Hex Empire, unfortunately, is not about an ancient land of witches turning each other into mules and spiders. The name refers to hexagons, the traditional battleground of the pen-and-paper wargamer. Hexagons tile well, you see, and they look nice with doodles of rivers and mountain ranges between them. They are pointy, but not so much that you need to wear goggles while working with them, like you do with squares or triangles. Dash them with pepper, and they taste good on a hamburger bun. Hexagons are winners.
This is a good game for fans of Risk and Dice Wars, for strategists who like to compare numbers but dislike the fuddy-duddiness of unit weaknesses and initiative and terrain bonuses. In other words, it's a casual turn-based strategy war game, pitting you against three computer-controlled armies in a battle for dominion over a randomly-generated plot of land.
Your objective is to capture the capital cities of your enemies. The map is littered with smaller cities and coastal ports, and generally speaking, it is a good idea to control as many of these as possible. At the end of each turn, each city in your territory will generate a unit 10 soldiers strong, while ports and the rest of your occupied land add soldiers to your cities randomly.
There is only one unit type, though for easy reference, it changes appearance depending on its strength. Your main restriction is that you can only move five units per turn, though you will quickly find yourself with more than five groups of soldiers. It's up to you whether you spend your precious five turns consolidating weaker units into more intimidating ones, or pushing the battlefront forward. Though it may seem restrictive, these are the choices that make Hex Empire interesting.
The other factor is morale. Winning or losing battles directly affects the strength of your army, so much that a losing battle can be reversed sometimes through a series of demoralizing surgical strikes. A unit's maximum physical strength is always 99, but in a battle between two maxed-out squads, the more courageous one will always win.
Replayability comes from the random map layouts. If you find a particularly fun one, you can write down its ID number and revisit it freely. The downside is that awkward maps are common, granting unfair advantages to some factions and mucking things up with large bodies of water. Just hit the randomize button again if the first map is too weird.
Analysis: Hex Empire occupies a comfortable spot between the simplicity of Risk and the number crunching of the Avalon Hill-style board games that inspired this whole soldiers-on-hexagons thing. You do have to pay attention to the numbers, and even add them together occasionally, but moving a squadron just comes down to two mouse clicks.
The five-move restriction, and the way your fighting units degrade quickly in battle, forces you to strategize instead of simply expanding as quickly as possible. The further and faster you push, the more likely you are to end up with a shattered and cowardly front line, ripe for a counter-attack. Real strength in this game comes from an almost chess-like approach, with units constantly guarding and reinforcing each other. There's a distinct and relaxing drumbeat to it, once you get the feel.
Could it use more variety? Possibly. Should it have multiplayer? Definitely. Do the rules governing the ups and downs of morale seem capricious? Sure. But Hex Empire lets you jump right into battle without much fuss, and offers enough tactical depth to be addictive even after several wars have ended. A bit of a treat, really.
Can someone tell me a good map to use for a newb Violetnam?
A few things that I have noticed
1. It was hard to figure out how to make ships at first. you simply move a unit onto a harbor and then move it onto the water the next turn.
2. It usually makes more sense to focus on your closest opponent first. This game might be more fun on a different shaped map where you are equally close to every opponent.
3. At the beggining you want to spread you units out to get as many cities as quickly as possible. After that you want to merge as many units as possible to save turns.
[Edit: Spoiler tags added. -Pam]
Necromancerman: I found 773892 to be an easy level as purple.
Here's what I did, if you want some tips:
first take the only city you can get to in one move, then take the two cities to the north. continue expanding upward and to the right.
green will expand towards you. just before they get into attack range, sign a treaty with them.
green will keep blue busy while you take over red (get a couple big fleets in the water and just attack all at once)
next, take the troops that you have on the north coast and attack blue once you have about 4 groups of 99 troops, attack by water, in all of this, you must keep the border between you and green heavily reinforced.
once you take out blue, you should be so strong that green will be easy. if you kept a strong border line, you should be able to move into green territory immediately and take their capital with little resistance.
Trying to figure out the gameplay - it looks like port cities don't ever spawn new units. Do other cities spawn every turn?
rikchik:
Ports do add to your forces every turn, but the soldiers show up at your capital city and the towns you've captured, not at the port itself.
