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victrix posted:Heroes Hour feels like it was made specifically for that, it's HoMM to a fault but the combat is real time army auto battle HH is fun enough, but it has some serious balance issues. It's more like a toy than a game. E: I'm just slinging negative opinions tonight, aren't I. These are all great games, I just dislike when a game is wasting my time. A game can be slow, as long as something's happening.
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Apr 4, 2023 01:05
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Clarste posted:I'm not joking. I think fighting battles in a 4x is universally a tedious waste of time so I opt out if I can. Apparently Planetfall was the wrong game for that, but I'm using this to dispute the notion that it's 8/10 separate from its tactical battles. I also prefer to auto-resolve in Age of Wonders games. After a few fights, I think I get the idea. I am way more interested in the high level diplomacy and building stuff than I am in pushing toy soldiers around. Maybe if the fights took less time individually to play out I'd be more willing to fight them, but I progress like 10 times as quickly by auto resolving. Age of Wonders 3 also got more fun for me when vassals became an option. Much less city and province defense micromanagement. EDIT: Hero's Hour and Dominions 5 are both great. Battles in the former don't feel sloggy. Battles in the latter ALWAYS auto resolve.
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Apr 4, 2023 01:31
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I find the battles in Total War games kind of annoying, to be honest. Too much to keep track of. I don't play them much, but when I do I tend to make heavy use of auto resolve. I think that just means the TW series isn't for me, though.
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Apr 4, 2023 02:29
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Starting to wonder why Excel doesn't have a vibrant modding community, it's got all of the numbers and they go up and there's none of that tiresome game bullshit getting in the way of the numbers
A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 02:42 on Apr 4, 2023 |
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Apr 4, 2023 02:39
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A Wizard of Goatse posted:Starting to wonder why Excel doesn't have a vibrant modding community, it's got all of the numbers and they go up and there's none of that tiresome game bullshit getting in the way of the numbers I believe you’re looking for Aurora 4X. Edit or [Cell]ivization https://s0lly.itch.io/cellivization LordSloth fucked around with this message at 02:51 on Apr 4, 2023 |
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Apr 4, 2023 02:49
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avoraciopoctules posted:I also prefer to auto-resolve in Age of Wonders games. After a few fights, I think I get the idea. I am way more interested in the high level diplomacy and building stuff than I am in pushing toy soldiers around. Maybe if the fights took less time individually to play out I'd be more willing to fight them, but I progress like 10 times as quickly by auto resolving. Age of Wonders 3 also got more fun for me when vassals became an option. Much less city and province defense micromanagement. AoW could really benefit from an Iron Man mode I think. The "replay battle" button in PF and 4, while great, is too tempting sometimes. I think a combination of limited manual combat tokens, maybe one every 5 turns, combined with an iron man mode would be perfect for me personally, the manual combats feeling a bit more special and less sloggy.
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Apr 4, 2023 02:57
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A Wizard of Goatse posted:Starting to wonder why Excel doesn't have a vibrant modding community, it's got all of the numbers and they go up and there's none of that tiresome game bullshit getting in the way of the numbers I believe we do, in fact, have an idle game thread around the place.
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Apr 4, 2023 04:38
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Lowen posted:Only if you bump both of those numbers up by 4/10. If you think the strategic layer of planetfall is an 8/10 experience you must love the deep strategy and compelling choices in the children's board game Candyland.
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Apr 4, 2023 04:41
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Infidelicious posted:If you think the strategic layer of planetfall is an 8/10 experience you must love the deep strategy and compelling choices in the children's board game Candyland. To be fair, when Stellaris is one of the major features of today’s 4X field, I’d give planetfall an inflated strategy score too. A 6/10 on the 4x layer, perhaps.
