Why is this game considered the first RT4X? Has everyone forgotten Rise of Nations...

The main reason Sins is called the first "RT4X" is because it is the first game to be called "RT4X". However, nobody is claiming it is the first game to mix Real-time style gameplay with 4X style gameplay. They are just claiming it is the first game to do it really WELL.

Also Rise of Nations was not really RT4X because it is very weak in a couple of the X areas.... eXplore? Not so much, the maps just aren't big enough to make eXploring that important a factor. eXpand? A little, but it isn't nearly as big a factor to winning as in a traditional 4X.

Also, if you can't take over other structures with influence then the game isn't really 4X, and I don't recall being able to do that in Rise of Nations.

Finally, the key to the RT4X designation is that despite being real-time, the game needs to PLAY almost like a 4X. Rise of Nations was ultimately still game that pretty much requires the player to master hot-keys and fast mousing to play the game, while the concept behind the RT4X designation is that hot-keys and mouse-work take a back seat to actual strategy, much like in regular 4X games.

Rise of nations felt like an extension of the Age of Empires series, albeit with a lot more features, and the ability to span time from way back when, all the way to the future. I played it quite frequently when it first came out, if it came out in 2004 i was 14, and i dont remember any real 4X elements to it, i do remember however, spys countering priests or something to that effect. i know that's offtopic, but that was a good game and i totally forgot about it.

There was a Influence aspect to RON, i remember my structures falling down as enemy influence took over my buildings.

4X is a very gray area...per wikipedia.

RoN is possibly the funnest game i played.

If you're gonna claim Sins was not the first of it's type and name the one that was, do it right. Imperium Galactica came long before Rise of Nations, as did it's sequel IG2.
(Though I don't know for sure if they were the first.)

RoN's probably my favorite RTS of all time. It had an influence system, an interesting research system, it had the same decentralization (that is, lack of "single base" focus) that 4X games have, exploration was terribly important, and it had those all important alternate winning conditions. Most importantly it had that "Civ" feel. To the degree that the term makes any sense at all, I'd say RoN fits the RT4X label at least as well as Sins, though it wisely wasn't advertised as such. It's still installed on my hard drive and gets played to this day, actually.

RoN, however, wouldn't be the "first" RTS/4X hybrid either, as the poster above me points out. That's a history that goes back further than 2003.

Huh? Rise of Nations was not a grand strategy game. It was one of those stupid play on a single map RTS games...a dime a dozen.

Oh and I almost forgot the most important element in its longevity, it had the best AI I've ever seen in an RTS. On the "fair" setting where you and the AI are on an even footing it put up a damn good fight, even 1 on 1.

That campaign system was great too.

Rise of Nations...by far the best strategy game I've EVER played. Sins comes relatively close compared to other RTS games, but RoN is still the best in my eyes. It's in a league of its own and I still play it at least monthly. Sadly, Rise of Legends was a terrible follow up (not sequel) that over-emphasized high-speed gameplay and a Warcraft 3-like setup. What I think made RoN so great is that everything was customizable (options for everything under the sun basically), there were many factions, and the AI was rock solid. It seems like Sins borrows some things from RoN. I just wish it would borrow some more.

I wouldn't fault the game for that. The AI was so good and adjustable that there really wasn't any need for most people to play online. Depending on what difficulty and strategy you set AI opponents on, they would actually do them and approach playing the game differently depending on which strategy they got. Personally, I got more enjoyment avoiding the whole online matchmaking and instead had a blast playing with/against friends and/or AI's.

you make a good point about exploration not being on a massive scale like sins or other 4X, RoN did just have a 'fog of war' style like warcraft, but i have to disagree when you say it didn't have an 'influence' system. In fact, the influence system was integral to RoN, i.e. National Borders... the more 'influence' your nation had the more your national borders would expand, and ultimately would push back other 'national borders.' If your borders expanded over enemy structures, those structures would start to take damage (called attrition in RoN) and would eventually be destroyed if the other nation's influence didn't push your borders back. In fact enemy units without a special supply unit would also start to take damage when in another nation's 'borders.'

By comparison Sin's 'culture' system is very weak. In RoN one of the victory conditions was having national borders that took up a majority (i believe 90%) of the map. So you could really just go economic boom, expand your nation's borders, and win the game without ever going on the offensive.

i also would like to mention that in addition to overall strategy, RoN had a fantastic tactical system. There were attack bonuses for 'flanking' enemy units. More damage done when attacking from the sides, and even more when attacking from the rear. In addition there were attack bonuses if attacking from higher terrain.

Now don't get me wrong, cause i can feel the obvious 'well then why don't you just play RoN' hanging in the air. I really like Sins, it is a good game with definite strategy but I feel in a couple areas it fell short. For example why can't there be a Culture victory condition? Or even a 'territory' victory condition, i.e. control a certain percentage (90?) of the planets in all the systems and you win.

Finally, I know this is considered a very rock/paper/scissors type game where combat is concerned, but I would assert that it is often NOT obvious which units best counter other units. The unit descriptions do not allow one to easily understand what are the best counters... you really have to dig through the forums to figure out what best counters what... and even then it's usually gray area (best counter to LRM anyone? some say fighters, some say flak, some say just other LRM, etc etc)

Sins is on a single map . . . I would say there is less to explore in Sins than there was in RoN. Further RoN offered a gobal map that let you choose where to attack next, letting you take over the entire planet in a semi turn based-semi real time way.

