Dune is one of the greatest Sci-Fi series ever written. It contains noble houses, giant sandworms, and lots of plotting. It’s the sort of setting just begging for a game series to give it the proper treatment that it deserves. Let’s see if Dune II lives up to the franchise name.

In 1984, the David Lynch film, Dune, was released. The movie itself was well… not remembered fondly. If you hadn’t read the book, then the movie was almost incomprehensible.

Audiences going to theatres were even given a cheat sheet to try and decipher all the strange names and futuristic jargon. 

Then in 1992, a game of the same name was released as an adaptation of the movie. This game, also called Dune, developed by Cryo Interactive. Dune mixed classic adventure game elements with strategy mechanics. 

You’d fly around the planet going to different locations and talking to characters. Then move around your Fremen desert warriors to battle the evil Harkonnen.

The game was generally liked for mixing up the plot of the books with player involvement and initiative. As well as its unique blend of adventure and strategy. 

But while the Dune adventure game was being made, so was another Dune game…

The Beginning of Dune II

In December of 1992, Westwood Studios released Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty. Unlike the first Dune, this game was a real-time strategy game.

While Dune II wasn’t the first real-time strategy game ever made, that was Herzog Zwei, but it was the most influential early contender. The foundation that Dune II set down would influence almost every RTS to come. 

Dune II eestablished many of the tropes that are now commonplace in the RTS space. 

Through its controls, it was the first real-time strategy game where you could use your mouse to control the game and move units. It pioneered the standard base building approach as well as collecting resoruces with worker units, and using buildings to unlock new technology and units.

Warcraft, Starcraft, and especially Command & Conquer would all take the ideas presented here and run with them.

Dune II is incredibly historically significant to the RTS space but its age shows in its gameplay and controls, which is why it’s left mostly unplayed and forgotten today.

“What became Dune II started out as a challenge I made for myself. The challenge was that strategy games would be out-of-control fun if the real-time aspect of Eye of the Beholder could be combined with resource management and a dynamic… But how? Long before I decided to experiment with actually building this new game in a Dune setting, I kept toying with the answer.”

Brett Sperry, from a 2009 interview with Gamespot

While Dune II wasn’t the first RTS. Brett Sperry, the designer of Dune II, was the one who coined the phrase “real-time strategy” as a more marketable take to distinguish it from the older turn-based wargames of the previous generation. 

Westwood would go one to design the Command & Conquer series but at the release of Dune II the game was already being billed as existing on “Westwood’s Command & Conquer Engine”.

Plot of Dune II

Dune II kicks off when Emperor Frederick IV of the Imperial House Corrino challenges Three of the Great Houses to mine Spice on the planet Arrakis. 

Whoever can deliver the most Spice to the emperor will be given control of the planet, an incredibly lucrative offer. 

The three factions at play are the: Atreides, Harkonnen, and the Ordos. The Atreides and Harkonnen both play a major role in the book series. 

While the Ordos are technically non-canon, only being mentioned in the unofficial Dune Encyclopedia. 

The game doesn’t do you any favors if you don’t know anything about the Dune Universe already. This is pretty much the whole set up you get and most of it will sound like gobbledygook until you actually start playing.

The player takes the role of the General of one of the Great Houses and must successfully destroy the other Houses while harvesting spice. 

As the missions go on and you take more territory, you’ll be given access to new technology. Technology as a whole is a premium in the Dune Universe. 

This is due to a pesky AI rebellion that nearly wiped out humanity, all computers are banned. Instead, humans use drug-enhanced advisors called Mentats who function as trusted advisors to the great houses.

As you begin to come out as the clear winner in the contest for Arrakis, the other two Houses will band together in an alliance to oppose you. 

The final battle will take place between yourself and the Emperor’s elite Sardaukar army. Dune II features separate cutscenes for each faction, adding a layer of depth to each faction. 

These cutscenes would later morph into the famous live-action cutscenes of the Command & Conquer series. 

Gameplay of Dune II

You begin by building your base. 

This concept, that you can place buildings anywhere and slowly expand your area of operation seems standard now, but for 1992 this was innovation. 

You could also build which buildings you liked in whatever order. Though to manage this freedom Westwood introduced the concept that some buildings would be dependent on others before they could be built. 

Again, this all seems quaint now, but for 1992 these were huge steps forward. It became almost ubiquitous in RTS titles after this.

