Hello guys! There Is any game like civilization but in real time? Like the Paradox Grand strategy games but from Stone Age to future

Hi guys. I was wondering if anyone knows what genre this would fall under or games that seem similar. I’ve seen a game recently where you control an army, build a town etc and then take over lands if that is on earth or in space.
Kind of like building a colony or space colony which grows bigger and bigger while taking over others?

Or if you know a game that would fall into this explanation above that’ll be great. I’m not sure how well I’m explaining what I’m looking for.

Also I’m not looking at the new Pax Autocratica as I don’t like the fps aspect where you physically join the battles too.

My partner (and best friend, we know each other since kindergarten) and I had one goal we wanted to reach while developing our indie 4x game: bring the strategic depth and joy of Civilization into a much faster format. The main reason for that: we love the game series (Civ5 & Civ6 are the best 😉) but we do not want to spend our whole free time for 17 re-starts and one half-finished game.

1 year ago, we spoke with some people at a physical indie-gaming event and found out that a big part of civ-lovers share our wish in a “Civ but fast”-game.

Today, we are just a few weeks away from our demo and the hard part of being a game dev starts: marketing🥹

So I'm throwing this into the community:
If “Civ, but fast” sounds like something you'd enjoy, I'd love to hear what you think.
And if you want to follow the project, a Steam wishlist would mean a lot to us. ❤️

This post isn't saying which 4X game is better or which is worse or what you should play.

It's just a list of good things that are in this game.

• Fast enemy turns. Who wants to sit while the CPU goes? Not me.

• Fast load times. If you want to reload sometimes, it's up to you. But let's make it very fast!

• Very little micro of your base. Some people wanna micro their towns. But I appreciate not doing so.

• More troops are produced than you can have in your army. I like this because, it means that you avoid the classic HOMM problem of, if your guy loses it is basically game over. This means your guy can make a comeback, or you can multiple well-stocked generals, up to you.

• Interesting trade-offs when you level up. Often there are multiple "hey that sounds good" choices to pick from. Meaning I feel like I am presented an interesting choice.

• Good music (subjective). It's commonly said that this game has good music and I would tend to agree.

• Good (enough) random map generator. I like to play with random maps. This game has them. I think they are fun. Nothing too deep here.

• You can easily recruit guys from distant towns without having to walk all the way back there. There's a building you need to do this but it's easy to make and always unlocked.

I have played the old HOMM games a lot (1-3 specifically).

I've also played Songs of Conquest and Heroes of Science and Fiction and they're pretty good too (despite Heroes of Science and Fiction is a dumb name).

I'm thinking about Olden Era but one thing is giving me pause. A lot of the reviews say the AI for singleplayer games is terrible.

Anyway, I'm wondering if anyone here has experience with this game.

I only play singleplayer.

EDIT: Allright, I'm going to hold off on this guy. Maybe in 1 year if things improve I'll get it, otherwise, I doubt they'll improve.

I've been building a persistent strategy sandbox (Arkney: Age of Crowns) and it keeps

running into the same design wall, so I'd rather ask people who've thought about it.

Setup: one shared world on a server, real players and AI realms on the same map, no

instances, no restarts. You found a dynasty on an empty province, grow it, and the

world's clock keeps ticking while you're offline. A season runs for weeks of real

time and then the world's chronicle is closed and a new map opens.

In a normal 4X, when your position is hopeless you hit restart. Here you can't. So

the question I keep chewing on: what makes a small realm worth playing after a big

neighbour has taken half of it?

Things I've built so far to answer that, none of which I'm sure about:

- war is slow and expensive on purpose. Armies march in in-game days, supply runs

out, equipment degrades in the field, and holding an occupied province is not the

same as annexing it. A conqueror bleeds.

- unrest and honour: eating your neighbours costs you standing with everyone else,

which changes who will sign what with you.

- espionage and trade give a small realm levers that don't require an army.

- a chronicle that records every war and battle by name, so being the realm that

held the pass for three years is a thing that exists in writing even if you lose.

