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I think the problems mentioned here with Beyond Earth are mainly that none of the leaders have any character to distinguish them. ie there's no real difference between say Space India's leader and Space America's. No unique lines, and not really any unique character.
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# ? Nov 27, 2014 02:46 |
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# ? Jun 10, 2024 13:12 |
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Veloxyll posted:I think the problems mentioned here with Beyond Earth are mainly that none of the leaders have any character to distinguish them. ie there's no real difference between say Space India's leader and Space America's. "No village was ever ruined by trade."
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# ? Nov 27, 2014 03:41 |
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Veloxyll posted:I think the problems mentioned here with Beyond Earth are mainly that none of the leaders have any character to distinguish them. ie there's no real difference between say Space India's leader and Space America's. Nor do their faction bonuses matter much, either, usually. 50% faster outpost growth, orbital craft stay up longer, something something 10% more growth when at positive health, yawn. There is not usually much reason to choose one faction over another save for color and city names. And then you get Polystralia's Faustian bargain of immeasurably greater power in exchange for immeasurably greater aggravation via the magic of forever manually assigning trade routes that you can't ignore because they're just so very profitable.
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# ? Nov 27, 2014 04:49 |
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Kyrosiris posted:No, you're not. Then again, I haven't played Endless Legend and never played SMAC when it was relevant so I don't have colored opinions on it. I suppose I'm in the same boat, but I did play quite a lot of Civ V, especially during the Peacewalker Civ LP. I really do believe that, in terms of mechanics, Beyond Earth is superior to Civ V, including Brave New World. It's a shame that culture got gutted, but the new tech tree, the quest system, and changing demands into favors really did a lot for the game.
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# ? Nov 27, 2014 04:59 |
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Siegkrow posted:FANTASY SNAKE How about Woad Wyrm?
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# ? Nov 27, 2014 05:05 |
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Endless Legend also has a nonlinear tech tree handled in a much less confusing way. I like the ideas behind BE's web and I love its virtue system, but EL has merit too. Basically, you unlock new tech eras in EL every eight techs you research, but there are more than eight techs each era, and later techs are more specialized, so you start to get picky the further you go. Instead of cultural policies or virtues, you have "Empire Plans" which give powerful global benefits, but only until you have to select the next plan. You burn up all your influence points on these and if you have too many cities it gets too costly in influence points to max out on the empire plan. Plus, you also have to expend influence on diplomatic interactions. You are expected to be able to shift your strategy as you go and there are powerful benefits to peace as well as war since you generate more influence when you have friends. Also you never have to hear about how no village was ever ruined by trade.
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# ? Nov 27, 2014 05:41 |
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Speedball posted:Endless Legend also has a nonlinear tech tree handled in a much less confusing way. I like the ideas behind BE's web and I love its virtue system, but EL has merit too. Y'know, that sounds really neat. I'll pick it up in the steam sale. e: VV That is a great use of barbarians. I've really got to get this game. ViggyNash fucked around with this message at 06:24 on Nov 27, 2014 |
# ? Nov 27, 2014 05:53 |
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It also has a more interesting take on barbarians. There are neutral Minor Faction villages populated by monster people and at the start of the game they sometimes release hostile units. Demons, cyberghosts, etc. You can just wreck the villages to pacify them, or you could go on a quest for them or give them money. Pacified villages add a population point to your nearby city, and you have to waste time rebuilding it if you wreck it, so there's a cost and benefit to all options. Plus, you can assimilate a minor faction into your empire. That gives you some nice global benefit like +5% science per Haunt village in your territory and lets you build their unique unit yourself. So barbarians aren't just hazards or pinatas full of xp, they are opportunities.
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# ? Nov 27, 2014 06:12 |
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Apropos of nothing, I keep confusing Endless Space and Infinite Space when people talk about them.
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# ? Nov 27, 2014 06:42 |
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Speedball posted:Endless Legend also has a nonlinear tech tree handled in a much less confusing way. I like the ideas behind BE's web and I love its virtue system, but EL has merit too. Don't forget how all techs in ALL eras increase in cost with each new tech and era, too, so it's not just about unlocking a new era, picking up the science bonuses, and then filling out the entire tree at your leisure. Failing to take a tech early means you pay more for it later, there's no quick and cheap backfilling of everything you left behind earlier.