Dune II only has one resource for you to collect, the Spice, which is central to the plot of the Dune novels. This substance can be mined by Spice Harvesters. This single and exhaustible resource which both sides were fighting over was a core part of Dune II’s design. 

Having to go out and expose yourself when collecting Spice meant that conflict was inevitable. Players couldn’t just sit inside their own base and wait for the enemy to come to them, they’d actually have to go out and defend their resources. 

This innovation would be mirrored in later titles like Command & Conquer’s, Tiberium Crystals. Command & Conquer was Westwood’s next project after Dune. The studio took what they learned from Dune II and improved on it for those games, spawning one of the most wildly popular RTS franchises.

Other games like Starcraft and Age of Empires, would also introduce multiple resources the player would need to keep track of. Further deepening the need for careful planning and resources management which Dune II introduced. 

Combat in Dune II

Each House also has its own units, an innovation that would perhaps be most purely realized in Starcrafts three separate factions all with their own unique units, buildings, etc.

The Atreides can build a Sonic Tank, the Harkonnen can build Devastator Tanks, and the Ordos can build the Deviator Tank (which shoots a mind-control substance which turns other units to your side).

Dune II plays much slower than most modern RTS games, which can be a blessing due to its clunky controls. Units have large health pools and take a while to be killed, so if you make a mistake you can usually get your troops out of it.

The game was also innovative in its use of fog of war which covered the entire map but for the areas, the player has troops in.

Unlike in later games, once the fog of war was lifted it stayed lifted. 

Throughout the game, you’ll find that infantry is next to useless at attacking enemy bases due to their painfully slow speed and low damage rate. They can also be run over by Spice harvesters which is hilarious but also deeply frustrating since spice harvesters aren’t combat units.

Instead, you’ll want to use your infantry to protect your more beefy tanks which are the real meat of your army. You’ll also have trikes and quad vehicles that are useful for maneuverability but mostly too weak to take head-on fights.

Combat definitely suffers from unit imbalance. Spamming tanks is usually a surefire way to win since their durability and range make them superior to almost every other unit.

Perhaps unsurprisingly the AI in Dune II is extremely basic. The AI will only attack the side of your base closest to theirs meaning you know exactly where you need to defend and will never have to worry about being flanked. They will also only send a few units at you at a time allowing you to pick them off easily.

These are just the things I noticed. According to others the AI will also: attack its own buildings if your units are behind them. Never build new defenses after its initial base is build, only repair the ones that are destroyed. Also if an AI spice harvester runs over your infantry it will just bug out and not produce any more spice.

Towards the later stages of the game players will unlock their Houses superweapon to overwhelm their enemies. The Harkonnen unleash a barrage of cruise missiles know as Death Hand. The Ordos unleash sneaky saboteurs who destroy buildings. The Atreides get access to the native Fremen warriors to join their ranks.

Of all of these, I found the Ordos superweapon to be the most underwhelming. The Harkonnen missiles were too inaccurate to be useful all that often. While the Fremen were on par with the Sardukar(much like the books) and were the most useful. Still, none of these were as useful as spamming tanks at the enemy.

Combat is slow but can be hectic, some of this is caused by only selecting one unit at a time. I can only imagine how groundbreaking this sort of approach was in 1992. 

Controls of Dune II

Controls were innovative in that they focused fully on using your mouse to control D, instead of the keyboard-centric controls of earlier games. 

What you can’t do however is select multiple units at once. Each trooper or tank has to be selected on their own. Multiple unit selection would be an innovation initiated by successors to the genre like Starcraft. 

Dune II’s age shows in how you direct units around. You have to manually select whether you want to attack, move, retreat, or guard. 

This is a far cry from later context-based systems where simply clicking on an enemy unit will initiate an attack. Though the later Mega Drive/Genesis version of Dune II included this feature. 

Graphics & Sound

Even today, the Graphics still work with the pixel aesthetic. The overall design is clean with buildings and troops being easy to distinguish.

This clear visual language is something Westwood would carry with them into the Command & Conquer series, and helped new players immensely when first learning the game.

The overall sound design is excellent. Taking inspiration from both the original Dune game and the David Lynch movie. 

Impact

Dune II laid the foundations for all RTS games that came after it.