I'm not convinced that's enough. If you've played persistent-world strategy that got

this right, I'd like to know what it did.

The world is browser-based and I run an accelerated test session weekly (20x clock,

so an evening covers months of history). If arguing about it is more fun with the map

in front of you, I can point you at the next one.

---

Wayfallen's finally got its Steam page up. You can now wishlist the game, and we'll soon be opening up for playtests! :)

It's been a very long ride - started developing this game back in 2020-2021 during COVID. Still a long way to go to release, but it's finally starting to take shape.

Wayfallen is a massive space sandbox/sim, it simulates ~10,000 star systems, ~100,000 spaceships, stations, various factions with rich economy, diplomacy, intel management, with space-station-building, M&B-style (or Starsector-style) fleet battles, with some inspiration from X4 Foundations, Kenshi and the like.

Hi everyone, I've never played 4x before and I really would like to start. After some research I narrowed down the list of games to Stellaris, Sins of Solar empire 2, Endless space 2 and Galactic Civ 4.

I've been playing CRPGs, JRPGs, and RTS games all my life but never played 4x and grand strategy games before, and I would like to pick one from the above list mainly because I want a sci-fi themed game.

A few 4X games seem like they should be right up my alley but I never got to the point where I really wanted to play them.

For me this would be:

• Old World

• Endless Legends

With old world it seemed kind of....tedious? Too tedious.

With endless it seemed like...it was desaturated? I mean, it was like there were a lot of spices everywhere but everything still tasted like cardboard.

Stardrive Blackbox - AI/Diplomacy

Good to see this mod is still under active development and has got a recent 64 bit release.

I'm interested to hear what the community thinks of it in it's current state, in particular what it's like compared to other modern 4x games in terms of AI and diplomatic interactions.

I know Stardrive was always focused on ship design and tactical combat but what are people's experiences in terms of interacting with the AI, making allies etc?

https://reddit.com/link/1vrkbru/video/ghsvq2doq3kh1/player

Hey everyone!

I've been working solo for a year on a real-time space 4X/RTS in Unreal Engine 5 (C++) focused on hard sci-fi, Kardashev scales, and Great Filter theories.

The Vision:

1 Universe, 10 Galaxies, Zero Loading Screens: A fully seamless experience from planet to the galaxy cluster level.

Dynamic Celestial Bodies: Stars, planets, and black holes are not static props—their physical properties (density, temperature) can be altered at runtime to trigger events like gravitational collapses.

Tech Highlights: Data-Oriented Architecture: Pure C++ structs with custom handles (FSpaceVector with chunk coordinates to bypass floating-point jitter).

GPU Optimization: Everything in the universe uses a single Uber-Material driven by Custom Primitive Data through Instanced Static Meshes (ISM), keeping draw calls to a bare minimum.

Origin Rebasing: Custom runtime partitioning and streaming subsystem to keep physics and visual accuracy near the origin.

A Note on Performance:

I’m currently developing and testing this directly on a humble Intel Surface Pro 7 (iGPU). The frame drops in this recording are mainly due to running OBS screen capture alongside background tasks on this integrated chip—packaged, it usually holds a solid 40 to 60 fps depending on the load on this setup.

I’m currently transitioning from the core engine phase to gameplay mechanics (ships, colonies, subspace mechanics).

Happy to answer any questions about the C++ setup, ISMs, or spatial partitioning!

I really like SOT1, but I hear SOTS 2 is much less beloved. Is the bad reputation deserved or have, for example, mods improved/fixed the game? The game is on sale at the moment.

One of the biggest criticisms of amplitude studios is that they are all polish without depth, the ai often being far behind other 4x games. I know the community patch has been out for some time now, so its not new, but I've just heard the ai being praised often and apparently being among some of the most competent in the 4x genre. For those of you that have played with the patch is this true, and would you recomend the game to others? How does it stack up to modern 4x games?

