Emperor of the Fading Suns Enhanced Steam Charts & Stats

Great classic game!

A classic game that has been patched to work on current. Key bugs in the original have largely been addressed and some new features have been added. PBEM Play is a plus.

[h1]Imagine for a moment that it's some time in 2014, and some random person in your Skype group starts talking about this "really awesome old game!" they just found.[/h1] Curious, you head to the link they posted and download a heavily modified version of "Emperor of the Fading Suns" called "Emperor Wars." You immediately open the game and are awestruck by the visuals and theme; it's like 40K without all the dumb shit everyone pretends to like. You're awed by the scope of planet-side strategic game play that seamlessly transitions into a galactic map, and you start to read the lore from the in-game compendium and unit cards. Is this Star Wars? Why are there feudal knights aboard starships with laser weapons and swords!? But then you quickly realize you have NO idea where to even begin playing the game, and close it immediately to never open it again. That was my first foray into Emperor of the Fading Suns, and I regret not putting more time and effort into it back then. [h2]But you can skip the grind now![/h2] These mad-lads have taken it upon themselves to upkeep and bring back to us this game in complete working order, with semi-modernized features that make it far more accessible to the average strategy gamer. There's nothing else I can say about the game that hasn't already been expressed by people more talented than I, other than the fact that the discovery of it back in 2014 spawned an Autistic obsession with its lore and world, as well as the purchasing of the books for the tabletop game. It's a beautiful universe and a fantastic game, and if you have five friends to play it with, it becomes one of the most fulfilling and engaging pieces of media that can be enjoyed among friends.

Love this game. Careful with the mods though, they kind of suck. There is a point where you HAVE to pick between lore accuracy and game-play and with games you should always prioritize game-play, the mods do not do this. The only mod this ever really needed was a QoL mod to change the building notifications and a few other things like giving the player hard data for choices. The biggest example is the traits you select when you start. You get ZERO data about them. Same for religions. There is no real in game list showing the benefits of these. If we can have a tooltop for resources we can have one for sects and traits. If things look really familiar when you start playing though, congratulations. You've just figured out that newer Civ games are copying Emperor of the Fading Suns and not always succeeding at it.

Game was originally release in 1997 not 2025 (I played it back then). This game isn't new player friendly. I held off leaving a review, but it's not getting any better. AI is and always has been brain dead. AI plays by a different set of rules to try to help it out. Not that it makes much of a difference. AI gets everything for free. No maintenance on units or cities (buildings in this game are considered cities even though they have no pops in them). No need for specific resources. Once it researches a specific tech with a unit it can and will build it to death. All this still doesn't help the AI. The AI barely does anything while you're colonizing most of the galaxy it only has a few cities and 1 lab that magically keeps up with you. Yup, my 35 labs vs it's 1. I even modded the game for tech to cost more, since the current cost is design to make it easier for the AI to get them all. The universal warehouse setting only affects you as a player, AI ignores this. Shows that the AI has no money, but it can still buy max resources from the merchants. Difficult settings. Well, only thing they do is determine how many skills you get at the beginning of the game. I play on the hardest level - Ridiculous. I left the AI on the easiest settting (since it needs all the help it can get). Well, I come to find out this impacts what types and how many units you find in the ruins. All players have to be on say Ridiculous for the ruins to be of any challenge. Labs are supposed to cost 550fb/per turn. I increased this and still it made no difference to me or the AI. Feels like it's disabled. For sure it's disabled for the AI. You need a specific amount of labs per tech, if you don't have enough at the beginning of next turn you lose that tech you just researched. Problem being there is no indication of how many labs you actually need as a player, doesn't affect the AI unless it loses all it's labs everywhere. Recent change to the game has made me not want to play anymore. Instead of going to next unit, now you get hit space everytime time when a unit ends it's turn, even if it's put on sentry. Makes the game really drawn out and tedious. Can't queue units. Instead every turn you get to hit enter to build and then to confirm that you what to built it. Hitting enter to confirm building is most of your game time and it's tedious. Matter of fact there are confirmations for everything. No option to remove any of them. Delete a unit, first you must confirm that you want to delete it. Next it usually only deletes the first unit regardless if you have another unit selected. However randomly it will delete a random unit in that stack. I've had the game delete resources when disbanding units. Too much hand holding. Problem with hitting enter at beginning of game to build units is that the messages come next and often times then not you end up accepting whatever the AI wants. Because in messages enter always means accept instead of exit. Mid to end game. Expect at least an hour or more per turn. Well more now that it doesn't automatically go to next unit. There's an achievement, win a MP game. Really? Who wants to sit around waiting for hours for other players to take their turns? Space map. What is flashing on the space map is usually not what is active. Really, that hard to fix? And this is a strategy game? You'll end up moving the wrong units often because of this. This bug never fix from 1997. Devs made a change to the game. Now when you bombard a building, you do no damage to it, just the hard targets stationed there. Sure that makes sense. Bomb it to death, but actually don't any damage to it. Wasn't like this always. I prefer to be able to actually be able to bomb cities into oblivion if I wanted to, or at least some risk to bombing. I quit playing due to hitting a game breaking bug. I eliminated a AI player that had a seat and the game wouldn't let me advance since I had to assign that seat to someone else but it wasn't election time. Pretty sure the object is to eliminate the other houses. I was somewhere near late game and that takes lots and lots of hours to get to. This issue and adding of even more clicking was just too much for me. You used to be able to skim tithes from the church, now it impacts production and loyalty. This helped you with large armies to contend with the AI's overbuilding for free. Might as well get rid of this option since now it's useless. Symbiots used to be a real challenge and a problem. Now they're brain dead like the rest of the game. And in the games I played on Steam, not even a challenge. Alliances mean nothing in this game. Break them as the wind blows. Diplomacy is useless. AI will constantly demand things from you. They magically know if their armies are bigger then yours. Usually their armies will be bigger then yours, first because they don't have to worry about running out of money and two, they build tons of cheap units in every building that they can. They declare war on each other but don't actually do any fighting or at least I've never ever seen them fighting in all my playtime pre and during Steam. Also they don't need food for anything. Which is why when I capture a enemy farm it's over flowing with food even though I have food usage turned on. The AI doesn't bother to recapture any cities you capture. I tested this. Captured some of their cities. Left no garrison there. Never once bothered to recapture. Matter of fact, since on Steam, I've never been attacked by the AI houses. They just threaten - I'll make you pay. Pay with what pacifism? It's like how can we make it even easier then it already is. Cause only a moron can lose at this game. And yet it's an achievement. Lose the game. I've also played this pre-Steam. Never lost a game, not once, not even close. You have to try really hard to lose at this game. I have no desire to play this game anymore. It just too monotonous and tedious. Made even more so by their recent changes. Game should be less about clicking and more about game play. Yet it's headed in the opposite direction. More clicking, less game play.

