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Coming back to the Legend again, trying Mykara. Feels like a faction you have to understand and master, this map control is something else and I was very wrong thinking initially that this is a peaceful faction. Their bonus from capturing every faction city was a strong hint about them. This game is really not what it seems. It really subverts and expands the genre, the problem is it's mimicking the conventions so well that you might be tricked into thinking it's the same as Civilization or GalCiv or (god forbid) Stellaris. All the rest of 4X/empire building games I know allow you some freedom in development supplemented by a variety of victory paths, but it's more of asking what you're going to focus on. In something like Civilization you might not focus on, say, trade, but not doing them is just a bad play. You might not get deep into the religious game (and due to how difficulty works on a higher difficulty you won't unless you really focus on it) but you still have to get that pagan belief and then embrace one of the religions. At first, when you look at EL you think those faction unique abilities are gimmicks adding to replayability. But eventually, you see that whoever you play as you have such a variety of paths that it makes the game unlike anything else. It makes the game hard to get into initially. You still think that you need to have that Civilization vertical growth in every direction. If there's a resource you need to exploit it, if there's a quest you need to complete it, if there's a unit you have to build it, if there's a faction you have to do diplomacy with it. But in this game, you can truly ignore some things and it's fine. You'll probably never ignore research completely, but it takes some practice to realize that science is not the king it is in every other strategy game here. And expansions doubled down on it. The original game did a good job using various factions to explain that you can play without ever doing diplomacy or starting a war, or by playing tall. Even though initially you may feel like some mechanics were only added for a specific faction to use and are less useful to other mechanics (sadly diplomacy often feels like this). But then you got a lot of additional mechanics that you are free to ignore or endorse. With expansions, you have giants, legendary deeds/wonders, espionage, invisible units, pillaging, pearl resource from exploration, additional exploration during eclipses, naval exploration, naval forts, urkans... And most of it you can ignore. This game has more mechanics you should only pay lip service to in any given session than most 4X have mechanics in general.
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Jun 21, 2019 08:52
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Lichtenstein posted:- The tier 1 food talent is bonkers good, but the food cost reduction one is garbage. -100% food upkeep sounds insane, but if you actually crunch the numbers it's actually pretty bad. When I saw this bonus I thought that the game tells me that I have to turn the hero into a governor as soon as he reaches level 3. But now that I have >300 food income on 18 pop city I can see it was a trap. And apart from initial +1 food on everything this hero doesn't help the economy in other ways. Defense bonus was nice for that one fight when my neighbor attacked me but now I have to go fro +5% FIDSI bonus and winter immunity and those are meh. I thought an eclipse is supposed to make overgrowth faster and wondered why am I not seeing this, but you say it opens an option to buyout? Oh boy. On what speed are you all playing? Fast looks like the right one without it all dragging, but I'm worried about balance. It feels like Empire Plans, for example, are much harder to use because you don't get enough influence.
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Jun 21, 2019 11:02
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I feel they've backed down from it in ES2. In EL there are not so many techs that anybody should get, and most of those are obvious and early (resource extractors, army size upgrade, market, basic FIDSI income - even those can be probably ignored) but in ES2 I can't imagine any situation where you shouldn't grab trade companies or black hole travel or supply upgrades.
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Jun 21, 2019 13:26
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Finished the game on the serious difficulty (5 of 7). Seems I've outgrown it as after a midgame I was able to secure an easy alliance with a big power and eventually won a scientific victory ditching the leader several turns before the end. Naturally, I also traded one of the victory techs for some earlier techs. Fast feels right indeed: I think on a standard 6 player map I had enough time for supremacy victory if I realized earlier that I have to go militant. In the end I've gone scientific cause holding land as Mykara is unreliable anyway. And in general I feel that winning "peaceful" victory even if it's mostly about victory makes for a better game, you don't get this boring mopping down of enemy remnants. Quest line reminds me that ES2 did it much better. There was some choice involved in ES2 and main quest line was, in a way, an additional tech tree. Here I have interesting texts to read but the actual quests are pretty boring and eventually they send me far away for a little gain. Sadly EL still provides some challenge and interesting games while ES2 suffers immensely from the fact that you can win the game through alliances even when every AI outperforms you.
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Jun 21, 2019 20:13
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I'm one of those edgy whiney dudes who have >100 hours in the game and whine about its problems. I have many problems with ES2 and how its impotent AI/difficulty settings make mastering systems pointless. But I'd say that I got dozens of hours of pure joy from this game even if I'm not going to touch it anymore. Game mechanics, variety in approaches, the music, the visuals - it all makes the game feel great. I may have more hours in Stellaris but only a few of those hours were any good, most were spent looking for something to entertain myself with. So I'd say ES2 worth every penny it costs. It's not a 500 hour game like what Paradox or Creative Assembly sells you, but you won't be bored by it until you're done with it.
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Jul 4, 2019 09:15
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AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:and I agree with Illiterist's post about it. Till today I never ever thought that my nickname can be easily connected to my poor handling of English (please get rid of all of those articles and do something with all of those unpredictable prepositions). And today two different people make this connection in two separate threads. Does the universe try to tell me something?
