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KOGAHAZAN!! posted:I played a couple of games to completion, yeah, I probably posted about it at the time. It's pretty well hidden behind the UI and a lack of information about how something works but there's definitely something simmy there. Cultures generate according to a number of setups that influence how likely they're to do something. Ditto for the planar invasions and ancient events, which i've seen pop off and do some pretty neat stuff. A good example of this is the (non empire, non rival, non player) elf raiders culture I mentioned which I saw in one game. Which will straight up go for weak spots in an empire and pillage it for what appears to be resources. Which causes other empires to want to build alliances or military aid agreements to fend them off. Or a bunch of what appeared were "ancient danger" type mummies and other undead living in a pyramid going full on Settra and basically reawakening trying to reconquer the world. Still not sure how the latter example happened but it was rad as gently caress. Of course this example also highlights a flaw of the game --- namely that if you get a boring world gen proc that not much is going to happen. Also, if you don't have a good range of vision into the world its hard to tell if things are even happening to begin with. Ditto for balance, since if you or the AI spawns in range of some high end resources then they can steamroll if the others don't have something to counterbalance it. DW1 and to a certain extent 2 also has these issues however. The AI in 1 would bankrupt you making ships and it seems like the AI in 2 has an issue with troops, meaning that players that micro that have a massive edge in play. Ditto for the balance issues in 1, since if you spawned near Naphta Fruits or another rare lux resource you'd just slaughter everything by dint of having an absurd economy due to the high dev speed. Not sure I agree with the endless fantasy units thing. You've got to research a lot to get units outside of the basic tier 1s that are plentiful to ensure all but the worst starter choices don't get boned. The exception to this is golems, but they're custom built using a rudimentary unit designer anyways. Can't deny that it's definitely got some flaws and jank though. 
Archonex fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Mar 15, 2022 |
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Mar 15, 2022 18:32
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So, uh, I suddenly got an ancient slave colony in Distant Worlds 2? And it's on the other side of the galaxy? And it's not because I've actively colonized it, because I haven't even got colony ships yet? And... there's nothing in the message log about this? Any ideas?
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Mar 15, 2022 19:24
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Wizards and Warlords feels early. Every time I go back and poke at it, it's changed radically in some way. I think it's biggest problem is that, unlike Shadows, it uses the hexmap directly rather than as a backdrop. That complicates AI and adds a bunch of filler to pretty much every activity. It takes ages for anything to actually happen, plus the hexmap is far too massive for it's graphical palette - and while the individual hex graphics can be modded now, last I checked (and I have a partially-complete hex-art mod sitting on my hard drive) there was no blending possible. Since you play zoomed way out most of the time all the nice hex graphics turn into clashing chaos that's bad for both readability and eye strain. Shadows uses much more muted hexes because they're almost entirely backdrop with no mechanical effect, the details of which can safely be ignored (though it would still benefit from graphical improvements in the exact same manner). Not to mention that it's got the same problem as most 4Xes, since there are few if any limits to micromanagement ballooning as you expand. I just can't ever stick with W&W for long; it quickly becomes a chore to play in ways that Shadows doesn't, and the payoffs take so much longer to materialize. Corbeau fucked around with this message at 19:57 on Mar 15, 2022 |
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Mar 15, 2022 19:52
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Archonex posted:Speaking of 4X games, did anyone pick up Wizards and Warlords when it was mentioned way back? I know I was going to do a topic about it but it seemed interest was iffy. So given the complexity of explaining parts of it I never bothered due to only a one or two people that seemed to be interested in it. The good news that game's developer is very active, and has acknowledged most of these issues and apparently has some sort of plan to address most of them. I think he has a habit of focusing too much on customization over getting the fundamentals working right, but it's possible that it'll be an actual good game in a year. cranky corvid fucked around with this message at 20:14 on Mar 15, 2022 |
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Mar 15, 2022 20:08
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NoNotTheMindProbe posted:Shadows of Forbidden Gods is in a pretty good state for Early Access. It's an anti-4X game where you play as a dark god and send out agents to ruin the AI's kingdoms. Pretty sure it's goon made as well. Sadly I can never get into the fantasy setting, but I'm super intrigued about this description. What makes it an anti-4X? Is it the case that you play as someone sabotaging the AI's empire, like barbarians on Civilization? That does sound a lot of fun... BTW, if someone would like to provide a pretty screenshot of DW2 I'll add it to the OP. I might even update the OP if I stop being lazy (ok I'll do it tomorrow). And one of you DW2 nerds make a thread already!
