Exploration : Thème 4X (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate)

Minecraft

Minecraft focuses on allowing the player to explore, interact with, and modify a dynamically-generated map made of one-cubic-meter-sized blocks. In addition to blocks, the environment features plants, mobs, and items. Some activities in the game include mining for ore, fighting hostile mobs, and crafting new blocks and tools by gathering various resources found in the game. The game's open-ended model allows players to create structures, creations, and artwork on various multiplayer servers or their single-player maps. Other features include redstone circuits for logic computations and remote actions, minecarts and tracks, and a mysterious underworld called the Nether. A designated but completely optional goal of the game is to travel to a dimension called the End, and defeat the ender dragon.

Mount & Blade: Warband

Sid Meier's Civilization V

Sid Meier's Civilization VI

Civilization VI is a 4X turn-based strategy game in which players guide a civilization from its founding as a small settlement through multiple eras of development. Players explore a procedurally generated map, found cities, research technologies, develop culture, engage in diplomacy, and compete against AI or human opponents to achieve victory through military dominance, scientific advancement, cultural influence, religious conversion, or diplomatic consensus. A key design change from its predecessor is the "unstacking" of cities, requiring players to place districts on surrounding tiles rather than stacking all improvements in the city center, making terrain and geography central to strategic planning. The game received two major expansions, Rise and Fall and Gathering Storm, which introduced mechanics like city loyalty, golden/dark ages, climate change, and natural disasters. It was succeeded by Civilization VII in 2025.

Spore

Sid Meier's Civilization IV

Stellaris

Stellaris is a real-time 4X grand strategy game set in a procedurally generated galaxy. Players control an interstellar civilization, exploring star systems connected by hyperlane networks, colonizing habitable worlds, and managing their empire's economy across resources like energy, minerals, and alloys. The game emphasizes empire customization through species traits, ethics, government types, and civics that shape both aesthetics and mechanics. Gameplay progresses through diplomacy, trade, and warfare with other civilizations, while mid-game and late-game galactic crises introduce escalating threats such as extragalactic invasions or hostile artificial intelligence awakenings. Players can pursue ascension paths including genetic engineering, cybernetic augmentation, or psionic abilities. Originally released for PC, the game later received a console edition and has been supported with numerous expansions adding megastructures, new empire types, espionage mechanics, and additional crisis scenarios.

Empire: Total War

Sid Meier's Civilization