Stellar Monarch

In Conclusion,

Stellar Monarch delivers on its promise; a game free of micromanagement. Even the element I managed, the movement of fleets, can be automated. But what does this leave the player? With no action to take, and a database of unnecessary information to absorb, the emperor occupies their time with chess, or a similarly trivial distraction. The only necessary duties include granting audiences, designing fleet compositions, planning wars, signing truces, while overseeing the research, finance, industry, and budget of the empire.

As emperor I never needed to look at a planet. Didn't have to think about any individual official. I rushed through the audience choices. Ninety percent of my time was dedicated to fleet maneuvers. The enemy isn't challenging or tough, but they maintain a massive, passive fleet that requires a grinding war, centuries long.

Stellar Monarch: Managing an Automated Empire

Stellar Monarch: A History of a Birth of the Empire

This game makes you feel like the emperor of an enormous space empire. The experience is different, but not fun.

It is nice that planets, fleets, etc are automated and you don't have to give orders to fleets/planets/etc every turn. If you set your empire up right (tons of fleets, all automated, budget priority to space fleets, etc) then your empire more or less grows by itself and there's little for you to do but hit the 'tag planet for conquest' and 'end turn' buttons many, many times.

On the downside, it feels like as emperor, most of your time is spent with fairly trivial things. Replacing disloyal courtiers. Picking which political faction to favor. Saying "yes, thank you again" to your guard for the 10th assassination attempt he's foiled (with the exact same popup/text every time). There really isn't anything much to do, and what there is is very repetitive. Most of the actions you can take (like tagging planets for conquest) require an insane amount of clicking to do, and 95% of the "alerts" you get are neither important nor interesting.

The concept of this game is good. It can be nice to play an actual emperor instead of say, a general. But the mechanics are incredibly boring. My empire may have been taking over the galaxy at a rapid pace, but I was so bored I was just hitting the "end turn" button every second I could. Even when I got "audiences" it was the same few people asking the same few things. There just isn't enough fun gameplay in this game.

I love the idea but the game badly fails to meet it. I spent 90% of the game just marking planets for conquest, pressing end turn and then space-bar to autoresolve the battles. The other 10% was just selecting the same answers to the extremely repetitive audience events and trying to balance my court factions before realising it was ultimately completely pointless and never bothering again. I never once felt like a 'Stellar Monarch' at all.

Although somewhat overpriced for what it does, Stellar Monarch is a nice little take on the space 4x / grand strategy genre that definetely feels different from more conventional games like Endless Space or even Stellaris. The micromanagement is definetely toned down and you feel properly imperial, but the game does not do enough with its audience and storytelling system. Seeing as it doesn't, playing from the earliest possible start date is too much of a grind. The genre on a whole could learn a lot from Stellar Monarch, but on itself the game does not hold up.

Let me come right out and say it: this game is extraordinarily unique. I remember seeing screenshots for this game before its first sale and just.. pining for it. So attractive for 4x junkies like me.

I want to point out that this game handles war and interaction in a way that other games rarely do. You are always at war; there are always border skirmishes. You simply are more or less at war at any given time.

I loved that aspect, because you could do a truce or declare a more formal war. Felt really great. Endless Legend does that, but its combat is kinda wonky. In this game you just move the people you want, where you want them, and greatness happens.

Pros:

• Gotta live that god-king life, except you can't do it alone.
  
• The game is overall pretty stable & fun to interact in
  
• The empire is well-developed and has quite a few fleets already established. In all space/4x I will play forever from now, I will always name things "Border Guard X" - thank you dev, you have changed my life for the better
  
• You can actually go in the discussions tab and find the dev talking to users about game design - good on you dude!
  

• You have to manually click a button to automatically rebalance your fleets. This is a complete waste of the player's time, and if the game wasn't so otherwise great, I would not recommend it. Make sure you rebalance everytime... the dev is a lich who gains strength on seconds wasted to the great question, "Why does one of my fleets have 40 ships while anoother has 10?" (don't get mad, dev, your game is good :)).
  
• Some of the management is odd - if you have an admiral that's a real POS, you can't fire him without getting a negative bonus with everyone... it's as if the emperor wouldn't slander him beforehand ;). Sry for spoiler, just thought it would have hella impact.
  
