Supremacy 1: The Great War - How to Play The Most Complex Mobile Strategy 4X Game on PC
Ever since their fall out of popularity in the PC platform, the RTS genre has buried its roots deep in the mobile gaming industry, with great and massively-successful titles such as Rise of Kingdoms, Lords Mobile, and Guns of Glory, among others.
Specifically, the 4X sub-genre of strategy games, due to its inherent complexity and large number of mechanics, can often be seen as far too advanced to be played on mobile devices. However, this claim was put to the test earlier in August as Supremacy 1: The Great War, possibly one of the most complex strategy games in the mobile platform, launched into the market, offering lots of combat, conquering, resource and province management, army building, and construction, as players battle over dominance of Europe—but we’ll get to that in just a moment.
Games that offer this kind of depth look a bit odd on the mobile platform, especially when considering that most of the titles here are more casualized versions of their PC and console counterparts. We think this is a trait inherent to the 4X genre since, even if you simplify them, the end product is still more complex than your regular strategy game. Regardless, we believe that the most complex games require playing them on the most advanced mediums, which is why we’re going to show you how to play Supremacy 1 on PC with BlueStacks.
Downloading and Enjoying Supremacy 1 on PC
Getting started with this game on your computer is quite simple, especially if you choose to play it on BlueStacks, our powerful and versatile Android emulator. All it takes for enjoying this game on your PC is a few simple steps:
- Go to our website and download the latest version of BlueStacks. Run the installer and let it work its magic, after which the software will launch automatically.
- Once launched, use the search bar on the top right to look for Supremacy 1 in the Game Center.
- Click on the game in the search results to go to its Play Store page, and download it like you would on your phone. If you can’t see the game in the search results, you might need to click on “Search in Google Play”.
- Once installed, find the game’s icon on the home screen. Click on it to launch the game and start playing.
The Fate of Europe is in Your Hands
Unlike other strategy games where the focus is on developing a single town and building your armies from there, Supremacy 1 is far more complex, requiring you to capture and annex provinces to your territory, and protect them from being retaken by your enemies. Each province offers specific resources that, upon annexation, are added to your production pool. In this sense, conquering is not just about growing your influence over the land, but also diversifying your production, which in turn allows you to research new technology and train new types of troops.
Every type of troop has a different armor class, which in turn determines their performance in combat. While you’ll be limited as to the type of units you’ll be able to produce at the beginning, your possibilities will expand as you capture more provinces and add more resources to your pool. The idea is to keep a varied army in order to both attack and conquer everyone, as well as to defend yourself from every aggressor.
However, capturing and annexing provinces is more complicated than simply attacking and breaking their defense as each of these places have their own morale. Morale affects essentially every aspect of your province, including its resource production, and its troop training and construction. Every new province you annex will start with low morale, and you can increase it through various means such as moving your HQ closer to the annexed province, and spending gold, among others.
Even the act of fighting is complex in Supremacy 1 as there are many variables that can influence the outcome of any battle. For example, the type of terrain the units are fighting on can give certain troops advantages as well as negatively impact the others. Moreover, there are countless types of units, some of which have unique attack types such as toxic gas clouds that can render an area dangerous for some time.
Wrest Controls From Your Enemies With BlueStacks
Supremacy 1 is a game about patience. You can give orders to all your units and provinces, and then sit back as they do your bidding. Everything takes a lot of time in this game—even moving troops from point A to point B can take hours of real life time. This design is perfect for mobile gaming since you could just log into the game on your phone, assign a few orders, and shut the app down and check it again after a few hours.
However, playing Supremacy 1 sporadically is a surefire way to get blindsided because, while your units take a long time to do anything, and enemy soldiers can take long to reach you as well, you’re defenseless if you’re not there to keep an eye out. On the flipside, this gives you lots of time to react and adapt accordingly. Nevertheless, this means that the best way to defend your provinces is by remaining online 100% of the time, which is difficult to do on your phone.
However, by playing Supremacy 1 on BlueStacks, you can simply log into the game on our emulator, give your units a few orders, and minimize the game to the background, checking up on it every few minutes. And since working from home has become the norm for many of us, this style of gameplay lends itself perfectly for BlueStacks, whereas if you attempt it on your phone, not only will your device eventually overheat, but your battery will die in just a couple of hours.
And this is without mentioning that BlueStacks also has unique tools and features that can give you the edge in any mobile game. These features include the Keymapping Tool that allows you to configure keyboard shortcuts for any menu, the Macro Recorder through which you can create macros to automate certain parts of the game, and even the Instance Manager and Multi-Instance Sync features that allow you to play on multiple account on one computer simultaneously.
For all the reasons we’ve mentioned through the article, Supremacy 1 is not for the casual gamer. It honestly plays more like a PC 4X strategy game like Sid Meier’s Civilization or Europa Universalis. Still, it’s a great title for those who love to immerse themselves in politics, warfare, and strategy, and we strongly recommend you to try it if you’re into games that also make you think. Save yourself the hassle and dominate your enemies in Supremacy 1 with BlueStacks.