It was alright. The thing I don't like about it though was that because of the morale points, it's impossible to win if you're the underdog. If you're winning, battles, you gain morale points, so you win more battles. If you're losing, there is no possible way to get past the enemies' high level tanks.
If you're like me and at first feel that the game is very easy to beat: make sure you don't overlook the not-too-prominently placed difficulty switch on the map selection screen.
The game takes too long and there should be a multiplayer mode, but the game is still fun.
This is really fun, but I agree there should be a multiplayer mode. Great strategy game. One complaint is that there shouldn't be a higher limit to the number of manpower you can get, rather than 99.
For me, this is perfection. I love this sort of game, it's simple to learn, addicting, challenging. All it really needs is a campaign.
If they didn't have a manpower limit it would take away from the strategy of "well, if i move this guy here and this guy here", it would be more like "well i'll move every single one of my guys here and then power through straight to his capital" and that's too simple.
Either way, love it, needs multiplayer, possibly a campaign.
Ugh. The means by which soldiers arrive is not clearly explained. I won my first match, but I could not understand how enemies managed to out-number and out-morale me even if I had a clear advantage in cities. This game definitely needs to be refined with proper instructions.
What ever you do, try your best to sign a pact as soon as possible. It would really help.
this game is awesome! it does get a little bit boring once you can beat it on hard though. if it had a campaign and/or a level editor, it would be complete.
I love these games too! Thanks for the "difficulty" tip, Vorpal.
If you're the underdog, you can make a speech and raise your troops' morale.
My tips:
You can combine groups of troops - I like to shuffle troops from city to city, expanding outward, making a relatively secure wall of 99 troops on my perimeter
Keep your dormant troops on a city until they get to the 99-person cap. Then move them off so that you don't waste any spawns.
Wait for the enemy to launch an offensive against you, then find a relatively less-protected route to their capital city. Once you conquer the capital city, all of that enemies' troops self-destruct (or that's the case on the default level)
Also, this game is so educational! I had no idea there was a land bridge between Philadelphia and Bangkok ;)
I hate towns with to much water it is just really hard to get troops to the water area to bypass whole areas but if your really good try leaving the map blank its no obstacles no towns just capital cities
Great game, but the A.I. is seriously broken. The game is way too easy once you understand the troop generation algorithm and morale system. And yes, I'm playing on hard!
It's all about territory, and especially towns. The A.I. doesn't understand this. You can loop lone troops in behind and around the defenses, and claim territory or cities at will. That gives you a huge amount of troop regeneration each turn, and since every town gets some of the new troops if empty, you can quickly overwhelm the enemy's ability to reclaim the taken regions.
It's actually better to avoid building maxed out tanks as much as possible.
That said, I still find it incredibly addictive, and can't stop playing, even though I know I'll win every time (or maybe because of this!).
Map No.
934023
seems fairly good for the red,
expand east then be friends with purple.
Overall awesome game. A map creator would be a really nice addition. Every time I play I wish I could make my own map. Other than that I really enjoyed it.
This is a neat game.. there needs to be a multi-player where 2-4 people can play on the same computer. The AIs are really too dumb and once you figure out how the AIs play it is easy to beat them even on hard with a map that puts you at a disadvantage.
I'm always red, and just to let you know (if you're also a red beginner)....
Number 21611 is very easy, cause there are about 5 cities really close to your home.
Hi,
Really liked it! The AI needs some improvement in 'hard' mode though - during the endgame it seems to place too much value on defending outposts rather than stopping tanks getting close to the main base. At the moment you can send 3-4 tanks in to attack only the base and win because it'll largely ignore them. :)
I really enjoyed this game. Just a few suggestions:
Conquering the home base of an enemy that has conquered another base should not kill the enemy entirely. E.g., if you are red and blue conquers green, then you conquer the blue base, all blue is destroyed and one lonely green tank spawns at the green base. Then you go kill that tank. This makes beating the game a little too easy, you just have to focus your efforts on the correct base.
I'd also like to see some statistics showing total number of troops and things like that.
All in all, great game. Terribly addicting.
Amphibious units cannot land on an occupied shore hex. Therefore to prevent invasions from the sea post light units on every shore hex.
I once trapped a huge fleet in a lake - the AI doesn't know how to turn back.
Love this game!
Anyone must suggest for the author to make a online multiplayer game! Humans vs humans instead of computers AND maybe up to 6 players instead of 4 with a slightly bigger map would be great!