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Mar 15, 2022 23:54
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Ardryn posted:Oh I meant the automation popup, but it's nice that the info is in there somewhere at least. I know you can't built a station in another's radius but does anyone known if when their radii overlap do they share mining rights?
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Mar 16, 2022 00:33
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JeremoudCorbynejad posted:And one of you DW2 nerds make a thread already!
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Mar 16, 2022 00:45
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Wish I could play DW2 but it crashes on me constantly. Just suddenly I'm back on my desktop.
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Mar 16, 2022 00:52
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Azhais posted:Wish I could play DW2 but it crashes on me constantly. Just suddenly I'm back on my desktop.
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Mar 16, 2022 01:09
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JeremoudCorbynejad posted:Sadly I can never get into the fantasy setting, but I'm super intrigued about this description. What makes it an anti-4X? Is it the case that you play as someone sabotaging the AI's empire, like barbarians on Civilization? That does sound a lot of fun... Sort of? It's a clone of a game which never existed, vapourware kickstarter darling "That Which Sleeps". The basic premise is: you are a Evil God, the world's great Adversary, who once in long-ago forgotten days threatened to destroy the world (or otherwise reshape it in some fashion radically inimical to the standard-issue fantasy civilisations currently inhabit it), and was sealed away. Your objective is to break those seals, escape your prison, and use your terrible powers to enact whatever flavour of apocalypse is yours. So you start off weak, only able to exert the smallest of influences on the world, needing to work through mortal agents and infiltrate existing power structures to acquire resources. Go too fast or too obvious and you run the risk of tipping off the forces of Good to your reawakening and having them cut your schemes short before you're strong enough to contest them. Later, you can go loud and have a final climactic showdown before ushering in The End. Or, that's the theory. It's a really cool concept for a game and I'm glad to see it back, though the very quick look I took at Shadows left me with mixed feelings. Over-large, ugly UI, a tutorial that broke on me halfway through. The chat in the Dominions thread definitely makes it sound like it can throw up some cool poo poo, though, so I'm going to give it another shot. Maybe ignore that tutorial altogether.
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Mar 16, 2022 01:32
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JeremoudCorbynejad posted:Sadly I can never get into the fantasy setting, but I'm super intrigued about this description. What makes it an anti-4X? Is it the case that you play as someone sabotaging the AI's empire, like barbarians on Civilization? That does sound a lot of fun... The AI is playing Crusader Kings while you try to undermine them with a handful of secret agents. The UI is the worst part of the game, but it's nowhere near as bad as other "bad UI" indie games because of some really good game design choices. Most importantly, you never get more than a half-dozen agents and each time they conduct some nefarious operation it'll take multiple turns to finish. There's no geometric growth in micromanagement; you can still have geometric power growth, as the stones you kick loose turn into avalanches with only occasional encouragement, but your agent pool grows slowly and linearly on a pre-set schedule. Even in the endgame you're only making a couple of decisions per turn. The only UI feature I outright miss is the ability to jump to another character from any screen that includes them ala CK3. Well, and I want more zoom-out distance along with zoom-to-cursor rather than zoom-to-center; I really badly want to be able to zoom out to an overview of the entire world, even if all the details and heroes fade out when I do, and then be able to scrollwheel myself right back in to anywhere I want. WASD panning just doesn't feel as good. I should probably go poke the dev with a feature request, actually...
