It may not look like much, but Neptune's Pride has already been awarded one of the highest achievements a game can have on a PC. No, it hasn't been installed on the C Drive, it's a web-based game, and it has gotten its tab pinned. Can you believe it?
Well, it would probably help if I explained what Neptune's Pride was. In short, it's a 4X game set in a randomly generated galaxy, full of aliens with one goal: own the majority of stars.
Who, if anyone, will work together and remain at peace until the inevitable backstabbing must occur? How will your galactic empire develop? What aspect will it flourish in? Wealth? Science? Huge numbers of warships?
I don't have a clue, but I'm looking forward to finding out.
Fun Times
I'm not entirely sure what version of Neptune's Pride is available for us to play these days. The website calls it Neptune's Pride, but the help stuff refers to Neptune's Pride II, which looks awfully similar to the only game that appears to be available to play.
Is it a full-on sequel or a graphical update? I'm not sure, but we'll assume it is the latter because the gameplay is what will get you hooked - believe me, I know.
Your first task is to find a game, and just missing out on one, I've got to start an empty lobby in the 'try before you buy' part of the website. It's important that you do have a play around with Neptune's Pride before you cough up any cash because - no word of a lie - a single game could last for a month. A month.
Now, I've been invited to tabletop experiences that offer similar gameplay to this, notably Twilight Imperium. They last a day. Neptune's Pride could take a month. When I read that might be the case, I wondered if this blog would mysteriously stop after game #999, but I thought I better crack on with it, play it as much as I could before writing about it, and just see what happened.
The various alien races each have their own interests, though I must admit that I'm not sure how or where this affects gameplay. I want to be this guy, but he's behind a paywall, so I end up picking an alien banker, and going down the economic route, paying for everything rather than bothering to developing it all myself.
You get to name yourself different in each game, so say hello to Financier Cavil. A nice bit of roleplay goes a long way in games like this, helping to immerse your opponents into the story of your hopefully mighty empire.
I got to choose my player colour and opted for Orange to reflect the Evergrowing Backlog theme. It was a silly choice. Not only do I prefer red, but the starting stars for the orange empire are rather spread apart, and there isn't a whole lot out here to contest. I suppose I don't want to contest anything if I can help it, but I worry that a vast empire will be harder to defend than a clustered one.
Time will tell, I suppose, and now I just have to wait for some players to join me.
Getting more stars is the aim of the game, and you can plot routes for your carriers to take so they can be left alone to explore the galaxy, and as you can see, it'll take some considerable time for them to do their travelling. We're talking hours to get from one star to the next, and that's assuming you've got enough technology to reach it in the first place.
You can research all kinds of things, and they'll boost the effectiveness of different parts of your empire. Increasing your scanning tech will allow you to see further out into space, knowing how to Terraform will allow stars to produce things cheaper, but being a banker, if I research Banking I'll get more money each day. It's a no-brainer for a first choice, though at my current rate it'll take 6 days before I know how to do that...
I don't actually know what economy points do right now, but I'm under the assumption that it'll generate more money each day. I hope I'm right. It's a practice game, right?
As you can see, I've planned some routes for a few carriers to start expanding my empire, and I'm all ready to go.
Ugh, there's always one, isn't there? Never give an Internet user the ability to freely name their character. Hi there, Mr Butthole. Could you not think of anything else before you joined, hmm? Think that gives a good account of who you are as a person and a player?
Let's have a look at my neighbours then. Who do I want to destroy the most?
To the south we have Fuzzymoth, and to the north is Commander Butthole himself. Delightful. I know who my chosen ally is, that's for sure. I simply cannot have Butthole victorious in this game.
You can communicate with whoever you want, about whatever you want, but Fuzzymoth here has made the mistake of revealing his intentions too early. Nobody at this stage of the game has any technology to trade - you have to research it first. What could Fuzzymoth be researching first, I wonder? Weapons tech, perhaps?
A carrier in motion stays in motion. It'll diligently follow its path from star to star and will follow orders about picking up or dropping off ships, should you need to transport defences around your empire, but once it has left one star system for the next, all you can go to change course is to reroute it from the star at which it is currently travelling to, or buy another carrier and send it the right way.
Buying a new carrier to save me the ten hours or whatever it'd take to change course, I send another carrier off to pick up a few stars on the southern border. From what I can see of the galactic map, this is the only route Fuzzymoth has of reaching me until he gets some better tech.
As you can imagine, sticking around and waiting for Neptune's Pride to play out in real-time is unimaginably stupid. The current production cycle will end in 16 hours, at which point we'll get another bunch of money to pay for the next step of our plan.
