Black and White series, Total War series, and Mount and Blade: Warband. I know they have been mentioned here before, but I thought another vote to these games is warranted.

If you have never played any of the Total War games, I highly suggest you start with Medieval 2: Total War.

Black+White and Total War are not sandbox games.

 

[Y2N1-09631]

Planetary Annihilation looks very good. It's almost exactly what I'm looking for.

How? There is literally no empire building in that at all.

There's not even any humans, everything in the game is a robot.

It isn't a sandbox either, it's an RTS game.

What do you mean no empire building? You can build factories and an army.

I never asked for humans in the game.

Yes, it's unfortunately not much of a sandbox, but you still can have complete control over what and where you build, and you can destroy worlds, which is pretty much good enough for me.

That's not empire building, that's a robot building automated factories to build a robot army.

There's no taxes, or politics, or diplomacy, or settlers, or civilian populations, or happiness to manage.

All there is are 2 to 8 of soulless automaton hell bent on annihilating each other through whatever means necessary. And that means is often through building even more robots to fight the other robots.

Machines dont have feelings. They dont feel pain. All they do is follow orders. You can't exactly be an evil empire if nobody is suffering under your rule, now can you?

Try looking into Europa Universalis 4, Crusader Kings 2, Endless Space and Endless Legend.
Those are real empire building games. And a number of factions in the latter two could definitely be described as evil, especially the Cravers, Necrophages and Cultists.

An empire is a group of peoples ruled over by an emperor. There are diverse robots that are ruled over, and robots are just as much people as AIs that are supposed to be humans in the game.

There are settlers, as you can settle other planets. The resources you get are essentially taxes.

Machine have just as much feeling as any other video game characters. After all, all a human is in a videogame is a robot with a different mesh.

In fact, there being no humans in the game is one of my favorite parts of it.

Tell you what, show me any sign from withing the game itself that these robots are actually thinking feeling people as opposed to the mindless war machines I belive them to be after 30 hours of playtime in the game, and I'll concede that it's an evil empire game.

It's obvious that they think. Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to walk to targets and shoot at enemies. Although as far as I know they don't feel, neither does any character in video games, so it would be a double standard to require ones in Planetary Annihilation to have feelings in order for the game to be an evil empire game while not requiring this for other games.

We have real, actual existing robots today that can do those same things, and nobody says they can actually think.

Of course they dont actually feel. I'm not talking about them actually literally feeling, I'm saying they have to represent things that do, like in Sim City or Age of Empires.

There is no double standard, either. I apply those to every game. Planetary Annihilation, as much as I enjoyed my time with it, does not meet them. I feel that the games I mentioned come a lot closer since they do actually represent real people of various races and species.

I'm pretty sure that one or two of the playable races in Endless Space are actual real sapient robot people in the lore of the game.

Frankly, even if the robots in PA were sapient, I still wouldn't count it as an evil empire game since all the game is about is base building and fighting. There's no actual empire management involved in at all.

If you want an RTS with empire management and the ability to destroy buildings, then Sins of a Solar Empire would be a lot closer, but you'd still be better off looking for a 4X game.

Okay, I think this is really just an issue in terminology. I consider "thinking" to mean, "inferring knowledge," which robots do, and you apparently define thinking as "inferring knowledge with a brain." Similarly, I think our definitions of running an evil empire are different. I essentially define it as "oppressing a large group of video game bots," whereas you seem to define it as something like "oppressing a large group of video game bots that pretend to be sentient." We don't really seem to disagree about anything real. Arguing about definitions seems pretty silly.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

Eador: Masters of the Broken World prehaps ? I love creating huge armies of Orcs, and then when they die I make zombies!

 

[Y2N1-09631]

You seem to be more interested in a different kind of game, but as mentioned earlier the Paradox grand strategy games really do fit your description to a t.

In my last game of Crusader Kings 2 in fact, I built an empire in the eastern steppes, and sacked Rome, Venice and Constantinople... Repeatedly. As for evil, I spent the first 10 or so years of one of my characters' reigns systematically blackmailing and murdering most of my vassals in order to prevent them from being able to organise against me, I assassinated 2 of my own brothers in order to steal their land, and I eventually ended up imprisoning and executing my wife and all 3 of my sons.[footnote]To be fair on that last one though, she tried to kill me first, and one of those "sons" of mine was suspiciously a white Norseman.[/footnote]

That covers sandbox, creating an evil empire, and possibly even destroying the world, doesn't it? You can at least destroy all civilization with your barbarian hordes, at any rate, if you wish.

Thanks for the suggesting. It seems like I still wouldn't be able to exterminate everyone, but otherwise the game sounds pretty good.

 

[Y2N1-09631]

You're looking for Black and White series, Total War series, and Mount and Blade: Warband. I know they have been mentioned here before, but I thought another vote to these games is warranted.

If you have never played any of the Total War games, I highly suggest you start with Medieval 2: Total War.

Black+White and Total War are not sandbox games.

Neither is Planetary Annihilation, but apparently that's exactly what he's looking for.

The distinction between sandbox and not is rather fuzzy. In Planetary Annihilation, you still chose what planets you want to colonize and how exactly you want to build your settlements, which is for the most part sandbox enough for me.

 

[Dietz]

Cities: Skylines will not only let you build your own little kingdom (city, really, but you get the idea), it will also let you raze it to the ground, if you so desire.

 

[Dietz]

Not sure entirely how much of a literal empire you want, but if you play EVE Online you can get the worst people you can find together and create an empire of evil. People are more than willing to be evil and help your cause. They just want turn on you.

No, people don't let other people play Eve. Best way to win at that game is to not subscribe in the first place.

Or go buy a copy of MS Excel, as you will need it eventually. I think mine is going on ten years old at this point.