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The Human Crouton posted:Compare that to Civilization where the AI proposes a treaty and you're locked in a data-barren screen until you make a decision. Oh, you don't have the entire map and each deal between each other faction memorized? Too bad, gently caress you. Maybe check and memorize the diplomacy screen between each and every turn next game. Oh, I remember this. I always "solved" this issue by only accepting deals that were obviously bad for the AI and good for me, or by refusing, then later looking at all my poo poo in peace and quiet, then sending my own proposal.
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Oct 16, 2022 09:22
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Peanut Butler posted:EL looks absolutely gorgeous imo and was my favorite civ-like for a while- buuut I'll say the visual style distracted me from quickly understanding the field, like I can with more iconographic games I mostly play it at the zoom that makes everything iconographic.
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Oct 16, 2022 10:45
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ELs style just gets very cluttered which I think is its problem. Most ES2 menus don't seem to have this issue but I think that's the difference between a full map and zoomed out stars.
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Oct 16, 2022 14:18
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ES2 has the standard 4x problem of AI that fundamentally cannot play the game.
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Oct 16, 2022 19:52
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Anyone try GalCiv IV yet? I enjoyed II, barely played III. Granted, after getting into Distant Worlds and Stellaris, it’s hard to go back to either.
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Oct 16, 2022 20:31
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chaosapiant posted:Anyone try GalCiv IV yet? I enjoyed II, barely played III. Granted, after getting into Distant Worlds and Stellaris, it’s hard to go back to either. It was fine I guess. Haven't touched it since the first 2 weeks.
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Oct 16, 2022 20:53
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I tried Distant Worlds 2 and I definitely need to do an immersion handheld experience through some guides or videos, because my attempts at everything just failed lmao Last game that I felt like that was the original Victoria so that’s promising
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Oct 16, 2022 21:30
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Google Butt posted:Hmmm I see, would I be able to get by with a keyboard that has a somewhat lovely track pad attached to it for a modern 4x? Basically I want to stream to my new big rear end OLED tv and play from my couch without a mouse. I solved this by getting the logitech trackball. I adjusted pretty quickly, and I can play stuff with a keyboard + trackball on the couch.
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Oct 16, 2022 22:51
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chaosapiant posted:Anyone try GalCiv IV yet? I enjoyed II, barely played III. Granted, after getting into Distant Worlds and Stellaris, it’s hard to go back to either. It is the same game you've already played multiple times now.
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Oct 17, 2022 04:53
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The Chad Jihad posted:Random question, back when strategy guides were a thing, does anyone remember any particularly good ones? I kinda collect them; for example the Imperialism 2 one is great The manuals for the Dominions games are works of art. The latest game's is nearly 400 pages of rules and lore.
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Oct 17, 2022 05:26
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How is Shadows of Forbidden Gods? The concept appeals to me, and it's gotten really good reviews, but I was a bit underwhelmed by the demo- it felt like a lot of really nitpicky clicking to gradually weight 1d100 rolls for every agent on every verb. Does the gameplay ever smooth out, or is it always a lot of really tedious micromanagement?
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Oct 26, 2022 08:55
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Omi no Kami posted:How is Shadows of Forbidden Gods? The concept appeals to me, and it's gotten really good reviews, but I was a bit underwhelmed by the demo- it felt like a lot of really nitpicky clicking to gradually weight 1d100 rolls for every agent on every verb. Does the gameplay ever smooth out, or is it always a lot of really tedious micromanagement? The demo is quite old (well, it was old when I played it, not sure if they updated it). The current version's mechanics are more flashed out and there's more to do in general. For example, in the current version there is now holy orders that you can infiltrate and influence, and the holy orders in turns can influence they country they are in. Orcs is also changed so you have more things to do with them. For example, you can help them build up pirate fleet, or help them develop monster manger for you to get special monster retinue. Then the version before they added magic which is pretty fun mechanic where you can freeze the world and kill everyone, or inflict vampric curse on a bloodline. As for lots of clicking, well, with experience you'll figure out what you actually want to do because a lot of actions that's available to you is not very useful by itself. For example, devastating countryside is usually not useful unless it's a larger plan to weaken a kingdom to pave way for an orc invasion. It's also not useful to infiltrate random POI, etc. I think you can also set agent to do certain action on repeat now, so that might help with the clicky aspect. Art is also improved a bit so it's more consistent and higher quality. pedro0930 fucked around with this message at 10:13 on Oct 27, 2022 |
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Oct 26, 2022 09:15
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Also it’s a goon game so you can probably find the dev around somewhere to ask them.