It’s a world map where players can choose which regions to conquer prefaced the later strategic meta-campaigns which would provide context for the real-time strategy battles.

Having resource collection units became ubiquitous in most RTS games. As well as base construction and unit production. Each of these gave RTS games their distinctive flow, with players building up their infrastructure before launching attacks, turtling, or rushing.

This also allows you to choose your own army composition giving a huge degree of variety to each game. It allows players to comee up with their own strategies and test them against other builds.

Conclusions

Soon after Dune II’s release, Westwood sought to develop a game not tied to any existing IP, as so began to work on the Command & Conquer series. 

While much of Dune II’s mechanics had been done individually elsewhere their combination here along with the real-time combat and base building was a formula for success. 

Dune II would eventually spawn two sequels of its own, Dune 2000, which was a partial remake of the original that brought many of the mechanics up to speed with the times, and Emperor: Battle for Dune, which brought the Dune franchise into 3D and kept many of the mechanics of its predecessors. 

Dune II is now abandonware, if you’d like to download it you can do so here.

More Dune:

If you’re interested in more Dune Games check out our article on the failed Dune MMORTS: Dune Generations.

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Master of Magic is a fantasy 4X strategy game released in 1994, developed by Simtex and published by MicroProse. The game achieved a cult following but never the influence of Simtex’s other 4X series Master of Orion. Even today Master of Magic is more ambitious in its scope than many other 4X games that have come out in recent years.

The basic premise of the game is that you start as a wizard in a small village and work your way up to conquer the world.

Like the classic 4X series Civilization, you will produce units, build and expand cities, and hopefully crush your neighbors. Unlike Civilization you’ll research new spells, gather powerful heroes, and perhaps most strange of all to fans of Civilization, fight out the battles on a tactical map.

Master of Orion was the hugely influential Sci-Fi 4X game that went on to define the Space 4X genre. Master of Magic never had the wide-reaching influence that Master of Orion did, though it has spawned a number of “clones”.

Nevertheless both games were critical to redefining what a 4X game could be. 

Each blends the 4X management-style gameplay with tactical battles, breaking Sid Meier’s rule not to blend micro-level tactics with a grand 4X game. Both games manage to pull combat off in different ways. 

For Master of Magic, its unique selling point comes from the sheer amount of options you have at your disposal. Multiple units from multiple races, along with your wizard who wields a wide variety of spells from several realms of magic.

The game thrives on this wide-range of customization. With the number of potential options at your disposal being truly ludicrous for a game of 1994.

Note: Master Of Magic was recently re-released by Slitherine both in their store and on Steam.

Gameplay in Master of Magic

You’ll begin your game by choosing either a premade wizard or customizing your own. Then you’ll assign your abilities, spells, and what “realm” of magic you want to start with.

Already, this character creation is a huge step up from the relatively interchangeable factions of the original Civilization. 

After that you’ll choose what race to start as, this determines some of your faction abilities, and what type of units you’ll primarily be producing.

Most of these magic realms and races are ripped straight from Dungeons & Dragons, so anyone with a passing familiarity with classic fantasy will understand the basics. 

Realms of Magic are how Master of Magic groups its different magical abilities.

You will also be able to choose a special “Retort” which acts as a unique ability for your wizard. There are 18 Retorts throughout the game. Each one provides a different bonus which could be anything from increasing your Fame to increasing Gold or Mana.

As you create your character, choose a race, and retorts you’ll begin to notice the defining feature of the game: the asymmetry of your choices. 

Not all magic is equal. And for the races, well unbalanced is an understatement.

Some magic, like Chaos, will have you raising volcanoes and raining apocalyptic fire down on your enemies, while Life will see you doing some weird fairy nonsense until the late game.

The best example for assymetric races of this is probably, the Lizardmen. They will want to use the waterways to start an early rush taking as much territory as they can. This is critical since they can’t access most of the tech tree.

They seem to be at a disadvantage at the start of the game but with the alternatives at their disposal, they can overcome this imbalance.

In another game, this unbalance would ruin the gameplay but in Master of Magic, the number of and variety of those options will allow you to get around these obstacles. 

The asymmetry is frustrating at first as you feel your way through this strange world. But once you understand all the different spells you have and units at your disposal then you can begin to see these imbalances not as unfair but as interesting strategic challenges.