[*] Some of the bonuses in the last audience only lasts for like 3 turns, it would be nice if benefits were for X turns rather than until the next age/era.

**SUMMARY**
Stellar Monarch brings a lot of fresh ideas to the genre. Sadly, it suffers from flawed execution that results in tedious, repetitive, and often frustrating gameplay. I recommend this game to players who are already very familiar with the genre and are mostly looking for something new. Players who are more interested in strong gameplay and a good user experience are less likely to find that Stellar Monarch meets their needs.

If you enjoy 4X games and would be excited to experience a fresh take on the genre, then Stellar Monarch delivers. It is an innovative title with hit-or-miss mechanics; the good is so amazing you want to scream "WHY DOESN'T EVERY 4X GAME DO THIS?!", while the bad makes many elements tedious. A person who plays many other 4X games will likely find this game worth purchasing just to witness its more innovative mechanics, even though they may never play it a second time.

This game is less likely to be a good fit for someone who hasn't played similar games or for someone on a tight budget that needs to get a lot playing time out of every game purchased.


**THE GOOD**
This game has one purpose - to make you really feel like an Emperor instead of a logistics officer, and it does accomplish this objective. The court system involves appointing political couriers to posts while balancing individual competence, loyalty, and corruption along with keeping powerful factions balanced. It is a simple yet elegant mini-game. The composition of your court then influences the flavorful random events with decisions for you to make, effectively spilling over into role-playing.

Speaking of role playing, the games storylines (which are event driven) add an extra dimension to traditionally flat and lifeless pure strategy games.

The victory condition system is also innovative. You have a list of 15 possible achievements; once you achieve enough of them, you are recognized as Emperor of the Galaxy. In other words, you can pursue different achievements from one game to another and the alien empires do not compete against you (directly) - they pursue their own interests and don't realize they are playing a game.

Finally, the game really does let you set priorities and trust your underlings to carry them out. Most resources only matter at the Empire level; you can tell your governors to prioritize more food and have no reason to care about which planets actually decide to build the farms.

**THE BAD**
Unfortunately, the bad elements are really bad. For all the positives I've described in the first section, the odds of me ever replaying this game are slim.

First, the learning curve is steep. Really steep. The game drops you into a complicated mess expecting you to avoid micro-level decisions. But until you understand what's going on, the effect is you can't understand what you're doing enough to make meaningful decisions at all. There's a reason that many reviews here include something to the effect of "I tried it and couldn't really get into it."

Second, the fleet management system is, in my experience, an absolute mess. Make no mistake, you will be micro managing dozens of fleets. Every turn. Sure, they're called "squadrons" instead of "ships", but the micro-management required is the same. This game somehow manages to turn interstellar war into SimBureaucracy and then make it even more boring. When you set fleets to auto, your admirals will create as many squadrons as they wish (you can influence to composition of the squadrons, but not the number) - and your shipyards will build as many ships as they request, which is a great way to go bankrupt without ever realizing what is going on. Set your auto fleets to offense? Your admirals will needlessly send multiple squadrons to conquer the same planet when only one is needed, and ignore all the other planets you've asked them to take. And manual squadron management slow, repetitive, and utterly unrewarding. It's possible that I've missed solutions to these problems after searching the interface for hours, but that itself should tell you something about the unwieldiness of the fleet system. The fleet system takes a game that promised to focus on high level strategy and instead turns it into a meaningless series of tedious and monotonous low-level chores.

Finally, there is no diplomacy, or really any distinction between your neighbors. Technically there can be temporary truces, but in practice here was my typical experience: You are surrounded by individual planets that sometimes have fleets and other defenses, and you will read battle reports every turn that 10 or more of your planets have been attacked. The attacks will be unsuccessful. You will neither recognize the planets' names, nor care about the battles, and most of the time you won't even notice which alien empires happened to be involved. Even if your diplomatic experience is more positive than mine was, one thing is certain: You will definitely not have the epic Imperial alliances and betrayals that have become standard in the 4X genre.

As a result of these tedious elements, you should expect the replay value to be low. Compare the number of hours played on these (positive!) reviews to the hundreds or thousands of hours played on other 4X games like Civilization VI or Stellaris. This is a game that leaves people satisfied with their purchase, but it is not a game that many people replay.

