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Real evil space tyrant would spend his time more efficiently. Posing for propaganda posters. Micromanaging urban development, making sure that lower classes are separated from elites with scary walls. Designing government app UIs so that the populace is as obedient and miserable as possible.
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Jul 30, 2019 10:55
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After trying out the different factions, I think Horatio is by far my favorite one. Also with emerald skins their ships look slick as hell Honorable mentions to the Unfallen and Vodyani
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Jul 30, 2019 11:49
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Shoving a tactical combat game into an already complex strategic game is bad. Civ 4 stacks of doom are the right way to go
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Jul 30, 2019 12:00
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Personally, I think the best tactical system for a 4x to emulate is King Of Dragon Pass. Don't even have to know where your army is, get to concentrate on the important stuff like sacrificing cows.
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Jul 30, 2019 12:41
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ilitarist posted:Third, there's an issue of balance between those two games in how much attention they demand. In a game like Heroes or recent Total War Three Kingdoms, you mostly win on a strategic map but some clever tactics can affect your losses in combat, you also need your wits and luck if the forces are even. You can win those games without ever participating in tactical combat. In a game like XCOM you spend most of your time in combat and you can win those games by being a great tactician even if you're bad at the strategic level. Obviously empire-building games should be more about strategic level, but then why have tactical combat at all? If you play your cards right you'll only have battles with pre-determined results, and it feels strange to have a whole separate game just for edge cases. In games like ES2 the "tactical" nature that they gave combat is a bad half-measure that I was able to look past and still enjoy the game, but I'm sure there is something better out there. ilitarist posted:So I'm of a belief that tactical combat should only be there to show the consequences of your strategic choices. edit: reading that then typing up my response got me thinking about how a boardgame I've been slowly working on in my free time over the past few years is space-based and is built around tactical, non-annihilation, combat that will also have a strategic layer, and that I need to make sure both aspects add something to the game... AAAAA! Real Muenster fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Jul 30, 2019 |
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Jul 30, 2019 15:41
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ilitarist posted:The very idea of tactical combat in an empire building game is problematic. I mostly agree, but some games are built more around the tactical with strategic just kinda thrown in; things like HoMM's single player and AoW3 comes up. You're right that on a more strategic level you just want to mash autocomplete on the lopsided fights, and as long as games let you do that it's all fine. My gripe with Es2 isn't the 'mandatory' nature of it's tactical layer (quite the opposite; just having a energy/kinetic and short/med/long readout gives you plenty to think about for picking a tactic and hitting autowin), it's that there's this deeply complex flotilla sim that you're not allowed to touch, and it even teases you with a ton of modules and other odd buffs/debuffs that you can in no real way optimise and are best just ignoring. I enjoy Amplitude's way of de-emphasizing combat, but EL is undoubtedly the 'worst' of its major titles in terms of micro; even with it's soft orders there are HUGE returns on paying attention to fights, which can get exhausting after a while.
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Jul 30, 2019 15:44
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Serephina posted:I enjoy Amplitude's way of de-emphasizing combat, but EL is undoubtedly the 'worst' of its major titles in terms of micro; even with it's soft orders there are HUGE returns on paying attention to fights, which can get exhausting after a while. Yeah, maybe. I like to use the option with giving orders only every second turn, it looks surprisingly like an interesting wargame design to me. And I find ES2 the worst cause I usually just watch EL and understand what happens there and what troops I need to counteract the enemy - even if I don't make any decisions myself. Really it's sadly what people want. For some reason people want to see soldiers shooting each other even if it's a strategy game on a galactic scale.
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Jul 30, 2019 17:06
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AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:This really stood out to me and spoke to me at a deep level, because I really love the Total Warhammer games but I've gotten to the point that I can win on the Strategic level by having lots of money, good troops, good lords and heroes, and I know where I need to have my armies, so I only very rarely find myself fighting tactical battles anymore last total war I played with any real depth was barbarian invasion and that campaign was beatable using no tactical battles, with only peasants as recruits. It's almost a design virtue, even if it's personally irritating. You want players to win, you want them to flex on some fools. But if you make a system that has multiple axes of mastery and you are not explicit as hell that players need all of them, it should be a game that is beatable by being good on only one axis. Or you'll piss your players off for "punishing players" or "lack of diversity." All that said, the ground invasions in ES2 are probably better than the naval system mostly because they're extremely transparent.
