Recommend me some games that make it rewarding to carry out hit-and-run attacks on enemy lands. It has to be optional and ideally there should be a faction or more that does it better than the others. Unfortunately a lot of space 4X make this difficult because pretty much the only land there are planets, and they're a unitary element that's easy to defend. Static assets are much more concentrated in these games.

Civilization 4 has an excellent Vikings Scenario in which you have to raid England and the shores of France. In the base game you can raid (pillage) villages and towns (which are tile improvements separate from player cities) for gold. Raiding a town is very costly for the civilization whose town it was.

Raiding can also be a major part of your game in Crusader Kings 2.

You can play as a Pirate faction in https://www.gog.com/game/distant_worlds_universe

and Armada 2526: https://armada2526.fandom.com/wiki/Unn

You can attack trade routes/ships in https://www.gog.com/game/galactic_civilizations_ii_ultimate_edition

and https://www.gog.com/game/sword_of_the_stars_complete_collection

Does it have to have 4X (or even 3X)?


My question was serious as it was unclear to me if the games had to be both strategy and 4X or not.

I feel raiding is an essential part of the Cossacks games.

I would say Total War, every commander has a raiding options and if you take total war warhammer you even have a couple of emerging factions such as the beastmen and orcs that live of raiding

in Distant Worlds ( this game you can find on GoG ) there are the united factions of pirates, well not so united, you even can play as or work with

Yeah, the Civ games are good since external terrain improvements are essentially mandatory, and the more recent games have civs that get bonuses specifically for pillaging. Sounds great, but Sega is one publisher that loves their DRM. Well, it has to have an economic aspect so you can weaken an enemy without fighting large battles or outright conquering cities. I keep reading about compatibility issues with Win 10.

funny enough i just obtained the whole package of IV ( on steam ) and playing broken sword atm without any weird happenings ( so far )

*beyond the sword

I've had zero issues with Civ4 on numerous computers with quite varied configurations.

Damn, the forum made an absolute mess of my post. I was referring to Distant Worlds Universe.

played about 30 games from vista to 10 and never managed to make it through to the end without something dubious happening

lets wait for 2 ;) which is under development right as we speak

still if the game is on a sale again, i say go for it

In Age of Mythology (real time strategy), one of the available resources is favor from the gods, which is used to train myth units and research special technologies. Each faction collects favor in a different way. The Norse faction's unique way of gaining favor is by engaging in combat, so they are encouraged to keep attacking their enemies as often as possible.

Ah, no wonder I didn't see the reply.

It works pretty good from what I understand. The most complaints are actually about tiny font.
If you don't want to risk it anyway, just get it on a sale. It is definitely worth it.

Thanks, I may give it a shot with the new refund policy. 4X in my eyes is just a subgenre of strategy, but I put it in the title because that's my primary interest for this theme. I'm also open to wargames with few/no 4X elements, and of course grand strategy games as well.