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Lost Empire: Immortals - First Look Preview
Gwynne Dixon
01/02/2008
Pollux Gamelabs turns up on the horizon at warp speed in an organically regenerative, hydro-powered, space battleship. We see what's up...
Some might argue that turn-based strategy is a dying genre. With RTS/RTT games, such as the Total War series, successfully combining humongous real-time battles with traditional turn-based strategy, pure TBS games (such as Civilization) have to offer considerably more depth in their gameplay to compete. For those who played a lot of Risk when they were kids, such as we did, this only heightens the enjoyment of a classic genre.
Lost Empire: Immortals is just such a traditional TBS game. Placing itself firmly in the niche sub-genre of space exploration TBS games, Lost Empire will have to battle for its share of the market with game series such as Galactic Civilizations and Sword of the Stars. However, Lost Empire has an ace up its sleeve and it comes in the form of its battle engine.
Let The Chips Fall Where They May
The traditional combat formula for TBS games, laid down by the grand daddy of them all (Civilization), features battles which play-out in a board game type of way. Upon attacking an enemy you're able to choose which of your units will go into battle first. The opposition then does the same and, depending on the many attributes of the battling units, a victor emerges. This process is then repeated until one side's units are completely destroyed or somebody retreats.
Lost Empire's competitors in the sci-fi TBS sub-genre have attempted to buck this trend in recent times. Sword of the Stars, for example, combines a turn-based 2D battle engine with an automated 3D one that you can zoom-in to, while Galactic Civilizations III opts for the fully automated 3D engine. This certainly helps to free such games from the 2D shackles that the sub-genre has been plagued with over the years, and it's something that certainly hasn't been overlooked by Lost Empire's creators, Pollux Gamelabs.
While Lost Empire is a turn based strategy game at heart, each player actually makes their move at the same time and then the results are calculated at the end of a turn. Within this turn based play are three of the four Xs in 4X gaming. Exploring, expanding and exploiting are all accounted for in Lost Empire's turn based interface, although the fourth X (exterminating) takes place in the game's battle engine.
The ships that you construct in-game are grouped into fleets. Within these fleets are a variety of different ships, from reconnaissance craft to defensive patrollers, and bombers to fighters. Unlike many 4X games, whenever you come into contact with an enemy, the resulting battle doesn't actually take place in the turn based game, but a separate battle engine. All your battle encounters are saved in this engine for viewing at any point but, if you don't wish to view the conflict, you can simply remain in the turn based game. Here you can see the results of battle by checking the amount of ships you have remaining in your fleet (if any) once the turn is over.
That said, from what we've seen of the game, the chances are you'll probably want to view the battles. While they are completely automated (as you have no control over your units), the nuances of battle between the units, as well as the thoroughly competent graphics, provide a spectacle that is rarely experienced in turn based strategy.
Pollux allows you to direct how your various ships will move in these automated battles. Additionally, you can tailor ships' weapon systems to satisfy your every whim. Lead Programmer, Jonas Moller, explains in TVG's Lost Empire Q&A:
"You can actually see where units are heading. Your weak units might be getting pounded by bombers, or maybe they're sneaking around and perhaps you should change your strategy by setting ships to guard your weak ships. Maybe you should tell your fighters to stay back and protect against enemy bombers.
"We're aiming to make a game which allows you to graphically conceive the battle, allowing you to see where you need to change your strategy. Also, the weapons system should make it pretty clear which weapons are being used, so you can see if an enemy is using long range weapons for example. This means you'll need some fast ships with some heavy hitting, close range weapons, so you can get in there and take him out."
In this sense it's a bit like Football Manager's 2D match engine. You can pick your team and set out your tactics prior to a match but, within the 2D match engine itself, you're little more than a spectator. Okay, so you can tweak tactics during a match in Football Manager, but it's essentially the same concept. In Lost Empire, you tell all the various ships what to do and you deck them out appropriately. Then, when the battle starts, all you can do is play your hand and let the chips fall where they may.
There's something quite refreshing about this. While it lacks the board game style of battles in other 4X games (meaning that tactical player choice is sacrificed in battle) it gives back to the gamer by providing something that feels more like an epic battle. It submerges the gamer in the plot of the game, which has the knock-on effect of making the experience more immersive.
Some story With Your Strategy, Sir?
4X games have never been famous for providing complex narrative alongside their in-depth strategy. From the advent of Sci-fi TBS games with Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, the sub-genre has certainly been more prone to adding a touch of story as some sort of an explanation for why everybody is conquering each other up in space. Other 4X strategy games, such as Europa Universalis and Civilization, simply rely on earth's bloody history to tell the tale.