**CONCLUSION**
A person who has played many other 4X games should consider purchasing this game primarily to experience its good innovations. I believe that I got my money's worth in the few hours I spent with it. But anyone who purchases this game should understand that it comes at the price of flawed execution, tedium, pain, frustration, and boredom. In particular, people who aren't already jaded on the genre should be very cautious about purchasing this title.

If you are a 4x fan, and want something a little different, and have the patience to get past the obtuse UI you'll find an intriguing game here with an authentic imperialistic vibe. The way the rebellion system is implemented is really cool, and I grew to really like the audience and court mechanics.

Some other problems to be aware of:
-The game has pacing issues, the interesting storylines take way too long to complete. Be prepared to click end turn a lot.
-Too many battle reports
-Managing fleets is fiddly and confusing
-Pirates are just annoying, as usual

This is a fun, light game. Yes, the graphics are simple, as are the sounds; and you certainly aren't going to see the complexity of many 4x games. There is no question that the game is rough around the edges and takes some time to get used to.

That said, I'm actually enjoying being unavoidably kept from micro-managing, because it simply isn't an option (even though many of the details are available to see, for interest). Instead, the experience of being forced to focus on the big picture is liberating.

The mini-game of balancing your council to keep the various factions in their place is an interesting diversion. Also, it's really nice to have many of the empire-wide decisions and roleplay confined to once-in-a-while royal audiences; it adds a rhythm and regularity that is also enhanced by the different "eras".

There are many aspects that feel more like a board game than Stellaris, but on the whole these are welcome. I play Stellaris, too, so I like having a fairly different but also fun experience to contrast it with.

Price tag of $20? Hmm, hard to say. There are free games online that are a bit similar, but at the same time, this is a cut above the ones I've seen. It was worth it to me, but feel free to wait for a sale if you're not sure.

This is a very unique take on a very repetitve genre. I am really enjoying my first game. The game mechanics (you are emperor, global view) truly reduce micromangement and allow you to focus on fun stuff, like fleet management, your royal court. Does need some polishing and expanded explanations in some areas (fleet shipyards, for example). But overall, the game is fun and the developer is very active and is pushing out frequent updates in response to the customers.

Havings played nearly a dozen space 4X games over the last 20 years, I've grown tired of individual ship management, and with relentless large tactical battles, regardless of the graphical fidelity.

Enter Stellar Monarch, a game which convincingly zooms out a little, and focuses on the grand strategy of the situation, rather than they minutiae. Better yet, the design notes state several well designed war and strategy board games as inspiration, which explains so well the focus and design aesthetics of this game. This background means that rather then try to be everything, this game tries to do a couple things well, and everything else in the simulation (individual ship and planet management) is handled by the computer rather than the player. That is what I personally want. I have played the games where I have managed dozens and hundreds of planets and ships. Now I would indeed rather be the true Emperror, and leave those trivial matters to computerized courtiers.

Boy oh boy, this is going to be a short review.

Stellar Monarch, also known as Pocket Space Empire is a 4X game made by a single dev which revolves around you being the Emperor of an empire and dealing with the upper levels of said empire. Dont let that fool you, there isn't much in the game in its current state (1.03).

The game is a fantastic premise and different compared to other 4X, instead of playing as just some generic leader title on other 4X games doing everything at once during each turn you make some deicions using laws and decisions as well as adjusting the empires budget which the planetary govenors and businesses will work with, as well as subsidies you can place on each planet (which are essential depending on which part of the empire the planet is on).

The micromanagement isnt completely true, 99% of micromanagement is gone (THANK GOD!) but there still is a tiny bit as stated earlier with the subisidies, you manually have to select each planet and pick which subisidy you want on it and then wait a few turns for them to become activated. Another issue is the automated fleets and AI, you can automate fleets but its purely defensive and dont retake planets lost in combat, so thats lots of clicking the fleets to retake lost worlds, it gets painful after a while.

Once you have done that, sorted your Audience of events every 10+ turns and tinker with the economy, you hit the next turn button and fight the constantly invading AI neighbours until you do the same. Good ideas get boring cus there is nothing else too do.

Its a NO for the time being until new content updates hit the game, as well as modding tools as i think this game wil excel with proper modding capabilities.

If you are familiar with Eurogame style tabletop games, then the abstractions and economic focus (vice military control) will feel very familiar to you. The game's pillars are not based on American-style wargames.