Campaign of Master of Magic

One of the most interesting aspects of Master of Magic is that instead of only one map to play on, the game takes place across two parallel worlds: Arcanus and Myrror.

Arcanus is a normal Civilization-style map with river valleys, mountains, etc. While Myrror is a fantastical underworld filled with giant trees and magical crystals. 

You can travel between these realms at special towers, giving you an added layer of depth as you’ll be coordinating armies between two worlds. 

Later games like Warlock: Master of the Arcane attempted to expand on this feature by adding more alternate dimensions. But I can’t help but feel that Master of Magic’s restrained approach is the superior one.

Technology

Instead of researching new technologies for your people, you’ll be studying new spells to increase your magical potential. But again, certain spells are locked off for some races. 

In that case, you’ll have less to work with and will have to come up with inventive strategies to get around this handicap. 

Still not being able to access the whole spell tree makes the game far more difficult as you may not know how to compensate. This is why I recommend playing as someone premade like Merlin first. He, at least, have access to the entire spell tree.

Dealing with Monsters

Where the real challenge comes into Master of Magic is the neutral ruins around the world inhabited by all sorts of nasty creatures. 

This is another difference from Civilization, the world feels like it’s been here before you and you’ll have to work your way up to be powerful enough to conquer it.

You won’t be strong enough to take many of these neutral caves and ruins down, in the beginning, instead, you’ll need to wait and bide your time until you’re strong enough.

Waiting is something you’ll be doing a lot of in Master of Magic. This often is not a “let me just play one more turn” kind of game. You’ll frequently have turns go by where nothing happens, and you’re just sitting there pressing the end turn and waiting for something to finish. 

It’s more about long-term planning what spells you want and what you’re going to do with them than about exciting turn-to-turn decision making. 

Besides the neutral enemies, the AI isn’t a real challenge most of the time. The problem comes from the number of customization options, spells, and units in the game.

It’s all too much for the AI to handle effectively, and even first time players will be able to beat the AI. 

In the hands of experienced players, the AI stands no chance, as the unbalanced nature of the game means you can easily create sweeping death stacks to crush everyone. 

On most difficulties, your rival sorcerers will barely make an impact while you will be leveling geography and raising new continents from the sea. 

They do have specific affinities or hatreds though. Chaos wizards will try and actively harm the player and can do some damage. If they unleash spells like Armageddon you’ree going to have a bad day but it probably won’t ruin your game.

“The AI will, at random, slam on red buttons like Armageddon and Call the Void without thinking twice. We might call such incidents a “trailing indicator” that they should have been eliminated or at least crippled before getting their hands on such toys.”

From the Master of Magic Wiki

Diplomacy with other wizards is limited. One interesting feature is that you can choose to trade spells that can give you something you’re missing. Sadly, you also can’t interact with neutral cities besides conquering them, which is a shame. 

Races will have their own diplomatic affinities. Everyone seems to hate the Dark Elves(I wonder why) and everyone loves the Halflings. This creates some uniqueness to each race in terms of who you will want to crush first.

There are 14 races in total. Each with its own unit sprites, lore, and bonuses. Each race is home to one of the two planes. The Dwarves, for example, are home to Myrror along with their friends the lovable Beastmen or Trolls.

There are also the odd work-obsessed Klackons, who are first appeared in Master of Orion.

On top of managing your magic and conquest, you’ll manage your resources to improve production and expand your power. 

The three resources are gold, food, and magic. Some races will have a bonus to some meaning it’ll be much easier for them to get them at the beginning of the game, but by the late game, you should have a good surplus of each resource.  

Armies, Cities, and Spells

The armies you’ll lead can feel small compared to something like Total War. With the max amount of units capped at 9 per army.

This often means you’ll have to wait for a unit to die before you can summon a new one to the battlefield. 

Each army can be incredibly diverse due to the number of units available. This makes armies feel interesting and unique, as it’s unlikely you’ll have any two filled with exactly the same units.

Heroes also have their own stats and can be equipped with magical items to boost their power. As heroes grow in experience they’ll achieve more fame eventually becoming champions. You can use spells to summon heroes or thee higher-level champions.

On the unit’s side, Humans have the most overpowered unit in the entire game: the Paladin. In a game entirely about magic, the Paladin is immune to magic. This means it can rip through your near-godlike wizard and your carefully prepared armies with ease. 

