I often ask myself what a short 4X would looks like. I love games like Civilization, but I never fully completed a single game, because it takes so many hours to reach the end. How to streamline the mechanics of a 4X so it could be completed in only a few hours? Ozymandias proposes few answers to this question.

A game of Ozymandias takes less than an hour, it simplified lot of mechanics from 4Xs to keep it in that small scope:
- The entire map fits on a single screen.
- Your tiles automatically and always produce resources, no need to build structures or assign workers.
- The tech tree is a table that fits on a single screen where you can pay to improve your production of various resources: No new mechanics or many effects hard to keep track of.
- Instead of building lot of units that fight each others to conquer territory, you have very few army units, and they exert territory pressure on the borders of your empire instead. If your "military power" is stronger than your neighbor and they fail to match it within two turns, your army will automatically conquer their neighboring tiles.
- Victories don't wait for a "total extermination" or "maxxed tech tree" that drags the game for so long. Instead there's a list of objectives that rewards 1-2 points to fullfill (Have 40+ population, Have conquered 3 enemy cities, have a territory XX tiles large...), and the first player to 6-7 immediately wins. It leave you enough leeway to have different ways to win, but the objectives a reasonable enough that once a player has built enough advantage the game will quickly ends without dragging.

It's a really interesting take on a faster 4X, though it could be said it's closer to a boardgame or a regular strategy game. I find some of those mechanics very clever and wish they were in bigger 4X, like the army exerting territory pressure, or the multiple victories conditions that ends the game much earlier. Being so short, it loses on certain aspects, there's isn't really any exploration, no fog of war, no trade, no diplomacy mechanics, no eras, no buildings (beside cities), no tech tree with technologies that drastically changes the gameplay.

But in and all, it's a pretty enjoyable experience for smaller, shorter, and more contained 4X games.

I often ask myself what a short 4X would looks like. I love games like Civilization, but I never fully completed a single game, because it takes so many hours to reach the end. How to streamline the mechanics of a 4X so it could be completed in only a few hours? Ozymandias proposes few answers to this question. A game of Ozymandias takes less than an hour, it simplified lot of mechanics from 4Xs to keep it in that small scope: - The entire map fits on a single screen. - Your tiles automatically and always produce resources, no need to build structures or assign workers. - The tech tree is a table that fits on a single screen where you can pay to improve your production of various resources: No new mechanics or many effects hard to keep track of. - Instead of building lot of units that fight each others to conquer territory, you have very few army units, and they exert territory pressure on the borders of your empire instead. If your "military power" is stronger than your neighbor and they fail to match it within two turns, your army will automatically conquer their neighboring tiles. - Victories don't wait for a "total extermination" or "maxxed tech tree" that drags the game for so long. Instead there's a list of objectives that rewards 1-2 points to fullfill (Have 40+ population, Have conquered 3 enemy cities, have a territory XX tiles large...), and the first player to 6-7 immediately wins. It leave you enough leeway to have different ways to win, but the objectives a reasonable enough that once a player has built enough advantage the game will quickly ends without dragging. It's a really interesting take on a faster 4X, though it could be said it's closer to a boardgame or a regular strategy game. I find some of those mechanics very clever and wish they were in bigger 4X, like the army exerting territory pressure, or the multiple victories conditions that ends the game much earlier. Being so short, it loses on certain aspects, there's isn't really any exploration, no fog of war, no trade, no diplomacy mechanics, no eras, no buildings (beside cities), no tech tree with technologies that drastically changes the gameplay. But in and all, it's a pretty enjoyable experience for smaller, shorter, and more contained 4X games.