Twinfinite: Top 10 Best 4X Games

[The_J]

Twinfinite has published an article called "Top 10 Best 4X Games". While a top 10 can be very limited, the writer made a very good selection in this case, containing Civ5, Civ6, Alpha Centauri, Humankind and Old World.

The excerpt from Civ6:

It should be no surprise that Civilization 6 is on this list alongside its predecessor. It’s the most-played 4X game on Steam at around 41,000 players in September 2023. And it’s no understatement to say that the Civilization series has a monopoly on the people’s vision of a 4X game. Wherever there is talk of the 4X genre, Civ will always make an appearance.

In previous installments, a game of Civ was skewed towards building tall, rather than build wide. This has since changed with Civilization 6, moving its tile supremacy into sprawling your empire across as many tiles as possible. Districts are the major point of addition that shakes up how you approach city building. Previously, the most important tile was your city centre, but now districts can be built on any tile in your empire. City location and management just became far more important. Mountains are great for science-dedicated cities, while those that anchor beside a beach can earn gold through trade hubs. The magic you know from Civilization is still here, its polish is unquestioned, and its additions all hit the right mark.

Read the full article here.

Thanks to Rui Castro for this tip on Twitter.

 

[blackbutterfly]

Any list that cites SMAC/X gets the thumbs up from me

 

[Dale]

No love for Imperialism II or Colonisation?

 

[Darsnan]

Any list that cites SMAC/X gets the thumbs up from me

And I love how the article highlighted Alpha Centauri:

Almost 25 years old and still the most perfect example of a 4X game ever created. Alpha Centauri holds up against the greats despite the low graphical fidelity.

That and the pic in the article has the Gaians conquering Planet! Boo yah!

 

[Futumch]

I notice that they had Warhammer Gladius on the list, but suggested it suffered behind a DLC paywall (their terms). Good old games has had Gladius DLCs on sale quite often this year, often at only a fraction of the price that they are on Steam. You just have to time your purchases, I suppose. Deep discounts of franchises on gog.com can sometimes go up to 90% off for DLC.

Alpha Centauri was an awesome game. I loved it back in the day. I'm still a bit underwhelmed by Humankind though.

Thanks for the link to the story though, @The_J , there's a few games in that list I have been hesitant to try, but I might take the plunge when I get some free time.

 

[Blake00]

Author looks young so am not surprised the list is mostly modern games.. which makes it all the more awesome that SMAC made it in heh.

 

[Solver]

I definitely subscribe to the theory that the author never actually played SMAC (or only very briefly tried it) but got told by older colleagues that it has to be on the list. The rest of the list strongly suggests the author is quite new to 4X - he says he started with Civ5, and the list, other than SMAC, is all about newer titles like the MoO2 remake or HK.

 

[Quintillus]

I agree with Solver, the author doesn't have decades of experience in 4X. In addition to straight-out mentioning Civ V as his first in the series, he mentions in the Civ VI section that, "In previous installments, a game of Civ was skewed towards building tall, rather than build wide." For Civ V, yeah, I'd agree, but not for anything older than that. Sure, you can bankrupt yourself if you go all-out into building wide in IV, but ultimately, building wide is still almost always the best choice, just not at 100 mph. Civ III, and AFAIK II and I, are all about the building wide.

Three Amplitude games on the list too... I would have appreciated a bit more diversity in the developers whose games are on the list. One or maybe two, sure, but surely someone else has made a worthy 4X game?

And Civ IV not being on the list is certainly to be considered heresy.

But Old World is on the list, so... I suppose I'll let it slide.

 

[aieeegrunt]

This “expert” has only played 5 and 6?

I mean games journalism is a meme for a reason, but man

 

[Solver]

This is also an opportunity to realize we're old. Civ5 is now 13 years old and most Civ players probably started with 5 or 6. Civ4 is firmly in the retro game category now!

 

[leif erikson]

OMG! What does that say about those of us that started with Civ1!

 

[Blake00]

We've reached that wonderful time in our lives where the people previewing, reviewing & retrospectively rating games and telling us whether we should play them or not are half our age.. or worse lol..

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

This is also an opportunity to realize we're old. Civ5 is now 13 years old and most Civ players probably started with 5 or 6. Civ4 is firmly in the retro game category now!

Pretty much.

 

[Solver]

OMG! What does that say about those of us that started with Civ1!

Yep, time for us to contact the local retirement community.

 

[Arcaian]

This is also an opportunity to realize we're old. Civ5 is now 13 years old and most Civ players probably started with 5 or 6. Civ4 is firmly in the retro game category now!

I got started with the series with Civ3 - I got it from the cheap pile of pc games at my local store in about 2003-2004, when I was 7 or 8. I'd imagine I'm on the younger side of people starting with the pre-Civ5 games; I have a lot of friends who play the series, and the only ones who have played Civ4 were ones I introduced to the game when Civ5 was not yet out. Even people around my age who are into more 'hardcore' strategy games haven't played Civ4 - and I'm not that far from 30!

 

[Klaus Hergersheimer]

I first played a demo of civ 3 and didn't know what the heck was going on; I don't remember there being any tutorial. just clicked on stuff and quit after 10 minutes. never thought of the series until,

years later I played a civ 5 demo (the vanilla version) and thought it was fun for what it was.

 

[Blake00]

I remember playing Civ1 in DOS in 1993 and having no idea what was happening.. I was a big Sim City addict so I started building a bunch of Civ cities in the squares right next to each other with zero spacing and wondering why they were starving haha. I played for ages and slowly started learning how to play and thinking I was doing great until a battleship showed up and started killing my legions and pikemen on the coastlines and I realised I'd fallen behind just a wee bit lol.. yet somehow I survived and eventually through stubborn youthful persistence won the game.. and went straight into a starting a new one and doing things right and never looking back lol...

 

[aieeegrunt]

This is also an opportunity to realize we're old. Civ5 is now 13 years old and most Civ players probably started with 5 or 6. Civ4 is firmly in the retro game category now!

This is like saying it’s OK for a music expert to have never heard the Beatles or Mozart