Other units like Phantom Warriors can crush most other units in the early-game and summonable units just make the problem even worse.

Cities are handled well. If you’re a human empire and you conquer an orc city, that city won’t suddenly become human. Instead, you’ll now be able to recruit orcs to fight alongside you, which adds to that unit diversity. 

The realms of Magic themselves do what they soundlike. Chaos focuses on fire, Death on the Undead, Life on Healing, Nature on the natural elements, and Sorcery on air spells.

Regardless of the realm, that you choose to focus on, all wizards can use the Arcane realms which involve things like artifact creation or Spells of Return.

Magic generally works as it should. One of the most interesting features being that you can manipulate the terrain of the map to your advantage. For Chaos, you can raise volcanoes which give you certain bonuses. One spell called “Armageddon” starts randomly spawning volcanoes on the map often in your opponent’s territory. 

This is mirrored by games like Populous and Alpha Centauri. But few other 4X games let you play around with geography in interesting ways. 

The game has alternative endings, besides just conquering your enemies which is a great addition to a game that already has a huge diversity in its options. 

Legacy of Master of Magic

Master of Magic did inspire several other games though. The Dominion Series, Endless Legend, Elemental: Fallen Enchantress, and Warlock: Master of the Arcane all take bits and pieces of Master of Magic, and build on its foundation. 

Other more direct successors like Planar Conquests and Worlds of Magic were generally not received well by fans of the original.

Mods like Fall From Heaven II for Civilization IV specifically draw from Master of Magic for inspiration. 

But each of these games went in their own unique direction and there’s never been anything quite like Master of Magic since. 

Conclusion

Unlike Master of Orion, Master of Magic had no sequel. Master of Magic never made its way into the strategy game discussion as well as Master of Orion did. 

Partially this is because the game is a mess. The AI simply can’t handle the systems even after the many patches the game received. 

While the asymmetry of the game is generally a good thing, it does mean when you know what armies work you basically have the game figured out. 

With Slitherine’s recent release, Master of Magic’s greatest fan mod, Caster of Magic, has become an official DLC for the game.

Caster of Magic is the definitive experience to play Master of Magic today. There’s better AI, rebalanced units and economy, and allows for more effective customization. It makes the game better in almost every way. 

Also, you can queue units in Caster of Magic, which you couldn’t in the original, and that’s amazing. 

Above all, Master of magic is ambitious, it’s almost rash in its push for you to be able to customize everything and giving you such a wide array of options. Although it’s still messy, it’s sad to see the game not impact 4X the way the Master of Orion did, because it’s still a great game. 

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A game that was billed as a cross between Dune and Warhammer 40K? Game of Thrones-esque Space Feudalism? Count me in.

Emperor of the Fading Suns is a 4X Space strategy game released by Holistic Design in 1997. But the game is so much more than just another space 4X.

In general, Space 4X games since Master of Orion and Master of Orion 2, haven’t been great. Most have shunned innovation for the tried and true methods set down my Master of Orion.

Emperor of the Fading Suns radically changes the standard formula in several ways, so much so that there really isn’t anything else like it today. 

Background

Coming from Holistic Design, the studio that brought us gems such as Machiavelli: The Prince, and Final Liberation: Warhammer 40K, the designers at Holistic now wanted to do something different. 

So they created their own universe.

The Fading Suns universe originally started as a homebrew role-playing setting at Holistic, which would become the grimdark setting for Emperor of the Fading Suns.

The game is not like any other 4X game you’ve ever played. Don’t believe me? How many games of Civilization have you played spread across 40 maps simultaneously, with another space map where you manage fleets of starships.

None? Yeah me neither. 

Beyond the immense scale, you also are dealing with complex politics and diplomacy. You see, in Emperor of the Fading Suns, you aren’t just a civilization out to conquer the galaxy because that’s just what space Empires do.

Instead, you’re one of five Noble Houses looking to put your family on the Imperial Throne. It’s more Game of Thrones than Star Wars.

This means you’ll have to wheel and deal with the other Houses, the Church, and the League to backstab your way to the Throne. 

Setting of Fading Suns

When I first heard that Emperor of the Fading Suns was a cross between Dune and Warhammer 40K I was skeptical. Both properties are unique and it’s difficult to translate their specific strengths onto another property.