Think that would be very popular and add some ads in the game and author can earn a lot of money! :)
Correction: amphibious units CAN invade occupied port hexes, but not occupied shore hexes without ports. So put 99 tanks in ports and pickets in the other shore hexes.
The author did a good job of simulating morale, logistics and command & control with a minimum of fuss. Lines of communication would be a nice add though. And air power....lots of possibility with the basic idea.
a good map to play on is 453267 as the reds
Try to play the empty map:
Delete the map nr and click change.
Strategy:
Sign a pact with the closest enemy and start combining troops right next to your capitol.
Other enemies will be too occupied with themselves, leaving you there to inc your troop numbers.
Moral will stay low for a while. After 15 or so turns go for the capitol with the weakest defense, with at least 3x99 tanks.
Morale will inc near to 99 when you have conquered 2 capitols.
I would love to know how to program a game like this. I've done click shoot games but haven't tried a TBS with AI. Anyone have a good website to go to or just a run down of how to do it?
I really like the graphics of this game. The map starts off pristine and green. As battle rages on some hexes, they turn muddy brown and cemeteries might pop up. Little things like that really endear a game to me.
I Love this Game:) I think it needs a little revision. They Should Make A Sega With All Cities From The United States. It Is Slow But Worth It!! I Just Beat 931322 In 18 Turns on Hard As Red:) Try It
-Mr. Mariah Carey
Maxed out each space on the map, good times!
http://inhll.tumblr.com/post/129512866/hex-empire-all-spaces-including-water-maxed-out
this game is awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! please could the author or somebody else turn this game into a multiplayer game please
This game is wicked, i just won map 7467 as reds it well easy
Reds are the best as you always go 1st
Okay, this map is impossible if you play blue.
Map #: 901993
If you don't believe me try for yourself. It won't let me make any allies and all three gang up on you and charge. I was able to kill green, but by then purp and red pushed through my forces and hit my capital. I've tried multiple stratigies to win and I can't seem to do it. If you can figure it out, please send me email me at lowkeyfee@yahoo.com.
My strategy is to sign a pact with the person above or below me, limit their space, and expand left/right. Then I go from there, and if it gets to be me vs one other kingdom/empire, i repeatedly sign pacts with them at the end of a turn, resulting in them breaking it and me getting morale.
control choke points, a lot of the time they just wont attack them
Map #: 901993
This one is possible with blue!
Ok, i needed 2 tries, it´s a tough one.
My strategy:
kill green as fast as you can and then take advantage of the weaknesses of the computer: concentrate on your future army power by attacking his towns and harbors while trying to avoid to fight his armies.
the computer most times tries to reach your capital as fast as possible and thus leaves his towns with little or no defense, so it´s really no problem to cut him of supplies by and by while hopefully succesful defending your capital against his first waves of armies.
pls post more "unbeatable" maps ^^
Hey, I just did #901993 too.
The problem here (as blue) is that red and violet both seem directed east by the terrain. So green and red are both attacking you at the same time ...
How I got it:
Expanded to near cities, defending them until red got near. Got a stray unit picking up cities and ports in the middle, heading south. Another stray unit went down south through Green's territory, picking up less-occupied cities and ports as feasible. When red and green got near my capital, I drew back so I had 3 or 4 99-strength armies encircling my capital. Their morale stayed high because of the other stray units always getting cities and ports. Red and violet started attacking each other, and my stray armies in the south linked up and killed Green. After that it was just a long cleanup (115 turns total.)
My secret to winning:
Concentrate on morale as much as on forces. Always pick up some cities and ports before every big battle, then your morale is as high as possible for your big stacks to wipe out their big stacks. This is one big way a "wandering stack" of yours can help out. It's pretty easy to keep vacuuming up miscellaneous neglected ports.
One thing it took me a while to get: Ports may contribute units to the total reinforcements every turn, but reinforcements never appear in ports - only in normal cities.
And one more thing I forgot about #901993:
When Red and Green got near my capital and I formed the perimeter, then that was the perfect time for a speech.
115 turns as
blue for #901993?! More like 28! It should be a pretty routine win with any colour on that map.
[Edit: Spoiler added ~ Kayleigh]
Hi, I'm new to the site and just wanted to say this game is insanely addicting!