Incredibly, and unexpectedly, when I log back in 16 hours later, I'm in the lead, my empire now 14 stars large. Nicely done, and here's another $265 to spend as well. You'll note that I've already spent it all upgrading bits and bobs of my empire, now that I know a little more about how it works.
You'll also note that my scientists have stumbled across a new discovery, which is amazing - I didn't know I had scientists! Each hour, your chosen research gets points equal to your research level, or something like that, and when you hit the required target, your technology level increases. It would, therefore, make a bit of sense to switch from researching scanning next to hyperspace range instead, because it'll be quicker for me to unlock it with these 72 points already in there.
A little calculator will crunch the numbers for you. Basically, it's always better to be defending, and each level of weapons tech will obviously make you better at knocking out opposing ships. So far as I can tell, there isn't any more to it than comparing numbers, and these numbers - predictably - aren't going in my favour.
If a player takes a star, they earn some cash depending on what's already on it, but they do destroy things in the process. Luckily I had no intention of developing this star for a while anyway. It's rich in resources, which means buying points of economy or science is cheaper, but it's not in the safest part of the galaxy, and I've not got the production to create enough ships to defend it.
So, knowing that it is only a matter of time before it turns red - remember, a carrier in motion stays in motion, there is nothing Fuzzymoth can do to stop this course of events - it's time for a chat.
Now, I wasn't thinking that I would get a badge or some favour for doing so, but I'm perfectly willing to put some flavour and flair into this message. I'm roleplaying here. It's immersive, and I've surely played enough of these games by now to come across as an NPC at least.
On this basis and this alone, I have completely switched my ire from Commander Butthole to Fuzzymoth. No matter what it takes, no matter the cost to my empire, Fuzzymoth will fall.
Not in this fight, obviously. That was never going to happen. But now war has effectively been declared, you best be prepared to face the consequences, and I'm not sure you know what I'm cooking, Fuzzymoth...
Also, Commander Butthole dropped out and gave his empire to the A.I. All the more reason to focus my attention down here.
I have the money but not the ships, that's my first problem. Increasing my production should be easy enough, but it'll be days before I see anything useful come of it - ships get built hourly, but if a star is only producing 0.25 ships an hour... yeah, we've got to think hard about this.
At this point, I know that half of Fuzzymoths carriers are incoming. Not all of his ships, but half of the carriers that he can use to move them. Where in his empire has he left the other two? Could my neighbours give him something to think about? Could they, at the very least, give me something I could use myself? Money? Technology?
As the hours tick away, another star falls, and I get increasingly desperate in my attempts to gain allies. Sadly, I can see that both are too far away to even reach any Fuzzymoth stars and being in the centre of the galaxy, they've got more neighbours to worry about - including each other.
I can confirm that at the time of writing this, saying that we cannot allow a Redditor to win has not resulted in support from either of these folks. At least I tried.
I'm turning into a sort of information broker here. I've just informed them where three-quarters of Fuzzymoths carriers are, and how many ships are with them. We all know the totals of what each player owns. This is valuable information for them to make use of, but no. Nothing happens. It's up to me.
Another production cycle goes by, and someone up there still likes me. My scientists have made a jump start of weapons tech. Sticking with banking in a situation like this is probably stupid, but I'm holding out hope that Fuzzymoth isn't as quick to the weapon tech he's researching - and having fewer points of science or research or whatever it is in his empire than I do, I think I might be able to catch up thanks to this boost.
It would be phenomenally useful if I was gifted weapons tech, I'm just saying...
The hours go by. The AI hasn't given me anything yet, but I'm five minutes away from the next level in weapons tech, which will effectively cancel out the defensive bonus that you get in fights, making it a straight comparison of the numbers.
While all this has been going on, I've just been farming ships. I've rerouted carriers to form a defensive line. I've even measured hyperspace lanes to know how quickly a carrier will move from one star to another - if Fuzzymoth goes south, I've one hour to put my force into action, but when will he strike? You get no warning. It's a cold war in the middle of space.
Unfortunately, the loss of two stars means I can no longer see where the rest of his ships are camped. I think there are 40 or so lurking just out of sight, with more at the ready if he has developed that star to produce ships, and why wouldn't he?
Nerdcrusher69 (there's always one) is taking a commanding lead in the middle of the galaxy, but my forces are more or less ready to deal with Fuzzymoth. As we both sit at weapons tech level 2, we're still essentially trading ships in whatever fight we engage in. However, the defender bonus always applies, and if I don't get the numbers right, that'll mean a big loss if I strike first - and when it takes a few hours to launch your carrier towards a star, you'll know when someone launches first.
