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I get that the Japanese are alcoholics, but why are wheat farms the only option for producing wine.
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Nov 8, 2022 21:41
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Warno has a lot better soundtrack then Wargame
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Nov 8, 2022 22:40
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Has anyone played the Galactic Civilizations series? I own number 3 from when Epic gave it away for free, but apparently number 4 was also released in April of this year. I never got into the games despite owning the first two iterations a lifetime ago and I'm looking for opinions on what to expect and maybe how to get a leg up on getting started.
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Nov 12, 2022 07:45
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I played 2 until I figured out the economic system is stupid broken. I hear 3 and 4 are very similar to 2. Also the owner is a massive libertarian doing workplace harassment and parking in handicapped spaces with his sports car, but I repeat myself.
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Nov 12, 2022 09:21
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Lostconfused posted:I get that the Japanese are alcoholics, but why are wheat farms the only option for producing wine. just make food industries and use the grain to make soju/sake.
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Nov 12, 2022 10:10
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the first mission in the moscow expansion for unity of command is incredibly brutal, i think i took comparable losses in that one scenario to the entire war in the west campaign
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Nov 12, 2022 14:49
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Orange Devil posted:I played 2 until I figured out the economic system is stupid broken. I hear 3 and 4 are very similar to 2. Also the owner is a massive libertarian doing workplace harassment and parking in handicapped spaces with his sports car, but I repeat myself. Yeah, if you raise taxes your population goes Galt; it's amazingly dumb on top of the CEO being a libertarian harasser (but I repeat myself...) V. Illych L. posted:the first mission in the moscow expansion for unity of command is incredibly brutal, i think i took comparable losses in that one scenario to the entire war in the west campaign Haven't gotten to it, but I've heard that's kind of how that whole campaign plays like.
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Nov 13, 2022 05:01
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so I started playing Galactic Civilizations 4 tonight, and one of the early techs you can research is a Space Elevator, but the very first one you build as the humans is special, so it's named, and it's named "Elon's Lift" glad I pirated this garbage
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Nov 13, 2022 14:34
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gradenko_2000 posted:so I started playing Galactic Civilizations 4 tonight, and one of the early techs you can research is a Space Elevator, but the very first one you build as the humans is special, so it's named, and it's named "Elon's Lift" lol makes sense, GalCiv was always trash by libertarian idiots reminds me of how the Surviving Mars game had lots of Musk references in it too
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Nov 13, 2022 14:38
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BadOptics posted:Yeah, if you raise taxes your population goes Galt; it's amazingly dumb on top of the CEO being a libertarian harasser (but I repeat myself...) yeah the campaign makes me weirdly pleased to find a 0:2 or even 0:1 attack at the start of my turn. all your instincts from the Western campaign are wrong, you just have to keep throwing artillery at the problem and then follow it up with enough bodies to break through. you can't even feint very well, since it costs 4AP it's very bracing. my recent defence of moscow saw me suffer 50% casualties and while that was partially due to some bad choices i don't see how you can do it at less than 20-30% at least
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Nov 13, 2022 15:00
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gradenko_2000 posted:Has anyone played the Galactic Civilizations series? I own number 3 from when Epic gave it away for free, but apparently number 4 was also released in April of this year. I never got into the games despite owning the first two iterations a lifetime ago and I'm looking for opinions on what to expect and maybe how to get a leg up on getting started. I played Galactic Civ 2 a bunch a long time ago. It's not really that good. The mechanics are novel in that I like putting building on spots, but it is shallow as all hell.
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Nov 13, 2022 15:35
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Orange Devil posted:Yeah I can’t think of any with a good AI. Command Ops 2 is pretty solid.
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Nov 13, 2022 15:46
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I wanted to do a Space Y game in commemorating Elong's journey. But hold the gently caress up Surviving-Maps.com is down. rip to a real website. Will smash my dick with a hammer before I download and compile that.
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Nov 13, 2022 16:09
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KirbyKhan posted:I played Galactic Civ 2 a bunch a long time ago. It's not really that good. The mechanics are novel in that I like putting building on spots, but it is shallow as all hell. The GalCiv games are also weirdly soulless. They just feel completely empty, even in the parts where the mechanics might be interesting.
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Nov 13, 2022 16:10
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i wish i was invested enough in elder scrolls lore to enjoy the elder kings mod for crusader kings 3, oh well. i think after the end is supposed to be released this month.