I remember loading this onto my brand new top of the line 386 and being amazed at how deep and....well...buggy this game was lol. After playing through 2 full games now without a single crash, I can say that this game is no longer buggy. And lets be honest, by today's standards its not all that deep either. It lacks a lot of QoL things that are standard in most 4x games these days. But that's not as bad as it sounds. What it lack in depth and QoL, it more than makes up for in charm and nostalgia. If you need games like Stellaris or GalCiv 3 or 4, this game may not be for you. But for those of us that cut their teeth on games like this one, its still worth the price. Give it a shot..you might just be surprised to find a gem (or trace or exotic lol, inside joke if you've played the game) Anyway, I like it and am having fun with it, so it gets a thumbs up from me!

If Warhammer and Dune had a 4x baby in 1997. It is amazing. It is everything 4x games today are not. The only issue is the UI control. It is left click to select/move and right to view. Its controls are like Dominions and firmly rooted in the 90s.

I missed the original 1997 release somehow, but the Enhanced Edition has transformed Emperor of the Fading Suns into the game it was always meant to be. Where the original required multiple community mods to function properly, this version delivers a polished, bug-free experience with vastly improved AI and mechanics. This old-school 4X draws clear inspiration from Dune and Warhammer, casting players as noble houses competing for the Imperial throne in a decaying galactic empire. What sets it apart is its emphasis on politics over pure conquest. Military victory remains possible, but diplomacy and intrigue are your primary tools for success. The most fascinating victory path involves securing enough votes from rival houses to be elected regent, then declaring yourself Emperor. Each house votes in regular elections, and initially everyone votes for themselves, but through bribery, threats, or favors, you can tip the scales in your favor. The challenge lies in maintaining power; hold the regency long enough and you can claim the throne, but expect everyone to unite against you. Even non-player factions like the Merchant League cast votes, making them valuable allies to court. A single campaign can easily consume 30-70 hours from what I found out, offering incredible depth across dozens of fully realized planets. The game seamlessly transitions from galactic map to planetary surface, creating an epic sense of scale. Yes, the 1990s UI and graphics show their age, but the strategic complexity and political intrigue remain unmatched in the genre. For serious 4X enthusiasts willing to overlook dated presentation for genuinely innovative gameplay, this Enhanced Edition represents exceptional value. The voting mechanics alone make it worth experiencing; there's something deeply satisfying about ascending to power through cunning politics rather than brute force. I couldn't recommend it more.