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Jul 30, 2019 19:26
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I agreed with @AAAAA! Real Muenster and others about problems of ES2, but still wanted to experience the last expansion, the hacker ghost people. Well the game is still there where I left it. It's beatufiul, playing it is almost cathartic. Core mechanics are great. I have some understanding of Behemoths cause it's my second game with them. I don't understand what should I do with hacking apart from putting sleeper agents from time to time, getting 5 seems to be a good thing. Other hostile empire caused a freaking revolution which was a minor inconvinience. Most importantly, I play on Endless and ignore most of the mechanics, I can let myself stop optimizing most of my planets. There are some diplomatic things coming my way, the usual grand galaxy dividing quest. I don't care. I'm in alliance with several most powerful factions, I grind through helpless enemies. I've won. I'm enjoying the music and the show and I'm crying cause I can see the beauty of those mechanics, about how interesting it might have been to betray my allies, trade, care about level 4 system development and late game techs. Next time I'll probably try Stellaris, make feel it still feels like a day job, try Civ6 again to make sure that basic UI design is a mystery to AAA developer or will try to fight through Stars in Shadows and GalCiv3. Then I'll play EU4 till the end of my days. I mean till Age of Wonders Planetfall comes out in 4 days.
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Aug 4, 2019 06:12
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https://steamcommunity.com/app/392110/discussions/0/1640919103692489579/ Patch 1.42.21 There's some changes in here, many of which are basically fixes to weird cases where calculations would cause unreasonable negative numbers for one reason or another, but this one is pretty big: quote:Universal Aerodynamic (Era 4) now grants +3 Command Points This is a really pretty enormous change to early-middle game combat. In the early stages, naval conflicts are hyper determined by command points - there's just not enough variation in modules for quality to matter as much as quantity, and the power difference from going from 4 to 7 command points is way bigger than going from 21 to 24. AC giving +3 command points was an enormous advantage, but also one that could be caught up on quite quickly. Now it's much more useful if you've researched both your attacker and protector hulls, and so it's going to hurt the ability of empires who are caught off-guard to catch up navally. I won't have the chance to fire up the game for the rest of the week, let alone actually test anything, but these changes, taken together, seem to mostly be bad for the pretty common strategy of "I'll worry about the military quadrant after I've gotten everything else up a few tiers."
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Aug 13, 2019 17:24
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More than a few small changes in there mate! Fleet accelerator modules can only be equipped on hero ships. RIP Bee swarms! You had served us well Federation's over colonization threshold now increases only with heroes that represent the political parties currently in the senate. Extreme nerf to a silly-OP thing, this is now quite interesting and much weaker Saints & Sinners now gives +20 Approval on all Systems and an additional +20 Approval on Systems with governors RIP religious Cravers. Like the above law, was only used to break expansion sanity checks, but Religious is a lot less appealing yet again for non-Vodyani. Introduced 2 Influence per pop upkeep for Trade Agreements and Science Agreement ...Fuuck? Those weren't big/common things anyways but yeowch. The real news is they're making balance changes w/o looking at stuff like how many things are useless, such as overpriced production values for most Era5 buildings, terrible return/opportunity costs on trade companies, etc. These are all 'tweak a number' type of things rather than 'overhaul the AI' (which is needed, but is a big ask).
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Aug 13, 2019 18:01
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Don't see a point in touching that game till "overhaul the AI" is in the patch notes.
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Aug 13, 2019 20:56
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Serephina posted:More than a few small changes in there mate! The trade one is kind of bizarre. Trade agreements don't affect the pacifist laws in the same ways as peace/alliance, which have profound affects, so it's not going to slow down what pacifists really care about, and trade/science agreements are basically just a willy-nilly thing to do. The other ones you mention are good, Saints & Sinners was a monster law. ilitarist posted:Don't see a point in touching that game till "overhaul the AI" is in the patch notes. Enjoy never playing another 4X between now and the sun swallowing the earth I guess.