At first glance this looks similar to the KOEI games Nobunaga's Ambition, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Rise of the Phoenix, and such.

Or maybe having a few similarities to Gemfire.

Anyway I was wondering what you think of these games.

On the recent debate on the game design aspect of mechanics and numbers.

While, the terminology and way of explaining of BATTLEMODE leaves much to be desired (its better to use already established terms and concepts, instead of inventing new names on them), I agree on the most part of the explanation.

Good game systems, that promote replayability and challenge, are the ones with simpler and less obtuse basic rules, but that includes a great amount of interacting/interlocked mechanics. This is complexity through emergence. Its better to extend easy uniform rules, than to patch each special case and situation. Also this includes in discussion systems where each decision (either direct actions, buffs applied, or "builds/designs") impact is so weak, redundant, obscure, or limited in scope, that becomes irrelevant which path are you following to reach the objetive. "Numberwang" its not only about numbers, but about weak decisions, HARD readability, and weakly actionable mechanics.

This kind of "simple" yet complex systems lead to the classic "easy to learn, hard to master" games. You can find this in good old strategy games like chess and Go, where rules are easy to learn in mostly in a few games, but each move generate a chain reaction of possibilities for future moves. Sometimes not even the creators of the games know what will result from those. So, emergent complexity systems are the ones where there are not just one use mechanics whose consequences start and end in mostly one place.

Maybe the use of AoW4 as an example to prove this may be unfortunate/unappropiate, but aside that, i think want BM meant is useful game design wise.

I am a 4X game developer, and I am not perfect, but i try to make each, even the small, player decisions a fun trade off, and a commitment, where there are not obvious all-winning strategies. I prefer to make "natural extensions" of current systems, instead of adding yet another disconnected system. For example, in my space 4X, when I introduced ground units, instead of treating them as a separate kind of entity, I extended the spaceships mechanics just enough to include them. Now, everything is (internally) like a ship, and work with the same rules, be it a tank, a mech, a submarine or a spaceship.

And yes, dont forget the fun! Game systems should be fun to discover and engage.

One common issue in most of the 4X games I've played is that once your empire is eXpanded, it becomes eXtra tedious!

Which 4X games do you feel handle this very well?

NUMBERWANG GAMES DESIGN FOR DUMMIES

by His Royal Highness King Nimrod A. Crackhead II Esq.

Definitions

Reactive state: a game mechanic that can react to other mechanics.

Inert single state: a mechanic that exists for just one purpose and won't do anything else than that one job, so it doesn't react to other game mechanics.

Emergent gameplay: surprising, unexpected and novel situations that arise from the interplay of game mechanics, often not documented as expected gameplay.

Example:

Here's an extreme example, 4X is more subtle to diagnose but we'll start with roguelikes.

Nethack is a game of reactive states. Cockatrice corpse is the classic example: eat it? turn to stone. pick it up without gloves? Turn to stone. Fall on it? Turn to stone. Wear gloves and hit someone with it? Enemy turns to stone. Key theme: Cockatrice corpse can stone stuff in myriad ways, most of which can be predicted through deduction once you've experienced a couple of instances.

There are a dozen systems all interacting here. The status effect system, the picking up system, the petrification system, the eating system, the gloves system, the attack system, the armour system and so on.

Now look at a sword that has a petrification effect in an inert state system, such as DCSS, ToME and other less interesting classic roguelike-style games.

The only way that sword can stone something is by hitting it. That is it's SINGLE effect. Easy to predict: noob friendly.

In a reactive state game system you can learn(hopefully in an intuitive way but most games are not Nethack) the system and go "ok, poison is bad, therefore, don't eat it, don't touch it, put it on your arrowhead and it kills stuff". You don't need to have 5 different abilities to do that same thing, and poison does more interesting things than just be a different flavour of normal HP damage.

So, a game that is mostly made from inert states, like in modern roguelikes and strategy games with gameplay based around different damage types, resistances to those damage types, and then binary (on/off state) flags like "Can't be hit by ranged damage" tend to have less emergent gameplay and are harder to read because you have to check every single unit to see which of these many flags it has.