Luckily for us, Holistic Design knew what they were doing. The Fading Suns universe is deep, interesting, and atmospheric. 

The game’s background is detailed in Emperor of the Fading Suns’ manual which is an excellent read. 

It’s written from an in-universe perspective and reminds me of the original Homewoorld’s manual, in its evocative writing bringing the setting to life.

A short primer on the state of the Fading Suns:

Human civilization nearly collapsed after the Second Republic, leading to much of Humanities former empire fragmenting. 

The core of the humans formed themselves into the Empire, united by Vladimir Alecto, who can be seen dying in the intro cinematic.

The “Known Worlds” are split between feuding noble houses, the Church, and the scheming League all tied together in a messy neo-feudal arrangement.

On top of this, there are many minor houses and lesser alien races who aren’t featured in the game. 

So once Vladimir Alecto is mysteriously assassinated, the five Houses must now elect a Regent every ten years since they can’t decide on a replacement for Emperor. 

As the noble Houses feud and bicker, the Tyranid-like Symbiots press on the borders of the Empire. Threatening to consume everyone.

Oh and on top of all of that the suns are dying.

Overview

You begin the game by choosing one of the five houses, your leader portrait, and the game settings. Once you choose your house you will be able to choose your starting bonuses and weaknesses to customize your house to your playstyle.

The bonuses you can choose to range from starting with some technology already unlocked, have troops start with higher loyalty,  or have a friend in the Church, to name a few. You must also choose negative traits, such as having enemies in the church or League or being insane.

Emperor of the Fading Suns then immediately drops you into the game and you’ll be staring at the galactic map.

As I said before, each of the 40 planets has its own Civilization-style map. With its own cities, continents, and oceans.

What I love about Emperor of the Fading Suns is how often it breaks the tropes of 4X Strategy Games. 

Instead of each faction monolithically controlling a planet, multiple factions can be present on a planet, since control is based on cities. 

This means you won’t fully control your home planets at the beginning of the game. Some cities will be controlled by Imperial Agencies, other Houses, or rebels. 

The planets themselves are also extremely different. The snowy cities of Delphi are extremely different from the sprawling Ecumenopolis of Byzantium Secundus. There’s also a map of actual Earth, which is renamed “Holy Terra”.

This adds a layer of depth needed in most games. Space can be incredibly boring, and it is in most space strategy games. 

That’s largely because most of the drama we love about Space Operas is interpersonal, the giant space battles are just a plus.  

Emperor of the Fading Suns moving the core conflict to the worlds themselves helps to serve this. Now when you bomb a planet from orbit you’ll actually need to choose the cities you’re destroying, and defenders can build a planetary shield or planetary defense guns.

By not abstracting things plant-side, they can create a more meaningful player experience by connecting you to these planets.

Victory Conditions & Politics

Your goal in Emperor of the Fading Suns is also unlike other games. Gone are the multiple victory paths of Civilization. Instead, you have one goal, secure enough votes to become the Emperor.

While there’s only one way to win the game, there are a number of options you have on how to get there. First, you’ll need to gather enough votes to become the Regent. 

But how you do this is up to the player. In a brilliant move, each vote you get in each house has scepters that count as votes. 

Scepters are actual units represented in the game, so like resources, they can be captured, depriving other houses of their votes.

Every ten years there will be elections when imperial offices are elected. The offices are Regent, Stigmata, Imperial Eye(spies), and Imperial Fleet.

You can buy and sell offices if you’re planning on becoming Regent or backing someone else. Which really makes you feel like a back-dealing Feudal lord, positioning their Dynasty for the Throne. 

The House that Wins the Regency can appoint the other offices. If you promised offices to other houses during the election you can choose to keep or break those however you see fit.

If you win the Regency you can declare yourself Emperor. You’ll then need to win two subsequent elections for Emperor while the other Houses attempt to destroy you.

This requires a strong power-base and careful preparation, once you go for the Throne, all bets are off and you’ll need to work diligently to maintain your Hegemony.

The Imperial Eye and Fleet are pretty straight forward. The Eye gives you access to a number of bases and spies across the empire, allowing you to keep tabs on your enemies, without committing any of your House’s resources. 

While the Imperial Fleet gives you control of the High-Tech battle fleet of the Empire. Since this is a technological dark age no one can build these ships at the beginning of the game. So these will be incredibly precious and powerful.