I had saved a bunch of cool maps, but for some reason it wont let me put spoilers to show them, and it doesn't work just typing them. If you have any help,please contact me.
***SUGGESTIONS*** :
1.Needs a multiplayer
2.Map editor maybe?
3.Randomize who goes first.
4.More difficult AI
5.Maximum unit strengh 100/100.Would turn into, lets say, aircraft?
Here's a couple of interesting maps that aren't too difficult (20-40 turns):
Blue, #875328
Green, #737960
Pink, #229543
Greatest java game I've ever played! Add multiplayer!
Problem Solved.
Here are some pretty good maps.
Red (Redosia) :
Map Numbers:
368845
375868
175494
and 250855
Blue (Bluegaria) :
Map Numbers:
981142
351564
and 200969
***NOTE*** I will post good maps for Violetname and Greenland soon.
981142 is actually very interesting if you try to win as Pink! Got it on the third try, 24 moves.
#345065 - Violet is truly desperate - there are no advantages in the Violetnam homeland - except that it's not easy to get to.
Took me 4 tries, can you do it?
#948024 - Islands? Everybody's on an island (except Blue.)
Map #66656
This map is impossible playing as Green.
Trust me, I tried it on easy and I still can't beat it. Blue blocks you from expanding, and eventually, Red conquers him and you can't beat Red when he has a big empire supporting him.
#66656 is doable as Green on normal difficulty.
My first try, 46 turns or so.
* 2nd turn send a small unit left to grab blank hexes
* For green, always try to sneak a unit up to the top middle. That unit will steal ports & hexes, for more manpower and more morale.
* Red kills off Violet (hurrah! only one opponent.)
* Build a large unit, give a speech, have it take Vermont while the other Blue units head south past it to your shivering capital. Sneak that large high morale unit next to the Blue capital when there aren't too many other Blue in range. Kill Blue.
* Be careful to keep your capital ringed with strong high morale units and Red will waste all his turns shuffling units in front of your capital.
* Destroy Red morale by advancing along the top and taking everything you can, while filtering enough units down to your capital to keep it safe.
General tips:
* You don't necessarily want to take every normal town you possibly can; a badly located normal town will just drain off reinforcements to itself where they will be wasted.
* As Green the standard strategy against Blue will always be to get a "strong enough" unit AROUND his units and 3 hexes away from Blue capital. Then strike when your morale is high and his is low. While doing this, your weak defenses have to delay him sufficiently so you don't end up dead.
* Always have some unit(s) running around grabbing enemy ports and hexes to keep up your morale up and his low.
* FIRST merge units ( resulting in low morale) and then conquer stuff, take ports, make speech to increase morale, THEN do your big attacks when your big units have high morale. For example, in #66656, do all your unit merging BEFORE you strike the Blue capital, to get the max benefit from the morale boost. Doing things in this order every turn is worth a lot of extra reinforcements!
Try this one: #941999 as Green (normal)
Not easy; took me half a dozen tries.
In fact #66656 can be won
with Green even on hard difficulty. Took me three tries but I was able to do it in 40 turns. I had to make a speech early on in order not to get wiped out by Blue but was able to knock him out just in time so that I could divert some units back to deal with Pink's first onslaught.
[Edit: Spoiler added ~ Kayleigh]
Again, #941999 is also winnable with Green on hard difficulty, even though it took me five tries. The key:
It turns out that sending your first army towards the island with San Jose and Berlin is essential for victory, to prevent Pink from building up too much on that island. Blue is strangely slow to attack you and falls surprisingly easily once you start munching on Edmonton and San Salvador. It's more important that once you conquer Blue you don't lose its capital (Rabat) to Red. If you can hang on to it and slow down Pink's offensive for a bit then the extra armies you generate from having two capitals eventually decides. I won in 36 turns.
[Edit: Spoiler added ~ Kayleigh]
And it's taken me forever, but I've finally managed to win as pink on #345065 (hard difficulty).
The only virtue of Pink's position is that with a large enough army you can block opponents from getting to your capital. The only way to get a large enough army to do that is to send your forces to take over all the available ports - the ones near Managua for instance. In the mean time, only attack Red's cities. By occupying a minimum of cities you grow your capital's army as quickly as possible. Eventually you should be able to eliminate Red, at which point you'll need to rush most of your newly born troops back to defend the capital. After that it should be just mopping up. Following this strategy I was able to win in 41 turns.