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Nov 13, 2022 16:20
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lobster shirt posted:i wish i was invested enough in elder scrolls lore to enjoy the elder kings mod for crusader kings 3, oh well. i think after the end is supposed to be released this month. There's a Warcraft mod for CK2 if that's more your jam
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Nov 13, 2022 16:25
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Galcivs only real thing has always been strong AI; aside from that they're saltine cracker dry. The first one was an excellent laptop 4x game back in the days where that distinction meant something
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Nov 13, 2022 18:17
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Mister Bates posted:Shadow Empire’s AI cheats like absolute mad and there are entire game systems it basically doesn’t have to engage with at all (it uses an extremely simplified version of the logistics system, for example, and it can’t build new cities at all). It’s a pretty good wargame AI but the only way to make it work in such a complex game was to just have it play a completely different game from what the human player sees. the flipside is, once i got good enough at the logistics of shadow empire to start doing anything but flailiing i got to the point where i could start winning conflicts sometimes, and i foolishly applied the lessons of that logistics system in how i carried out trying to actually win wars, only to realize that the AI basically ignores all that and there was no point to any strategizing about how to attack their logistics at all drained all my enthusiasm over the course of an afternoon and i've never played it again
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Nov 14, 2022 01:47
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Here you are playing 5D chess only to realize the computer is beat you at checkers.
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Nov 14, 2022 02:00
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gradenko_2000 posted:There's a Warcraft mod for CK2 if that's more your jam it got mogged by EK1. Elder Kings is good.
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Nov 14, 2022 03:31
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gradenko_2000 posted:There's a Warcraft mod for CK2 if that's more your jam Whoa didn't know this, that rocks.
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Nov 14, 2022 03:32
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atelier morgan posted:the flipside is, once i got good enough at the logistics of shadow empire to start doing anything but flailiing i got to the point where i could start winning conflicts sometimes, and i foolishly applied the lessons of that logistics system in how i carried out trying to actually win wars, only to realize that the AI basically ignores all that and there was no point to any strategizing about how to attack their logistics at all MP is the only way to play imo. But then I got burned out on that due to the assymetrical starts combined with tech imbalances and general self-reinforcing loops just compounding on themselves ultimately making the game not about war strategy but about societal productive capacity and logistics (though the actual logistics system has some serious issues also). Which might be realistic (though, really, for relatively small post-apocalyptic societies? not so sure) but ultimately not interesting enough to justify the amount of time it takes to play a game. Did sink hundreds of hours into the game before I got to that point though, so ultimately money well spent.
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Nov 14, 2022 10:06
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I played GalCiv 4 for a couple of hours last night, but I ran into enough rough edges with the design that I actually went back to GalCiv 3 this morning one of the big innovations of GalCiv 4 is that they separate planets into "Core Worlds" and "Colonies". The idea is that a colony only ever has one population, and just pumps out production (and research, and food, etc.) and sends it to a Core World, and the Core World is the only one that you manage directly like a city in Civilization. It's supposed to cut down on micromanagement because you might have three or four colonies for every Core World, but the problem is that at the same time, they dropped the Governor automation from planets entirely. Whereas in earlier GalCivs you could let the AI just manage the planet, this time you're obliged to manage the Core Worlds, presumably because they already cut out all the less valuable planets by downgrading them to Colonies. But this is still more micromanagement in general compared to retaining the Governors the other big innovation in 4 is supposed to be that the galaxy is split into "sectors", or small pockets of stars/star systems, that are separated from each other by hyperspace lanes. I found this more irritating and did not really streamline the structure of the game at all because it kills the small-scale maps while leaving the map looking like there's so much dead air otherwise, the basic structure of the game seemingly hasn't changed so much over the multiple other iterations: the planets feed production to the shipyards, the shipyards churn out your ships, and you use the ships for exploration, to colonize new planets, to build interstellar mining bases to capture special bits of resources and production. It seems interesting enough that I'll keep at it, and the combat automation actually appeals to me more than trying to learn tactical combat, but I can understand the remarks that it's "saltine cracker dry"
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Nov 14, 2022 10:32
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Paradoxish posted:The GalCiv games are also weirdly soulless. They just feel completely empty, even in the parts where the mechanics might be interesting. I used to think the moral dilemmas were neat, but the good/neutral/evil D&D alignments are pretty flat and many strategy games have flavor events now.