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# ? Nov 27, 2014 06:47 |
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Tomn posted:Don't forget how all techs in ALL eras increase in cost with each new tech and era, too, so it's not just about unlocking a new era, picking up the science bonuses, and then filling out the entire tree at your leisure. Failing to take a tech early means you pay more for it later, there's no quick and cheap backfilling of everything you left behind earlier. Yeah. You're encouraged to specialize in the later eras (you can leave out stockpile techs entirely if you want) but the Tier 1 and 2 techs are all so very essential that it's hard to leave behind too many of them. It's a nice system. Sorry for derailing the thread TOO much, people-who-are-only-here-for-XCOM.
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# ? Nov 27, 2014 07:14 |
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Speedball posted:It also has a more interesting take on barbarians. There are neutral Minor Faction villages populated by monster people and at the start of the game they sometimes release hostile units. Demons, cyberghosts, etc. You can just wreck the villages to pacify them, or you could go on a quest for them or give them money. Pacified villages add a population point to your nearby city, and you have to waste time rebuilding it if you wreck it, so there's a cost and benefit to all options. Plus, you can assimilate a minor faction into your empire. That gives you some nice global benefit like +5% science per Haunt village in your territory and lets you build their unique unit yourself. So barbarians aren't just hazards or pinatas full of xp, they are opportunities. Centaurs are just hilarious to watch in combat. I love my fat horsepeople.
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# ? Nov 27, 2014 10:50 |
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Errant Signal finally did a video on Beyond Earth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M51p4LmPQ40 He shares my love of the role-play-centric mechanics of the game, like the tech web and the affinity system, but berates the game for not knowing what it wants to be, and not having the substance to back up its thematic concept. I really thought the role-play-centric nature of the game would make for a better lp, but I guess the rest of the game might be hard to deal with. Speedball, would you considering coming back to this if the expansions improve the bad parts of the game?
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# ? Nov 27, 2014 21:25 |
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I just caught up on this... ah, the dysfunctional good times. One thing I was wondering about, not sure if it's been brought up yet, but perhaps the reason X-Com gets so many promising women and less-than-stellar men (Looking at you, No-Scope) is because the male-dominated traditional militaries are being as stingy with their troops as the council is with funding.
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# ? Nov 27, 2014 22:39 |
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ViggyNash posted:I really thought the role-play-centric nature of the game would make for a better lp, but I guess the rest of the game might be hard to deal with. Speedball, would you considering coming back to this if the expansions improve the bad parts of the game? Absolutely. In fact I'm counting on it. Elfface posted:One thing I was wondering about, not sure if it's been brought up yet, but perhaps the reason X-Com gets so many promising women and less-than-stellar men (Looking at you, No-Scope) is because the male-dominated traditional militaries are being as stingy with their troops as the council is with funding. I was gonna have one of the characters theorize about this, but it never came up. Doing a little more work on next update. Y'all have NO idea where I'm taking this. Heh heh. Speedball fucked around with this message at 23:02 on Nov 27, 2014 |
# ? Nov 27, 2014 22:59 |
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Well, now I think you're gong Inception with it. Illusions within illusions within illusions.
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# ? Nov 27, 2014 23:10 |
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ViggyNash posted:Errant Signal finally did a video on Beyond Earth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M51p4LmPQ40 No village was ever ruined by trade.
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# ? Nov 28, 2014 07:26 |
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Speedball posted:Absolutely. In fact I'm counting on it. So does that mean we might get the Snake in space Lp a few years down the line after Beyond Earth gets expansions? assuming the expansions are good enough anyway. Also, the Civlopedia has a surprisingly large amount of flavour in it, check out the entry for the LEV destroyer and the victory wonders at some point. I can have moments of... eccentricity and sometimes be quite curious about things. Please forgive me if I do something foolish or rude.
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# ? Nov 28, 2014 12:08 |
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For anyone curious about the Endless Legend chat, it's currently 50% off on Steam. Here's a link to the game's page.
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# ? Nov 28, 2014 21:16 |
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Glidergun posted:For anyone curious about the Endless Legend chat, it's currently 50% off on Steam. drat, I was about to link that. Valve done goofed. I ended up getting the extra stuff versions of Endless Legend and Dungeon of the Endless for $32
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# ? Nov 29, 2014 00:22 |
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Decided to try out the Long War mod and I'm not sure I like it. I understand it is supposed to make the game more difficult, but it has some pretty ridiculous stuff. Losing 2 countries in the first 2 weeks of the game because of things I couldn't do anything about because things take as long if not longer to do and yet time passes more slowly and more stuff happens in a short period of time. "<Country> is reporting UFOs in their skies" "<Country> is reporting UFOs in their skies" "<Country> is reporting UFOs in their skies" "<Country> has withdrawn from the x-com project." All of that within 2 weeks, when it is impossible to even get a sat above said country because you don't start with enough power for another satellite array, and the arrays only support a single sat + 1 for adjacency. I realize that you can reconquer them later on, its just really frustrating. I love the expansion of the class system. I love the larger squad sizes, the infinite availability of most grenades and other neat sub items. I even enjoy the enemies being a lot more dangerous. I don't enjoy having a large ship that I can literally throw all 4 of my starting aircraft at without shooting it down appear in the first week.
