If you like games that make you plan and think more than react with speed, I would recommend Ascendancy. It is a shame that the company who produced this game, the Logic Factory, ceased to exist to create other worthwhile titles, as this is the type of game that truly explored the limits of its potential.
Rather than rely on multiplayer to create worthwhile opponents, Ascendancy requires you to carefully adapt to the strategy of each of race. Some races are extremely easy to win with such as the reptilians that have a rapid growth in technology.
Also interesting are the Oculons, who are able to see star lanes ahead of time and plan their travels ahead.
Best of all each race is distinct in its style and ship design. While basic ship forms exist the visuals for each race’s crafts are different. The races themselves are vastly different looking as opposed to comical ‘Buck Rogers style’ variations of humanoids. This makes each game different in both the challenge and duration. Adding to the replay ability is the randomly generated star maps that come in each version of the game. A Civilization III style galaxy format helps to create the type of game you want to play. Since this game is circa 1995, they are actually the innovators of this concept.
Also
lending itself to the Civilization and MOO series is the concept of a tech tree. A large helixes spider web visually connects the technologies together beautifully establishing the difficulty in obtaining each new technology through distance. The player may view this at any time and rotate the web 360 degrees to plan their next advance.
In the same vein, the galaxy can be spun about as well to suit the player’s tastes and to keep the game visually interesting. At first every game is a collection of multicoloured stars, unconnected, and unexplored much like in MOO. As travel on ‘star lanes’ proceeds the web is drawn and plans to conquer or enlighten take shape. At each star lay a variety of planets easily identifiable as barren or lush. Essentially all planets are habitable, but some are better for mining resources, others for science and others for population and food. A few will reveal secrets upon closer inspection.
The whole game is an entertaining exploration of the galaxy. Space combat, ship design, colony management is included as well to create a well rounded and visually entertaining game. Also be mindful of a well-designed interface that exceeds its own capacity by serving the player well without interfering with the overall mood of being in space. I highly recommend this game to anyone tired of empty and graphically-oriented glitz.
