Anacreon: Reconstruction 4021

Anacreon: Reconstruction 4021 is an ASCII space strategy game in where you play (obviously) as the supreme leader of a galactic empire struggling for global dominance. It contains the common elements of 4X strategy, including planet management and development, exploration, tech research and war.

The game contains several scenarios (although you can design your own with a text editor) that present the general background of the game (number of players, number of turns and difficulty). Each map is randomly generated, and wins the player with the highest score when reaching the turn maximum.

Colonies cannot be created. Instead, there are independent planets that must be conquered in order to add them to your empire. Colony management is almost automatic, as there are no facilities (apart from certain orbital platforms) to build and resources are used and divided by the computer. The different types of ships and troops are also automatically built in planets equipped with the necessary tech. Tech is discovered linearly as you progress, but each planet has a tech level (that also advances automatically when in an empire) that determines what can be constructed there. You can, however, establish the general purpose of a colony (agricultural, military outpost, raw material mine…) and freely transport resources and troops between colonies, and you must pay attention to several statistics (efficiency, warehouses, type of planet…).

As there is no diplomacy (except a message system for multiplayer), Anacreon plays mainly as a game about war and conquest.