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Oct 27, 2022 10:09
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Omi no Kami posted:How is Shadows of Forbidden Gods? The concept appeals to me, and it's gotten really good reviews, but I was a bit underwhelmed by the demo- it felt like a lot of really nitpicky clicking to gradually weight 1d100 rolls for every agent on every verb. Does the gameplay ever smooth out, or is it always a lot of really tedious micromanagement? What 1d100 rolls? A character slowly adds their relevant stat totals until they hit the target total. Don't go for big places with lots of security without having bribes handy. There can be a lot of dead turns if you want your agents to lay low after their crimes. The best way to defend your agents used to be setting up a plague in a central location and just reinforcing that until heroes learned to hate the relevant agent. Then you lead them on a merry chase around the map while your other agents actually accomplish god relevant tasks.
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Oct 27, 2022 10:44
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habituallyred posted:What 1d100 rolls? A character slowly adds their relevant stat totals until they hit the target total. Don't go for big places with lots of security without having bribes handy. There can be a lot of dead turns if you want your agents to lay low after their crimes. The best way to defend your agents used to be setting up a plague in a central location and just reinforcing that until heroes learned to hate the relevant agent. Then you lead them on a merry chase around the map while your other agents actually accomplish god relevant tasks. Yep, that's the one that was bugging me. I ended up grabbing it off of your guys' feedback and I've been enjoying it a lot- I think what really threw me in the demo was that the tutorial area is so small that it somehow gave me the impression that every turn I was going to spend a million years individually clicking each guy through each action. I still wish the full version flowed a bit better, maybe by shifting a lot of the popups to side banners that can be blown up or ignored at will, but I haven't had any of the gripes with the full version that I did in the demo.
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Oct 27, 2022 21:33
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A middle ground between hiding all of x announcement forever and being told every time somebody decides to ward nowhersville would be nice. I always follow the Chosen One, just on general policy. Everyone else I just glance at. Except for the Mammon game I had which was just a nonstop series of fights over the holy mountain. Lots of trying to pick off people before they could replenish their bodyguards. Anybody try any of the mod gods? I know they just got implemented and I am tired of trying to get Ophanim off the ground.
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Oct 27, 2022 23:03
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Beefeater1980 posted:Also it’s a goon game so you can probably find the dev around somewhere to ask them. I can answer questions about it, if you want, but I feel I'm probably a bit biased when it comes to "is it good?". Naturally, as the dev, I'm going to say no. So much I still want to fiddle with, and a bunch of things I'd change if I had a chance to redo it all. Hopefully I can smooth most of the issues regarding the UI and stuff out before full release, still got a few months to go, and no-one's more excited than me about the modded gods. There's some very creative stuff, which adds in new mechanics (like sinking cities beneath the waves) which the base game doesn't have, so it's pretty cool for me that people enjoyed it enough to spend the time on making these mods.
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Oct 28, 2022 04:00
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Had a game where my orc got swarmed by 10 characters a turn and they just spent every turn murdering literally everyone. Need to find a screenshot
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Oct 28, 2022 04:24
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Bobby Two Hands posted:I can answer questions about it, if you want, but I feel I'm probably a bit biased when it comes to "is it good?". Naturally, as the dev, I'm going to say no. So much I still want to fiddle with, and a bunch of things I'd change if I had a chance to redo it all. One thing I'm curious about on the technical side: how do you manage the scope of the search space when each agent evaluates potential moves? Is it fast enough that each agent can iterate through each potential hex, or do you use some kind of heuristic to focus what they evaluate?