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Mar 16, 2022 02:00
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Just played two games of shadows of the forbidden gods today and I have to say there's some interesting meat in that stew. In my second game as not-hastur I had no real strategy other than causing as much political turmoil as I possibly could. That was enough to eventually cause the gigantic central kingdom that covered about half of the landmass to splinter into an ugly civil war. Which was too bad for everyone else, because they were the only kingdom that was doing anything about the orcs. Even though I never directly interfaced with the orcs (you can hire an orc guy and make him an army chief and go direct him as an army to pillage and roam) all of my weakening of the human political situation suddenly paid off as the orcs, now united across the east of the continent, started to go and kick the human countries' respective shits in. All of the previously bulwark states' defenses had been turned into juicy targets by decades of madness and misrule, and anyone who had martial experience fighting orcs I turned into a quivering coward with my mind affecting abilities. That was the second game. In the first game, I won halfway through creating a transylvania hellscape in the northwest, and doing some desertification and climate change in the southeast. I think the game still has room for a few more systems to flesh out its fantasy Sim and give you more stuff to poke at (for example the next update is adding trade routes and economic decelopment) but it's pretty drat interesting right now. Impermanent fucked around with this message at 10:21 on Mar 16, 2022 |
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Mar 16, 2022 10:00
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It's a very cool game, I just hope the UI gets an overhaul. Clicking 6 times to get the information on a city with 5 actors in it is annoying as gently caress and the number key overlays are just unusable.
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Mar 16, 2022 10:13
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So, I got DW2. I love 4X games, but it just feels very hollow and bland. It seems to me, like I'm meant to play it with loads of automation and it just feels wrong. It doesn't feel like much of a game. I've played for about 10 hours or so I think, restarted once, maybe the issue is the pacing of the game itself?
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Mar 16, 2022 12:08
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Ragnar Gunvald posted:So, I got DW2. I love 4X games, but it just feels very hollow and bland. I haven't gotten it yet, but DW1 was kind of like that at first. It got better over time, and was very much a work in progress. Keep in mind that part of DW1's appeal back then was the sheer wonder at an automated galaxy with a living economy in such a huge format. This lead people to be willing to overlook it's lacking features which expansions then added in. Stuff like carriers and fighters, piracy, and the ancient era were all post release. How moddable is DW2? DW1's mod scene was incredible, and it gave it a lot more replayability over time.
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Mar 16, 2022 13:31
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NoNotTheMindProbe posted:Shadows of Forbidden Gods is in a pretty good state for Early Access. It's an anti-4X game where you play as a dark god and send out agents to ruin the AI's kingdoms. Pretty sure it's goon made as well. Holy poo poo, a version of That Which Sleeps which exists!
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Mar 16, 2022 14:16
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Corbeau posted:There's no geometric growth in micromanagement; you can still have geometric power growth, as the stones you kick loose turn into avalanches with only occasional encouragement, but your agent pool grows slowly and linearly on a pre-set schedule. Even in the endgame you're only making a couple of decisions per turn. I love this, thanks. It's the only thing preventing me to enjoy Dominions5 as much as I should. Way too many commanders.
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Mar 16, 2022 17:48
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Jack Trades posted:It's a very cool game, I just hope the UI gets an overhaul. Clicking 6 times to get the information on a city with 5 actors in it is annoying as gently caress and the number key overlays are just unusable. The cycle-clicking is actually gone in the current version; now clicking on the middle of a hex selects the site, and clicking on a hero/agent/army icon selects the hero/agent/army. And there's a hotkey to switch between viewing location modifiers and viewing available agent actions.
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Mar 16, 2022 18:31
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Has anyone successfully fought off the pirates in Distant Worlds? I was doing a good job when everything was in one system, and even doubled by fleet strength by capturing pirate ships. But when I started building mining stations in other systems things went downhill fast. With one planet, I can't afford to field enough fleets that were strong enough to fight off the new, stronger pirate ships that started showing up everywhere. Anywhere I fielded my main fleet was completely safe, but they could only be in one system at a time. At the same time, "bonus income" has wildly inflated my cash on hand so that even one unlucky raid costs me 6k at a time, far more than it would have cost to just pay the pirates off. And I lose a raid that badly once or twice a year. Dastactic says in his videos that paying the pirates off will bankrupt you, but really, it seems much cheaper than any of the alternatives. It isn't helping that even after scouting three systems around me I only found one of the pirate bases, and when I captured it, it didn't destroy that pirate faction. The latest generation of pirate ships is fast enough to effectively kite my ships even though they've only got a speed advantage of ~100. So I can't force engagements anymore unless they do something stupid like commit to a raid on a station I'm close enough to jump a fleet to. That should mean it's possible to build player fleets around long range and high speed to kite stronger AI fleets too, but my military tech is still a generation behind the pirates so that's not an option for me yet.
