Aren't all 4x just "secretly a board game"? I say this as a huge fan of the genre btw, they translate extremely well
this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2023
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Every 4x game and even some gsg games were board games at some point in some way
I guess even Civilization VI could be played as a board game, since all of its metrics are down to simple point accumulations and everything is turn-based.
But you'd spend an absurd amount of time between turns making everything work. Going through all cities to calculate its production, science, society scores, resources, unit upkeep costs, etc.
You'd also need to keep up with way more info that is reasonable to represent with tokens : unit health and experience, each city's buildings, etc.
It is a computer-assisted board game. Replacing the computer yourself is not impossible, it's just absurdly impractical.
Computer-assisted board games are a growing subcategory. Typically they have a companion app that handles the background number crunch, RNG, and guides you through turns with what decisions are possible in each phase.
Well yes but actual no. While 4X games are turn based strategies where most rules are implemented through simple math, the obscene scale and complexity means they'd be impossible to implement on a board. And that's before even considering fog of war.
For a TBS to work as a boardgame, it must have a real-world mechanical solution to its secrets (cards, Stratego units, etc) and it must be simple enough for humans to execute all of the logic within the game.
Something being a board game doesnt effect complexity, after all campaign for north africa is a thing that exists. I fear the man who created such a thing. I want a video game version.
on some level, I agree. The civ board game was absolutely simplified to be suitable for one-off sessions, but the underlying mechanics are undeniably an entry in the Civilization universe. It works well as a board game because civ is inherently a board game with more advanced mechanics, designed to be played by AI and a single player that must master all of those advanced mechanics. Simplifying the game into a one-shot board game does require skill on behalf of the game designers, but it's still the same game
It's not really about the strategy -- jumping from board to a digital counterpart, it's the book keeping that is the huge difference. All the stuff that happens automatically between turns - in civ, this is income, maintenance, trade routes, research, culture, production, population growth, happiness, religious pressure, diplomatic decay, auto move, terrain development, experience, etc figuring in all the bonuses and penalties applied by every citizen, every trade deal, every tech, every wonder, every cultural development, every special land, etc.
In theory in a 4X you're supposed to be aware of all those rules and factors that are in play but in practice the game is too large to account for every instance.
In a boardgame, you're executing that by hand, so it's much more direct.
To me the thing that draws me to a 4x game is The complexity of a system but also internal consistency should lead to the ability make informed decisions without knowing the explicit mechanics of the game.
So you can know that empowering industrialzation and urbanization will undermine the landowning class and let you shift power to new leaders in society because it makes sense that as society moves from mostly farming and less land focused economies the less value landowners have a in society. All without you needing to have a formal "Industrialize!" card or phase in the game.
The fact that it's mechanics based also mean you can weird things like industrializing but only your farming only further entrenching your land owning class but developing a middle class of angry tradesmen because the land owners don't support reforms that would empower them at all.
Victoria is a blast
not stellaris but 4x with action point type system and card based actions. All in the stellaris universe/flavor. Sounds like fun to me
Sounds a lot like a non-pacifist version of Slipways.