Anyway, Lost Empire even goes so far as to offer the resolution of its story as one of the winning conditions for the game. Many millennia ago, this advanced civilisation called the Aeons existed, but then the civilisation fell in a devastating cataclysm. The secrets of this ancient race exist in the Lost Empire universe and it's up to you to expose them.
Within the game, you're given the choice to follow missions given to you by one of two immortals (one is evil, the other good). You can choose not to follow these missions and progress through the game without its story, but if you do opt for the story and take on an immortal's missions, that immortal will eventually form an alliance with you. Once you have this alliance, the goal is then to destroy the other immortal and, along the way, you will expose various secrets about the galaxy's past. In destroying the other immortal (be it good or evil) you will complete the story winning condition.
Everything Seems To Be Above Board...
Of course, the usual range of winning conditions are also on offer (economic, military, scientific etc.), while the other basic gameplay tenets of a TBS game also appear to be in good working order. There are six playable races, all with their own unique traits. The Tritons, for example, are a water people with regenerative ships; while the Crystal Spirits live inside crystals and have a very good knowledge of computers, apparently.
In addition to these six playable races, there are also 28 minor races which have to be taken into account during your exploring and exploiting. Each minor race has unique sciences for the plundering, while they can also be assimilated into your civilization with some mineral bribery (be careful about these minor races biting the hand that feeds them though). You can also strengthen minor races that lie on your boarders by giving them minerals, in the hope that they might build up their fleets and put up resistance against your enemies.
Leaders are also available and the game starts with three leaders who you can ascribe various jobs to (farmers, generals, etc.). Be sure to take advantage of their various strengths, though, so that they can help to speed up production and aide you in battle.
Another essential 4X feature that is well integrated into Lost Empire is fog of war. It takes the form of red and blue rings surrounding your various fleets to denote how far you can see, and the perimeter within which enemies can see you.
Everything appears to be above board with the diplomacy system as well, with the usual alliances and map sharing taking centre stage, as well as the deception and espionage that ambassadors and diplomats can afford you. To add to this, enemy AI is pretty unpredictable and differs from one race to the next, so you'll have to adjust your diplomatic tactics considerably in each unique situation.
As has already been mentioned briefly, unit types vary widely from one race to the next. Some empires have regenerating, organic ships (presumably operating under some kind of bio-kinetic energy), while other races put a greater emphasis on stealth. So, unlike other 4X games where the differences between units in each race is purely cosmetic, Lost Empire looks set to offer a wide array of different gameplay dynamics for the various playable factions.
Pollux Gamelabs... Making Your Life Easier
Trade is something that has often been a laborious task in turn based strategy games. Manually forming trade routes for each given resource, with each specific city/planet and all the various civilisations, has traditionally been a bit like data entry. To keep Lost Empire up to date with the top 4X games out there, Pollux has automated the formation of trade routes to a certain extent, minimising the need for micro-management in the process.
Pollux has also made modding more accessible in Lost Empire. All the variables in-game (weapon strengths and ship speeds etc.) can be changed through a spreadsheet, which - we're assured - should be fairly accessible to anybody who can use Excel. The ship and particle editors, on the other hand, are slightly more complex but do allow you to change the graphical appearance of everything from the interface to weapons and ships.
Speaking of the graphics, Pollux appears to be serving up a fairly nourishing visual meal. Too often in space 4X games have we been excited by the prospect of jetting through the expanses of space at light speed, only to be let down by a flat, top-down view of the proceedings where each star looks like a Haliborange tablet. This is no longer the case in Lost Empire, as the galaxy itself is a stunning vista that you can zoom in and out of at your will. The turn based game has nice 3D visuals from an isometric perspective and, by the looks of things, it will really make space exploration come alive.
But, before you put on that Buck Rogers costume, wait! There's more. The real graphical feast comes in the form of the battle engine. The screenshots pretty much tell the story... The graphics aren't incredible, but for a space strategy they are right on top of the pile. Think back to when you bought sci-fi novels as a kid: you would always go for the one with a front cover that pictured an awesome space battle. Then you would read the book and find out that most of it was about dull, inter-galactic politics. You'd throw the book into a log fire, disgusted. Having had a good first look at Lost Empire, it certainly appears that Pollux has nailed this inter-planetary battle thing that you lusted after as a wee nipper.
Multiplayer gaming is fairly well accounted for. Gamers can select any of the six major races to play as, and then take part in LAN or online games of up to 10 players.
