3 ms·
Ascendancy is my favorite classic 4X, still have the CD version and sometimes fire it up in DOSBOX.
by ThePhysicist 4y ago
Ascendancy is my favorite classic 4X, still have the CD version and sometimes fire it up in DOSBOX.
- thriftwy 4y agoAscendancy is an example of how gameplay limitations ruin the game experience. In Master of Orion I you could have huge fleets of warships roaming through the space. In Master of Orion II (significantly less successful if you ask me) there were a mechanics of "control" or smth along these lines, which limited you from having a large number of large warships by ramping up upkeep. I guess you could live with that. Ascendancy is nice, but: You can only have N+1 ships, where N is number of your planets. This means you need to spend 90% of time developing planets (pushing "next building") with no ways to utilize your industrial output when not building a ship replacement. Boredom of managing insignificant colonies by hand is what ruins many 4X games. It would be an understandable limitation if Ascendancy was a board game, but in a video game it's just a sign that game designers could not balance the gameplay. Otherwise, great game. The music and the races are awesome. Tech tree is very funny.
- ThePhysicist 4y agoHah, you can just press M (I think it was M?) to automate the management of colonies. Never managed planets by hand as it's super boring and a bit pointless as you said. In general the late game is a bit bland as the AI is not very good even with the patch they delivered, but still it's quite a fun game and the 3D view was really innovative at the time.