4X games

“Dominate the world through diplomatic finesse, cultural domination, and military prowess.” -Giant Bomb

By Patrick S. Baker

Introduction

After, shall we say, the mixed critical and commercial reception of 1999’s Civilization II: Test of Time, which has an aggregate of only 66% on Metacritic, famed game developer Sid Meier and his company, Firaxis, immediately set to work on another Civilization game. Originally, the development of the game that would become Civilization III (Civ III) was given to Brian Renyolds, the man behind the highly successful base Civilization II game. However, Renyolds left Firaxis before development really got rolling to start his own company, so the assignment was handed to game designer Jeff Briggs and game programmer Soren Johnson.

Briggs was an experienced game designer, and one of the three founders of Firaxis, along with Reynolds and Meier. Briggs had previously helped design such games as Colonization and Civilization II. He also held a PhD of Music Theory and had written the original music for many of Microprose games.

Johnson had gone to work at Firaxis after an internship at Electronic Arts (EA). He was assigned as the primary game programmer for Civ III under Briggs direction. Johnson joined the development team with just 16 months left to finish the game. Still, he rewrote much of the game’s code, with his main focus was on the its Artificial Intelligence (AI).

“SolForce’s official motto was “Per Ardua Ad Astra” (Latin: “Through Hardship, The Stars”), but its real motto was “Repensum Est Canicula” (Latin: “Payback is a Bitch”).”

by Patrick S. Baker

Sword of the Stars (Sword) was developed by Kerberos Productions and released in 2006. Kerberos was formed by a group of developers that had worked on Homeworld: Cataclysm, an expansion of the hit game, Homeworld. Homeworld clearly inspired some aspects of Sword.

A 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate) space game, Sword bore some resemblance to Homeworld, Galactic Civilization, and Reach for the Stars. In the original version of the game, the player selected one of four races to play: The saurian Tarka, the dolphin-like Liir, the insectoid Hive and of course, a united humanity defended by SolForce. Other races were added in later expansion packs and sequels. Each of the races had their own advantages and disadvantages as well as their own technology tree.

By Patrick S. Baker

Master of Orion III

Part 1 here

Part 2 here

During the six years between the release of Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares and the release of Master of Orion III, the PC gaming world proved to be something of a Hobbesian trap for game developers and publishers, that is to say: “…. poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

In 1993, MicroProse Software had merged with Spectrum HoloByte, to form MicroProse, Inc.. This merger was called “a great marriage” because “Spectrum Holobyte had a lot of cash and very few products, while Microprose had a lot of products and no cash.”

By Patrick S. Baker

Part one here

In 1993, MicroProse published two huge hits: Civilization and Master of Orion. The company soon pushed forward on sequels for both. Simtex, after developing the first Master of Orion, produced a port of the Avalon Hill railroad and robber baron game board game, 1830, which was published by Avalon Hill.

Then they developed Master of Magic, a 4X fantasy game that was published by MicroProse. Shortly after the release of Master of Magic, MicroProse procured Simtex, renamed it MicroProse Texas, and made it an internal develop division. This made the sequel technically an in-house MicroProse production, although the Simtex logo still appeared briefly at the start of the game.

Originally titled Master of Antares the game was quickly retitled Master of Orion 2: Battle at Antares (sometimes MoO2:BaT, or MoO2 or BaT). Steve Barcia and Ken Burd, still at Simtex, returned as part of the development team for the sequel. Meanwhile, MicroProse was still the publisher and partnered with MacSoft for the Macintosh version.

By Patrick S. Baker

The early 1990s saw the release of many of the seminal games of what would soon be called the 4X (for eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate) PC game genre. Games like Armada 2525, Civilization, and the subject of this article, Master of Orion (MoO) were published some 30 years ago and still influence the genre today.

In fact, reviewer Alan Emrich named the game type “XXXX” in a 1993 preview of Master of Orion for Computer Gaming World (CGW). A year later Martin E. Cirulis in the same magazine shortened the term to “the four Xs” this later became “4X”. While MoO was not the first 4X game, that honor goes to Reach of the Stars released in 1983.

Still, it was Master of Orion  that “would define 4X gaming for years.”