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Aug 13, 2019 21:31
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No 4X ever had require me so little time to win trivially on max difficulty. Don't talk as if ES2 is the same as other games in this genre. Well maybe I was misleading with talk about AI specifically, it's not the only way to make the game more difficult. Let's call it "balanced difficulty".
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Aug 13, 2019 21:34
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It's possible we're playing different games but Civ5&6 as well as the Paradox series, which are the main ones I hear talked about, are dramatically easier, especially in terms of AI. Civ AIs in the hex era are at the level where they aren't opponents, they're resources.
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Aug 13, 2019 21:39
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I haven't played Civ6 much but I've played CIv5 far more. Even on Emperor I had to consider what I'm doing, never won on max difficulty. ES2 on max difficulty is a relaxing game where I can fool around and decide which victory do I want to get this time. Paradox games allow for some hard starts and I have never felt I have fully mastered any of their games apart from Victoria 2. And I never moved from default difficulty. Plus they don't have any real definition of victory. EU4 is easy if you consider your goal to don't feel threatened by anything in the world and don't start as endangered countries. It's miles harder if you're going for any decent achievement or world conquest or start as Mzab or Tver or dozens of other countries.
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Aug 13, 2019 22:19
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Tulip posted:It's possible we're playing different games but Civ5&6 as well as the Paradox series, which are the main ones I hear talked about, are dramatically easier, especially in terms of AI. Civ AIs in the hex era are at the level where they aren't opponents, they're resources. The amount of hours you'd have to put into EU4 to be successful with a majority of starts in it is pretty high, even on normal difficulties. The amount of hours you need to put into ES2 to play any faction is a lot lower. Now granted, a portion of that is complexity and not depth, but warfare in EU4 has a lot of depth when it comes to maneuvering, politically and militarily, and you need to utilize both aspects to succeed. ES2 lacks that depth, as beating the AI requires incredibly little of the player.
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Aug 13, 2019 22:46
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I'd even say that the depth in ES2 is there. Plenty of interesting mechanics, a lot of moving parts giving you interesting choices. But there's no reason to bother. In my only game with the latest expansion I didn't really optimized hacking, barely used Behemoths, only had a few heroes, didn't bother with Academy quests. I'd be happy if the difficulty was cranked up so that I'd need to understand all of this. Civ5 is boring, more inferior game, but you need to understand everything that happens on any decent difficulty. Its mechanics don't go to waste.
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Aug 14, 2019 06:26
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Tulip posted:It's possible we're playing different games but Civ5&6 as well as the Paradox series, which are the main ones I hear talked about, are dramatically easier, especially in terms of AI. Civ AIs in the hex era are at the level where they aren't opponents, they're resources. How do you even compare the ES or EL AI to the CK2 AI for example? Characters act according to their traits, so a weak, craven Byzantine Emperor will capitulate to faction demands, while an ambitious, cruel emperor might fight an endless series of civil wars. Your high stats, greedy and deceitful spymaster will likely betray you, while a lower stats, honest and just spymaster might be a bit worse at his job, but won't support other people's plots against you. It's a totally different game, and the main goal is not to beat the AI.
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Aug 14, 2019 07:49
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Tulip posted:It's possible we're playing different games but Civ5&6 as well as the Paradox series, which are the main ones I hear talked about, are dramatically easier, especially in terms of AI. Civ AIs in the hex era are at the level where they aren't opponents, they're resources.
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Aug 14, 2019 14:53
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In no world is Civ or any other 4x I can think of easier than Endless Space 2. AI difficulty is the weakest part of the series, hands down.
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Aug 14, 2019 17:08
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Yeah. Even I can beat endless difficulty which is a clear sign it is easy.
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Aug 17, 2019 09:10
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Good news for everyone then - it's massively unlikely there'll be a new Endless game and you won't have any new games to be disappointed by!
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Aug 18, 2019 17:15
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The Deleter posted:Good news for everyone then - it's massively unlikely there'll be a new Endless game and you won't have any new games to be disappointed by!
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Aug 18, 2019 17:40
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The Deleter posted:Good news for everyone then - it's massively unlikely there'll be a new Endless game and you won't have any new games to be disappointed by! What happened?
