| abstract
| - 4X games are noted for their deep, complex gameplay. Emphasis is placed upon economic and technological development, as well as a range of non-military routes to supremacy. Games can take a long time to complete since the amount of micromanagement needed to sustain an empire scales as the empire grows. 4X games are sometimes criticized for becoming tedious for these reasons, and several games have attempted to address these concerns by limiting micromanagement. The earliest 4X games borrowed ideas from board games and 1970s text-based computer games. The first 4X games were turn-based, but real-time 4X games are not uncommon. Many 4X games were published in the mid-1990s, but were later outsold by other types of strategy games. Sid Meier's Civilization is an important example from this formative era, and popularized the level of detail that would later become a staple of the genre. In the new millennium, several 4X releases have become critically and commercially successful.
- The 4X video game genre is a sub-genre of the strategy genre. The name comes from the 4 "X"'s that comprise a summary of the genre's gameplay:
* X-Plore: Look around and find interesting things.
* X-Pand: Build more cities/colonies/space stations on the territory you just found.
* X-Ploit: Improve the cities/colonies/space stations through various means, making the most of the resources you have acquired.
* X-Terminate: Use those resources to kill everyone who isn't you and take their stuff. Technically, it should be 4 E, but the "X" just sounds cooler. In 4X games, you control an empire that is in competition with other empires. These "empires" can represent different clans, tribes or cultures, or even different alien races. Different empires may also have different advantages or disadvantages; some games even allow you to create customized empires on your own. The empires will be competing over a region that could be as small as England, or as large as the Galaxy. Most members of the genre do not require that you play them on a specific piece of terrain. Instead, most of them offer a randomized map generator, typically with settings that affect the outcome (how many planets, how much water vs. land on Earth-like worlds, etc). The map almost always features some degree of Fog of War, requiring the player to devote resources to explore the map in order to discover new resources to exploit. On whatever map the player chooses, there are territories on which you can build "cities" (whether planetary colonies, space stations, or just cities). Cities exploit the resources in the region where they are built, and can transform those resources into "buildings" (improvements to the city's efficiency), money, or units. Units can move various distances on the map, possibly with terrain restrictions, and perform a variety of tasks -- which may or may not include combat. You almost always have to produce a special type of unit that can create another city to let you expand your empire. Some games allow you to create customized units based on your technology base (see below), in addition to the default units included in the game. Other empires work under the same restrictions as you (except when they are cheating bastards). You can talk to other empires, broker peace with them, trade with them, ally with them against a common foe, or kill them. Mostly kill them. Be careful: they will do the same to you, and they will remember what you've done to them. Most 4X games feature a Tech Tree, though others may use Technology Levels instead; some even combine the two. Cities produce research, which is used to research new technologies. The Tech Tree is so named because you cannot research a technology until you have its prerequisites. You can't learn "Alphabet" until you've learned "Writing", for example. Technologies provide upgrades for cities, letting you better use their resources, build new units, buildings, or weapons, and so forth. A staple of the genre, borrowed from the originator of the genre Civilization, is the "Wonder". It is a city-produced construct that only one city in the entire game-world can produce. Whichever empire builds it first gets its benefits, and everyone else gets zilch. It generally confers a substantial benefit to the civilization that produced it, and it can only change hands if the city it is built in changes hands. More recent 4X games offer less powerful non-global "Wonders" that each empire can build, but can only be built in one of their cities. These typically provide a large bonus to a specific city. One other staple originated by Civilization is the "goodie hut"; random local tribes/lost cargo pods/space anomalies that act as Inexplicable Treasure Chests for the first player to discover them. Of course, some of them can act as Chest Monsters, as well... Just to make sure you can't be completely pacifist, you will usually encounter barbarian tribes (pirates/guerrillas/terrorists/angry alien fungi) that appear out of nowhere and cannot be negotiated with (although their units may be captured instead of destroyed if the player is clever). Victory in 4X games will always be available by exterminating all or most of your opposition. However, 4X games are usually expected to offer one or more alternative victory conditions. Some allow you to pool your civilization's production in order to produce a gigantic monument, such as Civilization's UN Unity Spaceship, or Alpha Centauri's Ascent to Transcendence. If you can do that, spending all of those resources while defending your borders from people trying to stop you, you win. In some games, researching a long series of technologies (typically that do not provide any immediate benefit) causes victory. If you ally with all other (surviving) empires, then you win in some games. While all victory conditions are usually open to all players, some factions are often more suited to pursuing certain endgames than others. Historical versions of the genre tend towards allowing Anachronism Stew, but at the direction of the player. A player's civilization might reach tanks and battleships by 1000 AD while the computer players are still in the iron age or develop genetic engineering before electricity. Futuristic versions tend to use a lot of Techno Babble in their unit/weapon/technology names and descriptions. Not to be confused with either a popular Australian brand of beer or the stand-in continent for Australia in Discworld. Examples of 4X include:
- A 4X game is one where players control a country or an empire and are expected to:
* eXplore the game world
* eXpand your empire by creating new cities/colonies etc.
* eXploit the resources in your empire
* eXterminate rival empires by attacking and eliminating them The term was first applied to Master of Orion, and is most commonly associated with the Civilzation series. Every game in the Europa Universalis series is considered a 4X game.
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