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Mar 17, 2022 04:14
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Pay them off till you find their stations and force attack the station while paying them off in a surprise attack. Did the trick for me before I got bored and downloaded stellaris again.
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Mar 17, 2022 04:37
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NoNotTheMindProbe posted:Shadows of Forbidden Gods is in a pretty good state for Early Access. It's an anti-4X game where you play as a dark god and send out agents to ruin the AI's kingdoms. Pretty sure it's goon made as well. To add onto what others have said- this game is really well designed! I haven't seen a game this unique pull it off so well in a long time, much less one in early access. I don't have too much time these days, but I just couldn't pull myself away. A+ would cthulu again. Looking forward to what comes next with it.
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Mar 17, 2022 04:48
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There's a roadmap in the steam comments. I've left out the stuff about magic because it's already implemented:quote:-Improved orcs
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Mar 17, 2022 05:17
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LLSix posted:At the same time, "bonus income" has wildly inflated my cash on hand so that even one unlucky raid costs me 6k at a time, far more than it would have cost to just pay the pirates off. And I lose a raid that badly once or twice a year. Dastactic says in his videos that paying the pirates off will bankrupt you, but really, it seems much cheaper than any of the alternatives. i dunno if its broken or redesgined since DW1, but in DW2 pirates only demand 125 bucks a month which is peanuts. just pay them off. in the original their demand would vary based on your income so you could end up paying individual pirate factions like 1k a month or more. just pay them until you find their home stations then ruthlessly eliminate them
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Mar 17, 2022 07:48
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Just disable pirates in the future. They're just a tax on your early development.
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Mar 17, 2022 07:52
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I also made the mistake of setting space creatures to the max assuming it would be like Stellaris where there were positive events too. Instead I got a universe of assholes that hide inside stars the second fleets show up to kill them
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Mar 17, 2022 09:05
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Ragnar Gunvald posted:Pay them off till you find their stations and force attack the station while paying them off in a surprise attack. Did the trick for me before I got bored and downloaded stellaris again. Lasted about 10 hours in DW2 before I started asking why I'm playing this over Stellaris. Stellaris has issues and I've never "finished" a game in almost 500 hours played but it feels more fun and interesting than DW2 does to me. DW2 feels like I'm mostly spectating and it's missing some tools that would help with disabling automation and making it feel more interactive like idle ship notification or mission completion notification. If you want to manually control your scouts, for example, you basically have to sit there with the exploration ship tab open and watch for when they complete their task because the game won't tell you. e: I wish DW2 scaled up a representation of fleets, stations & planets/systems for display when zoomed out instead of basic geometric shapes. Watching from a zoomed out view is just a bunch of circles moving around and isn't very interesting to look at but where I spend most of my time. RandomBlue fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Mar 17, 2022 |
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Mar 17, 2022 15:17
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Stellaris is made to be an enjoyable game, whereas Distant Worlds 2 is made to be more of a sandbox. I think they fill very different niches, while appearing to be exceedingly similar games.
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Mar 17, 2022 16:27
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HerpicleOmnicron5 posted:Stellaris is made to be an enjoyable game
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Mar 17, 2022 16:32
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distant worlds isn't ever going to be the best space 4x on the market, its very love/hate. if you like what it does and what its trying to do, then there's nothing better. it is a big sandbox of automated systems, mostly just the player nudging a space empire simulator. if you're looking for something with crunchier gameplay or meaningful tactical decisions, distant worlds is not it, but if you want a space ant farm then yeah
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Mar 17, 2022 16:50
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Something about the weapons in DW2 confuses me. My escorts came with some sort of wave motion gun and torpedos pre-installed and while torpedos are easy to understand, this weird "bomb"-weapon confounds me. So, this weapon does huge AOE-damage and is a direct fire weapon, which I am assuming means PD can't intercept this "bomb". But the normal weapons like beams seem to do only tiny amounts of DPS, have way less range and no AOE. Looking at the stats I can't see any obvious drawback, but this would make any other weapons useless. What am I not seeing?? 