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Aug 18, 2019 17:56
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I'm mostly just shitposting, don't worry about it. But I vaguely remember on a dev stream somewhere that they weren't working on Endless Legend 2 and the only thing they've released since then is the Horatio visual novel, which, don't get me wrong, owns. if they make an announcement in the next year or so for a new Endless 4X game I'd be surprised.
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Aug 18, 2019 18:07
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https://twitter.com/Amplitude/status/1163139789723504646 e: Endless/Two Point crossover let's go Overminty fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Aug 18, 2019 |
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Aug 18, 2019 19:04
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I know AI will never approximate playing a human in a 4X, but ES2 is the only game I've played where I've "accidentally" won while checking out a new race I also think there's an expectation (maybe even a requirement?) for 4X in the style of the Endless series to have good AI because they're so clearly singleplayer-focused games
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Aug 18, 2019 19:05
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I know a guy who works on that company's next game, he's at gamescom hopefully they announce something. Kurtofan fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Aug 18, 2019 |
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Aug 18, 2019 20:02
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The Deleter posted:I'm mostly just shitposting, don't worry about it. They made the visual novel, which they released for free. I don't expect a company would dedicate time and resources to a free product for no reason--I suspect it was to build brand awareness, which would be pointless if they're abandoning the universe. As far as a 4x game--well I love the games in the series so far. But I think my dream game would be Mass Effect or Dragon Age style game in either the Endless Space or Endless Legend universe.
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Aug 19, 2019 00:33
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prometheusbound2 posted:As far as a 4x game--well I love the games in the series so far. But I think my dream game would be Mass Effect or Dragon Age style game in either the Endless Space or Endless Legend universe. But you've said yourself they've already made a visual novel in that universe! On a more serious note, gameplay-wise Dungeon of the Endless is pretty rad and playable in coop. I don't think it manages to be that infinitely replayable roguelike on par with FTL it tries to be, but it's fun for awhile. And it has a ragtag bunch of larger than life characters. No fancy graphics and voice acting a la BioWare but still rather immersive and solid, and it has its own soundtrack by FlyByNo.
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Aug 19, 2019 08:30
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Humankind! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1124300/HUMANKIND/ "Create your own civilization by combining 60 historical cultures from the Bronze to the Modern Age. Begin as Ancient Egypt, then evolve into the Romans, the Khmers, or perhaps the Vikings. Each culture brings its own special gameplay layer, leading to near-endless outcomes." seems very ambitious! A friend is artist on the game, he worked on the units and buildings and stuff, I can"t wait to see what this looks like
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Aug 19, 2019 20:01
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Using cultural transitions as indicators of progress is real interesting as an idea. Also goddamn do I love how those urban districts are laid out. I'll probably get this.
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Aug 19, 2019 20:06
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toasterwarrior posted:Using cultural transitions as indicators of progress is real interesting as an idea. I like the idea of moving from superpower to superpower to shape history. The movement of centers of power is something that historical 4X games have really struggled to model since they're, y'know, video games and so whatever you play as is the main character of the game.
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Aug 19, 2019 20:13
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That is like... surprisingly Civ-esque. I mean EL was close but if you put Civilization 7 above those screenshots I wouldn't doubt it for a second. Looks sick though
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Aug 19, 2019 20:14
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Excellent. Civilization needs some direct competition.
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Aug 19, 2019 20:35
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Well I look like a loving idiot now 
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Aug 19, 2019 20:39
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The Human Crouton posted:Excellent. Civilization needs some direct competition. I admire their willingness to take a swing straight at the champ.
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Aug 19, 2019 20:39
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The Deleter posted:Well I look like a loving idiot now Actually your comment was remarkably well timed, since it isn't an Endless game. I'm looking forward to this, although I am dissapointed it's not Endless Legend 2. I liked their sci-fi setting more than our own boring lovely planet. I've never liked Civ games but if it plays like Endless Legend I'll love it. Really hoping for their trademark extreme factional asymmetry.
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Aug 19, 2019 21:59
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Chadzok posted:Actually your comment was remarkably well timed, since it isn't an Endless game. If each culture provides a wildly different bonus then it's basically Make Your Own Faction. Egyptians get a bonus to riverside tiles, Romans organise soldiers faster, Vikings cross oceans better, that sort of thing. Needless to say I'm psyched!
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Aug 19, 2019 22:12
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