Gamer UK said "it looks great ... everything looks slick, clean and well designed ... Ascendancy mixes just about the right level of complexity and challenge with an intuitive interface, great graphics and the odd spark of humour." Bucher even noted that Ascendancy had "one of the best tutorials [he'd] ever seen", and said the game's "attention to detail and ease of use is much rarer than it should be." Other critics decried Ascendancy, however, for its unchallenging Artificial Intelligence as well as the excessive micromanagement required to compensate, because the AI is not only unchallenging as an opponent, but utterly unproficient at managing the player's planet and ships. In his look back at the history of space games, Geryk said "Ascendancy had the misfortune of being released with just about the worst AI ever in a computer game, to the extent that playing against the computer was almost pointless". Even Bucher said "the key problem lies in the artificial intelligence." A patch was released under the name Antagonizer, which was specifically designed to make the AI more challenging. It did this by making the enemies far more hostile towards the player but not toward each other, giving them the significant industrial advantage of allowing them to build their first 3 structures on their new planetary colonies in one day each, having the NPC species build the right structures on the right colored squares and having attacking ships stop right outside of range of orbital missile bases the player has in orbit, if they have weapons with sufficient range to attack the planet from a safe distance. The iOS version of Ascendancy released in 2011 included the AI from this patch, as well as other modifications. Notes Sources Ascendancy Game Manual, The Logic Factory, 1995. External links Ascendancy - the Manual - a complete manual for the game 1995 video games 4X video games DOS games IOS games Video games with isometric graphics Science fiction video games Turn-based strategy video games Video games developed in the United States