does anyone remember Ascendancy from the Logic factory?

Oh yeah, Ascendancy was a great game. The only problem I had with it is when I run it from Windows, the cursor goes really really slow and I have to run the mouse across the pad 4 times or so to get across the screen. But I ignored that for a little bit and was amazed. The tech tree is still the best of ANY game, plus you had to think of what buildings to place on planets and where due to local conditions (I think red squares unusable, and either blue or green is good for research, and so on). I am really surprised that Masters of Orion continued when Ascendancy existed, cause it's a real shame they never continued the series. If you want to try it google up Abandonia, a good site for abandonware games(definately not pirating, I checked it out before downloading from there, as they have strict laws they actually adhere to quite well)

Ascendancy was awe-inspiring at first glance. The interface was spectacular. Great graphics and music. The 3D starmap with starlanes worked great. The tech tree was wonderful and hasn't been reproduced, I agree. I also liked the modular colony and ship design.

However.

The AI was DREADFUL and a complete game-breaker. Even as a child I could never lose to it. If nothing else, it made a whole bunch of easily exploitable errors that just couldn't be ignored.

The developers released an "antagonizer" patch which was supposed to make the game challenging, but it did nothing to fix the AI. All it did was give the computer players more resource bonuses to waste on useless ships.

They've been working on Ascendancy 2 for something like ten years now, supposedly.

I still remember ascendancy. It was a great game. as I recall, the maximum ship number you can build was limited to how many systems your empire controls (3 times the system number?). There was no resources, instead you build factories, research centers, population facilities, and so on to increase the strength of each planet. ship design was fantastic so the research tree. and I remember that the planets were orbiting (turning) around the stars each turn, or am I making this one up?:PP

I loved Ascendency too! Also the music was fantastic for the time although there isn't much of it by today's standards. Ascendency is available to download as abandonware now, and can be run via a DOS emulator for windows quite happily. I've been known to do exactly that, and minimise it just to get the Ascendency music with my game of SEIV!!!

That game gave me some great moments in the past... I recall finding the Nanoshell shield technology in ruins in the early game and building it into my designs. I got into a fight, powered up the shields, the ships' power units couldn't cope so my ships shut down and were promptly shot to pieces by the computer! I still remember how my friend laughed at me...

Edit: http://www.abandonia.com/games/221/Ascendancy.htm has all the history you need for this. Screenshots, box scans, the manual, some chat about its history!

Yes, I remember buying it as soon as it was released. The graphics were amazing and would still stand up today. But alas, the AI was terrible and after beating the game once had no compunction ever to play it again. Shame really. I also played a game by the logic factory called the tone rebellion. Weird game, never really got into it.
I would be surprised if we ever saw anything else by the logic factory, although I believe the website is still live.

Well this link should make your day. This is a free download that works well on my XP PC. Make sure you download the AI patch as well as it has a MAJOR impact on the gameplay.

http://www.abandonia.com/games/en/221/Ascendancy.htm

As everyone said above, the AI is just absolutely nonexistent. I remember a couple of ideas for making the game more fun to play. First, just hit the 'End Turn' button for the first 100 to 1000 turns. Then, one you start colonizing planets, just let the game pick what to build for you. If you follow both of those ideas, you will still decimate the AI. But, it does help even the playing field a little bit.

The one thing I remember liking the most about this game are the long range weapons that could fire all the way across the system. It was a lot of fun watching a ship come out of the warp point only to be fired upon from ships or orbital weapons around the planet that were all the way across the system. In addition, the game really had some clever weapons and other tech items.

I remeber Ascendency as a beautiful game with wonderful music and cool-looking alien races that was an absolute snooze to play. The AI was so patheic and the gameplay was so flaccid and repetitive that I think I got through three complete games before shelving it forever.

I am a huge MOO/ M002 fan (Moo3, not so much :-/) and have also tried most of the other Space Opera type games out there, and Ascendency was definitely one of the least engaging I have tried...

Cunnilingus and Psychiatry have brought us to this...

Tony Soprano [/i]The Sopranos

I downloaded from abandonia however I can't get it run from the C prompt,,,,any suggestions?

Ascenancy was my first (PC) space strategy game and I liked it. If there ever be Ascendancy 2, I'll buy it...

Wenla

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Before you can develop a strategy, you have to have a vision.

Does anyone remember Pax Imperia: Eminent Domain (or the Apple predecessor)? Tough game!