Stigmata is the most interesting as it’s a tough trade-off. The Stigmata are a military order tasked with holding off the Tyranid-like Symbiots at a crucial chokepoint before they can overrun the Empire. 

You have access to highly advanced ships, space marines, and tanks: namely, you have the most powerful army in the Empire at your disposal.

But if you want to make use of it against your political enemies you’ll need to pull them back from the desperate defense against the Symbiots. 

This in itself is a trade-off, as perhaps your worlds are near Stigmata, and you’ll want to reinforce the defense. Or maybe your enemies are near the planet and allowing the Symbiots through. Since it will force your enemies to spend precious time and resources fending off that threat. 

The Political system in Emperor of the Fading Suns is so well thought out that it pains me that it completely doesn’t work. The main problem being the AI, which we will get into later. 

Diplomacy

The diplomacy system is expansive, you can trade technologies, votes, and resources. You offer or demand up to three things in a deal. Meaning you can be flexible in what you give or ask for. 

One of the most valuable trading items in Emperor of the Fading Suns is votes. You will need to convince your rival houses to give you these through the trading system. 

Dealing with the Church allows you to excommunicate certain players, ban technologies that might be useful to your enemies, or grant you bonuses. 

Factions

Each faction in Emperor of the Fading Suns has its own unique style. The five Houses are all your standard archetypes for a noble family. 

The Hawkwood are the play off the Atreides from Dune. These are your standard “good guys” who canonically win the Emperor Wars conflict in the Fading Suns universe. 

The Decados, whose name literally sounds like decadence, is the Harkonnen stand-in from Dune. They’re known for being hedonistic, and perhaps fittingly their home planet is full of oil. 

The Al-Malik are middle-eastern inspired. They have close relations with the Merchants League and are one of the two main houses bordering Stigmata. The other being the Hawkwood. 

The Hazat are based on Spanish culture. In the lore, they border a foreign human empire called the Kurgan Caliphate, which they’ve often warred with. Although the Kurgan don’t appear in Emperor of the Fading Suns.

The Li Halan are based around Asian culture, I haven’t played them enough to know exactly what their starting planets are like. 

I wish that Emperor of the Fading Suns fleshed each house out more, giving them different units and specific buildings or traits to further diversify them. 

Beyond the playable Houses, you have the two other Human factions: The League and The Church. 

The Merchant League will run the Agoras on each planet, acting as the mercantile intermediary facilitating trade between the Houses. You can buy any goods you’re missing from the Agora, and there’s one on each planet.

In another show of Emperor of the Fading Suns’ interesting design, The League doesn’t just act as intermediaries. If they become powerful enough (by having 300,000 credits) they can declare a new Republic, essentially breaking off from the Empire, and attempting to reform the old Human Republic.  

This means they have access to advanced units and will go to war with all other factions. Creating another threat where before there was simply your hard-nosed trading partners.

The Church holds a huge amount of power in the Emperor of the Fading Suns. They directly control a few planets, such as Earth, and have their own armies and fleet. Their main interaction with the player will be to ban certain technologies. 

If the player is currently researching these techs the Church will send an inquisitor to destroy your heretical lab, or you may be forced to abandon the technology. 

The last two factions in Emperor of the Fading Suns are the alien Symbiots and the Vau. 

The Symbiots are akin to the Tyranids or the Zerg. They’re a hive-mind race of bugs looking to overrun civilized space. They often end up being little more than a minor nuisance in the base game since their AI won’t build new fleets once their main one is destroyed.

The Vau are similar to the Protoss or the Eldar. They’re a mysterious race with highly advanced technology but mostly keep to themselves. Each House has an embassy on a Vau border world and can trade with them, they especially like maps of your planets.

Resources & Tech

In most 4X games researching new technology is always good, always pushes civilization further. 

But Emperor of the Fading Suns is set in a technological dark age. Technology is often seen as malicious or insidious and is liable to get your research labs destroyed by the inquisition.

Research can be done through different labs, with one technology being researched by each lab. So for every lab, you have the more techs you can research simultaneously.

Resources are collected by buildings, automatically. Resources are units themselves, they can be shipped, stolen, or destroyed. Buildings can also consume resources to function meaning you’ll need an income of certain resources to keep your higher-tech buildings running.

