Back in 1997, I saw an advertisement for a remake of a Macintosh game from 1993 called Pax Imperia. Its new name was to be Pax Imperia: Eminent Domain. One look at this ad created an immediate need for me to play this game. It looked amazing. I waited and waited, as the release date was pushed further back every month. Finally, it was released and the wait was well worth it. I played this game feverously for hours on end for a year or more.
It had everything: great game play, unlimited re-playability, fun cut scenes (and pretty well rendered for its time), and most of all, space conquest!
The game begins with a long movie covering the events which brought interstellar travel to humans. There is no faster-than-light travel in this game, but rather, utilization of wormholes that conveniently connect every star system in the galaxy. You begin with the standard strategy game ration: one planet, one transport, and one scout. Every strategy game seems to follow this formula no matter what the conditions are, just replace planet with city, and transport with settler, etc. It is very easy in the beginning to quickly expand your empire. Your home planet already has a shipyard,
and you can enqueue up to ten new transports to be built. If you are lucky enough to be far away from your rivals at the beginning of the game, building a sizable empire with good defences can be quite easy. If, on the other hand, you are plopped right next to one or more neighbouring empires, you could very easily be confined to only a handful of sectors, or even become engulfed in a large war you aren't quite ready for.
War is probably the largest aspect to Pax Imperia. Starting out, you are usually concerned with planetary defence. Every planet can be defended by four orbitals: a Missile Base, a Battle Station, a Fighter Base, and a Minefield. Each can be upgraded to five levels. Researching new weapons, fighters, and mine technology will improve your defences greatly. When you are ready to claim your "eminent domain" by force, there is a great amount of shipbuilding options at your fingertips. Ship design is very detailed, and you can add any researched ship component and weapon to the six different types. These are: Scout, Destroyer, Transport, Cruiser, Battleship, and Carrier. Cruisers, Battleships, and Carriers must be researched, but early on you can be a bit sneaky and put fighter wings on Transports for a makeshift Carrier. Battle in Pax Imperia is a little cumbersome. Whether it is in deep space or over a planet, it is two dimensional, and ships have trouble getting around each other. Once you find the tricks of the trade with battle, and use fighters to their full advantage, battling becomes easier and you will find yourself taking out enemy planets left and right, but remember to come in and colonize that planet quickly! A rivalling empire is sure to take an interest in it.
Financing your empire is an important aspect to your emperorship. Each planet is rated on its potential wealth. Your starting planet is "Opulent" if you are on the easiest difficulty, and becomes increasingly poorer for each level of difficulty. The majority of planets in the galaxy are labelled "Mediocre", but planets range from Sterile (1X) to Opulent (11X). When you colonize a planet, it begins to build itself up. You can either choose which colonial advancements to build directly, or allow the sector's governor to choose based on the planet's selected construction track, which can be: "Quickest" for building the easiest thing possible, "Finance" for building components that bring in money, "Construction" for components that increase that planet's construction points, etc. It can become difficult to balance your planets out for a smooth running empire. If you are at war, fleet maintenance can become rather expensive, so you want to have ample financial components built on your planets. However, you also want to have a good amount of construction points so you can build fleets and defensive orbitals quickly. As you can see, there is a great deal of micromanagement to take care of in your imperial and financial administration.
Research is a bit easier. There are five fields of research available: Weapons, Ship, Shielding, Colonial, and Space. Weapons developments can be applied to both what ships can carry and also what can be fired from orbital defences. Ship technologies consist of star drives (which determine how many sectors a ship can travel without refuelling), tac drives (which determine how fast a ship can travel in space), and hull materials. Shielding is divided into Shields and Screens which both act differently, and later a composite of the two called Fields. Colonial technologies are the planetary components built by each planet. Finally, Space developments are comprised of orbitals, fighters, colonizing technologies, and ship repair technologies. The biggest problem with research in this game is its lack of depth. Every race and empire has the exact same technology tree, and if your empire sticks around long enough, you will have discovered every available advancement, and most likely so will your rival empires. This puts no scientific advantage to any empire, which definitely takes a dimension out of the game.
The last "great" element to this game, Diplomacy, is barely worth mentioning. It is the weakest part of the game. There are some useful tools in the Diplomacy screen such as the "Compare Empires" graphs, which show multiple graphs for each empire based on number of ships, number of planets, treasury, construction points, etc. Running "Black Ops" against the other empires can be helpful at times, but success in these missions is so rare, that it is usually not worth your time. There are three states of relations between empires: War, Neutrality, and Alliance. Neutral and Alliance both have two sub-treaties available, but war is usually so inevitable between empires, they are not used often. Trade routes are the only worthwhile sub-treaty as it can bring in added revenue. The "repair and re-supply" sub-treaty can be counter-productive because it gives access through all of your sectors to planets that you may have your eye on. Peace is useless in the game because it does not bring you any closer to galaxy wide dominance. You have to fight for that!
One more aspect to this game, although somewhat minor, is race selection/customization. There are a handful of pre-built races to select from in the beginning, but you should really try to customize your own race based on your style of play. There are options such as which atmosphere(s) and temperatures are ideal, characteristics (warrior, scientist, builder, ect.), research speeds for each field, and many other options. Play around with these options until you find the perfect combination for your style. You will most likely stick with that race from then on.
Pax Imperia: Eminent Domain is an amazing game. Added depth to research and diplomacy would bring it up a notch or two, but with the already large checklist of things to do to manage a successful empire, you will forget about that problem quickly. If you like 4X Strategy Games, seriously check this game out. It really has everything you can ask for in a space conquest game.