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# ? Nov 29, 2014 02:24 |
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One country is guaranteed to leave early because that's where the first alien base gets set up. Generally the aliens will also focus on increasing panic in the same continent as the base. Otherwise it should take some time for panic to ramp up as long as you aren't ignoring abductions. As for large UFOs, just send an interceptor to scout it out and then immediately abort. It's not worth trying to take them on until much later in the game. You can get lost countries back, by the way, by putting a satellite over them and completing a base assault. Don't stress out too much over losing countries, you can lose two whole continents and be fine (my current situation).
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# ? Nov 29, 2014 03:02 |
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Long War has the basic problem that there's some great content and some stuff that's basically just padding and/or difficulty for its own sake, and there's no way to filter out the latter to keep just the good stuff.
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# ? Nov 29, 2014 04:16 |
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kvx687 posted:Long War has the basic problem that there's some great content and some stuff that's basically just padding and/or difficulty for its own sake, and there's no way to filter out the latter to keep just the good stuff. I think the main thing I want to get rid of is the weekly abduction missions, sometimes twice a week. Making the game longer and having more stuff happen I can understand and agree with, but the levels need turned down a lot. In my second game I'm on my 4th deployment and haven't gotten a single thing researched or gotten a second satellite up.
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# ? Nov 29, 2014 22:36 |
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I am now in Long War mid to late game. I strongly suggest to get some SHIVs up early. These are a huge help with maintaining squad rotation. Something else to keep in mind is that Exalts Laser Weapons can actually be grabbed and immidiatly used via Stunning, but Alien Weapons have to be really expensively converted, unless they are Alien Grenades. I would, in Long War, strongly recomend to go all the way until Advanced Lasers first. These have Laser Cannons which make the Air War far more managable. I went for Asia then North America. Btw, I once had a totally hellish week with the "Catch Alien battleship" council missions, another unrelated council mission, 1 terror mission, 2 abductions and 2 downed Ufos. That was "intense".
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# ? Dec 2, 2014 20:32 |
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Khisanth Magus posted:I think the main thing I want to get rid of is the weekly abduction missions, sometimes twice a week. Making the game longer and having more stuff happen I can understand and agree with, but the levels need turned down a lot. In my second game I'm on my 4th deployment and haven't gotten a single thing researched or gotten a second satellite up. Making the war longer? Good. Padding out the war? No. They should've just stuck to stretching things out over time with a few more UFOs instead of an abduction every other day. That's not a longer war, that's a denser war. Maybe they could've called the mod "Eventful War" or "Rut War".
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# ? Dec 2, 2014 23:37 |
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X-COM super-sale today on Steam. Might need to wait until the end of the semester to give you guys another substantial update. Stuff happens. I'm sure you know how it is.
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# ? Dec 3, 2014 00:45 |
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Is enemy Within on sale? Cause I really want that so I can play Long War.
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# ? Dec 3, 2014 01:39 |
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Deadmeat5150 posted:Is enemy Within on sale? Cause I really want that so I can play Long War. Yeah. Enemy within and all the DLC is 67% off. But the complete enemy within bundle costs less overall if you don't have the main game yet. EDIT: 75% off, $7.49 for X-Com EU. 75% off $12.49 for the "Enemy unknown complete pack" which is the base game, Enemy within, and both DLC (SWEET HATS). Just Enemy within 67% is $9.89. Expansion+DLC by themselves is $13.83. Section Z fucked around with this message at 02:29 on Dec 3, 2014 |
# ? Dec 3, 2014 02:26 |
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Speedball posted:X-COM super-sale today on Steam. Oh, I know. I can't wait to have time to do things like not writing a pointless 12 page paper about dumb topics.
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# ? Dec 3, 2014 03:37 |
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Had nightmares about rejection letters all night, set off a mid-night panic attack, stressed during the entire 10-hour workday today. Turns out that the actual confirmation of who made it in got delayed a week too so I get to look forward to this happening to me sometime soon AGAIN. gently caress. Actual rejection would hurt less than this, it'd just be one more for the pile and I'd move on. May attempt to update X-COM anyway just to get my mind off this planet and onto theirs.
