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Focusing on tactical decision-making, resource management, and long-term planning to achieve victory. Often involving elements like building, defending, and conquering within a structured set of rules and objectives.

4X is a genre of strategy-based games in which players control an empire and "eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate". Emphasis is placed upon economic and technological development, as well as a range of non-military routes to supremacy. Games can take a long time to complete since the amount of micromanagement needed to sustain an empire increases as the empire grows.