I dont play a traditional 4X game to just fight wars all the time. In a game of that type, there should be alot more to strategy than just fighting. I mean, there's all that potential for things like political backstabbing, which can be entertaining as heck, or trading or... whatever. So many ideas. But alot of these space ones just go "Well we have all these big ships, CLEARLY the player will only want them to fire lasers at each other!", and just... ugh. That's not to say that combat shouldnt be there, or be a mindless afterthought, but still.
For better or worst, 4X is suffering an identity crises. Because what you described is great, but I view it as a whole separate genre entirely (Grand Strategy). 4X has exterminate as one of its words, and implicit in that is that unless one is honorable and so loyal as to allow me to win via diplomacy, I am going to kill you sooner or lately. The more that bogs me down from that goal (politics [external or internal]) is just fluff that slows down my goal. Which is what I meant about updates: Adding in more advanced diplomacy just ultimately slows down the overall flow from early to mid to late game.
Typically I like the idea of "Grand Strategy" games, but their tutorials always seem to have been designed by extremely drunken monkeys with hammers, so I never get into those. It was annoying enough to have to learn Dwarf Fortress by watching through over 50 tutorial videos (each at least 15 minutes long).... sure, it was worth it, but I still dont feel like doing that again with grand strategy games. Which is a shame, really. I mean, the tutorials for those may as well be "Okay here's the map, you start here, you have a keyboard, and when you hit keys, stuff may or may not happen, dont forget to click stuff, KTHXBAI!!!"
That's another rant though.
Anyway, what I meant was moreso that the 4 different X elements just need to be more balanced than they are lately. Having war in the game in question is totally fine. When the time seems right to do battle rather than negotiate, I'll do so. Explosions shall indeed occur. I'm good at pixellated virtual explosions with lasers and stuff. Anyone who says otherwise doesnt know me very well. The problem is that with current games of that sort, the time is ALWAYS right for that, and anything else tends to be a bad idea (or just dramatically slower, which ends up being the same). So I tend to get more than a little bored. The Civ series naturally seems to be the one that handles all of this the best, but... it'd be nice to have another game that ISNT just that. I've yet to find one.
Though, it doesnt help that for something like Endless Space, which has alot of combat in it, sometimes the combat systems are just outright bad... so you end up with mere drudgery. Feh. That game really wasnt very good, was it... it seemed like it had such potential, too.
Yeah I have the same problem really. It's why I only later added "space" to that 4x For me the last time I saw a 4x that I really really liked it was SOTS 1... and only until the "grind" to win appeared 20+ battles per round ain't fun....
Either I don't like genre anymore, or the genre left me behind and doesn't like me anymore.
Maybe we should make 3x a new genre, and remove the eXterminate as gameplay "pillar"
Yeah, I've had that same feeling as of late. The genre almost feels kinda like much of the RTS genre, in how that genre... which seems to be mostly Starcraft now... ends up just being wild clicking and micro, instead of actual overall strategy. With 4X games, it says "4X", but much of the time it's moreso "1X with some brief exploring sometimes". I mean, obviously that's not true in a technical sense, but that's the feeling I always get from them.
Does make me glad I've got AI War though. That's typically the game that fills this void nowadays. I mean, yeah, that's combat-tacular, but it still gives me the same feel and there's LOTS of things to do that isnt just direct fighting. Granted, all of it is to PREPARE for direct fighting, but still. It sure feels varied as hell... which I cant say for 4X games lately.