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Nov 14, 2022 19:57
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Yeah, I haven't played a GalCiv after 2 but it feels like in a post-Stellaris world it's just not nearly as special. The only thing that really stands out in my memory is that I think it might have handled the cultural warfare stuff the best out of a 4X game. I started to do a write up about it when Cultural Victories in Civ 4 came up. Your culture is a little expanding sphere that fights cultural spheres that it runs into and if your culture spreads over another planet they start to identify more with you than their empire. If you want, you can just leave it be and kind of get a firm grip on a weaker empire or abuse neutral/friendly empires and start setting up activism/guerrila training centers in starbases by the planet to push it toward rebellion. Then the only answer is that the empire either has to go to war with you (which will piss off any planets that like your culture and might start a rebellion anyway) or just try to be more entertaining and hang on. It felt neat and about the best way you could handle a Cultural Victory idea, even if it turned into way too cheesy of a tactic against AI. It also reminds me of what felt like the big GalCiv issue. 2 had a really neat idea where you or any other civilization might encounter an ancient civilization relic site that triggers the Peacekeeper System. This spawns a bunch of end-game level neutral ships that are dedicated to galactic peacekeeping. Which means that if any of your military ships wander out of your cultural area of influence they're at risk of getting one-shotted. You either have to accept full austerity and build up a military that can resist the peacekeepers or settle in for an economic or cultural game, or play cat and mouse around the patrols. If you're peaceful then you can also hide behind the patrols. It's a really cool idea...except it triggered really often and was broken as hell. If I remember right, your ships firing back at the peacekeepers when attacked flipped them from a special neutral faction to being at war with you, which meant that they'd randomly blow up your trade and research ships and go into your territory to just kill everything. I don't know that they ever bothered to fix it, at least back when I was playing it when it first came out  .
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Nov 15, 2022 00:44
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V. Illych L. posted:hello, i am trying to play unity of command 2 and after comfortably managing the italian campaign i'm getting completely wrecked in operation overlord It sounds like you're playing the DLC now, so maybe you beat Overlord, but all the same: Overlord's a tough one, you've got some very strong forces but your whole position is brittle. You need to take the Pegasus tile on turn 1 with those veteran British paratroopers, and then leave them there. Try to get them dug-in if possible, and manually re-supply them if necessary, but don't move them. When I play it, the Germans usually don't even attack that tile - maybe you need to be a little more aggressive with that airfield west of Caen, draw the panzers over there where you can hit them with more than one division. Basically the whole southern beachline should take some ground and then dig in, don't overextend, don't get greedy, until you've got Cherbourg and your supply situation becomes manageable.
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Nov 15, 2022 01:41
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Kazzah posted:It sounds like you're playing the DLC now, so maybe you beat Overlord, but all the same: i just ended up not taking pegasus bridge at all and scaling back my objectives worked for me. the germans insisted on sending two panzer divisions up to kill whatever airborne elements i sent to try and hold it and no matter how aggressive i got at caen (short of moscow-tier attritional attacks), so i ended up just holding the bridge with a token force and being more methodical about taking caen giving up pegasus bridge allowed me to use my US airborne divisions for an early strike on bretagne with which i was quite pleased
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Nov 15, 2022 10:58
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Parakeet vs. Phone posted:Yeah, I haven't played a GalCiv after 2 but it feels like in a post-Stellaris world it's just not nearly as special. Oh yeah I forgot that this was why I played GalCiv 2. Stellaris didn't exist yet.
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Nov 16, 2022 19:43
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Stellaris isn't turn-based though?
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Nov 16, 2022 20:43
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Maximo Roboto posted:Stellaris isn't turn-based though? Just lol if you're not playing it at max speed with constant frantic pausing.
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Nov 16, 2022 21:04
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GalCiv 2 had a very funny mechanic where your population's growth rate was inversely proportional to the tax rate, so the less you taxed your people the more they hosed also the way ground combat worked was that you just grabbed a bunch of people directly from the civilian population of a planet and dropped them on another planet, where they fought against the defenders' civilian population until one side or the other was dead, which had the effect of making any civ with the Super Breeders trait almost invincible in ground combat, especially on the defense. they'd reproduce so prolifically at 0% tax rates that you could almost completely annihilate them and they'd be back to outnumbering you within weeks.