[Edit: Spoiler added - To post spoilers, please use spoiler tags: <spoiler> example </spoiler> If you need help understanding spoiler tags, read the spoiler help. ~ Kayleigh]
This game is excellent for the imperialistic mind. I have not found a single game quite like it since! True, I would like a map editor so I can re-create the world and Europe.
I quit easy mode after a few games. Normal was quite a step, but I learned some tactics. Now I'm playing hard, but find it quite difficult on the mainland. That is why I perfer islands and seas.
If anyone can find great maps with plenty of islands and little mainland, post it here. Thank you.
Thanks for your comments,yv! I'll have to try some of those on Hard - I only graduated to Hard recently.
I'm not sure what's harder about Hard except that the enemies don't attack each other ...
All Islands - map #21748, all start on islands.
#941999 / Green / Hard - got it
I couldn't last on Violet's Berlin/San Jose island, so I took my wandering first unit up the middle via Beirut and Apia to Sarajevo. During my extended struggle to survive, I finally manage to build a 99-army or two at Sarajevo to kill Blue. Then a race south to relieve the siege of the Green capital ...
#345065 / Violet / Hard - got it
Sent out a wanderer before the barbarians closed in; after quite a voyage he was able to take Managua and surrounding ports; after that Blue was doomed again. (Why is it always Blue?) Anyhow, the computer won't/can't do much to you if you block the pass and are getting 40 reinforcements a turn in your capital ...
You can readily see the difference between Easy and Normal and Hard on the blank map (erase digits and "Change Map".)
On Easy, the computer heads to the closest opponent, human or computer.
On Normal, all the computer opponents head towards you, but don't mind fighting each other on the way if they encounter each other.
On Hard, all the computer opponents head towards you AND don't like fighting each other at all. (Once in a great while there is a CPU-CPU battle ...)
Try playing green who find it easy!
I'm not sure if its my fault, but by the looks all 3 AI nation rush towards my capital!
Best gameplay so far was with green though; same thing happened, but their rush was slowed town thanks to a big water body in teh southern half; There were some real nice fights at the ports of my not-that small island!
Eventauly i killed blue, purple killed red and so two great nations stood against each other! OFC I won but it was a very nice fight.
I found some maps that I very much enjoyed:
373852
427761
437879
755635
The bottom two maps are quite challenging for Bluegaria. In fact, I couldn't solve the top one:
922759
649474
The bottom one, however, I was able to win with Bluegaria.
Alliances cannot be made with anyone, so don't bother. Create a pipline leading from Tirana to Lódz, in order to build up a tank with considerable morale. Then, build up a tank on Seoul to bring to Greenland. KEEP THESE TANKS OUT OF ENEMY HANDS! You need them to capture Thimphu and Sucre, the capitals of Greenland and Redosia. Once they are ready and simoultaneously (sp?) landed near the capitals, make a speech and destroy them. Violetnam will still be considerably strong, but you have all your strength to crush him.
Granted, it's a gamble, but it worked for me, and may work for you.
Have fun conquering the map!
Try this map as Violetham on Hard: 000068
it is unbeatable...
#68, Violet, Hard
This is not too bad because the enemies can reach you from one port only. I sent out some units from the Violet island, captured the 2 nearby ports (temporarily), got 2 99's up near Red, got a town not far from his capital, built up there (scavenging hexes and ports), and took Red out. After that it's cleanup.
#922759, Blue, Normal (applies to Hard as well I'm sure)
This is not easy; the key is to get a unit AROUND the Green attackers and capture the town and three ports on the coast (while fending him off near your capital.) Once you have superior unit production, send a 99 down to the Green capital. As usual, I ignored his attackers as much as I was able to ...
General strategy:
I ignore the head of the AI's advance as much as I can without losing my capital. This is almost always doable because 3 99's around your capital discourage him greatly. I take towns, ports, etc behind his front, reducing his morale and increasing mine. From there, you can push from your capital, or simply get 2 or 3 99's next to his capital(s) and kill him.
To win without an ally, you need not to pick the best starting point, but the one, that can defeat the closest enemy, before the other two arrive with significant forces.
After a while, the game is more about figuring out the weaknesses of the AI, than having a good strategy, so, as everyone else I guess, I hope there will be a multiplayer mode.
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