That carrier I have on a week-long route? I'm really tempted to completely ignore it, let it engage the enemy, and just see what chaos unfolds. By the time it arrives, it'll have close to 60 ships onboard, perhaps more. It might be just enough to punch a hole into the defences, and I've two carriers parked behind that could do the rest...
Final Word
I'm not sure you understand how excited I am to watch this chaos unfold, and you can bet your bottom dollar that I'll be annoyed if it doesn't work out as I hope it does, but I'll stick with Neptune's Pride until Financier Space is no more - all I've got to do is log in each day and see what's what.
I mentioned that I was invited to play Twilight Imperium once, and I was interested to go but couldn't make it - anxiety, of all things, sadly. The next best thing I could have to that board game experience was smaller board games that do something similar, video games that do something similar but are usually too complicated for an idiot like me, or Neptune's Pride, which I actually learned about properly just a few days ago with a very timely YouTube suggestion.
The fact that it takes literally hours for anything of note to happen in this game is both daunting and exciting. Countdown timers are great, and they are everywhere in this game. Your daily production, your research, each and every carrier in motion. Something is always happening in Neptune's Pride, but never often enough that you have to check up on it every half an hour. Just note down when the next important event will take place and log in then.
If you can't log in frequently, get chatting. I'd have preferred if that part of the experience wasn't met with memes and silence, but that's the Internet for you. We can't have nice things.
In two hours another production cycle ends. What will I spend my money on? What will my scientists discover? How will my plans change?
In eight hours, my ship will reach the point of no return. If I chicken out, I must chicken out before then, otherwise, in 19 hours, it'll smash through Fuzzymoths defensive line, and who knows what'll happen after that. Heck, who knows what'll happen before that? We've already lost another player. Perhaps I'll chuck some technology their way in an attempt to get something back.
Anything can happen in Neptune's Pride, and I'm very much looking forward to it. If you fancy the idea of a month-long 4X, definitely check it out, and if you can get a few friends together rather than playing with randoms, do so.
FILLING YOU IN
This is the state of the galaxy a week later. I sit atop the leaderboard with 38 stars, and every other players has either deliberately placed their empire into AI administration, or was kicked for inactivity. It is me against a bunch of robots in a multiplayer game that thrives on social interaction, shady deals, and broken promises.
When I first wrote about Neptune's Pride, I was on the war path with Fuzzymoth. I reached out to help from Nerdcrusher69, giving him some technology to help him to attack from the other side. A day later, Fuzzymoth quit. Nothing had really happened. Maybe he saw the writing on the wall.
From then on, Nerdcrusher69 and I were allies, and their reason for being so was simply that an AI empire must not win. He couldn't do much with his empire, but pushed money my way and said that he'd do what he could to attract some attention his way. A few days later, he, too, went and clicked the quit button.
I, however, still like Neptune's Pride. The joy of logging in periodically to check on the status of your ships is often quickly followed by the alarm that, during the wait, your opponent gained a new level of weapons technology, and your entire force was wiped out. What was your contingency plan? Do you have enough ships to cover it? Are you on the back foot?
I'm going to continue playing this game to see if I can shrug off attack from 7 AI empires out to get me using the mechanics alone. If I can, then surely I'll have enough of a grasp on them to use them effectively against human opposition - provided they all stick around to see the end game.
It's sad that I alone will know what happens in the end, but I genuinely didn't think it'd be me in the top spot when I started playing, so to be winning what is a great little game is fantastic.
FURTHER FILLING YOU IN
Well, it was slow going, but when the galaxy is at all out war, all you need to do is put every single bit of science you've got into weapons tech, all your cash into getting more science and manufacture, and then just pick your targets wisely.
There were plenty of tit-for-tat battles that resulted in trading stars and slowing my inevitable victory down, but that was my fault as much as it was the AIs. But yeah, when you're playing with a carrier carrying hundreds of ships, with a weapons tech level of 13 versus your enemies' 8 or 9, it's just a matter of time, and that time has come.
Do I play again? Most likely, at some point. With humans, though. Known humans.
Fun Facts
Can you design a game for emergent gameplay? A doctoral thesis and Neptune's Pride suggests you certainly can.
Neptune's Pride, developed by Iron Helmet Games, first released in 2010.
Version played: Unknown, possibly Neptune's Pride II, PC, Unknown