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Apr 4, 2023 04:44
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Clarste posted:I'm not joking. I think fighting battles in a 4x is universally a tedious waste of time so I opt out if I can. Apparently Planetfall was the wrong game for that, but I'm using this to dispute the notion that it's 8/10 separate from its tactical battles. If someone tells me a game is 4/10 my expectation isn't just that they don't like it, my expectation is it's broken and basically unfinished. Even when just talking about one aspect of a larger game. I've played plenty of games that were 8/10 or better games in my opinion, but that I returned simply because I could see they weren't designed for my tastes. (I know you didn't say 4/10 yourself but the principle still applies) I can say this: if someone doesn't want to play a mix of tactical combat and 4x, I don't think they'll like AoW3/Planetfall at all. I don't think that means the 4x part of Planetfall is bad, it just means it's not a game for them. Like, units in Planetfall are really different from each other. They're more like different cards in magic the gathering than different units in Civ, and these differences mostly relate to how they play in the tactical game. So if someone is just skipping playing the tactical game, it's like they're outright missing at least half the game, and then playing the remaining half not knowing what any of the units they're building or mods they're applying really do beyond the results they get back from an AI vs AI fight that they probably didn't even watch. I try and rate games by how well I think the developers did making their game. When I look at just the 4X part of Planetfall I see a game with well tuned balance, lots of asymmetry in the different factions, a huge unit roster with both strategic and tactical variety, UI design that competes with the best 4X games UI, and an AI that plays the game well enough to be fun for a player with 100s of hours. These are goals the biggest 4X studios don't fully reach. That's why I rate the 4x part of Planetfall at 8/10. Why not 10/10? I think the 4x element of PF suffers from setting up every battle the same: with both armies fully on the field from the first turn, with every battle either ending only when one side has nothing left, and no real option to retreat or chase. Some other games like Sword of the Stars and Humankind have done a better job with battles that can end for reasons other than one side wiped out and that last over multiple turns. SotS even allowed any unit to freely retreat at any time, it just needed to move away from the front or to certain points on the map. I think there's room for improvement on this front in future games that integrate 4x and tactical combat. Then there's assorted other stuff like: shuffling population around is too much management, engine limitations mean only 1 instance of tactical combat possible at a time and pauses map movement, building navies vs building other units is not much of a choice. This is all 4x layer stuff, even though all but the population shuffling issue touches tactical combat. That's how inseparable the 4x layer and the tactical battles are. victrix posted:the strategic layer is a very bad UI for what should be a slay the spire series of pitched battles awarding new units and upgrades change my mind Having a bad UI and saying the strategic game should be removed entirely are two different things. I like doing the 4x stuff like exploring and clearing the map, putting down and managing my cities, research, diplomacy and building new army units. So getting rid of all that would make the game worse for me. The Age of Wonders series has worked like this from the first game. The entire Total War series, Sword of the Stars, Master of Orion 2 and the entire Age of Wonders series have all had a 2D 4x map layer with cities, army recruitment, diplomacy and research to give context to the fun tactical battles. These games/series are all somewhat popular (or were, back in the day). I think what these kinds of games need most is more freedom for the player to setup different kinds of tactical battles, not less. Having something like the above as a streamlined mode for multiplayer or quickly trying out different armies would be cool though. PS: I do not like *any* HOMM game or Heroes Hour. I haven't been interested enough in any HOMM game to try and found Heroes Hour incredibly boring! But I'm not going to tell a fan of HOMM or Heroes Hour that they're 4/10 games. They're clearly well made games. Just not ones I like/am interested in.
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Apr 4, 2023 05:45
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Infidelicious posted:If you think the strategic layer of planetfall is an 8/10 experience you must love the deep strategy and compelling choices in the children's board game Candyland. Sorry to double post but I'm honestly curious - what's your favorite 4x game, what rating would you give it out of 10, and what specifically about the strategic layer of Planetfall gets it a 4/10 from you?
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Apr 4, 2023 06:25
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Stellaris is a great game now. What the gently caress?
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Apr 4, 2023 06:30
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I will die for my hot take. Mostly because I don’t have any convincing arguments, but yes, Stellaris sucks. Always has, always will, expansions not bought. Fun never found. Maybe I could, given a fresh first impression? Maybe I just chose the wrong factions and difficulty for my my playstyle? Nah, it’s just a messy sandbox.