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Nov 16, 2022 21:16
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Flashpoint Campaigns Southern Storm drops todayquote:High-Level AI and Battle Plans  quote:Seeing the mortar unit being instructed to fire solely in support of its own group (inset) and the FSE moving along the blue path, with the mortar unit (yellow highlight) near the rear in Bad Windsheim.  quote:With the mortar unit having interrupted its movement to fire a quick barrage in support of the FSE, suppressing a cavalry unit on the flank.
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Nov 17, 2022 00:54
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Parakeet vs. Phone posted:Just lol if you're not playing it at max speed with constant frantic pausing.
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Nov 17, 2022 02:08
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Mister Bates posted:GalCiv 2 had a very funny mechanic where your population's growth rate was inversely proportional to the tax rate, so the less you taxed your people the more they hosed It was like a series of half steps taken from Masters of Orion. There's an idea of fiddling with sliders to do the optimal things at optimal times. Unfortunately the math was stupid in a way that you just keep every slider in the maximum whatever. The nuetral alignment powers were dogshit I tried. The rewards were just better if you committed to either bit. And you could pull off some dumb number maneuvers but nothing was satisfying.
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Nov 17, 2022 02:13
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Mister Bates posted:also the way ground combat worked was that you just grabbed a bunch of people directly from the civilian population of a planet and dropped them on another planet, where they fought against the defenders' civilian population until one side or the other was dead, which had the effect of making any civ with the Super Breeders trait almost invincible in ground combat, especially on the defense. they'd reproduce so prolifically at 0% tax rates that you could almost completely annihilate them and they'd be back to outnumbering you within weeks. Yeah Master of Orion did the same thing except without the tax thing and it wasn't stupid.
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Nov 17, 2022 02:23
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Mister Bates posted:GalCiv 2 had a very funny mechanic where your population's growth rate was inversely proportional to the tax rate, so the less you taxed your people the more they hosed It wasn't that the population literally went down, but that your population was treated like the early US where only people with property (in this case pay taxes) "count" towards being members of that society. So if you taxed them too much they went John Galt and I guess hid in some poo poo hole on an asteroid lmfao
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Nov 17, 2022 02:34
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Mister Bates posted:GalCiv 2 had a very funny mechanic where your population's growth rate was inversely proportional to the tax rate, so the less you taxed your people the more they hosed It also had this thing where you were supposed to split state income or taxes or something between science and industry, and you were supposed to split your planetary production buildings between labs and industry as well, but also had some overflow mechanic where excess industry or science production would still be used for the other thing. I forget the details. Anyway, the optimal solution was to put either one or the other at 100% and build only those buildings all game.
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Nov 17, 2022 08:49
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Maximo Roboto posted:Stellaris isn't turn-based though? it is, the turns just auto-advance unless you pause
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Nov 17, 2022 17:56
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i tried to follow up my defense of moscow and now all my divisions are chewed up and keep dissolving on impact this campaign is genuinely hard
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Nov 17, 2022 23:19
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Was it this thread that was talking about GURPS because lol trying to turn reality into a series of game rules really draws attention to ideology: Capitalism A realm with a capitalist economy features lots of private ownership of the means of production, with the market determining what to produce and consumers as the ones who drive it all. Such an economy lends itself to plutocracies if entirely unchecked (consider the robber barons of the 19th century!), but a species or culture with suitably community-oriented traits might produce different results. Laws or heavy cultural expectations may keep CEOs focused on how their companies will improve life for everyone, rather than just the bottom line. Examples: New Zealand; Star Trek’s Ferenginar; United States of America. Benefits: Whenever Revenue is gained, make a Management Skill roll (or roll against Finance, if a suitably placed PC has it). Success by 3+ increases the gain by 20% immediately. When purchasing improved TL, Infrastructure Rating, or Education Rating, reduce the added cost of Improve (p. 34) by 5%. Drawbacks: A capitalist economy is prone to wild swings unless carefully and skillfully managed. Roll against Management Skill every 2d turns. Critical failure results in an economic “bust” that reduces total current Resource Points by 