Many devs who make 4X games seem to have the souls of engineers; Aurora 4x being the archetype. In those games micromanagement focuses on design, production, and use of things like ships. Mastery of those concepts leads to victory.

This game requires micromanagement and is numerically obtuse as well, but it focuses on the qualitative values of game elements (i.e. cards) instead of design, production and use of things.

Like Eurogame board games, the elements in Stellar Monarch are driven and controlled by complex sets of rules and their interactions. Also like a board or card game, many of the rules seem arbitrary and unreasonable. In a board game this is required for simplicity and balance, but modern PC games are usually more refined.

(Better) PC games usually give players a better illusion of control and keep their rules meaningful, but subtle. The player's actions are more independent and positive and negative feedback loops are more sophisticated.

I'll highlight by using an example of Stellar Monarch's military officers.

[quote]
* Admiral (high rank officer, impact of statistics x3)
Competence of all high rank officers (admiral, vice admiral and optional political officer) affect combat bonus of all squadrons. Loyalty determine how much the officer supports the Emperor (rebel points generation).

* Vice admiral (high rank officer, impact of statistics x1)
Vice admirals contribute their statistics to the fleet very similarly to the way admirals do but the impact is smaller (x1 while admiral's statistics count as x3).

* Political officer (high rank officer, impact of statistics x2)
Political officers are optionally assigned to "help" the admiral, especially in regard of maintaining high loyalty. Note that political officers tend to not be so competent so the performance of the admiral might fall. Political officers contribute their statistics to the fleet very similarly to the way admirals do but the impact is smaller (x2 while admiral's statistics count as x3).

* Commodore (low rank officer, affects the squadron only)
Competence of the Commodore together with the competence of high rank fleet officers determine squadron's combat bonus. Loyalty determine how much the officer supports the Emperor (rebel points generation).
[/quote]

At first blush this would seem to be an interesting and detailed mini-game. In Stellar Monarch, like a card game, the player is dealt officers and can see all the detailed information about them. However, when presented with clearly bad officers, the player is very overtly constrained from taking action by the game rules. Instead of the player feeling in control and being immersed, the rules dictate an arbitrary discard system which results in the deal of yet another random officer card.

For example, despite perfect knowledge of their Commodores' issues, the player is unable to act on that information effectively and suspension of disbelief is broken. There are no subtle consequences or positive/negative feedback loops -- just a hard and fast rule, "You cannot discard a commodore card." It's ironic that less numerical precision about a Commodore's qualitative value might have been better for the player's overall game experience.

If you don't like card or board games, particularly Eurogames, you will find these kinds of weaknesses pervasive in the game's design.

EDIT: Previously known as Pocket Space Empire, the dev changed its name to Stellar Monarch.

I'm not particularly happy about this game for its price point. It should be $15 or less, ideally $10 for what you get.

While it's a good idea and a relatively polished execution, the game is somewhat less than what is promised in terms of grand strategy FUN, rather than implementation.

The game essentially distances you too far BACK from being invested in it, alongside a very unclear (if ultimately relatively simple) learning curve (the fleets especially).

Combat is essentially positioning forces near planets you want, then pushing a squadron one by one onto the enemy planet. It's not so much hard as it is very unclear why you're winning or losing and almost RNG-esque if not for just spamming larger fleets on enemy planets.

Diplomacy is largely a wash; there's no real differentiation fluff-wise with other civilizations aside from a blurb and their racial character art. In fact, fluff is very weak in this game and makes it hard to role-play if you were looking for that in an empire-builder. You barely emotionally care about whatever's going on beyond taking more territory and balancing out various gewgaws of imperialism (from your Courtiers to what fleets are where to the annoying as hell Hive universal enemy).

What takes the cake is the eventual Rebel era which essentially stole all of my frontier-expanding invasion fleets in one "well F you, player" swoop with very little explanation other than "the Era changed and now all the previously pretty loyal planets and the fleets on them now HATE you and will fight to the utter death against you."

THE BIG tl;dr:
5-6 out of 10 (Not worth the current price, but bless the developers for trying)
I really want to like this game, because I feel it could ultimately be very charming, but it ends up being a sadly mediocre (if valiant) attempt to build a great empire builder that takes out the micromanagement of other games like CK2 or the Total War military series. There was a lot of potential here.