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Apr 4, 2023 06:41
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Lowen posted:Sorry to double post but I'm honestly curious - what's your favorite 4x game, what rating would you give it out of 10, and what specifically about the strategic layer of Planetfall gets it a 4/10 from you? Probably Alpha Centauri, 9.5/10 As far as Planetfall goes: Planetfall's strategic layer just has very little to engage with and flat out isn't enjoyable on it's own. I felt no attachment or investment to anything in the strategic layer. The art direction and feel of everything was incredibly generic. Once things got rolling it was number go up without any of the satisfying aspects of number go up in a game like Civ; where you plan ahead for tile production or a wonder or whatever and get visual feedback of the growth of your cities. The decision trees are so abbreviated that there's no room to feel clever, or much of anything really. Which could be forgiven if it wasn't in service of fighting the same tactical battle (a meeting engagement) with the same 6 units over and over. Overall Sword of the Stars is a much better game in the same vein; where the strategic layer is boiled down to it's most base elements so that you can focus on mashing spaceships together. SoTS is perfectly playable and still has interesting gameplay and choices to make if you auto resolve everything because each faction functions differently on the strategic layer, and even if you're burning through turns you're researching stuff that has actual impact on gameplay, running into random events, exploring and colonizing or scouting or designing ship(s). The tactical game adds to that. Infidelicious fucked around with this message at 08:28 on Apr 4, 2023 |
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Apr 4, 2023 07:37
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I think Planetfall fell victim to the same problem that Civ: Beyond Earth did. In order to play it safe the leaders and factions are painfully generic in order to let the players customise and tell their own stories, that was the given reason for Beyond Earth anyway. SMAC is so memorable because the factions had extreme amounts of character even though they didn’t play much differently at all, but it’s not a ‘safe’ style anymore from a corporate perspective because you can’t be seen as making political statements.
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Apr 4, 2023 08:36
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Infidelicious posted:A lot of words to say Planetfall is a 6/10 tactical game married to a 4/10 4x most of 4x games are x/10 games that consist of x-2/10 parts
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Apr 4, 2023 09:33
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Yeah most of this is basically "I like building stuff, not wargames." Fair enough, I guess.
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Apr 4, 2023 09:52
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toasterwarrior posted:Yeah most of this is basically "I like building stuff, not wargames." Fair enough, I guess. I like wargames. I just don't like playing the same fairly shallow one repeatedly; which is what happens when you make tactical combat a focus of 4x's. Like I enjoyed the hell out of Rule The Waves which is not really a 4x, but has two distinct layers. The Strategic layer is extremely simple turn to turn; largely you are reacting to events, balancing the budget, designing new ships and approving new construction. Most of this is not done on each turn, so turn to turn goes extremely quickly. The tactical layer ranges from you micromanaging every ship or just setting a formation and heading for your fleet and adjusting it as you need to; you can fight Jutland in about 20 minutes if you accelerate time to contact and out of contact. These layers interact in numerous important ways that your decisions directly impact, and neither one wastes your time. But most importantly; I actually remember tactical battles in RTW from like 5 years ago because I was actually invested in the outcome. Because I designed the ships, named them, chose the doctrine... and then the actual battle had enough random or interesting things happen like a squall allowing a destroyer group to get close enough to launch a torpedo attack that allowed my horribly outnumbered fleet to carry the day; or all of my lovely low freeboard budget battleship design floundering in an unexpected storm and like 4 of them sinking. I refuse to believe that anyone remembers a specific moment from a Planetfall tactical battle vs. the AI. Infidelicious fucked around with this message at 10:59 on Apr 4, 2023 |
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Apr 4, 2023 10:15
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Heros hour is a love letter to heros of might and magic 3 with QOL improvements. I do take issue with everyone calling it an auto battler because after you familiarize yourself with all the units you can pull off some crazy wins in situations you didn't think possible with micro, splitting your stacks properly and positioning. On the main menu are like 15 puzzle battles where you can only use so many points to make an army from a limited selection and are also at a disadvantage and if you put some strategy in you can win and learn some stuff. Some of them were pretty hard but doable. I got back into distant worlds 2 this weekend to play the DLC factions and had some fun, but I also made some silly mistakes and got frustrated, but I'm learning to get good again. I have only won once so far, but getting to midgame even on harder modes is no problem
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Apr 4, 2023 15:29
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Infidelicious posted:I like wargames. I just don't like playing the same fairly shallow one repeatedly; which is what happens when you make tactical combat a focus of 4x's. ive always wanted to get into RTW but i know nothing at all about ships or how to design them
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Apr 4, 2023 16:09
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TBH I get the impression AOW's actual qualities as a game barely matter here. The series is shooting for a weird hybrid RPG/4X/tactical niche there's not much passable competition in so either that premise really resonates with you, in which case 11/10 it's the only game in town, or what you really wanted was uuuh an extremely granular WWII naval battle simulator that looks like a CAD program from 1995 in which case no poo poo it'll compare unfavorably to the entire genre of games that specifically just do that. There's a lot of 4X and strategy games where it's reasonable to make that kind of side-by-side mechanical comparison, because hey they're all fuckin MOO2 clones which one does the best job at copying MOO2's mechanics with your preferred amount of cruft, once you get even a little outside that space poo poo don't work that way.