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Jul 5, 2019 09:30
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Amethyst posted:I’m convinced paradox games are a practical joke against me, personally and everyone is pretending to like them That is only true about Stellaris.
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Jul 5, 2019 12:36
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Ah, understandable!
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Jul 5, 2019 14:23
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oscarthewilde posted:The Endless series might not be the best 4x series -their AI is typically pretty bad and some of their mechanics are more annoying than meaningful- but when it comes to the design and aesthetics, there's really nothing comparable. Their UI's are clean and functional, the graphics and lore are surprisingly good for a 4x and all of their soundtracks are probably the single best video game soundtracks out there. There's also a problem with EL that it becomes sorta too bloated. I think it was fine rigth up to Morgwar, but this navy stuff added a huge layer to a game that, depending on a map, might be totally missing. But if it is there it's a pile of new mechanics - naval exploration (which works very differently from land one cause you can actually enter the tile you're exploring), naval bases that allow Cultists to expand somewhat, naval quests, navies themselves. I think Inferno additions were much better because this eclipse thing happens rarely yet subtly affects all of your playthrough (for example your garrisons become more valuable cause from time to time they can come out and re-explore temples). Mykara is back at bloating the game with those Ukans which are giants but not giants and they also have their own tech tree, kinda. Not to mention it all makes the tech tree even wider and I'm not sure whether it's still as balanced as it was once. And the map in EL is horrible to interact with, cluttering it with new stuff only makes it harder. Sadly, I have the same experience as @Serephina with many of those games. In EL you're at least in danger but still, the painfully obvious strategy is to ally someone ASAP and then no one will attack you because no other powerful block will ever form. In ES2 power blocks do form but even if AI gets magical powerful military it doesn't do anything. Those games are still good: I'm glad that they exist and it's fair to pay full price for a game you figure out in 60 hours or so. None of those 60 hours were boring, all of it was pleasant and immersive. I've played >600 hours in Europa Universalis and that meant dozens of hours when I was bored and just waited for something to happen; putting up with tax-paying app UI; getting my immersion from a limited number of music tracks and black and white cheap event pictures.
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Jul 26, 2019 08:26
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Because there was a change in game design philosophy. Civ5 started it in some ways, maybe they've had a good look at what Paradox was doing at the time. First, since GalCiv2 people have mastered the art of making complex tooltips, some of them multi-level (it happened in Rise of Nations, probably earlier). Second, more importantly, every strategy game under the Earth makes sure you don't miss anything. If there is a button you can press to make it all better then the game will make sure you know it. In Civ4 there's a small button for rush production in the corner of a city screen, in later Civs buyout button stands proudly so that everyone can see it. If anything important happens in the world you get an event icon about it. There's a handy overlay that shows you everything you need to see (unless you're Endless Legend for some reason). In some ways it sort of adds discipline to developers. I adore Field of Glory Empires, recent 4X from AGEOD, but you can clearly see that those devs are used to players who read manuals. They've tried to make helpful tooltips but still some parts of the game are arcane and can't be decyphered without a manual or FAQ. Like, say, winning conditions. And the game itself isn't that complex, so it's not like it's a trade between a complex game you have to research before you play and simple experience you can plug and play.
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Jul 29, 2019 08:35
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The complexity of some mechanics is ingeniously compensated by the fact that you can beat AI on Endless without understanding what happens in combat. And I honestly think they did a good job simplifying the system compared to ES1 which seemed to be a copy of GalCiv2. In ES2 I at least look at those energy/kinetic attack/defense graphs and they seem to affect stuff. And I don't know what's worse - the fact that I have no idea what happens in combat when I try to watch it, or the fact that I have no need at all to understand anything there. Amplitude probably has the best UI out there. It's much more baffling when Civ6 - which is supposed to be 4X for people who don't play 4X - does similar things much worse. Even experienced players seem to be missing the fact that combat power numbers do nothing by themselves, only the difference is important in combat and so +5 CP bonus is as good when applied to a slinger as to a giant death robot. Or last time I've checked Civiliopedia didn't had entries about terrain type so I had no way of knowing if there's some district I should build in a specific place - plenty of extremely important things like that you have to memorize eventually. The smartest person in the world will still have bad city/district placement in their first few games.
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Jul 29, 2019 14:23
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Tulip posted:obscure, overcomplicated combat mechanics you can only indirectly control is a genre staple at this point. In CK2 you can affect the tactics your commanders choose based on the commanders' ethnicity in addition to the troop composition. My position on CK2 is that Paradox should stop pretending there's something clever happening there and should expose AI priorities, stat effects, and those tactics too. There are plenty extremely unobvious points with those mechanics (like councilor stat giving diminishing returns after 15, doctor relationship from -1 to +1 being equivalemt to him getting 5 learning, zealous ruler actively using his right to get land from infidel vassals etc) that you might not realize after hundreds of hours because they change often and there's so much stuff happening at the same time it's impossible to notice any reason behind it. No wonder some fans cry for tactical battles in those games even though it's easy to see how insane that idea is.