Yes, later, after it had been out for some time, I always wanted to find Pax Imperia: Eminent Domain but it was nowhere to be found in stores. Since then I haven't tried to find it online.
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Fouund it! It's free "abandonware" now!
http://free-game-downloads.mosw.com/abandonware/pc/strategy_games/games_o_p/pax_imperia_eminent_domain_a_k_a_pax_imperia_2_.html

I doubt that I'll play it though.
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That site is charging a small one time fee...well back to my current games.

You don't happen to know where the original Pax Imperia (released on the Apple only, to my knowledge) can be downloaded from? All I have found is a site offering a patch making it compatible with recent MacOS versions.

Not it's not. No relation whatsoever. The only thing in common is that you can only travel via pre-existing connections between stars, instead of to any star withing a given range. Ascendency did not invent that concept - it was around in board games as far back as the 1970's, and probably decades before that in SF literature.

Ascendency was published in 1995. The first game in the Space Empires series was published two years before that. It is safe to say that MM was not influenced by Ascendency in creating the original Space Empires game, and later Space Empires versions have clearly been evolutionary developments of the original.

If you played the really early Space Empires games (for example Space Empires II, which was released in 1995 - probably in development at the same time as Ascendency - and can still be downloaded in shareware form from MM), and had ever played the board game Starfire (first published in 1979), it is clear that Starfire was the original inspiration for Space Empires. As SE has evolved the mechanics have moved farther away from Starfire, but in the early versions the mechanics were far too close for coincidence.

Ascendancy would be the first 4X space opera I played on the PC.

Pax Imperia 2 was the first 4X space opera game I modded.

Boy, this brings back memories (good and bad). I've even got the original disks for both floating around here.

May have to reinstall PI2. It still has one feature that doesn't exist in the SE series: Weapon Arcs. Even though we can't do those in the SE series (yet?), I might be able to mine it for other ideas.

"Only by being constantly at war with evil in all things, including yourself, can you truely know peace."
Download my mod here: GidMod

I would categorize that dev cycle in the same realm as Duke Nukem Forever.

"Only by being constantly at war with evil in all things, including yourself, can you truely know peace."
Download my mod here: GidMod

greycell wrote:
"The developers released an "antagonizer" patch which was supposed to make the game challenging, but it did nothing to fix the AI. All it did was give the computer players more resource bonuses to waste on useless ships."

Well, there is a little more to the antagoniser patch. The patch offers 3 different play modes:

"Peaceful:
---------
This is an even shake for the player. This is just you against the AI code,
without cheats.

Neutral:
--------
This adds an edge in industry for the AI, and biases the AI players
against the player diplomatically.

Hostile:
--------
AI is very biased against the player diplomatically, to the point where AI
opponents will probably all end up at war with the player. The AI
players get an edge in both industry and research."

When I played this patch for the first time (on "hostile"), I remember that I was beaten up by the AI very early in the game. Unfortunately, one of my opponents and I discovered a critical system (my only connection to the rest of the game world, as my home world was in a 5 star deadend) at about the same time, and although I managed to conquer and hold this system for some time, the AI kept attacking me, thus preventing any normal development. As a result I was locked in my deadend, and eventually I gave up.
Maybe I didn't play an optimal game, maybe I could have won, had I held through long enough, but the antag AI of Ascendancy is definitely a worthy opponent for ME.

Another way to influence the difficulty (and game experience as a whole) of Ascendancy is the choice of a race. If your race has a research bonus, is not too weak in economics, and has some time for peaceful development, then you are almost invincible. But you don't have to choose such a race, if you want a more challenging match.

Pax Imperia 2, however, is very different in this respect (that's why I mentioned it in an early post of this thread). Left alone, the AI will develop a very powerful empire. You still can beat it, but it is likely to take very hard fighting, system by system, with ever-growing and -stronger fleets on both sides, in line with your (and the AI's) economic and research development. Like in many 4x games, there is a period where the game hangs in balance. If you manage to out-fight, out-research and out-build the AI during this period, you've won the game, and it's your choice whether you want to end the game at this stage, or continue to conquer the AI's empire system by system (which may take quite long if the number of systems is high).

I used to play Ascendancy a lot in the past.
I still own it, too.

I remember having a lot of fun with it, designing ships, figuring out what to have which planet build, having fun with the map when trying to guesstimate which areas to send ships to to get to some area of space...

I forget the name of the race, but my favorite was the one whose special ability was to 'terraform' a planet.
I abused that at times, I would have a colony ship park at the biggest dead world possible, and when the power was ready, colonize the dead planet with all its black squares and let rip with the power. Poof, instant keeper.
A planet the AI ignored becomes a useful planet for me.
iirc, I think it didn't just turn black squares to white squares, I think it turned them into colored squares, which means a planet full of bonus squares.