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Oct 28, 2022 18:17
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The Chad Jihad posted:Random question, back when strategy guides were a thing, does anyone remember any particularly good ones? I kinda collect them; for example the Imperialism 2 one is great gran turismo's 4 guide has an amazing diversity of content, from full page pictures of cars/tracks to fairly involved explanations of how various car stuff like limited slip differentials work and how to set them up in game. there's also a quite good overview of skip barber's racing college program and how actual racecar drivers are taught to analyze curves, tracks, lines.
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Oct 29, 2022 00:27
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Omi no Kami posted:One thing I'm curious about on the technical side: how do you manage the scope of the search space when each agent evaluates potential moves? Is it fast enough that each agent can iterate through each potential hex, or do you use some kind of heuristic to focus what they evaluate? It's got the 'profile' thing, which sets a maximum distance for what each agent/hero has access to (quests and stuff have profile too, to keep stuff sane), but after that, it's just that fast. The AI's hardly complex, and I do consciously try to avoid adding anything which would be slow to evaluate. Mostly, though, it's just modern PCs are pretty drat powerful.
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Oct 29, 2022 03:29
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Any solid guides or cheesy tactics for Age of Wonders 1? Even on the easiest difficulty on the first map the game sends full stack to your towns inside of like 10 turns. I kinda just want to cruise around and blow poo poo up and don’t want to have a massive tug-of-war-of-attrition just getting thru the campaign.
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Oct 29, 2022 07:22
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Not sure of any guides, back in the day AoW was mostly a niche forum talk type of game. I do recall the best way to brute force it was via your heroes. Aow still had unlimited retaliations per unit (iirc) so as long as you could stack a hero with the max (was it 10?) defense they could pretty much just tank and grind out any force that wasn't fully dedicated to magic attacks. Add in some abilities like life drain, first strike, or stun attack (shock attack?) and your hero can carry you through most maps. Abilities like dominate or charm also had very few limitations, allowing you to creep together a whole map worth of troops. Some of those abilities might need to be taken at character creation though. Spells that boost melee defense were very handy especially early on when you are still building out your hero, and later on investing the mana into more melee attack. AoW wasn't an especially balanced game, if something reads like you could abuse it, you probably can. Otherwise lean on your hero(es) and make sure to stay aggressive and take away towns from the ai.
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Oct 29, 2022 10:49
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The Chad Jihad posted:Random question, back when strategy guides were a thing, does anyone remember any particularly good ones? I kinda collect them; for example the Imperialism 2 one is great Get the OFFICIAL Final Fantasy 7 guide so you can miss a bunch of actual useful information, see a bunch of typos and get a bestiary with half of the entries missing info or being overlaid with different creatures. Alternatively, the FF9 guide, which refers you to the internet.
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Oct 29, 2022 10:58
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The Lufia strategy guide was excellent.
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Oct 29, 2022 11:49
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Earthbound travel guide
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Oct 29, 2022 11:57
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Orange Devil posted:The Lufia strategy guide was excellent. Yeah, the SNES had some good ones, but all in German. Guides for Lufia II, Secret of Mana, Secret of Evermore, even one for Terranigma, I think? Too bad those were never really sold separately, so they're kind of hard to get nowadays. I threw mine away decades ago, for example. For some reason Nintendo thought German kids would get easily confused by RPGs, ha ha. Apparently no-one told them about the German love for simulation games, RPGs are easy mode compared to that poo poo.
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Oct 29, 2022 13:48
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Libluini posted:Yeah, the SNES had some good ones, but all in German. Guides for Lufia II, Secret of Mana, Secret of Evermore, even one for Terranigma, I think? Sure, Germans can understand RPGs, but part of the German love for simulation games is the German love for extensive documentation, so strategy guides are right up that alley even if you don’t actually need them.