You just want to be invested in your empire, but are carried along by momentum of "one more turn" hoping you'll find enjoyment. The game however doesn't really give a damn about you similarly, sadly.

Surprisingly enjoyable.

Despite its low end graphics and un-storied developer, this title is worth your time especially if you are into Paradox strategy games.

It's a quick, hands off, space based 4x, the conceit being that you are the immortal emperor of the Terran race, ruling from the centre of the galaxy, naturally superior to all. To win you must be prestigious enough, blood-thirsty enough or valorous enough to claim the title of "Ruler of all Galaxy" (developer is not a native English speaker, cut them a little slack). Anyone familiar with the Warhammer 40K licence should find some common ground here, but it also calls on classic sci-fi such as Asimov and Clarke.

There is almost no micro-management in this title, that's what you have courtiers and councillors for, instead you are concerned with balancing political power, addressing the court and dictating the fleets. It is, as the name might suggest, like crusader kings for a pocket-able device.

Despite it's low-fi feel, it does a good job of depicting what it would be to be the immortal emperor of Terra, dictating the growth of your people and seeing off the mewling, un-evolved alien races of the galaxy.

Pocket Space Empire is to most space 4X games what Unity of Command is to Gary Grigsby's War in the East: a straightforward experience stripped of a lot of cruft.

As the description says, you don't concern yourself with minutiae like planning out each planet's production, or organizing your fleet in detail. Planetary governors take care of the former, and the game takes care of the latter by a handy system for assigning certain fleets to certain directions, and by building squadrons to match a desired composition.

As the emperor, your time is divided between three main pursuits: managing your wars (which are likely to be more or less permanent) by directing fleets from your headquarters on Terra, deciding research priorities, and ruling over your court.

War management is fairly traditional strategy game fare: point and click to move your fleets. Some of your fleets will likely be autonomous; autonomous fleets always station a squadron on each border world in a certain direction or directions, which generally takes care of defense. You get to manage the more interesting offensive half of things. Although there isn't a great deal of depth to the moment-to-moment maneuvering, especially as your empire grows more powerful and your enemies fall behind, there is a good bit of strategy at play. It takes a long time to move fleets across your empire, so changing fronts should not be undertaken lightly, and you'll find yourself careful in committing your mobile fleets. Rarely will you attack for the sole purpose of taking territory: the random galaxy generator seems to do a good job of scattering features of interest so that you're usually aiming for one of those, with supporting offensives to secure your flanks.

Research is research; it progresses more or less linearly in five separate areas, and you can choose one area for primary and one area for secondary focus, at the expense of research speed in other areas.

Finally, personnel management. Your Imperial court has six departments, each providing bonuses or penalties to your empire's functioning. You must balance the presence of factions in the court to prevent rebellious sentiment from growing, but this (along with less-interesting management of planetary governors and fleet commanders, neither of which can be easily shuffled around or relieved of duty) is not Crusader Kings 2. Your courtiers, governors, and admirals are mostly interchangeable, and they don't have personal motives or bear personal grudges. Court management is mainly shuffling cards around.

In the end, though, I like it. This is a beer-and-pretzels 4X to go with my beer-and-pretzels wargame collection. It isn't especially deep, and I don't know how well the gameplay would hold up if you were to sink 100 hours into it, but it's worth the price of admission, and it presents you with a unique take on managing your space empire.

A very good game with a fresh concept regarding 4X management. If you are looking for a different kind fo experience and a well made game with few bugs/problems this is for you. A solid 4X game with some decent writing/story and a well executed design. Does not have very high grade art/sound design, but it is fine for what it is. Definitely more of a managment game and you shouldn't get it if you are looking for shiny battles.

I think this would appeal to people interested in Crusader Kings 2 from Paradox, or Space 4x generally.

I have been really enojying the beta, and it sounds as though there will be continued work on the game after release. I literally never encoutnered a single issue during the beta.

There are no build queues or tactical combat moves, you tell your empire what to do in a general sense and not how to do it. You have some budget and focus options, appoint people to high offices, hold occasional audiences, worry about rebels, and move your fleets.

It is an interesting idea which is well executed. The gameplay is fun, and the music and artwork style fits it well.