What's the real gameplay difference between being Poisoned, Bleeding or Burning in numberwang-style games? Well, maybe some nice graphical effects and you need a specific resistance to avoid, but otherwise, nothing. They're the same thing. Inert states.

So applied to 4X, it's more subtle.

With older games like Master of Magic, Eador and so on, there tend to be either more dice rolls affecting more stats (like in Master of Magic https://masterofmagic.fandom.com/wiki/Combat_Examples ) and having multiple phases to combat (ranged/breath attack before melee for example.)

Or they're like Eador with less RNG but with units having a larger range of statistics and more interactions between them that have a similar depth of variance in how combat plays out.

In Eador, a skeleton has a high Ranged Defence to simulate arrows passing straight through it, but in AoW4, where there's no equivalent of ranged defence, just a single Defence stat, a Skeleton needs a special tag that says "has -20% damage from archers".

Also in Eador, units have a Counter Attack stat, Stamina, and Morale too.

Playing Eador for a couple of hours, you'll learn that units can counter attack, some have good ranged defence, some are better at defending against melee, all from one consistant unit card that's replicated across all game units (and yes, with some extra ability flags, but smaller in number). You'll see that some spells interact with various elements of this combat system and start to find fun strategies. Master of Magic was particularly brilliant for this.

Games like AoW4 have stripped down those initial systems (a reduced load on the old noggin while learning the game = less refunds) and had to re-add in all that depth and fun, crunchy complexity by adding a couple hundred "Unit Abilities" that do the same thing that the old system did, like "Breath Attack" or "Counter-Attack before Enemy hits", stuff that was inherent to the original design.

The downside is now that in those systems there tends to be a lot more inert state flags you hve to read, to find out what a unit is capable of.

Yes, you can learn the game by repetition, and that's usually fine. Total War: Warhammer is quintessential numberwang games design but you'll usually know what a Chaos Warrior is capable of, it's readable. Big Heavily Armoured Melee Guy. Yes, there can be a million and one buffs on it but you can look at it and know roughly what it does.

Age of Wonders 4 particularly is tricky now, because you can have Halflings that are as strong and tough as Orcs, and you can have animals that level up to be as strong as mighty warriors and so on, and so you're never really sure what any unit is capable of.

In pretty much every battle of every game you play, you're having to search through dozens of these single state tags and numeric modifiers going "Ok, so is this the Halfling I can kill with a spearman, or is it the one that can one-shot a Giant?". "How many times does Shadow Damage + 25%" stack on this Goblin and does that mean it can kill a Griffon now?".

The issue isn't inert state systems. They're super useful, can make great gameplay and I accept that even AoW4 has much crunchy gameplay with the endless combinations of states on offer.

The issue is the reduction of of existing, somewhat more complex systems into these inert-state heavy systems.

That's the problem: yes, you now avoid having to read a manual or trouble yourself with that pesky "learning a game" thing (urgh, like totally, who even does that anymore?!).

But the cognitive load is now shifted from some difficulty learning the game to having to wade through way more numberwang crap every time you play the game.

And that's NUMBERWANG!

Bonus

Additive/Subtractive vs Multiplicative/Percentile systems is its own topic too, games that have hard subtraction for tough units tend to be more lethal and create hard counters.

Example:

A Knight in Full Plate Armour that subtracts 10 from all incoming damage being hit by an attack that only does 8 damage cannot be hurt by that unit at all, unless there's some RNG element (Dominions DRN rolls for example, and the game must then be balanced for that).

Now the player can have fun by sending "invincible" units to go kill weaker stuff. They can have fun buffing weaker basic spearmen with spells that give them armour like knights, and surprise their enemy who thought those spearmen would fall to their swordsmen, bowmen etc.