As for the AI causing problems...
It's fun watching the enemy attack when you got a planet with big missile launcher stations in orbit, helps to slow down their attacks without getting to bogged down with ship production because of still being able to build up planets. Very helpful when it is a choke point system, and they have to get past it to get to my core systems.

I might have to dig out the disk again and get the latest version of DOSBox installed and have some good old times again.

Ascendancy plays well on my XP PC - no DOSBox required!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascendancy_%28computer_game%29

There's been talk of sequel for ages, status unknown.

Doesn't look good though, the website doesn't really reveal much, or (more worringly) show any screenshots http://www.logicfactory.com/ . I would love a sequel, with improved visuals, Space Empires diplomacy options, but MUCH better A.I than Ascendacy or SE.

I liked the game. I remember it had great graphics but the AI and pathfinding was dumb as a brick. Still, it was fun to play.

Has anyone tried running these using the latest DOSBOX? I have fond memories of both including Privateer and Star Control...is it me or has the field just dried up? And yes I have played SE since v2 was released...hahaha even used it as the topic for my capstone marketing project

I still have my copies of Ascendancy and Pax Imperia 2. Ascendancy had many great ideas but I thought then that the AI was soooo weak it makes SE look like IBM's Deep Blue. Still, I'm ashamed to say, I do remember losing once though I no longer remember how.

Great game which I only discovered recently due to another thread like this one.

But as for SE5 being the only modern G4X, not so, there is Sword of the Stars and now Sins of a Solar Empire. Both play online but neither quite have the feel of strategy growing out of mathematical simplicity like Master Of Orion or Ascendancy. Neither have the complexity of SE5 either. But they are all unique and all worth playing IMHO. So are Stars! & MoO2.

Pax Imperia Eminent Domain was the first Windows game I ever owned. I liked it a lot. Shame Imperium Galactica 2 was a bit unfinished and lets not talk about MoO3.

The "There Can Be Only One" principle only applies in game to players. It doesnt have to apply to the games themselves.

Pax was nice, but also one of the biggest disappointments I had for a game.
I had found that game when blizzard was still producing it, and they were predicting great things! A lot of stuff that is already in SE, like custom ship design... But also custom hull design with morphing stuff and such. But that never made the game. It was a shame.

Minefields are probably better handled in Pax than in SE combat though.
I still have to try stars!

The Ascendacy music is available at another thread on the boards. There's a link in there.

~Myrath

I was talking about Pax2 by Heliotrope Studios, I think that was Pax1's successor. I have never played Pax1.

Stars! is very abstract and a much more basic look than even Ascendency or MoO1 just so you dont go disappointing yourself again, but it is fully graphical ... in 2D ... as opposed to text, lol. A big step up from Space Invaders! Dont have high expectations. Its very basic visually but still strategic with exploration (scanner & drive techs & fuel) and economy strat (it has commodities and mining and 3x resource cost for ships) and plenty of arithmetic, only tactical decision is in choosing your own ships AI but that makes combat fairer, nice game if you are not expecting too much.

I know; Pax Imperia II was initially started by blizzard, but was taken over by Heliotrope studio's.
When I talked about Pax, I meant pax Imperia II.

~Myrath

Ohhh I see, I didnt know that, well that is a fine pedigree for Pax II after all. Obviously Blizzard did better concentrating on the ~crafts but I cant help wondering what it would have been like if they had stuck with it. I liked the way that peace was a win in Pax.

Rereading the OP I cant help the feeling that he/she was a bit miffed at SE. I dont think its fair because SE is pretty good and getting better, but obviously it is imperfect shall we say.

What I notice about Ascendancy was the way that planets gave you control of space with the big guns you could build on them, something which is nevertheless available in SE as planet launched fighters. But big guns that can fire several hexagons might be kind of fun, one for the modders!

I really want to play this game but for some reason the abandonia site isn't working for me... I click on the download this game link and that takes upwards of five minutes to load the download page. I then click on the get it link as directed and it simply takes another five minutes to load before telling me the connection was reset. Does anyone else have this problem or know how to solve it or is my poor 6 month old computer just giving out under the strain of trying to download a massive 41 Mb file?

Ah this brings back memories! It was a cool game.
The AI was useless, the music was cool, and it had 3d system maps and star maps a feature that even today is hard to find on turn based 4x games. Too bad I threw the cd away... been like 10 years?