Why do you never hear about these being released? I never find out about them for years after and they never seem to be huge successes either.
Anyways, whats your favourite one? Mines Civ IV.

My favorites are Civilization III and Master of Magic. I really don't know where people hear about them being released either. I assume there must be niche hobby sites and forums out there in the magical ether of the internet.

4x games are probably my all time favorite to play, its a shame there aren't more of them. It is a pretty niche activity, which is why I tend to want to play just about any one I can get. As much as I like Civilization 5, I think my favorite 4x game is probably Civ 4, as I think I have the fondest memories of that one. I also loved the expansions and mods for it.

I never really played 4x at all until recently, although I think you're wrong that they aren't successful. Sins of a Solar Empire had good critical acclaim and financial success. Civ 5 is one of the top-5 most played games on Steam, and maybe the top singleplayer game, so it's clearly found a big audience.

I couldn't get in to Civ4, but I really love Civ 5. I think that made me more interested in 4x games. I bought the MoO pack from here, and I'll get to them soon.

I don't mean that they're never really successful, I just mean that they've never really been very popular. A lot of people don't even know what a 4X game is. Civilization is really the most popular, and most people call that a turn based strategy rather than using the term 4X.

Master of Orion 1/2 are my favorites, Civ series is very good too.

Well, I guess we have different definitions of 'popular.' Strategy games as a whole are never as popular as an MMO, FPS, or RPG, but they do quite well for themselves. If you want to include the total war games as 4x, then think most people would be familiar with the concept, as that series is also quite popular.

What does "4x" mean?

And why is that used more than "Strategy"?

And when I think of Total War, Civ or Europea Universalis "Tactical Strategy" sounds more appropriate.

In other words you spend a lot of time dealing with a tactical overview perspective of everything.



By the way, I'm not sure you could really consider this 4X but just wanted to pimp Star Wars Empire at War in this thread because one of the reasons I prefer it more than most RTSs is that 50% of the game is spent in an tactical overview perspective.

The two big favourites of mine off the top of my head would be Master of Orion 2, which is an absolute classic, and Civ 4 BTS.

Haven't found any others that have come close yet, but I'm slowly working my way through them.

There are quite a few spacey ones that I haven't played... perhaps one of these days I'll find the time.

Explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate. It's not synonymous with "strategy", it's a specific subgenre.

Lol. Wouldn't that be "4E" =P

Possibly 4 "ex", and since "ex" is pronounced the same way as "x", 4X is an appropriate even shorter version.

I've heard it before, but never bothered finding out what it stood for, and now I got an answer anyway.

Wonder if I can solve all my problems that way, not bothering about them?

Lol. I've come to find that a lot of things that I at first discern to be a 'problem' are actually blessings in disguise. XD