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Mar 17, 2022 17:47
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Splicer posted:As a long time Stellaris player I'm going to have to ask for some citations I never said made well
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Mar 17, 2022 18:06
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Libluini posted:Something about the weapons in DW2 confuses me. My escorts came with some sort of wave motion gun and torpedos pre-installed and while torpedos are easy to understand, this weird "bomb"-weapon confounds me. Friendly fire. Area weapons don't discriminate.
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Mar 17, 2022 18:12
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Bloodly posted:Friendly fire. Area weapons don't discriminate. Yeah, that makes sense. I didn't want to blindly assume, since the game didn't tell me about AOE weapons hurting indiscriminately. (Or let me guess, that stuff is in the manual I didn't read?) 
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Mar 17, 2022 19:28
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Looks like the last 10 pages or so are about DW2. Anyone have any recommendations on how to get into the game? I've played hundreds of hours of Paradox style games, and this one seems like there is 'more' under the hood than the others, but it also feels like I'm just sort of sitting there waiting for my empire to build itself. Help me enjoy Distant Worlds 2 everyone!
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Mar 17, 2022 20:26
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Grevlek posted:Looks like the last 10 pages or so are about DW2. Anyone have any recommendations on how to get into the game? I've played hundreds of hours of Paradox style games, and this one seems like there is 'more' under the hood than the others, but it also feels like I'm just sort of sitting there waiting for my empire to build itself. congratulations on summarizing the last 10 pages or so
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Mar 17, 2022 21:16
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As someone who put *checks Steam* holy poo poo nearly 3000 hours???  ahem, who put a lot of hours into Stellaris, I think it's kind of funny that Stellaris-players often complain about a lot of the automatization not working, causing an overwhelming amount of micro, while people who don't like DW2 seem to be annoyed at automation working too well Anyway, the most fun Stellaris is if your space empires runs itself, and you only go in once a month at most and deal with an important issue. The worst Stellaris is if you have to babysit a thousand issues at the same time, eating up your time like candy. In comparison, Distant World's strength was always that you could just highly automate anything you personally think is boring and only concentrate on that other stuff. It's why I've stopped playing Stellaris for now and switched my free time over to DW2! Playing Stellaris is fun, but while playing it I also feel like I'm haunted by the feeling that I'm only having fun because I grew up with space 4x games from an era where "good automation" meant your order was properly processed without making the game crash, if that makes sense
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Mar 17, 2022 21:27
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Grevlek posted:Looks like the last 10 pages or so are about DW2. Anyone have any recommendations on how to get into the game? I've played hundreds of hours of Paradox style games, and this one seems like there is 'more' under the hood than the others, but it also feels like I'm just sort of sitting there waiting for my empire to build itself. unautomate everything and slowly crank it back up as you decide what parts of the game you like directing and what parts you find to be busywork.
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Mar 17, 2022 21:32
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I feel like the current state of Stellaris is pretty good. It fixed AI and Automation, which have been the biggest issues for a while.
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Mar 17, 2022 21:33
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It’s been a while since I’ve played Stellaris, but I did play it a lot in the past. For me, the abstractions it chooses makes it feel very much like a game, and every update has pushed it more that direction. DW, on the other hand feels more like the galactic emperor simulator I’m looking for. It’s nowhere near perfect, but it provides an experience closer to what I actually want when playing these sorts of games.
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Mar 17, 2022 21:39
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Agean90 posted:unautomate everything and slowly crank it back up as you decide what parts of the game you like directing and what parts you find to be busywork. its this. just go to the empire policy screen and set the automation level to none, and eventually you'll re-automate things you find more annoying than fun. the default level of automation is to help new players get into the game but if you want to grog your way through things then turn it all off and let the micro surround you
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Mar 17, 2022 21:40
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