We made an exhaustive list of all games that has been at one time or another recognized as a 4X game. For each game, we specified the name, year of release, platforms of release and the development studio.

 We selected 10 games that had a huge impact on the genre, as a sample.

We established the common Core Entities, Core Features and Core Challenges of these 10 games. 

For each Core Entities of each game, we wrote as many questions as we could think of, to understand how this core entity works in the given game.

 Then we answered all these questions by playing each game !

Once we did all that, we were able to easily indentify which core entites has an impact on which challenges of each features, and more than that, why and how. So for each  core challenge of each core features, we schematized the relation of the core entities that has an impact on this core challenge in the context of this core feature. Don't worry, it's will be easier to understand with the visuals (hopefully).

To clarify and conclude our work after this huge step, we analyse the 4X genre using the "4 Domains of play" Model by Jason VandenBerghe as well as the Self Determination Theory and the Quantic Foundry Model by Nick Yee.

Finaly, we put all these results into a google presentation that you can check just below ;)