Star Traders: 4X Empires

"We have Master of Orion at home-" Okay that joke doesn't actually work here as well as the others. While I love the Trese Brothers' games and have gone out of my way to buy all of them to support the team, this one I cannot so easily recommend. While I personally got my money's worth out of it, I can also stomach jank, and boy is this one JANK... Imagine, dear reader, playing a 4X game like Civilization, now, you're playing 3 factions at once and trying to balance their relationships playing all roles of a team game. Weird but doable. Now, imagine that... But you don't get a production queue. There's so much micro and fiddling in this game because of it. Thankfully it's turnbased so you don't have to worry about getting slapped while you take time to take your turn, but it goes from fun to tedious real quick. Thankfully, all their other games are aces, and this is the one "mixed" standout of a very positive lot.

Wieder einmal der Beweis, dass es für ein gutes Game nicht viel braucht. Graphik: Mist Sound: Mist Game: Überragend Es erinnert mich etwas ans Dune-Universum. Man übernimmt die Führungsrolle eines Feudalsystems im Weltraum, jedes Haus übernimmt eine bestimmte Aufgabe im Imperium - und die Kämpfen gegeneinander, wenn man sie lässt. So stellt dieses Game nicht nur ein simples 4X-Game dar, wie zB MoO; Neben dem herkömmlichen 4X-Spiel muss man auch darauf achten, ein Gleichgewicht der Mächte im eigenen Imperium zu wahren. Im späteren Spielverlauf kommen neue Häuser - oder Kasten - hinzu, die man dann auch entsprechend fördern muss, um sie zu etablieren. Ein Game also, das sich nicht so einfach beherrschen lässt. Wird einige Zeit dauern, bis ich mich da richtig eingearbeitet habe. Der Techbaum ist gewaltig, zumal jeder Forschungs-Durchbruch gleich mehrere Techs freischaltet. So beinhaltet jede Forschung zwischen 5 und 10 Techs, wovon man im Normalfall 2-3 erhält, es sei denn, man erhält einen Event, mit dem man die Forschung komplettieren kann - So erhält man auch nicht alle Techs, aber ca doppelt so viel. Handelsrouten zwischen den Häusern müssen erst verhandelt werden, eine Einrichtung einer Handelsroute kostet Geld und Ressourcen, das gelingen ist jedoch nicht garantiert. Clever! Geld und Ressourcen sind aber von Anfang an nicht so das Problem, da hat auch ein Anfänger einiges an Spielraum - man muss es nur im Auge behalten. Die Schiffskonstruktion ist ebenfalls gewaltig. Schon der erste Blick verrät, dass im Laufe des Spiels so ziemlich alles möglich wird - so beginnt die taktische Weltraumschlacht schon von Beginn an bei der Schiffskonstruktion. Die Vorgaben des Spiels sind eher so etwas wie gutgemeinte Vorschläge, die einem den Schnittwert eines Designs demonstriert - man wirft sie ziemlich schnell weg. Aufgetankt und repariert wird im Orbit eines Planeten/Sonne, man muss die Schiffe nur ein paar Runden parken. Ist der Treibstoff alle, hängen die Schiffe nicht einfach nur im Raum herum - wie ich es schon bei manch anderem Game erlebt habe - nach Hause geht immer. Schiffs-Upgrades sind kostenlos, und werden beim neudesign auf wunsch mitgeliefert. Zahllose Möglichkeiten, einfach und unkompliziert - auch hier genau das Gegenteil, was die großen Entwicklungshäuser liefern... Zahlreiche Kampagnen und Karten werden mitgeliefert. Der Witz ist, dass man einer bestimmten Kampagne eine völlig andere Karte zuweisen kann, was die Sache überaus interessant werden lässt. Karteneditor mitgeliefert. Selten hat mich die letzten Jahre ein Game so schnell begeistert.

