Emperor of the Fading Suns

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Emperor of the Fading Suns
Developer(s)	Holistic Design
Publisher(s)	SegaSoft
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows
Release date	1996
Genre(s)	Turn-based strategy, 4X
Mode(s)	Single player, multiplayer

Emperor of the Fading Suns is a science fiction "grand-scale" space strategy computer game made by Holistic Design in 1996. The game has a well-developed diplomatic model, a wide array of units and a complex back-story. This game was based on Holistic's in-house role playing game (Fading Suns).

1 Gameplay
2 Diplomacy
3 Aliens
4 Gameplay Complaints
5 Hacking & Mods
6 See also
7 External links

[edit] Gameplay

The game is played on a galactic map and specific planet maps. Planet maps utilize a hexa-grid system for movement. Individual units and buildings take up a single grid space. Several menus handle diplomacy, chat, and documentation.

In the game, you play as a feudal lord of a noble house amongst the ruins of a galactic empire. You must battle other noble houses and rally enough support to be crowned Emperor of the galaxy. You can start as one of five houses; each has their own advantages and disadvantages. During game setup, the player can customize their house, taking some negative traits such as insanity in exchange for more positive traits, like having all your units start out better trained. Each house starts on its respective home planet, and houses starting on temperate planets have an early-game advantage over houses that start on frozen or jungle planets. There are several non-player groups in the game, including the Symbiots, Vau, the Guild, and the Church. In total there are fortythree planets that can be explored, colonized, and fought over.

During the course of the game you can explore planets to find ancient relics (which give you bonuses), wage war on any other group in the game, or research forbidden technology. Research is a major part of the game, earning new units and buildings; however, there are "forbidden" technologies in the game, as declared by the Church. Researching these will result in the Church sending Inquisitors to your planet, who will subsequently burn your research facilities. Owning forbidden technology usually results in very powerful units. You can get nearly any technology declared "forbidden" by the Church, for a price, or even threaten to unleash the Plague on your enemies if they don't comply with your demands.

[edit] Diplomacy

Diplomacy is handled by a simple trade interface. The player is free to ask for (up to) three things and can then either offer three things or threaten the player three different ways. Besides the other four noble houses, you may also negotiate with the church for votes, ask them to excommunicate another player, or sign the "Holy writ" and admit the supreme authority of the Church. The Merchant League will also negotiate if it is to the benefit of their monetary interests.

The ultimate goal of the game is to become Emperor of the galaxy. Achieving the state of Emperor is difficult. First, one must gain enough votes through diplomacy or by outright theft of "sceptors" (sic) which are worth 1 vote each, to become Regent. Upon becoming Regent, you can assign three branches of the government forces to houses; these branches are the Stigmata Garrison (a huge fortress and warship fleet on and above Planet Stigmata, dedicated solely to halting the Symbiots from spreading throughout the galaxy by blockading the only jumpgate from the Symbiot worlds to human space), the Imperial Fleet (the remnants of the Imperial Navy, in theory the fleet should be used to maintain galactic peace, defend against Symbiots etc., in reality the Minister can use it for his own devious House purposes), and the Imperial Eye (espionage, a fortress on every noble house's home planet with some special detection equipment that allows you to see a large portion of the planet surface. This, however, tends to be a less powerful a position than it might seem, since it is very much possible to overrun the Imperial Eye installations with a decent sized force, even before a House is appointed to this position). At any time when you are Regent you can declare yourself Emperor; however, once you do, you have to survive 10 turns while all the other houses try to eliminate you. Holding the position of Emperor for 10 turns secures a win.

[edit] Aliens

The alien Symbiots and Vau are the only alien species that can be interacted with in the game. Neither has a deep diplomatic interface (the symbiots have none and you may only sell maps to the Vau). The Symbiots are a parasitic organism capable of taking over practically any organic matter. Once infested, the subject is added to a Hive Mind. With these characteristics they share similarities with Starcraft's Zerg. The Vau are an alien race with highly developed technology and large interstellar empire. Lucky for humanity, they are non-expansionist.

Because of time restraints neither was fleshed out. The symbiots are at best aggressive rebels and the Vau (who do not even get a turn) easily conquered planets.

[edit] Gameplay Complaints

Some concerns have been raised regarding the quality of the gameplay. In particular:

1. Later turns in the game can take hours, as players attempt to manage several planets (between assaults and micromanaging buildings). This results in a low quality experience as far as multiplayer "hot-seat" is concerned.

2. Many units, even when just researched, are not very useful, making researching through the tech tree somewhat unnecessary.

3. The computer AI does not present an interesting challenge and can be easily bought for peace with a surprisingly small amount of money, even if the assault which broke the original peace killed several of their nobles.

4. Even though you have multiple votes you are restricted to casting all your votes for one candidate.

5. The in-game documentation is vague and written in an in-universe style limiting its usefulness, especially for more experienced players.

[edit] Hacking & Mods

The game uses a series of .dat files to store all the data it needs, such as units, technologies, etc. These files are all in plain-text format, meaning they can be easily edited in any text editor, such as Notepad. Editing files in this way can allow the player to build units they normally would not be able to (such as the Vau units, sceptors (sic) or even Inquisitors), build units for no resources, or even allow themselves to have no negative traits. This is considered cheating by many players, although it does make an interesting experience. On the same note, these files can be edited to make player-made "patches" of the game, and there are some very well-crafted mods in existence. These try to fix bugs and enhance the game (for example the Hyperion patch makes it possible for the Symbiots to build additional organic spaceships, so they are not stranded on their home planet if their initial fleet is destroyed), while adding lots of new units and balancing out old ones. Hyperion patch: [1] Nova patch: [2]