Star Trek Birth of The Federation - Play Test With Commentary -

Let's travel back to 1999 and fire up Star Trek Birth of the Federation. This is genuinly one of the most underrated Star Trek games of all time!
In this video I give an overview of what the game is like to play and show the features it has.

[crownprincesebastianjohano]

My tips to anyone new to the game: 1) For the UFP: Research and diplomacy! Wait until the populations explode for the minor species and bribe them into joining the Federation. And then convert all their workforce to building their special structure and research. Once you reach Tech Level 9 and get Galaxy X, Sovereign and Defiant Class ships it is over for the others. The Defiant is the most ludicrously powerful and fast ships (four sectors per term!) 2) Ferengi: Extra trade routes and buy a fleet. Bribe the Andorians or Zakdorn into joining and train your fleets at their war academies. 3) Klingon: Pick a weak faction to attack and keep doing it at a low level to train your crews. Use the Kvort Class as it is powerful, cloaks and can move three sectors per turn. 4) Romulans: You only really need to build a fleet of two ship types: Warbirds and destroyers. Use the Tal Shiar to steal secrets and funds and slowly build up your fleet. The Cloak gives you an unassailable tactical advantage if you establish solid strategic ground. 5) Cardassians. The Obsidian Order is everything. Judiciously conquer species to bolster intelligence, military proficiency and economy. If you can overcome economic weakness you are doing well. Use the Obsidian Order to steal as many Romulan ships as possible to create squadrons of ships that can cloak and use them to wreak havoc behind enemy lines attacking outposts, convoys and raiding systems. Build up a giant fleet of Galors and train them for 100 turns to legendary and brute force crush everyone.

[adamantu]

Even the statement "one of the most underrated Star Trek games of all times" is a huge understatement. That game is the best Star Trek themed strategy game of all time and it is a shame there never was an official Birth of the Federation 2. But there is a huge total conversion mod with that name

[RokkitGrrl]

I loved the different interfaces between the UFP, Klingons, Romulans, Ferengi, etc.

[nickgribben]

This was the most amazing game. I miss it! Would love to play it again. Crystalline entity used to obliterate me every hour or so 😢

[Plasmacore_V]

I loved this game so much. You could get so much money playing as Ferengi with all the extra trade routes and just buy ships outright. And just give money to bribe other factions to raise their opinion of you enough into joining or not attacking you. Still have my CD copy, haven't tried playing in on Windows 10/11 though.

[ObsessedwithChess]

I spent so many hours on this game. Got to play over network in the Physics lab over 20 years ago after work with my friend Paul, who played as Klingons. I was the Romulans of course! and was able to take out all his outposts and leave his fleet stranded in deep space with no where to go! Happy memories :D 😂

[Defiant]

This was one of my most favorite Star Trek games of all time! There were a couple of cool mods that allowed the Dominion to be in there and one that greatly increased the Borg presence. I'll never forget that one time I was at war with the Cardassians for nearly 100 turns. We were pretty much at a stalemate, but then suddenly the Cardassians wanted a non aggression treaty that quickly morphed into a full scale alliance request. I could not understand why they wanted that all of a sudden so I sent a couple of ships into their territory to see that they were getting MASSACARED by the Borg and they were quickly multiplying. I accepted their alliance proposal and began rapidly building up ships as I knew what was coming. Talk about some crazy Borg battles!!!

[HugoBolzer]

even after at least a decade i still remember EVERYTHING about this game 😅
- i loved to start with "Tech 1" and build up all the way
- there was a feature or bug = when you group a colony ship + Troop Transport you will Terraform everything in 1 round
- taking advantage of "Ramming" Maneuver to win early combats
- building a heavy industry system to build ships and scrapping for credits
...and sooo on i just LOVE BOTF

[paulrose]

nice still play this game got my original copy dvd from 1998

[ShamelessMcBundy]

I remember discovering this game in high school. I wasted so many hours playing. I loved it.

[HermesX]

I played this game when it came out, loved it really. Always played with the Ferengi. Also loved that every faction's interface looked empire-appropiate

[asvarien]

This was one of my favourite games! Seeing Star Trek Infinite made me very nostalgic for BotF!! I think the Romulans were my favourite empire to play.

[iluvbotf]

Not only the best star trek game this is probably my favorite game of all time period. They are still modding it to try to modernize it as much as possible!

[FriendOfMyconids]

I play this game all the time, easily the best trek game.
I've been playing the ultimate dominion mod lately

[DanBen]

I was younger this was one of the Star Trek games I played on PC. Great fun spent hours playing.

[kevinb]

Still have this game, just need to buy an external dvd player. One of my all-time favourite games

[SnugglehPuppeh]

I had no idea any Deep Space Nine content existed in this game. Awesome. Also you probably know, but if you like this sort of game the New Horizons or the New Civilizations mods in Stellaris are great.

[AdamHeafield]

Nice a video on birth of the federation, I still have my original BOTF CD, I wish they'd remake this game for modern systems its such a good strategy game. When Borg cubes turn up its either all over for where they spawn and the empire that they are attacking or you burly survive a fight with the cube, 40 star ships doesn't cut it not even close, try hundreds Well maybe with future tech but still its a hell of a fight, not to mention all the other random events that can happen during a game. Yeah I had many fun hours playing this. 😄

[HairyHillman]

This was one of my fav games from my youth, have never seen it played on anything past windows XP! How did you get it running in 2023?

[ThomasstevenSlater]

One thing I like about this game is that morale system pushes you into acting in character. Morale boosts the production of science, industry and intelligence or reduces if the morale on a planet is low. For example of the federation declaring war, bombing and invading lowers morale and making peaces rises it meanwhile the klingons love declaring war hate betrayal and are disappointed with peace