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Apr 4, 2023 16:37
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Kvlt! posted:ive always wanted to get into RTW but i know nothing at all about ships or how to design them its ok you don't need to know a thing to make good ships also ultimate admiral dreadnoughts exists if you want that but more approachable, still dont need to know anything about good ship design, i just stick biggest gun to every ship
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Apr 4, 2023 16:46
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I loved SMAC so much because frankly I'm an anti evangelical and loved beating the poo poo out of Miriam. Today's world is not going to come out with the characters that were in that game, too much fear of pissing off some people, must be milktoast nowadays y'all. I enjoyed the tactical play (such as it is) in DW1 quite a bit, I played that game a ton. Haven't gotten into DW2 yet, I've really moved on to 'building games' as mentioned, as I find I like the building better than the fighting in general.
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Apr 4, 2023 17:18
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Miriam was right tho
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Apr 4, 2023 17:32
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Lady Radia posted:Miriam was right tho Naw 
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Apr 4, 2023 17:33
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thinking on it, I'm pretty sure I wanted to murder almost all the smac leaders
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Apr 4, 2023 17:35
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victrix posted:thinking on it, I'm pretty sure I wanted to murder almost all the smac leaders The fact that thinking about it is required to reach this conclusion is why SMAC owns. Precious few games ever try to tackle the breadth of real ideologies, and their consequences for the future, that SMAC does.
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Apr 4, 2023 17:40
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Dierdre is the one who gets the godhood, so she was right.
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Apr 4, 2023 17:44
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Corbeau posted:The fact that thinking about it is required to reach this conclusion is why SMAC owns. I believe the lesson is ideologies suck rear end, it's just a question of what flavor of rear end
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Apr 4, 2023 17:51
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victrix posted:thinking on it, I'm pretty sure I wanted to murder almost all the smac leaders well yeah they're all different flavors of the kind of genocidal absolute tyrant you're playing in a 4X, they had to be charismatic enough that they're fun to play but also read clearly in a few lines as someone who'd feed you to the mindworms in a heartbeat. if there's one you didn't wanna kill that's the one that'd get ya it is pretty funny that to accomplish the sympathetic part they had to make Miriam a hundred times more thoughtful and humane than any actual leader in the christian right tho A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 18:14 on Apr 4, 2023 |
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Apr 4, 2023 18:03
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victrix posted:thinking on it, I'm pretty sure I wanted to murder almost all the smac leaders The fact that the characters made you feel something besides boredom is a grand achievement in itself, compared to most modern games.
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Apr 4, 2023 18:20
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Mayveena posted:I loved SMAC so much because frankly I'm an anti evangelical and loved beating the poo poo out of Miriam. Today's world is not going to come out with the characters that were in that game, too much fear of pissing off some people, must be milktoast nowadays y'all. I think its more that no modern 4x studio is ever going to able to justify hiring a decent writer. No one in SMAC would piss people off nowadays, far from it, it's just "not the way its done" (there's no proof it will make money) so they don't do it.
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Apr 4, 2023 18:28
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oh how i loved turning Sister Miriam's entire continent into an inland sea with PBs. feels good, man.