It's not a bad game, but it has some serious problems. The interface is clunky, the awesome ship designer is knee capped by the fact that you have no idea what any of the numbers mean, the tutorial is one of the worst I've ever seen (it throws a lot of text at you, and if you accidentally misclick then you have to do the entire tutorial again to see what you missed), but the biggest problem is that your planetary populations constantly climb without end. Most faction literally can not build enough housing to keep up with demand, until they finally mutiny and become independent. Every attempt I've made in this game has ended with my slower building colonies entering into a death spiral until they rebeled, because you can't keep up with the crazy population growth. I'd probably give the game a thumbs up if my super advanced sci-fi civilization could figure out how manufacture birth control pills.

A rather deep 4X game based in the 'Star Traders' universe created by the Trese Brothers. Unlike other 4X games I've played, this one has 3 races of peoples trying to colonize planets deep in space, and they HATE each other. Your role is the leader or overseer of them, and politics play a huge role in this game. In addition to trying to build the colonies, research a huge tech tree for economic and weapons tech, build up a defense system and fleets of different ships, you have to worry about the different races spying, going to war, barring trade with each other. All have negative effects on the overall economy. There are several difficulty levels, tons of maps, and 9 different races to choose from. Really good value and replayability from this alone. Ship customizing is quite detailed, allowing you to build about 10 different ship types, and customize engines, shields, crew training and more (once you have researched the tech). Ok, now add to this the ability to add one or more alien races to the game, all with different personalities and tendencies (more aggressive, etc...), and they are trying to kill off all of your planets. Late in the game, you are tinkering with the economy, politics, research, building, moving ships, attacking the enemy, invading their planets, repairing your vessels, and more on EACH TURN. Quite complex and fulfilling. Fortunately, there are several Let's Play vids now available on youtube, and the Trese Brothers forum is active and full of helpful players to learn strategies, ship build designs, etc... While the graphics are 2D and a bit on the simple side, I can whole-heartedly recommend this game. Frequent updates are the norm with Trese Brothers, so UI improvements, new tech tree options, features, balancing, etc... happen on a regular basis.

I REALLY wanted to like this game, but frankly, there are just way too many problems. This is a very simplified, streamlined 4X game. If you are a fan of stuff like the Civilization series or Stellaris, this game has nothing to offer for you. If you theoretically like the concept of a 4X game, but actually playing them feels overwhelming with the amount of things you have to manage, then this could be a nice offering. Cheap, streamlined, simple. However, unfortunately, it is also half baked. The idea is that you have to establish an empire in space, with the help of three selected factions whose relationship you have to manage, as the admiral of the templar order, tasked to safeguard the new empire from xeno attacks. You win a map by eliminating all xeno presence. You can design your own ships, picking up the part from components you researched. In actual practice, the factions have barely any identity, you manage everything like you would in any other 4X games and the faction diplomacy is just random rolls. At the start of every turn, you have a random chance of the relation between two factions changing randomly. How often this happens and whether the change is positive or negative is entirely up to RNG, with nothing you do impacting it (well, aside of difficulty level you pick). On higher difficulties you can lose outright by factions starting a trade war early, before you had time to research the diplomatic method to end that war, which plummets your trade to nothing, which can get you to a deficit, which mean you can't build anything, which means you can get more mines, so you can't ever get out of deficit or build ships, so the xeno overruns you. And again, whether this happens of not is entirely up to random chance. The ship research stuff? Superfluous and pointless. All you get is extra stats. Some of these are outright unusable. For example, "boarding" attacks type cannot be put on any ship that can also use a heavy reactor. Which means the best boarding pod research is pointless, since you cannot put that, and the best boarding crew, with the best boarding assault action type on ANY ship configuration, because the best non-heavy reactor doesn't provide enough power to meet the requirements of this combination. The game also mentions gamma / theta, etc. damage types... but I have no idea what does such damage, if anything at all, since none of that is explained in game. The different weapons have no difference between themselves aside of damage numbers really. Other issue: the "quality" stat on the planet decides how many buildings you can put up. If the planet is attacked and you opt to defend instead of evacuating and you lose that defense, quality is decreased by one, with NO way to regain it ever again. Problem? Even if you have way more defense points than it is required to protect everything, you still have a random chance of losing quality, which PERMANENTLY gimps that planet. Also, defense buildings cannot destroy attacking ship, so in turn, all defense buildings are completely useless and you’ll have to make ships to prevent the xeno reaching your planets. There are multiple xeno types, but there's NO difference between them. All will have the exact same 4 ships: close range attack ship, missile ship, antiplanetary attack ship and colony ships. That's it. And all look the same, sound the same, do the same, regardless of xeno type. Presentation is also simple, there's genuinely less animation in this game than in Civilization. As in the first one, from 1991. But honestly, what truly put the cherry on top of all that is that one of the achievements is impossible without cheating it in via Steam Achievement Manager. The Paragon Scientist achievement requires to research 200 techs in a single game. Problem is, there are faction specific researches, and you can ONLY have three factions in any game, not more. And with that in mind, the maximum amount of researchable techs in any game is 195. So, you either have to hack the game via cheat engine to unlock faction research for factions you don't play with, or just cheat the achievement in. That is inexcusably lazy, quite frankly, which shows me that this game was abandoned halfway through. Devs had an idea, half done it, realized it to be too much in scale for what resources they have available and just threw it out on Steam and moved on to the next thing. As such, yes, this game is cheap, especially on sale, but frankly it doesn't worth your time, let alone your money. As a completionist, I put in about 50 times more time than it ever deserved at most.