1d¥10%. After rolling a critical failure, ignore this drawback for 4d turns. Communism A realm with a communist economy is one in which prop- erty is state-owned rather than privately held. Essentially, the government – and through it, the people – owns the means of production. The people are given jobs to do; in return, the government gives them the goods and services they need to survive and continue to work. Example: The USSR. Benefits: Whenever a Workforce Point is gained, roll 3d. On a roll of 5 + Conformity Rating or less, an extra point is gained. Drawbacks: Add one level of Corrupt (pp. 26-27) to the realm. Mercantilism A mercantile economy is one in which exports are maxi- mized and imports are minimized. It promotes regulation of the economy by the government to increase its power abroad. High tariffs on goods (especially manufactured goods) are nearly universal. Examples: Most countries in Europe from the 16th to 18th century; Chinese Empire in the 19th century. Benefits: Buying Resource Points (Buying/Selling Resource Points in Play, p. 37) is automatically 10% cheaper. Drawbacks: Selling Resource Points earns (3d)% less; roll each time RP are sold. Socialism In an idealized socialist economy, the basic needs of sur- vival (food, shelter, medical care) and possibly even luxuries are available to all citizens, who do minimal labor to keep the realm running – or possibly none at all, if magical ser- vitor beings or robots are available! The government rather than the private sector owns and manages the economy, and provides for the people’s basic needs. People must work, but many get to do the work they enjoy, and unpleasant jobs may require government or social incentives. Such a system is slow to adapt to changing needs and disruptions, as people hope others will handle it. In a variant of socialism, the Zwangswirtschaft of 1930s Germany, businesses remain privately owned but all major decisions are dictated by the state; market transactions have only limited influence. Examples: Modern-day China; Oz under Ozma, in L. Frank Baum’s The Emerald City of Oz. Benefits: Increase starting Citizen Loyalty by two steps. Drawbacks: Increase the cost of maneuvers by 1 Workforce Point. Increase the cost of disruptions or windfalls by one Resource Point or one turn’s worth of Revenue, for actions pertaining to the realm’s citizens or their welfare. Mixed and Other Economies It’s possible to combine bits and pieces from more than one standard economy type in a hodgepodge system that works (or doesn’t!) for a given realm. Such a mixed economy usu- ally shares the benefits and drawbacks of all the contributing parts, although some of these might cancel out. That’s just a guideline – the GM’s judgment is final. Below are some situations that modify how economies work. These variations can be applied to any economy type, adding their own distinct character – although they aren’t all equally well suited to every economy. Accurately describing the economies of some realms might require several modifiers! Occasionally, a modifier may form the “whole” of an econ- omy, but this is rarely stable and perhaps best-suited to non- human races, lost colonies, and weird cultural experiments. Composite economies use different systems at different levels. For instance, in a nation made up of tribes or clans, there might be a socialist economy within each clan and a free market between clans – and foreigners can be cheated with impunity. Israeli kibbutzim are enclaves of socialist economic planning within a larger market economy. Criminal economies are found in the cracks of society, and thrive in larger economies with many laws – or in anarchic ones where warbands and small enclaves are the largest forms of “government.” Anything needed is obtained via robbery, theft, fraud, blackmail, or cash/trades for illegal goods and services. In some communist economies (e.g., the USSR), a large part of production and distribution actually occurs in a criminal sector. Palatial (or palace) economies are common at TL1, and go with monarchies, theocracies, etc.; they may also represent socialist economies gone wrong. The economy is mostly state- run, but to get a share of the wealth, a citizen must be on good terms with the decision maker(s). Corruption is rampant. Labor and production tend to be inflexible, and surpluses get invested in either grandiose public works or war. Participatory economies are those in which the people vote democratically on what goods are made or what services are produced. Slave economies rely on the forced labor of others, who till the fields and make the goods. Slave economies are always at risk of uprisings . . . Note that if non-sapient beings (robots, magical constructs, etc.) are doing the work, it isn’t a slave economy! Subsistence economies go well with feudal and post-apocalyptic societies, and with many low-TL governments. The realm’s economy is locked into (barely) feeding the citizens and providing their basic needs. Margins are so slim that disturbances can easily be disastrous, resulting in famines. Change for the better is very hard to come by. Market transactions may rely on barter, not cash; locating someone will- ing to swap what you want for what you have requires a roll similar to that to find a hireling or job (pp. B517-518). Unsustainable economies rely on devouring finite resources: food, water, the environment, etc. A more refined version is deficit spending that’s unsustainable in the long term. The economy and the realm are on a countdown to disaster!
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Nov 18, 2022 00:29
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