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# ? Dec 5, 2014 05:24 |
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Speedball posted:Had nightmares about rejection letters all night, set off a mid-night panic attack, stressed during the entire 10-hour workday today. Turns out that the actual confirmation of who made it in got delayed a week too so I get to look forward to this happening to me sometime soon AGAIN. gently caress. Actual rejection would hurt less than this, it'd just be one more for the pile and I'd move on. I once had a dream that I was back at the office after some time away on vacation. Everyone was glad to see me, asking how I was, but they seemed fuzzy and confused on the details about why I had been gone. I woke up feeling excited to go back and see everyone soon now that my time away was over. Then I remembered they'd fired me three months earlier. Can't say much more than that I've been there and I encourage to find something else to do to take your mind off things; even something not LP related.
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# ? Dec 5, 2014 05:58 |
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Holiday related job stress is never fun. So says guy who had a conversation with a co-worker regarding an old store manager's return after thanksgiving replace the reasonable one basically consisting of. "Oh, yeah. My mother told me he seems to have it in for you." "...Have I ever even met your mother?" "Nope." As much as an update would be cool, don't kill yourself over our free entertainment if the X-Com stuff itself isn't sufficiently distracting. EDIT: Well, I never found out the specifics RE: peroson's mom, but I guess it was basically common knowledge the guy basically just didn't like me that much and this fact didn't change despite being away from that particular store for years. I left soon after his return, after a different co-worker upsetting a customer resulted in him chewing me out instead after I went over to cover for the storming off co-worker. Short version, more overt signs and multiple people agreeing "yeah, should probably quit before he fires you" later I was out of there and he was all smiles and 'I'll miss you' on my last day. EDIT: vvv Yeah, sorry for the derail. But basically I felt more comfortable around the prior store manager than THAT GUY coming back. Despite the fact the guy I quit over never physically assaulted me like the previous one. (Xmas rush plus blizzard warning rush = Unwisely telling manager to settle down resulting in being shoved against a wall and "No YOU SETTLE DOWN " He has some 'holy poo poo what the gently caress have I done' realizations over that when I next saw him though.) Section Z fucked around with this message at 09:50 on Dec 5, 2014 |
# ? Dec 5, 2014 08:36 |
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Section Z posted:Holiday related job stress is never fun. So says guy who had a conversation with a co-worker regarding an old store manager's return after thanksgiving replace the reasonable one basically consisting of. I'm having trouble parsing this. Did the new manager bitch to your co-worker's mother about you so specifically that, not even knowing you, she nonetheless brought it up with your co-worker? Or...?
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# ? Dec 5, 2014 08:50 |
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Probably the co-worker remarked to his mother about how the incoming manager treats various people, particularly Section Z.
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# ? Dec 5, 2014 09:42 |
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Speedball posted:Had nightmares about rejection letters all night, set off a mid-night panic attack, stressed during the entire 10-hour workday today. Turns out that the actual confirmation of who made it in got delayed a week too so I get to look forward to this happening to me sometime soon AGAIN. gently caress. Actual rejection would hurt less than this, it'd just be one more for the pile and I'd move on. Expecting to either break down completely or do a dance of joy on the 15th when I get confirmation if I actually get in to any of the courses I applied to for next year or I just go back to moping around since I'm practically useless otherwise. Can't say I'm looking forward to that day based on my previous attempts.
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# ? Dec 5, 2014 12:17 |
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Hmm. Stings less than I feared but way more than I wanted. The rest of the team's helping me through it, though. I'll need at least 24 more hours before I stop feeling like a reject, though.
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# ? Dec 14, 2014 08:41 |
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Speedball posted:Hmm. Stings less than I feared but way more than I wanted. The rest of the team's helping me through it, though. I'll need at least 24 more hours before I stop feeling like a reject, though. Glad to hear it didn't go that bad for you. Turns out I had the date slightly off and got mine on the 10th this week and I at least managed to get into a course about Network technology. So I get something to do next year for once. Hooray.
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# ? Dec 14, 2014 12:39 |
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I take it back, I only felt worse the more time went on. Trying to avoid posting on the internet today, I'm just going to make an rear end of myself.
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# ? Dec 14, 2014 19:49 |
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# ? Jun 10, 2024 13:12 |
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Just think of us as your support group. don't worry, we all love your stuff.
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# ? Dec 14, 2014 21:07 |