Pax Imperia

Like most 4X games, Pax Imperia's basic gameplay involved building spaceships and flying to other worlds in order to take them over. Once captured, the worlds could be upgraded to provide materials, ships, and improve their defensive capabilities. Unlike most other 4X games, Pax had much more complex solar systems, including moving planets, their moons, and a habitable temperature zone that varied depending on the star and the race's preferences.

Races could be customized by players at the start of the game. Options included which atmosphere type they breathed (oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, or hydrogen), temperature range and tolerance, and four percentile-rated attributes: curiosity, efficiency, reproduction, and aggression. These attributes impacted the race's rate of scientific discoveries, building speed, population growth, and on-planet combat effectiveness, respectively.

The game was reviewed in 1993 in Dragon #196 by Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser in "The Role of Computers" column. The reviewers gave the game 4 out of 5 stars. Computer Gaming World stated in August 1993 that Pax Imperia innovated on previous 4X games like Reach for the Stars and Spaceward Ho!. While calling it "a work in progress", the magazine concluded that "the quality of Pax Imperia more than outweighs its blemishes ...

a pleasing and challenging addition to its genre". A 1994 survey of strategic space games set in the year 2000 and later gave the game four stars out of five, stating that it "rivals Reach for the Stars in scope". The magazine praised its detail but wished for faster play and "a good tutorial".