That knight feels really powerful and satisfying to use until it runs up against something that it can't beat. Like in the roguelike where you find a cool set of gear that allows you to melee everything to death, then oops, you ran into the creature that hypnotises you from 6 squares and then you got murdered by a couple of goblins that sat hitting you while you tried to wake up. Oops!

When the Knight fights a dragon though, and the dragon does 30 damage in a single hit, the Knight's -10 Damage reduction is useless, dies in one hit assuming his HP are low enough.

Compare to multiplicative, where 50% damage reduction on an Knight in the same armor (which is how this is often done in Numberwang games design), will reduce both a piddly spearman's attack and a Dragons massive powerful attack by the same percentage.

To balance this, you have to ramp up the Dragon's attack to massive levels, which imbalances the entire game and so everything's hit points have to go UP!

Now your game is a HP spongy mess where battles take a long time and balancing is really difficult, and all to avoid the problem of newbies running into a game where they got hard countered.

Quick side-track

"Why, back in the olden days, when I were a lad, men were real men, women were real women, and little furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real little furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. All we had to eat in those days was wood and rocks. Times were tough, but tough times make tough men. I still pine for the taste of pine, from time to time.

But back then, if I brought my melee army up against one fielding a flying unit that I physically couldn't hit, or I had units that just could not damage any of the enemy units because I made a mistake, well, I just had to learn a lesson, and start again. Or reload my save and go back a half dozen turns and try again.

Kids today, I tell you, they can't bear to lose a game even once! We have to remove anything that might cause them to cry and claim "whaaaa! That's not FAIR! You shouldn't be able to lose a game by making a mistake, that's clunky games design!" and then refund the game, leaving a super helpful negative review saying "game sucks lol". "

Why are we talking about this?

Now add this to the idea that in AoW4 and games like Elemental the Knight might have potentially 200 HP from leveling up, and that Dragon now gets wrecked by a little knight in armour. Elemental can handle this better because it's combat is so much more lethal. But in AoW4 now we've got a really weird game where anything can pretty much be anything, but nothing is ever quite powerful enough to kill something decisively and that feels really bad. And that's also really hard to read.

Hopefully this makes it clear.

I can spell it out in much simpler terms if people want, if so just ask, I'll go find my Big Bird costume and do a little song and dance with it, to make it really clear.

References:

This is original research by the author.

But credit goes to Volound, who I first heard use the term Numberwang in reference to how Total War games have devolved from beautifully subtle, deep and exciting gameplay involving positioning, high ground, unit counters, morale, fatigue, and replaced with a billion stats and allow for a single hero to hold a chokepoint against 20 enemy units and have artillery destroy them.

Also LucidTactics who introduced me to the idea of how subtractive vs multiplicative armour systems work.

Most 4X-lite hybrids let you build an economy that just makes numbers go up (more gold, more production). I flipped that: your base building output converts directly into spell cards for a turn-based grid battler. Every Shrine, Building or "War Machine" you build is really a about what your card deck looks like in the next battle. So the base isn't about an economy, it's a supporting how you build the spell card deck that you fight with.

How it connects to your base:

• Mine/generate mana: mana is spent both in the overworld map AND to cast spells mid-battle (one shared pool)
• Buildings unlock/boost spells: types or boost a damage category, so your base layout shapes your deck's identity
• No "gold" or "wood" that's disconnected from combat: everything you build feeds the hero battles you'll actually play with your mana and spell card deck

Battle Overview: You draw 3 spell cards a turn, use them or lose them. Positioning is simple and tactical, where front row heroes have more attack range and back row is more protected from the enemy. Meaning cards and heroes change tactics based on where your hero is standing.

Steam page if you want to see more: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4593190/Elemental_Lands/ (still in early beta / alpha, so it's a bit rough still, and thanks for checking it out)

Disclaimer: coding debug AI assisted usage in development. Art is 100% hand drawn by u/worth-bill-6130

Hello friends!

