So this is sort of a weird question.

I really like 4x games, but my favorite part is always the first third of each game. I like exploring, developing, fighting neutral enemies. Once I encounter the other enemy commanders/rulers/whatever though, the fun tends to drop a bit for me. I no longer have the freedom and exploration and have to spend all my money in an arms race taking provinces back and forth till they die.

SO. Basically I'm wondering if there's such a thing as a 4x game without these. One solely focused on expansion, exploration, and dealing with neutrals. It can be approximated by doing stuff like playing a Colossal Eador map with one enemy, but I'm curious if there are any games built for it.

I'm not sure if counts as 4X, but Civ can be played largely peacefully. In Civ 4 (haven't played Civ5 yet) you'd have things like culture, religion, economics/trade that you can use to compete with and largely play a game around "building" not "fighting",. I also like exploration and building but not fighting so much unless I just have to, so I completely understand where you come from.

Masters of orion comes to mind as well as Civ

Mm, yeah, Civ is a good example, actually. I should probably clarify my above request now that you've reminded me of that: Although I'd definitely like to see if an enemy-less 4x game exists, one in which you can play entirely peaceful is good too. That means diplomacy actually works, it doesn't automagically break down as the game goes on, etc. I really need to get around to getting this sometime since it's 4x and space and supposed to be awesome and wee.

Masters of Orion was an amazing game for its time and still one of my favorite games to this day, those games seems to be a rarity now a days

Also another game if you like egyptian stuff is Pharaoh hardly any fighting in that game

Totally enemy-less sounds something like Sim-City to me. Total Sandbox - Total building. I thought Sim City 4 was really good in that regard. I haven't played the newest Sim City yet though

Well, I'm looking for something with more exploration and such than pure building. Also, completely enemy-less isn't necessary, neutral enemies a la Eador or cool, just not enemies on the same "level" as the player.

If this doesn't exist, there's potential here, I think! Something about exploring and settling a new world and such.

It was years ago when I played this game but I believe you can play Fragile Allegiance without wars. Can somebody confirm it?

I had hoped Spore might be this game - but unfortunately that didn't work out so well. Spore at it's core is a competitive game - not an exploration/builder - which ruins it imho. But it sounded like they had this idea similar to what you mention when they started. I thought it'd be so cool to explore this galaxy and see what's out there, but it was so vanilla and samey everywhere with no complexity beyond rinse/repeat.

For some reason so many of these games go the route of forcing you to grow aggressively - the big land grab to the exclusion of self-investment - and then fighting over everything at the end - instead of the cooler aspects of growing your civilization. I guess building a system of mutually reinforcing incentives is difficult to program realistically. Part of the problem seems to me that the cost of war is often too low in these type games. It's often the better strategy to fight much of the time - but it seems that seems that can be changed so incentives are different inside the simulation engine itself.

Civ4: Colonization with the community fan expansion The Authentic Colonization (TAC) is quite fun if you want to play without other nations. You can build up and in the end whenever you are ready fight for independence, or not.

I have Civ4 Colonization but hadn't heard of that expansion before, I'll definitely check it out. I haven't played Spore, but it seems like one that ended up on a lot of retrospective "most disappointing" lists.

Yeah, definitely agree with you. Plus I think people in general just see more of an appeal to combat? It's more immediately gratifying to be able to punch people in the face than build up infrastructure to efficiently oppress natives.

TAC for Civ4:Col is great, many people put many years of work into it, it makes the game finally better than the original Col. They added lots of atmosphere and made the independence war interesting. I would compare it to the RP for Fallout 2 or the community fan patch for Gothic 3.

You like 4x games but have never played Master of Orion?

You are in for some fun times... That games owes me many hours of my life.

And you shouldn't. It's been reduced to Sim Village (plus massive DRM).

Yeah I know, I'm terrible. I keep forgetting to pick it up whenever I'm in the market for a GOG game. Dx