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Apr 4, 2023 18:48
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tbf I don't think that's a 'games these days' thing so much as, well, I'd struggle to name five games ever that had what you could reasonably call strong characterization
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Apr 4, 2023 18:57
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Kvlt! posted:ive always wanted to get into RTW but i know nothing at all about ships or how to design them I didn't really either until I played it after reading Grey's France LP. Like I said, games move fast enough to where even if you gently caress up your designs your tech base advances and your old bad ship becomes obsolecent anyways. There is basically just one important breakpoint in RTW... and it's that 2" of armor is proof from high explosive splinters; meaning it'll prevent catastrophic failure from hits that aren't otherwise damaging. This is very important early on as most ships are lost to mechanical damage leading to becoming slow enough to finish off with a torpedo. Idk maybe I'm too harsh on AOW as I'm realizing I never liked HOMM either for the same "these are two games I wouldn't play separately, stapled together" reasons. Infidelicious fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Apr 4, 2023 |
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Apr 4, 2023 19:13
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Lady Radia posted:Miriam was right tho Mayveena posted:Naw -This is a world with self-aware colonies that automatically, cleanly, and permanently remove those who "cause problems". Would you be comfortable being ruled over by such a thing? Miriam isn't. -Are we sure it's a good idea to make intelligent grey goo? -We can transport matter, but anyone who's been around sci-fi nerds too long has heard some version of the teleporter argument... (although Miriam's concern is with her idea of a soul) -She gets in a dig at capitalism, for it's fundamentally unable to handle all the important things in the world which can't be assigned a dollar value.  On the flip side, as much as I loved playing as the University, let's not pretend there's not a lot of monstrous poo poo hiding behind that curtain.
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Apr 4, 2023 19:24
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all the factions get up to some off-putting things,even the "good guys." it's the future, you're building a civilization on a planet that is literally alive, poo poo's going to get weird.
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Apr 4, 2023 19:40
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Infidelicious posted:I didn't really either until I played it after reading Grey's France LP. Like I said, games move fast enough to where even if you gently caress up your designs your tech base advances and your old bad ship becomes obsolecent anyways. Does RTW cheat in the AI's favor? Because I remember my last game I ended up just ragequitting after the fifth or so time I dropped several torpedoes into an enemy ship and had it sail away with moderate damage, whereas every time my ships got hit by a single one (even plane launched) they sank within minutes. And it's not like I was skimping on the torpedo protection, either.
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Apr 4, 2023 22:21
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Bremen posted:Does RTW cheat in the AI's favor? Because I remember my last game I ended up just ragequitting after the fifth or so time I dropped several torpedoes into an enemy ship and had it sail away with moderate damage, whereas every time my ships got hit by a single one (even plane launched) they sank within minutes. And it's not like I was skimping on the torpedo protection, either. It never cheats, I'm pretty sure. Whole bunch of factors go into the efficacy of a torpedo, including the torp itself. Nothing short of a proper battleship tends to survive one, and that tends to come down to tonnage and damage control whether you actually do end up surviving. It's been a while since I've played RTW and I don't quite recall how the randomised tech tree works, but if you were fighting Japan then I'm 90% sure they get a natural bias towards torpedo tech and can get some pretty nasty stuff going there.
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Apr 4, 2023 22:32
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HerpicleOmnicron5 posted:It never cheats, I'm pretty sure. Whole bunch of factors go into the efficacy of a torpedo, including the torp itself. Nothing short of a proper battleship tends to survive one, and that tends to come down to tonnage and damage control whether you actually do end up surviving. It's been a while since I've played RTW and I don't quite recall how the randomised tech tree works, but if you were fighting Japan then I'm 90% sure they get a natural bias towards torpedo tech and can get some pretty nasty stuff going there. I was Japan, and I was regularly hitting battleships and battlecruisers with 3-5 torpedoes and having them survive the battle, while mine would go down after one. Like, I'm normally one to scoff at unfounded "the AI cheats" allegations, but it was ridiculous levels of the enemy shrugging them off.
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Apr 4, 2023 22:37
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