So I played the game here and then I purchaed the gold edition on Gamer's Gate. The game is fun to play and moddable. However once you hit turn 200 or colonize 20 planets the game has a dramatic slow down in game play. At that point you'll mostly be waiting on the Resource or Population Manager, often times 20 mins plus for your turn to come up. At turn 200, I was just getting into the game and having fun. So I checked if there was a fix for this. No fix. Per the developers, the game is not designed to be played for long periods or for you to colonize every planet in sight. I usually won the game after 30-45 minutes of game play, often winning before I ever met another race, having gotten bored with that, I modded the victory conditions for more time. What's the point of having a universe with hundreds of planets, but if you colonize more then 20 planets, the game becomes unplayable with long periods (many minutes waiting on the AI to complete processing your turn) between turns. Eventually you'll get tired of waiting and hit crl+alt+del, kill the game and go play something else.

The other thing is that diplomacy is a joke. The ai will attack you, make peace, agree not to attack you for 20 turns, 5 turns later will attack you again, make peace, make you an ally, attack someone else, you'll attack the enemy of your ally, they'll make peace, you won't even know they made peace, etc. Or you can attack another race, make peace, attack them again, make peace, etc. If a planet has too amny defesnses, buy the planet, the ai will sell any planet they have except their home base. Hey, there's an invasion fleet at your planet, just buy their ships if you have the cash.

Iif you manage to wipe out a race, they'll become friendly and start asking you for tech, even though they don't have any ships or planets and you've completely wiped them out.

I've never been able to get thru all the techs in the game, just takes to long to research them and playing with the default game without modding, you'll just barely scratch the surface. Once you've researched every tech in a particular catagory, it would have been nice to get a messages about it, but you don't so you have to keep checking and then remember to go thru every planet and delete that type of research facility. I have noticed from conquered planets that the ai does not have the same limitations as you do when it comes to building research facilities. So the top tier reseach facility, you can only build 1 for your empire, where as the ai can build 4 per planet. And on top of that, the ai will always be willing to sell you any tech that you don't have and they've researched.

If you are thinking about getting the Supernova expansion pack and that they have fixed these issues. Sorry, they're still there. I really didn't see any point in it.

So all in all the game is fun in the beginning, is moddable, but has too many issues to keep you inteserested for any length of time.

Armada 2526 is described by it's developers as "Master of Orion meets Total War" and while that might be something that intrigues you a thing to keep in mind is that merging two genre's does not always mean bringing over only their qualities.

Armada is, in it's basic form, true to the developers claims. Half of the game takes place in a turn based galaxy view where you conduct research, engage in diplomacy, move your fleets around and designate construction and production on the various planets in your empire. The other half of the game happens when your fleets collide with those of your enemy and battle ensues, you are then transported into a real time battle field where you must find victory.

The 4X portions of the game are decent without being impressive, the main feature of the game being population management where you you must manage immigration and emigration in order to maximize the tax efficiency and productivity of your colonies. This is an interesting feature that builds upon the general population dependency that is found in most other 4X games. Unfortunately it is also an extremely repetitive task and as your empire grows you will find yourself tempted to leave this aspect for the AI to manage which unfortunately removes a lot of the uniqueness from the experience. A below average UI does not to help the experience.

The Total War part of the game is unfortunately quite lacking, instead of commanding your ships around you are simply tasked with general orders issued to all ships and as such you do not fleet as though you are taking part in the battle as much as you should. A broken retreat system makes the battles far too definite and the victor is rarely anyone other than the biggest fleet.

Armada does have some good sides, a decent diplomacy system, interesting factions, an influenced based exploration/expansion system and space squids. There is nothing however that really makes it stand apart from the rest. In the world of 4X games it is easy to make a game that is simply everything we have seen before with a few new ideas thrown in the mix and that is exactly what Armada 2526 is.

All in all, Armada 2526 is a decent 4X game that tries a few new tricks but in the end only delivers what we have already seen before. It is a solid enough experience that can entertain you as a fan of the genre but it is nothing that cannot be experienced in better games and nothing that really moves the genre forward in a way you can expect to see in the future. A game only for the most diehard 4X fans.

Very basic for a 4x Space Empire-type game. There are much better, competing games at near the same price point such as Endless Space (which I don't really like, but do like better than this) & Space Empires V. Battle is pretty flat, no ship customization options (only through tech unlocks), very shallow technology trees.

One feature that I did like and did not expect to find in a game of this low-end quality, was the ability to schedule repeated round-trip shuttling of popuations, or other land-based assets.

If you can get this game on sale for $1 then maybe give it a whirl, otherwise pass.

Why would you buy the original game when there's armada 2526 gold (with the supernova addon)? Because it offers a darker and different experience. It's much harder to keep everything in balance and to get money in the original game as you can't establish the big commercial hubs you have with Supernova. Also pollution is a much bigger problem as you don't good tools and techs to keep it down. I think it's still worth it for different challenge and you have to think the building of your colonies differentely. It's also the game i started with before the addon was released. If you don't have the game yet, i recommend to start with Armada 2526 gold first as if offers a lot more features.

This is an interesting space based game but its really weak on some things. The tech tree is much a joke compared to many other similar games and there is no ship customisation you get what you're given pretty much.

To be honest I don't consider it worth £12 because it feels more like a flash game import than an actual game itself.

I should have posted it years ago when I bought the game, but here it is : don't.

the AI is frustrating, to the point that you get to pride yourself with a sizeable "attack fleet" made up of say, ten ships and a few space infantry units, then you get to some remote area in the enemy's empire only to find he has ten times more of everything. Extremely difficult game, even though the interface or the management is quite easy to understand. The last frustrating item is the inability of your opponents to have a coherent behavior. Allies for twenty turns, they turn on you just to kill one civilian in a colony, and that's it.
I don't know what these guys did after that game, but I hope it included a sufficient amount of self-criticizing

i recommend this game only to fans of 4x strategy
+interesting concept about space strategy
+u choose a faction from many with each unique characteristics
+enjoyable and relaxing
+/- weird space music
-supernova complete edition off steam?
-graphics
overall:7/10

This is a far far far far far far Better improvement from its predecesor 2525 for Dos including the Deluxe version.

Oh yes.

You can do much more than the original version, diplomacy, control battles, research new technologies including psychic and biological technologies.

Also the graphics and music soundtrack is terrific.

I'm very sad this isn't getting out more.

I like this game. I've read some of the other reviews that are negative in the fact that other games take this style of game ("4x" is it called?) a bit futher and deeper. I think they may be right in that this one does not go that deep; however, it is still a good "casual" space conquest game, in my opinion.

This isn't Master of Orion.

This game has less micro management, and thus is faster paced. Combat is closer to MOO 3 without the broken AI. Graphics is closer to MOO 1 but without the charming pixels.

The game is Master of Orion watered down and that's all the positive things I can say about it.

If you have played any Master of Orion, you can continue playing them.
If you haven't played any Master of Orion. I don't know your frame of reference but it's safer to get a Master of Orion game than this watered down version.

If you can't get Master of Orion and crave Master of Orion, this game may still your hunger if you close your eyes really hard and let the Master of Orion soundtrack play through your head.