Sorcerer King - New 4X Game From Stardock

Stardock announced Sorcerer King today on Steam Early Access. The game is made with the Elemental game engine. I have the usual Video , and game description below.

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A New Kind of 4X

Sorcerer King is a new direction for 4X game design, pitting the player against a single overwhelmingly powerful enemy instead of a set of evenly matched factions racing for abstract victory conditions.

Think of the Sorcerer King as the evil mage who won the last traditional 4X game. He has already conquered the world. His enemies (including you) are scattered, their armies broken and cities torn down. His dark minions have free reign to terrorize the survivors everywhere except a few tiny outposts of civilization (like the one you start in) too insignificant to crush.

Asymmetrical Gameplay

Sorcerer King is built around the concept of asymmetry. Your goals (kill the Sorcerer King) are wholly different than the Sorcerer King’s goals (destroy the shards and therefore the world). The rest of the game revolves around this central concept.

The Sorcerer King doesn’t play by the same rules – he operates on a completely different level than your scarce resources allow you to. A sophisticated “Game Master” AI controls his forces and other events in the world, managing pacing and generating threats to ensure an engaging game from start to finish.

What’s In, What’s Coming

Sorcerer King is in Early Access. That means it’s functional but incomplete as we march toward its early 2015 release date. The main things you’ll see improve during Early Access are polish, balance, and content.

The one major feature that is still being worked on is the minor faction system. The remnants of other civilizations will each have involved questlines and dialogues, and you’ll have to win their allegiances before the Sorcerer King overwhelms the last shreds of hope they cling to. Letting them slip into the Sorcerer King’s grasp will be a huge blow to your chances of stopping him.

More information.

Oooo….sounds cool!

Great news! Expanded FE:LH is coming?

I like especially this:
- Your goals (kill the Sorcerer King) are wholly different than the Sorcerer King’s goals (destroy the shards and therefore the world).
- The remnants of other civilizations will each have involved questlines and dialogues, and you’ll have to win their allegiances before the Sorcerer King overwhelms the last shreds of hope they cling to.

Hopefully quests will be generally expanded and more interesting.
Only "destroy the shards and therefore the world" doesnt sound like a bright idea from any ruler. But I hope this plot will be explained.

So close and yet so far. All I want is a turn based master of magic replacement but they are hellbent on never giving this to me. I simply can't understand.

My gut response is different for the sake of being different. Not my thing.

I think it is a more story driven game than a strict 4x game as was FE. I had hoped for a more solid narrative story but I think that is not stardock strong point; they seem to be a sandbox house. No clue if it will be any good but the steam board is livid at the pricing and closeness to FE.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
Not my thing.

Let me guess… no MP.

Originally Posted by you
I think it is a more story driven game than a strict 4x game as was FE. I had hoped for a more solid narrative story but I think that is not stardock strong point

It stays in familiar 4x territory which they already know. But there should be many events and Brad mentions "hundreds of quests" in an interview so it seems they are slowly moving there. I think one day they will create (party) RPG with some strategic elements.

Brad also mentions "tongue-in-cheek" dialogues. Hopefully they wont overdo it.

The final iteration of FE (LH) is a damn good game, so I'm hoping this will be too. The only major downside (to me) are that all the different factions play and look about the same. That's easily corrected with Heavenfalls exellent Stormworld mod though.

I get that it's the same engine and dev team, but this looks too similar to the Fallen Enchantress games. Not sure why exactly, but I just couldn't get into those titles. The single-player campaigns were boring to me, and I'm not into multi-player when it comes to 4X.

Skip for me. Still uses Fallen Enchantress as base which is pretty terrible. Balance was all over the place, their pride of customizing all units led to OP combinations and 0 uniqueness of factions. City building was boring, and tactical combat although playable in Legendary Heroes still not as good as it could have been.
City spam….. never solved.

I am only interested in Beyond Earth and Worlds of Magic.

Since this dev team could never solve how to make a good and interesting tactical combat they decided to not improve their Gal Civ 3 with one (I care about Space 4x without tactical combat even less)

Honestly it look like it could be fun game for few sessions but not for long term play like other (good) 4X.

I think that what this project is is a way to make a game that takes little time to develop and will reuse existing Fallen Enchantress graphical assets.

Brad Wardell wants a Master of Magic clone too, but this one isn't it. I think he will eventually make one though, he seems really keen on doing this.