by MarcM, 16 November 2025
The adventure rolls on, as we’re (re)learning Space Empires 4X.
And Back to It
click images to enlarge
As the second round starts, neither empire has made much of a dent in exploration. Green is doing well with three young colonies. Next economic phase, they’ll generate a total of three points of income and grow to 3-point colonies. Red just has one colony but they did get five points worth of minerals.
Both empires continue scouting. A Red scout discovers a black hole in their system and doesn’t live to tell the tale. Luckily for Red, they had just bought a spare.
Green keeps finding planets to colonize. They’re building a stronger economy than Red and can start producing larger, better ships. The early game is with them.
Several rounds in, the Green scouts venture into open space and learn why it’s risky. Danger markers mean instant destruction so Green just lost two scouts. But the markers get removed and the empire is clearing a path into Red territory. The final Green scout discovered a nebula. Like asteroids, nebulae affect combat.
Deeper into the game, both empires have fully explored their systems. Both have expanded to become collections of income-generating colonies, though Green currently has a larger empire and economy. Green is using the income to improve ship size and speed, as well as offensive and defensive modifiers. One challenge with upgrades, in standard rules existing ships need to be in a system with a shipyard for one turn to get the latest tech. Currently both sides only have shipyards in their home systems, so that’s a problem. For the future, I’ll need to build shipyards as I expand. One thing to note in the image above is that Green has an unprotected colony developing near the Red empire. It’s in danger of extermination.
Exterminating Your Enemies
The Red empire notices the unprotected colony, so here’s a chance to demonstrate the fourth X, exterminate. We haven’t yet had opportunities for ship-to-ship battles, but this will give a taste of combat in Space Empires until warships start trading broadsides.
When battle begins, the combatants move out of the play area and reveal ship types and fleet sizes. Red is attacking the colony with two scout ships and four destroyers. The colony has no firepower, no guarding fleets, and no chance. Attacks happen in rounds, with each higher-class ship (the class-E destroyers, in this case) firing first. In ship-to-ship battles, your ships might be destroyed before they can fire a shot. Since you don’t know what the enemy has until combat starts, that makes things interesting. You might be facing a couple of class-E destroyers, a handful of class-A dreadnoughts or a decoy that just exposed your whole fleet. Pay attention, track your opponent’s income and you can make educated guesses about what you might be facing.
There are no combat charts. Ships fire individually. The to-hit number is the attack strength (4 for the destroyers here and 3 for the scouts), modified by attack tech minus the targets defense strength, modified by defense tech. Rolling the to-hit number or lower damages the target. Once damage in a combat round equals the target’s hull size, it’s destroyed. Non-fatal damage gets repaired before the next combat. Each ship in a class attacks individually before you move to the next class. Since colonies have a defense of zero, the destroyers need a 4 or less. An attack rolls a 3, so damage reduces the colony from a size 3 to a size 1. A second hit finishes the colony completely.
A few turns later there’s a chance for ship-to-ship combat. Two battle cruisers and three cruisers catch up with the fleet that exterminated Castor colony. Red has added three battle cruisers of their own. Several of these ships have attack and defense modifiers, so I scrawled their total attack and defense values on my board overlay (not included). It helped a bit till I got the hang of things.
Once the smoke clears, the battle cruisers have exchanged a hit apiece. They have hull sizes of 2, so the damage from a single hit doesn’t have a lasting effect. The Red destroyers didn’t fare as well. They took three hits, and since destroyers have hull sizes of 1, three are destroyed. Castor is partially avenged.
Midway into the game, a Red scout ventures into deep space and discovers a barren planet. I’m using some of the advanced rules so that means aliens enter the game. With combat values of 5s and 6s, they’re not lightweights.
The scout doesn’t have a chance. This is a case of being destroyed before you can even fire.
The Green empire eventually reestablishes a colony on Castor, but at the top of the board, the Red ships have exterminated two more and are about to finish off the colony on Eccles. That’ll be total of 15 points of income lost for Green.
With the colony on Eccles destroyed, three fleets of Red battle cruisers head for Chulak, the Green homeworld. Green has been building large, powerful ships, but they’re expensive to keep. The loss of three colonies slows production.
The Red battlecruisers meet Green ships in battle in Green’s home system. The fleets exchange fire, slowly whittling each other down. For a couple of rounds, Green has been able to produce new ships to replace losses. A group that started with seven Red battle cruisers has been reduced to three. But Red has just taken out the last two of Green’s shipyards, so new ships become difficult.
And Red reinforcements are on the way, in the shape of dreadnoughts and destroyers. Since they’ve been wiping out colonies, their types and numbers (though you can’t see them here) are revealed.
Red’s second group of ships has joined the fight. They added two dreadnoughts and a couple of destroyers. The destroyers didn’t last long, and Red just lost their last battle cruiser. Green has built another shipyard, but ultimately the math isn’t in their favor. The game ends when the opponent’s homeworld is destroyed…which it isn’t…but the rules note that often the eventual outcome is obvious before that happens. Unless I’m mistaken, that’s where we are. I think, based on firepower and Red’s defensive bonuses from technology, the Green ships can’t land enough hits in a round of combat to destroy the Red dreadnoughts. While Red can’t destroy Green’s dreadnoughts for the same reason, Red has two more groups of battle cruisers on the way (and enough resources to keep pumping them out). Green’s lone shipyard can’t produce enough ships to counter. It will take a while, but eventually, if I’m playing this right, Green will lose.
Signing Off for Now
This was a good time. The more I played the more I realized, “I should’ve…” so it was nice to feel like I was learning how to plan a strategy and not just move around flipping over the system markers. I wish I’d started the exterminating part of the game earlier. Keeping track of the technology modifiers across a bunch of ships was a little complex late in the game by the time I started trading shots. I’m still not totally sure I got everything right, but I’ll do better next time.
I don’t mind record-keeping in a game – I like some, to be honest – but that’s something else that I can do better. I was sloppy with my tallies, and that’s a key part of the game. But the enjoyment of exploration and expansion are in full force. And the excitement really built at the end when Green was defending the homeworld. Plus, there are advanced and optional rules I still need to try. I look forward to the next playthrough, this time with the Close Encounters expansion. I haven’t dug too deeply into what the expansion adds, but I saw mention of boarding parties and ground troops, so don’t think it’s just pretty lights and electronic music.
Space Empires 4X Series
(Re)introduction ~ (Re)Learning AAR pt 1 & pt 2 ~ Ground Battles pt 1 & pt 2 ~ Replicators pt 1 & pt 2 ~ All Good Things pt 1 & pt 2 ~ Forum Thread
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