What bizarre maelstrom of yesteryear have I meandered into? I find it positively bizarre that I have reviewed perhaps a dozen strategy games over the past six months and not a one has been real time. Supremacy: Four Paths to Power is the latest in this menagerie of turn based strategy titles. This time around Matrix Games and developer Black Hammer Games have wrought a stylized sci-fi conquest game that pits four star faring races in a war to control, well, everything.



Ok, that’s the setup. So what’s the real deal? Supremacy has a lot going for it, but in my opinion it fails to deliver a knockout punch to follow up its jabs at innovation.

And innovation is clearly the focus the designers took with Supremacy. Sure, turn based science fiction strategy games have been done before and that concept of four races vying to the power position in the universe? Yeah, not exactly original. But the innovations are delivered in areas that are too often overlooked.

Take the pre-game cinematic for example. In most titles we would see some cleverly scripted action sequence of digital animation that would show off the most bad ass weaponry in the game creating massive explosions set to some knock-off synthesizer rock. In fact, I rarely watch more than a few seconds of a cinematic now. But the opening for Supremacy grabbed within the first frame. Why? Because its not a typical cinematic. In fact, it’s not digital animation at all. It’s more like a choreographed montage of anime-style art pieces that sets up the game with crystal clarity: This is war! It is pitched with blood, corpses, explosions, and dismemberment. If you have a child under thirteen who is into strategy games, you might want to preview the cinematic. I contains some really chilling imagery.



And let’s be honest, when is the last time anyone wrote a review that contained anything about the opening cinematic?

Let’s meet the contestants on “Who Wants To Conquer The Universe!” Contestant number one is Mhaal of the Groth. This five hundred year old slickster sports more chrome than a ’62 Impala and rates about a 9.0 on my creep-o-meter.



Next up is that bad boy from planet apostrophe, Kra’Ag of the Cha’Ar. Thanks to some exceedingly lenient child labor laws, Kra’Ag was able to bathe in the blood of his enemies at age fourteen!



Contestant number three is blue skinned beauty from the Fvost, Kaj. This frigid vixen was trained in art of war by her renowned grandfather to take her place in the universe as the token female of this ensemble.



And our final contestant is none other than Vagell of the Altans! Come on you homo sapiens, give it up for Vagell! And that “Flock of Seagulls wannabe” doo? Chick Magnet!

Clearly I’m making a pathetic attempt to poke a little fun at the “four paths to power” that really forms the basis of the strategy elements in Supremacy. It’s not that the back story on each of these leaders isn’t original, it’s simply that the characters aren’t very deep. You learn everything you need to know either from the opening cinematic, or from the dispensation of characteristics for each leaders individual units.

As usual, units make a strategy game and every strategy attempts to be original in the selection of units for each side of the conflict. In the case of Supremacy, there is an interesting mix of common units and custom units that is very appealing to me. For example, no matter which leader you choose (or don’t choose, as the case may be), you will be able to choose common units such as the Sniper, Infantry, Artillery and Tank. These units look a little different visually, but have identical characteristics. To complement the common units, each leader has the ability to build fleets and armies from unique units such as the GW-13 Biotox, the Pyro, the Cryo Inhibitor and the Ionic Generator. The Biotox, for example, is a “mech” that spays the enemy with a corrosive biochemical.

Both the ground battles and space battles take place on moderately small maps with moderately small forces. Another jab at innovation lands when you get into the unit building process. You see, in the ground battles Supremacy has gone away from the concept of “economy strategy” and back to pure strategy. This mean you don’t have to build a base, mine a bunch of metal, collect a bunch of energy and pump out affordable, effective units. Instead, you are given a “queue” of sorts that has a certain number of slots available. You can then choose whatever mix of units you like, but they have to fit into the queue. The queue is a five by eight grid. Each unit type is a certain size. Infantry units are a one by one square. A tank is a three by three square. A Vulcan C-L17 mech is two by five. Once you’ve filled your queue, that’s it. Those are all the units you get for the length of the ground battle.

This presents a fairly unique strategy experience in that you get to customize your force based on terrain and strategy style while the smaller map sizes and limited number of units makes for interesting possibilities even if the engagements are relatively short in duration.



Space combat is an entirely different animal. The queue concept is gone but there really isn’t a lot of economy management involved still. In fact, about the only thing a player needs to keep track of is fuel (something I was constantly running out of). A planet contains a number of factories and factories represent how much manufacturing power a planet has. You can add factories and perform other upgrades to planets in order to boost some of your capabilities. However, you are still limited to one ship per round, per planet. Also, different planets can produce different type of ships. Each ship possesses unique abilities such as area of effect weapons or hyperspace jumping.

The reality of Supremacy is that is actually presents two totally different and unique strategy experiences. Both are good, but not great and both are punctuated with some really innovative ideas.