With universal warehouse off the game becomes really interesting, now all resources aren’t shared between planets. Instead, you’ll have to make sure each planet is self-sufficient or that you have supply lines set up to keep them running.

You’ll also have to plan for any military action, any planetary invasion will now need food brought along with it.

Combat & Units

I’ve seen some things in Emperor of the Fading Suns.

I’ve seen troop transports blown to bits as they breach the atmosphere of Aragon. Byzantium Secundus, torn to shreds as the houses vie for domination. Horrors on Stigmata as the Symbiots eat cities alive.

Seriously though, there are some great moments in this game if you can get passed the micromanagement.

Emperor of the Fading Suns uses a now admittedly outdated system of unit stacks to handle combat.

What unit stacking does allow for is combat phases. The first phase is indirect which allows artillery to fire, then air, and finally direct where most units will engage. 

These phases mean you’ll need diverse stacks of units, as your death stack of space marines will be torn apart without anti-air cover.

Unit production and movement require a huge degree of micromanagement, much to the game’s detriment. You’ll have to manage multiple stacks across multiple planets, it’s all incredibly finicky with the 1997 UI and controls. 

There’s really no good way to keep track of all your different armies besides just cycling between which units haven’t moved yet. It’s all tedious micromanagement.

You’ll also have to deal with space combat which is a good deal simpler. 

Where this level of detail does shine is that raiding, piracy, and hit and run tactics actually can make an impact in the game. Destroying the enemy’s shield generator with a crack squad of troops could open the whole planet up to an invasion. 

You can also use your starships to bombard enemy armies before using planetary carriers to assault the surface.

Critique

From all this, the game probably sounds amazing, and that’s because it is… on paper. The core problem with the game stems from the AI and its general incompetence. 

Playing against the AI for any length of time will show you just how utterly inept and broken they are. 

The League will build normal units even when they have access to much better Third Republic units. The Symbiots will cease to be a threat once their first fleet is destroyed, making the main driving force in the game dead in the water.

All that incredibly complex micromanagement that the player finds so difficult, well it’s doubly complex for the AI. 

The level of micromanagement here is truly mind-numbing

Emperor of the Fading Suns was not a commercial success on release, one reason was the terrible AI but the other was simply that the game isn’t finished. 

There are other sects of the Church which are in the UI but absent from the game. There seem to be some systems added last minute, and others which were half stipped out. 

Mods for Emperor of the Fading Suns

Even with these changes, Emperor of the Fading Suns became a cult classic. 

That being so it spawned a number for mods that fix the massive problems with the game. There are three main contenders for overhaul mods you should check out: Hyperion, Nova, and Emperor Wars.

The Nova Mod looks to keep the feeling of the vanilla game without changing too much of the units or buildings. If you’re looking to get an updated vanilla experience today, then this is the mod for you.

Hyperion goes further, it makes changes to the AI, resources, and how units work to rebalance the game and give it more challenge. Hyperion makes the game more complex mechanically, and it can be more confusing for new players to learn but is great for multiplayer. 

The final mod is also my favorite, it’s the Emperor Wars mod. This mod focuses on booth mechanical rebalancing and adding a huge amount of new lore units and overall flavor based on the Fading Suns universe. 

Each faction in Emperor Wars now has its own unique units based on the Minor houses that make up that house. They also can recruit new mercenaries, alien auxiliary, and economic units like peasants.  

With all these changes the AI does have trouble keeping up with Emperor Wars. I’d only recommend it if you’re a lore-buff like me since it really does make the Fading Suns universe come alive. 

Conclusion

Emperor of the Fading Suns is a game that deserves a remake. Many of its ideas are downright brilliant even though the execution was often lacking. The level of micromanagement and lack of challenging AI means that many players will be turned off by this. 

Emperor of the Fading Suns was a genetic dead end for gaming. Many ideas here would only show up again as recently as in Crusader Kings 2 and that’s a very different context. 

You have political drama, feudal houses, and ravaging aliens. All the ingredients for a great game in an interesting universe are there. 

Played against the computer the game vacillates between being a cakewalk and tedious micromanagement. Played by Email against friends the game shines as a complex politically focused 4X.

It’s sad to see there hasn’t been anything else like it tried, and I hope that we can see something with as much ambition as Emperor of the Fading Suns. 

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