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Oct 29, 2022 14:02
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Autsj posted:Not sure of any guides, back in the day AoW was mostly a niche forum talk type of game. I do recall the best way to brute force it was via your heroes. Aow still had unlimited retaliations per unit (iirc) so as long as you could stack a hero with the max (was it 10?) defense they could pretty much just tank and grind out any force that wasn't fully dedicated to magic attacks. Add in some abilities like life drain, first strike, or stun attack (shock attack?) and your hero can carry you through most maps. Abilities like dominate or charm also had very few limitations, allowing you to creep together a whole map worth of troops. Some of those abilities might need to be taken at character creation though. Spells that boost melee defense were very handy especially early on when you are still building out your hero, and later on investing the mana into more melee attack. This is true, but likely not going to help much in the first 10 turns of the first map. Honestly I don't remember AoW being that hard, but IIRC on the first map the easiest way to build up is by diplomacy rather than traditional recruiting. Which is to say when you find a neutral city/group of units, you just have to move one of your units into them and they'll usually be like "this unit will join you for x gold" which is often a lot cheaper than building those units yourself would be. Also walls. Walls and an archer or two won't make a city invincible, but it'll hold off a lot of small raiding parties and let you concentrate your units in a reactive force that moves around dealing with threats.
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Oct 29, 2022 16:39
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chaosapiant posted:Any solid guides or cheesy tactics for Age of Wonders 1? Even on the easiest difficulty on the first map the game sends full stack to your towns inside of like 10 turns. I kinda just want to cruise around and blow poo poo up and don’t want to have a massive tug-of-war-of-attrition just getting thru the campaign. It's been so long, but I recall the late-game maps getting completely over the top ridiculous in terms of what they'd throw at you. Like unreasonable cheaty bullshit. Except you can cheese the gently caress out of that bullshit with your own bullshit. Strategic spells and comboing level up abilities in tactical combat allowed some truly busted stuff in the player's favor. I suspect the devs knew though, hence the difficulty. It's one of the few games I've played all the way through that felt like I was cheesing the game with busted mechanics yet still felt challenged by the game. If you're not being grossly unfair to the AI then you're probably in for a bad time. That said, none of that helps early in the game before you get busted spells and build voltron heroes. I don't recall the early game being that difficult though. I do remember that ranged combat is absolutely crucial with early troops though, so if you're not squeezing all the value out of ranged unit positioning then that might be part of the problem. Wasting the enemy at range is the best way to avoid casualties that you can't afford given the AI's numerical advantages. Corbeau fucked around with this message at 16:55 on Oct 29, 2022 |
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Oct 29, 2022 16:51
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Throw fat hobbit ponies at your early game problems. Fat hobbit ponies solve a lot of them. e: Also, enchantments you place on your units are permanent (though they require upkeep). While research is cool and good, you're better off spending your mana on keeping a bunch of these up early on - research is easier to do it once you've crushed your enemies, seen them driven before you, and heard the lamentations of their AIs. my dad fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Oct 29, 2022 |
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Oct 29, 2022 18:30
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my dad posted:e: Also, enchantments you place on your units are permanent (though they require upkeep). While research is cool and good, you're better off spending your mana on keeping a bunch of these up early on - research is easier to do it once you've crushed your enemies, seen them driven before you, and heard the lamentations of their AIs. Oh yeah, this is a good one. With how the AoW 1 combat system works having one good unit is much better than having several average units, so if your choice of magic schools has some decent buff spells try to layer them all on a few good units.
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Oct 29, 2022 18:42
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Iirc you were also free to pick your spell spheres at the start of the campaign, and the best value buffs came from just a single one. Earth and Life both had good cheap defence buffs to stack on either a solid frontline unit or to get your hero 1/3 of the way to gently caress-off status (or both if you found a node for the upkeep).