In Sins you set your scouts to explore, in RoN, you set your scouts to explore, its exactly the same only there was /more/ to explore in RoN. Maybe it didn't look as big but every ounce of land was useful for building and tactics where as in Sins only the planets gravity wells are useful and tactics don't play a major role.

No. I consider each planet its own individual battle map.

I'm speaking from a multiplayer point of view. I never play single player games. I just recall playing multiplayer games on a single battlefield map. Boring...

RoN was basically Age of Empires with more ages and the conquer-the-world mode on top. Which isn't to say it wasn't a great game (I was in the beta and liked it quite a bit), but considering it was largely just a standard RTS with a turn-based world map layer added on top to string the 'levels' together, I don't think RT4X would really fit there.

I've seen online players quit the game because culture took over their empire. There's your victory condition right there. (once again, not speaking from a single player point of view)

It's called the first RT4X game simply because that's what the devs decided to market it as, not because of any gameplay reason, or at least, that's the consensus from the people I've talked to.

Why is a planet its own map? Plants are equivalent to RoN's cities. What's the difference? Planets have research stations, resource extractors, factories, and defenses. Cities have libraries, mines/camps, factories/barracks, and towers. The only real difference between them is that Sins makes you use phase lanes and RoN lets you approach any way you want from any direction.

I'm not saying either game is better than the other--they both have their place. I just don't understand the thinking that a planet (or star) is its own map. Sins has huge maps with many planets and star systems, but RoN also had maps with multiple continents.

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This brings up an exciting idea for a future expansion of Sins. Would it be possible to have different regions or localized anomalies? One of the things I didn't like about RoN is on the really huge maps everything was desert, forest, or some other region. I would have loved to see the top and bottom of the map go to snow, middle become desert/tropical, and the places between go temperate in order to change things up or change the movement/attack stats of different units for factions depending on what their strong points were. Sins could do something similar like having regions of space contained in nebulae, toxic/explosive clouds (briar patch), subspace/movement distortions, asteroid debris like an oversized asteroid belt spanning multiple planets, or something else. Each area could have advantages or disadvantages for a certain faction (ie: tec gets movement reduction in a subspace distortion, advent get shield reduction in an asteroid field/belt/region, and/or vasari get speed reduction in a nebula). Just thinking...

I loved RoN for years and years. But now it's..... yeah

I wish there could be a deep and complex RTS or TBS(I prefer RTS) where the smallest maps would be like one galaxy. Every player picks from several races and would start out on their own planet and be able to explore the planet, mine its resources, build small villages (hamlets) that with money and population will grow slowly into metropolis, and that you can do research to eventually be able to build space stations to go off into space and explore. From there you can continue teching up to eventually be able to colonize different types of planets and find enemies. Just thoughts...

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I have played Civ4 and it has left me wanting for more because it truely gets boring once you have a vast empire in that game. The only fun part is when you start out and make decisions on where to expand and then start attacking enemy early... yawn

What 4X elements do you see Sins having that RoN lacked, out of curiosity, other than perhaps scale? I honestly can't think of any, whereas I can think of several traditional 4X components RoN had (a more substantial culture system, wonders, non-combat victory conditions) that Sins lacks.

Exactly the same question I have Vinraith

I would argue that 'wonders' in sins are the end game super weapons, they provide a way of breaking an enemies civilization in several cases. I don't think theres a defined role for wonders in most games though, some make them an end game objective and if you maintain them, you win, but other games make them into a super powerful weapon or culture bomb type thing. I think the only similarity between them all is that they cost a heck of a lot, and they usually do a lot of damage to the opponent in one form or another.

Non-combat victory situations aren't absent in Sins, they just don't actually MAKE the opponents game end usually. However, I've seen plenty of players quit because they were held in a corner and cultured to death passively. I don't know quite what other non-combat conditions you are referring to because really, this isnt civ. 19 different conditions for possible victory arent necessary, or even desirable in a real time strategy game.

Scale IS a large part of 4x because it has to encompass fully that 'explore' component. I would say sins may not even fully encompass that condition either unless played on the very largest 100 planet maps, because it doesnt take too long to explore even 50 planets with good scouting.

I think however, Sins does hit a good balance and as soon as all of the bugs/balance issues have been ironed out, the game will be remembered as a classic.

Wow that sounds awesome. Waiiiit... I think they just brought out a game like that! Its called Sins of a Solar Empire! Its totally awesome, you should check it out!

edit: Did I just fall for a sarcastic post by posting another sarcastic post? If so, well done sir! You win this round!

Not really, lots of folks play 4X games on small maps. There's nothing fundamental about a 4X game that demands a 300 star map (or a 300 city map in the case of Civ/RoN). Exploration in both RoN and Sins is basically the same, build some scouts, put them on auto explore, and forget about them. Huge maps in RoN are pretty big, anyway. Sins can obviously scale to an unlimited extent as long as you have the PC to handle it, so no other game is going to be able to match that.