Point of Order: Civilization did not father in 4x games

[Raleigh]

I loved Empire Deluxe.

[Barnacle Bill]

Empire did not resemble Risk at all. Risk has an area movement system and a combat resolution system quite different from Empire.

Sid Meier's Civilization bore no resemblence to the original board game "Civilization" (which AH acquired but was not the original publisher). That game (which I own) has area movement like Risk and essentially uses your population as military units (and isn't really about combat at all), and involves a lot of playing/trading cards.

Sid Meier's Civilization bears a huge resemblence to Empire. Given the odd way Empire modelled air units, which Civ used EXACTLY, Sid obviously copied Empire. In fact, Sid Meier's Civilization is basically Empire plus a bunch of new features. Empire units worked exactly like the following Civ units: Rifleman, Armor, Fighter, Bomber, Transport, Battleship, Carrier, Cruiser, Destroyer and Submarine. All cities were created already at start (no settlers), with each player having 1 city at start and the rest "neutral" (as if Barbarian-controlled in Civ2 except they did not produce any units). Like Civ, you start with a blacked-out map except right around your starting city. Cities had an inherent defense equal to an "Army" (what Empire called the basic unit, which was the same functionally as the Civ2 Rifleman). All cities produced units at the same rate, but different units took different numbers of turns to produce (roughly proportional to their Civ shield cost). There was nothing to produce except units - no gold, no buildings/wonders, no terrain improvements, no diplomacy (all players at war with each other all the time), no research, no worrying about population in cities (happiness, growth, food, etc...), no science. Everything Empire DID have worked just like Civ1, though. Later versions of Empire added a few more features, as did certain pre-Civ Empire clones (one of those that I remember had something like the Civ3 strategic resources, one had combat system enhancements similar to Civ2, etc...).

[Herder]

Wow, now I think I see why you are called Barnacle Bill

Actually, I prefer turn based games. Command HQ was a good game though. You could launch Satellites to reveal a portion of the other players map and you could move your satellites but if you moved them too much they would run out of fuel and crash.

I mean come on, here we are playing Civilization, the THIRD iteration of the series, and satellites aren't even modeled in the game.

[gamma]

I remember playing StratCon (Strategic Conquest) on Mac IIs. These were the Macs with the huge (at the time) color screens. Lots of fun. I suspect it was simply the Mac port of Empire. It had MP, by the way.

Also worthy of mention was xconq, for Unix/XWindows. Undoubtedly came after Empire, but this one was set up on a hex grid. I was playing both of these around 1989-92.

Finally, I wonder if anyone happened to play Anacreon on the IBM PC. This looks like the nearest ancestor to Starlords/MOO...

[xane]

and satellites aren't even modeled in the game

Doesn't the Apollo Program work like Civ2, and let you see the whole map ? Besides, you can group satellites with Espionage

[OnePresent]

Back when the earth was still cooling Mattel came out with Utopia for their Intellivision consol. Any of you kids around then?

Intellivision, the thinking man's Atari 2600.

Here comes the male nurse...mustn't get caught using the rest home's computer.

[CubsFan915]

Originally posted by xane


Doesn't the Apollo Program work like Civ2, and let you see the whole map ? Besides, you can group satellites with Espionage

Not any more...

[Slax]

Games that were somewhat similar also include M.U.L.E. and Seven Cities of Gold (although mostly exploration) for the Commodore 64.

[dconner]

Originally posted by gamma
Finally, I wonder if anyone happened to play Anacreon on the IBM PC. This looks like the nearest ancestor to Starlords/MOO...

Never heard of that one, but I did play several space conquest MOO predecessors.

GALAXY was from Avalon Hill, for the Atari 800 (and others, I think.) It was playable by one to a bunch of players (at least 8, I think) and involved the conquest of star systems "A" through "Z."

IMPERIUM GALACTUM (by SSI? for the IBM PC, circa 1988?) was similar (and moving closer toward MOO.) It had planets with different population potential, and star systems with two or more planets (potentially owned by two players.)