Fantastic Space-Opera-themed 4X with hints of the Dune lore abound. It is fairly simple to learn, and the unexpected depth you'll find in what can admittedly come-off as graphically unimpressive is astonishing. Infinite replay value. Threat-Level-Midnight levels of recommendation for this Trese Brothers classic.

Solid, simple game; simple to pick up, but challenging to master. Surprisingly deep.

I'd recommend against it, at least the Mac version. Most annoying are the crashes; as your game gets bigger, they get more and more common. Maybe 15-20 hours into this playthrough and the game now crashes every few hours. Crashes are devastating, because the game only saves when you end a turn. A turn can take 15 minutes when you're moving a lot of ships, pretty frustrating to crash and have to redo it all. There are also several map glitches (e.g., camera is supposed to follow ships when they automove, or enemy ships, but it does not unless you do an annoying little trick each time). As to the game itself - it's fun, but 100% derivative of GalCiv, almost to the point of outright copying. And the production value just isn't real bad. They've reused icons in places (e.g., orbital mine has the same icon as a mine, very confusing when you order a colony to build an orbital mine and then it says it's building a mine); they've reused animations (boarding party attack has the same animation as a gun attack has the same animation as a lance attack); and the UI is just desperate for more QoL features and ease of use. Want to know which of your ships have moved already? Haha, idiot, you should just remember! Want a shop to stay put, and then not have to think about it again? No way, it's fun to cycle through a hundred ships every single turn. Basically, this is a less-polished mobile version of GalCiv. If it didn't crash and was just a tiny bit more polished I'd give it an enthusiastic thumbs up as a time waster. But it just makes you deal with a little too much for me to recommend. I'm still gonna play it...... but I wish I had something better that my Macbook could run.

Experience a Space based Love Story featuring YOU, the main character, and your love interest, the lovely ADVISOR, as you try to Fight off unrelenting waves of Alien invaders, all while finding off the Drug addicted populace and the Guilds responsible for your budget, and equipment constantly trying to annihilate each other....

I feel that this game is underrated. In ST:4X, you have to manage 3 different factions. I do not think I've seen or heard about any other strategy games where you have to manage multiple factions at once. It's a unique idea. A succesful player will keep a balance of power between the factions, and be wary of the political simulator so that they do not fight each other. Another unusual thing this game does is allow total customization of the warships created. The player chooses components available from tech tree research to build a ship out of. There are also pre-designed ships that can be built for those who aren't interested in trying to customize and optimize their fleet. I do have a few criticisms. Not all of the mechanics are well documunted, and you may have to search the dev's forums to find out how some things work. Also, the end-game, when the player is about to win and the AI has no realistic chance of a comeback, can feel tensionless and boring, but that is a common problem of 4X games in general.