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Oct 29, 2022 19:44
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Thanks for all the recs! Yeah there was a window of time where games were complicated enough to need guides and the internet hadn't cannibalized the space yet, which led to this little flash in the pan microcosm of... inspired? guide writing? Not sure if that's the right word. But my go-to example is the maniac who wrote the X-Wing guide alongside the more standard stuff wove in a narrative walkthrough of the missions so there's this little novella packed in. The Warcraft 2 guide was similar, in that it was written like the journal of an in-universe character
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Oct 29, 2022 20:13
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The Chad Jihad posted:Random question, back when strategy guides were a thing, does anyone remember any particularly good ones? I kinda collect them; for example the Imperialism 2 one is great The two that really stick out in my memory are: -The Prima strategy guide for X-Com(1994), which is a loving gigantic tome that goes into intricate detail about enemy stats and clearly breaks down every system in the game and how to exploit them. -The Bradygames strategy guide for Star Ocean 3: Till the End of Time, which is a ~300 page full color book that has huge charts about all the crafting combinations and recipes in the game along with a really detailed guide.
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Oct 29, 2022 20:59
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Is there a packaged version somewhere of Civilization 2 that runs natively on Windows 10 and isn't bugged? I have the "Civilization Collection" box set which has Civ 2, but I don't have a disc drive any more and my understanding is that the "working/current" version of the game has some kind of bugged AI? Edit: While I'm here, i've decided to play some of the older 4Xs I never played when I was younger: Master of Magic, Master of Orion, and MoO 2. Are there any good let's plays of the original flavor Master of Orion that goons would recommend? Either video or SSLPs are fine with me. I've found some good stuff for MoM and MoO2 already. chaosapiant fucked around with this message at 20:14 on Oct 30, 2022 |
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Oct 30, 2022 03:03
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You'd probably need to gently caress around with Dosbox or a Win2k virtual machine on HyperV to get it to run properly.
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Oct 30, 2022 21:02
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After years of playing 4Xs, but never playing either MoO Classic or MoO 2, i'm falling in love with both of these games. I think I do prefer MoO 2 for the better presentation and atmosphere and I like loving with pops. But both games are just so drat elegant in their design it makes me wonder why other 4Xs keep having to get just more and more complicated. Ironically, it's Distant Worlds Universe that reminds me the most of the original MoOs. It's got that right mix of mystery and atmosphere the original games have. More Master of Orion questions: 1. How was the remake of MoO? Is it as good as the originals? Or is it just a soul-less knock off type thing? 2. Master of Orion 3: is that any good these days? I know there's been fan-patches to fix tons of issues, but is it actually a good game these days with those patches? I've been reading Libliuni's awesome MoO3 Let's Play, but it's hard to get an idea of how the game plays today, fully patched and what not?
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Oct 31, 2022 04:03
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chaosapiant posted:After years of playing 4Xs, but never playing either MoO Classic or MoO 2, i'm falling in love with both of these games. I think I do prefer MoO 2 for the better presentation and atmosphere and I like loving with pops. But both games are just so drat elegant in their design it makes me wonder why other 4Xs keep having to get just more and more complicated. 1. Not good. Extremely bland and forgettable IMO. 2. I've tried it a few times but even all patched to hell it wasn't enjoyable for me.
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Oct 31, 2022 04:42
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chaosapiant posted:After years of playing 4Xs, but never playing either MoO Classic or MoO 2, i'm falling in love with both of these games. I think I do prefer MoO 2 for the better presentation and atmosphere and I like loving with pops. But both games are just so drat elegant in their design it makes me wonder why other 4Xs keep having to get just more and more complicated. MoO3 with one of the flavor (vanilla/strawberry/chocolate) patches worked well enough and was even fun from what I recall, but it's a very different beast from MoO1/2 and not entirely stable especially on modern systems. At least I had a lot of trouble getting it to run about 4ish years ago.
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Oct 31, 2022 04:59
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