I really enjoy the asymmetry of the game, as well as the various events that vastly changes the game's pressures from one turn to the next.

If you want a comparison to another game, I would have to nominate Risk. Because of the use of starlanes, and the restriction of expansion options to only connected systems, its military strategy is very similar to Risk. The biggest difference is the single shipyard at your home world, which requires you to plans your moves a bit further out.

The political aspect reminds me of Crusader Kings II, but only on a superficial level. It certainly adds yet another level of game play on top / in additional to of the military aspects.

The best part is the game being turn-based, which means you can quickly save the game, go do something else, and go back to it at another time. The exceptionally helpful reports at the beginning of the turn will help you to quickly reorient yourself. Then again, if I play just one more turn...

I enjoy this game more than any recent Space-based 4X games that I played. Here is a Let's Try series covering my second time playing the game. Obviously the game play will changes as the game is updated, but hopefully it will give you an idea of how much I enjoy playing it.

I have played long enough to develop a first impression of the game...there is obviously a long way to go, but here is what I think...

Pros:
Unique: Fresh take on an old subject. I like the concept.

Overall Scope & Feel: Its "just right" for what I want out of a grande strategic 4x game

UI: As with all games, you have to get used to it but it works very well.

Art & Graphics: Simple but effective. I like the look of it.

Mechanics: Core game works and is elegant & efficient.

Fleet Managment: This is good. I like the feel and scope of fleet deployment and management. Most enjoyable part of the game for me.

Fun Factor: I have found my time with the game quite enjoyable. Having to think about proper allocation of forces to meet threats, advance, etc..

Intrigue and Politics: Much work to be done, but the core idea is good. A great deal of potential here and the core mechanics are already enjoyable.

Value: There are those complaining about the price. I think its a fair value...I have gotten my money's worth out of it already...Its cheaper than a two hour movie w/ refreshments...

Cons:
Fairly Plain Jane: Its a bare bones, early access game. May features are not working, but it is EA, afterall.

Love it or hate it: I think most 4x gamers will either love it or hate it, depending on what you want out of a 4x game. It is all about grande strategy with little economic/planet managment options.

Spreadsheet game: Since it has minimal graphics, much of the game is about numbers, modifiers, etc.. This doesnt bother me, but may bother some. See comment above.

This game left me pleasantly surprised. Like others, I wondered how true the non-micromanagement part of the game was and it lives up to its tag line.

While I agree, the game is new and has many features untouched, I think there is great potential here.

As the Emperor, you make broad decisions during audience, colonizing a planet, production/research edicts, or sending a squadron to conquer a planet. The military is abstract in that you define what an average squadron's ship complement should look like and the AI does the rest.

I expect the game and storylines to be fleshed out a little more with more decision input from the Emperor.

The only qualm I have so far is that officials who die of old age are hard to identify (only referenced by name but I have no idea who someone is based solely off of name).

This definitely plays like Crusader Kings II in space to an extent combined with a space 4X type game. I look forward to additional features and the final product!

im going to make this short sweet and simple.

- Cons -

-spelling / sentence mistakes
-no Tutorials just textboxes, lucky the game is easy to understand.
-lack of description on some aliens (these are most likely placeholders)
-education why is it not going up? what does it impact? basically lack of detail on some game mechanices.
-pirates spawn out of nowhere and the game claims they are weak (they somehow have capital ships?)
with enough troops to somehow attack my garrision and make troops retreat?
they also take over planets which doesnt seem very pirate like.
(to me anyway, but hey im more of a smash and grab kinda guy.)

- Pros -

-i like the UI, it has a comic book feel to it.
-this is really the first game of its kind.
-gives a very dystopian falling empire feel to it (warhammer like) enemies everywhere.
with a touch of Emperor of the Fading Suns, but without the emperor dying and less micro
-the panic of tryign to keep everything together is REAL, BE WARNED.

so why am i giving this a thumbs up? the game has problems, but they are fixable. However after playing the two games i've listed im willing to take a chance. no game has even been close to EOFS and that was made in 1996. in the end im willing to put money up for future support, and the game is playable. its just bare bones right now. though it does fulfill its goals, no micro execpt how many ships you want and where to move em. in the end its up to you, if you are at any point of a game development unsure. then dont buy it, wait and play the safe route.