4X strategy game 'Pandora: First Contact - Gold Edition' now available for Linux on GOG, also on sale

You forgot to mention the AI: The latest versions of the game (that you only get with Eclipse of Nashira) have a an AI that is so good that it has to be penalized up until medium difficulty level in order to give human players a chance. It is therefore a really good game for advanced 4X players: You will be slaughtered and you will need to learn how to play against the AI. Lot's of fun gaming hours guaranteed.

I did contribute the Dutch translation of the game.

How does it compare with Civilization: Beyond Earth? I was excited for that but somewhat disappointed with it. I like the 4X-on-an-alien-planet vibe though and this looks similar, so while it looks interesting I'd love to hear from people who've played both.

Quoting: PhiladelphusHow does it compare with Civilization: Beyond Earth? I was excited for that but somewhat disappointed with it. I like the 4X-on-an-alien-planet vibe though and this looks similar, so while it looks interesting I'd love to hear from people who've played both.

I have the same question. I know Pandora is a little older, but don't know much other than that for comparison.

While Pandora is clearly inspired by Alpha Centauri, the way you need to play it is very different. In Civilization derived games, like AC, but also beyond Earth like games you need to build as many cities as possible in a short period of time after starting the game. In Pandora, such strategies don't work, are even counter productive, and in order to be succesfull, you need to develop yourself a different strategy in order to win the game. The Pandora approach to a well known gameplay problem, the stack of death, is for example also very different: Instead of forbidding stacks, the developers found a more structural solution to make them ineffective (stacks are very vulnerable to enemy artillery).

Conclusion: It is inspired by Alpha Centauri, but it is a very different game. The gap between Civilization and Beyond Earth is much smaller than the gap between Beyond Earth and Pandora. Many BE players consider this a big improvement. Further in the eyes of many, BE has a few fundamental flaws, while the gameplay in Pandora works. That is not to say Pandora has no flaws, on the contrary, but the basics of turn based strategy gameplay, the set of rules, work pretty well.


Last edited by dmantione on 9 December 2017 at 6:46 am UTC

Liam, when you say the GOG version works perfectly, does it mean the game support multiplayer, cloud saves and overlay on Linux? I though such features relied on Galaxy. Could you clarify it please?

Pandora uses its own TCP/IP based client/server architecture for multiplayer and does not depend on external middleware for it. I own the Matrix Games version and can perfectly have multiplayer games with people that own the Steam version. I have never heard of a dependency on Galaxy. Therefore, while I can't confirm for sure, it would really surprise me if the GOG version would do anything else.

Quoting: dmantioneIn Civilization derived games, like AC, but also beyond Earth like games you need to build as many cities as possible in a short period of time after starting the game. In Pandora, such strategies don't work, are even counter productive, and in order to be succesfull, you need to develop yourself a different strategy in order to win the game.

Thanks! I appreciate the overview. Regarding the bit I quoted here, could you elaborate just a little—why is expanding as fast as possible counter productive? Is it because the aliens push back if you expand too fast?

Aliens are indeed one of the reasons: Having to spread your defenses when the aliens become aggressive makes it harder to survive them. That is, however, not the main reason. The main reason why expanding too fast is counterproductive, is because of the way your population grows: Let's assume you have 10 units of population. If you spread them over 2 cities of size 5 each, then you need to construct twice as much buildings to make them productive (farms, factories, labs) as when you would have a single city of size 10. Therefore, in Pandora you want to delay constructing cities.

At some point however:
* You will run out of habitat
* You produce too much polution in a city
* Or you want to use a strategic resources on the map

Only when that happens, it makes sense to construct a second city. Migration of population to the new city is automatic in the new city and is affected by the amount of habitat, polution, and morale in the city.

So.. in Civilization, constructing cities makes your population generally grow faster. In Pandora this is not the case, you grow faster by having a limited amount of cities, enough to provide sufficient habitat for your citizens.

You don't want to spend too much time on constructing civilian buildings such as factories, because you need an army. Keeping your army strong enough is more important in Pandora than in Civilization, because of alien agression and the AI: The AI plays to win and if you become an easy appetite, the AI will decide to go to war. Therefore an underdeveloped army will quickly lead to loosing the game.


Last edited by dmantione on 9 December 2017 at 6:59 pm UTC

Innnnteresting, and thanks for the detailed explanation. I have 553 hours in Civ V and 81 in Beyond Earth, but got bored of both of them a year or two ago (I now scratch the same itch with EU IV). Much of that time was playing multiplayer with a friend who still wants to play a 4X occasionally (and isn't quite prepared to jump to the complexity of a grand strategy game), so maybe I'll bring this up to him to see if a new game with a different take on the mechanics would be fun for both of us.

Quoting: PhiladelphusHow does it compare with Civilization: Beyond Earth? I was excited for that but somewhat disappointed with it. I like the 4X-on-an-alien-planet vibe though and this looks similar, so while it looks interesting I'd love to hear from people who've played both.

It's a bit simpler, no clever web-shaped tech setup, and no real other dimensions to progress--no choices of political economy like in Alpha C, no harmony/purity/supremacy thing, no culture advances et cetera. It does have a couple of cute innovations of its own, like the concept of "operations" which are things you can do anywhere on the map a limited number of times--some operations, like orbital insertions of units, you have to build as one-offs which hang around until you use them, while others, like scans or orbital bombardment or nukes, have dedicated buildings which give you one every X turns. Tech tree is somewhat randomized, meaning you can't really have a standard order of grabbing stuff.

It's also much bloodthirstier. You will do a lot of fighting. You will fight the native buggy things. You will fight the AI, which will attack even if you were getting along great pretty much the moment it sniffs that you have a small army. You will fight the extra, "eclipse" buggy things. You will fight the invaders from some advanced hostile race that gate in. You will maintain a big enough army that if your focus is more growth and expansion you will constantly curse the need to devote precious city production and upkeep to making and maintaining more units.

Micromanagement of production and resources is both important and significantly different from Civ games. Learn how it actually works or be hooped.