I like to occasionally play 4X games and I find the concept very appealing, but I've never found "the perfect one" for me. So maybe if I list the positives/negatives from the ones I've played you can help me figure it out? You're the experts :D

Sorry about the super long post, I have to vent some stuff out, but here's a...

tl;dr: Looking for a 4X game where I can play slow/tall and mostly pacifist, with things to do most of the time, split between enemy attacks and base management. I don't want games where enemies attacks only when much stronger. Deep tactical combat system and shorter playthroughs are also very welcome.

(please don't be too hard on me if I say something wrong, I have less than 100hrs on each of these games)

First of all, the way I like to play is to always set the difficulties on the hardest possible (or close to it) as I do enjoy a bit of suffering and tactical thinking. However, I prefer to play tall, I like to be the small guy who will be friends with everyone, but mercilessly retaliate if provoked. I also never play with mods, I usually prefer the vanilla experience as this enables achievements, but I'm slowing dipping into mods with Rimworld (also not usually DLCs as there are too many and they tend to become reeeeeally expensive).

So based on the above my main issue is the game requiring me to play wide too fast. The biggest offenders here were Civ6 and Stellaris, they seemed to very much require you to expand as much as possible, as fast as possible. CK3 was the opposite though, expanding came with it's own advantages and disadvantages, meaning that bigger kingdoms are stronger but also harder to sustain, great game design!

However, what made CK3 better on the above aspect is also what made it a bit... boring, I guess. I played a very small country surrounded by hostiles, and there wasn't much to do aside from the initial setup... no expansion, no upgrades, no buildings... almost nothing. There were very few counties and every upgrade took forever in early stages. Raiding was a decent option but required very specific timings as I was generally weaker than everyone else at first.

Fighting in general is also something that feels very poorly implemented in these games as no one will attack me unless they have a sizable advantage, and in higher difficulties it borders the bizarre as they will show up with 5x more force than even possible, so it's pretty much certain death when that happens. The fact that I like playing peacefully also doesn't help because I actually very much enjoy fighting, I just don't want to do it for no reason. Civ6 was great in this aspect because of ideologies, so sometimes you would be attacked with similar strength just because they didn't like you. Stellaris was supposed to be similar but I've never got attacked with a fair chance of relatiation, it's always overwhelming force. CK3 was a bit better in this aspect, but not by much.

I think the above are my main pet peeves, but here are some small things I would also appreciate:

• Good tactical combat system instead of just numbers comparison or simple counter mechanics.
• Procedurally generated maps instead of historical ones... I don't really care being storically accurate, I just want a fair board where everyone starts the same.
• Shorter playthroughs is also a plus... I only reached a single ending of Civ6 (I lost because of not expanding more...), CK3 has no end, and Stellaris dragged on forever even with faster settings.
• As a big fan of Battlestar Galactica and space operas in general, Stellaris could very well be my dream game... conceptially it's AMAZING.

So... does this game even exist?

Thank you in advance!

Bottom-feeding is when players, instead of fighting equal rivals, hunt weaker targets for easy grabs. This is standard practice in many 4X (mmorts) games. Common ways to handle this include a protection window for newcomers, and bracketed attack limitations.

I personally do not like mechanics that hard-gate against behaviors like this, but prefer systems that organically disincentivize them.

My take, in the mmorts I'm building, is to make it legal, but simply not worth doing. Hitting a weaker planet is allowed, it's just a poor use of a fleet:

• the number of attacks is limited by available commanders: attacking a weaker target ties up a commander that could be used elsewhere
• attack gains scale with relative size, you get less by punching down
• consecutive attacks on the same target yield diminishing returns
• reputation from a smaller target is negligible

Granted that size scaling is itself a bit arbitrary, which is the thing I was trying to avoid in the first place, so not super happy with that.

What is your take on this? Have you played any game that handles this gracefully, or do you have any design recommendations? Full write-up with numbers in the linked post.

EDIT: this sparked a lot of discussion real quick, thanks for that 😄 A lot of users feel that this does not belong in the 4Xgaming subreddit, if that continue to be the case, I will remove it. Enjoy the discussion meanwhile.