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Jul 29, 2019 15:09
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@Tulip, yes, again this in-combat complexity is hard to distinguish from a random noise - the combat is affected tech, military stats of 6 participating generals, their personal stats like craven, their combat traits like aggressive leader, random events like duels, semi-randomly chosen tactics, army composition, terrain, a combination of special troops with terrain with special traits, temporary modifiers... So in the end you make sure to attack with bigger numbers and if there's bad terrain or a lot of tech then you need even more numbers - great, now you know enough about combat to play on the highest level. @AAAAA! Real Muenster, I feel your pain. There are other space strategy games though! I haven't touched Galactic Civilization 3 for a while and it looks rather sterile, but it looks like a real strategy game about strategizing in the vein of Civ4: it's certainly not just about learning each faction's trick like ES2 nor it's about stories like Stellaris. There's also Stars in Shadows which is Master of Orion 2 but... Well... The art style is different. And humans are not vanilla race.
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Jul 29, 2019 16:26
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The very idea of tactical combat in an empire building game is problematic. First, from a thematic point of view, I'm a galactic emperor. It's immersion-breaking that I have to personally tell my ship to concentrate fire on that guy over there. Second, you're making two games instead of two and have to make the player learn a very different set of rules. Third, there's an issue of balance between those two games in how much attention they demand. In a game like Heroes or recent Total War Three Kingdoms, you mostly win on a strategic map but some clever tactics can affect your losses in combat, you also need your wits and luck if the forces are even. You can win those games without ever participating in tactical combat. In a game like XCOM you spend most of your time in combat and you can win those games by being a great tactician even if you're bad at the strategic level. Obviously empire-building games should be more about strategic level, but then why have tactical combat at all? If you play your cards right you'll only have battles with pre-determined results, and it feels strange to have a whole separate game just for edge cases. Fourth, probably the biggest issue is the gameplay balance. Master of Orion 2 is fondly remembered but it was not a very good strategy game due to a screwed-up tactical level. There are well-known exploits. Those mean that even if strategic AI has right bonuses and is interesting to fight against it doesn't matter cause you'll have better results in tactical combat - which is a zero sum transparent game so usually you can't affect its difficulties without it looking cheap. It also means that some strategic decisions, like researching exploitable components, are more potent than others if you have a meta-knowledge. It also means that your performance depends on your patience more than on your good decisions - if you can get better results by doing quick combat manually then it means that skipping it harms you, and in very few of those games devs want you to play every battle by yourself. So I'm of a belief that tactical combat should only be there to show the consequences of your strategic choices. Should also maybe give you some limited choices: you can concentrate on your troops running away, or you want to get rid of specific enemy units so that reinforcements have a better chance to deal with enemies. But if your choices in combat may turn crushing defeat into victory then it negatively affects the gameplay. I think Endless Legend did well with its very soft orders.
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Jul 30, 2019 10:06
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Real evil space tyrant would spend his time more efficiently. Posing for propaganda posters. Micromanaging urban development, making sure that lower classes are separated from elites with scary walls. Designing government app UIs so that the populace is as obedient and miserable as possible.
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Jul 30, 2019 10:55
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Serephina posted:I enjoy Amplitude's way of de-emphasizing combat, but EL is undoubtedly the 'worst' of its major titles in terms of micro; even with it's soft orders there are HUGE returns on paying attention to fights, which can get exhausting after a while. Yeah, maybe. I like to use the option with giving orders only every second turn, it looks surprisingly like an interesting wargame design to me. And I find ES2 the worst cause I usually just watch EL and understand what happens there and what troops I need to counteract the enemy - even if I don't make any decisions myself. Really it's sadly what people want. For some reason people want to see soldiers shooting each other even if it's a strategy game on a galactic scale.
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Jul 30, 2019 17:06
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I agreed with @AAAAA! Real Muenster and others about problems of ES2, but still wanted to experience the last expansion, the hacker ghost people. Well the game is still there where I left it. It's beatufiul, playing it is almost cathartic. Core mechanics are great. I have some understanding of Behemoths cause it's my second game with them. I don't understand what should I do with hacking apart from putting sleeper agents from time to time, getting 5 seems to be a good thing. Other hostile empire caused a freaking revolution which was a minor inconvinience. Most importantly, I play on Endless and ignore most of the mechanics, I can let myself stop optimizing most of my planets. There are some diplomatic things coming my way, the usual grand galaxy dividing quest. I don't care. I'm in alliance with several most powerful factions, I grind through helpless enemies. I've won. I'm enjoying the music and the show and I'm crying cause I can see the beauty of those mechanics, about how interesting it might have been to betray my allies, trade, care about level 4 system development and late game techs. Next time I'll probably try Stellaris, make feel it still feels like a day job, try Civ6 again to make sure that basic UI design is a mystery to AAA developer or will try to fight through Stars in Shadows and GalCiv3. Then I'll play EU4 till the end of my days. I mean till Age of Wonders Planetfall comes out in 4 days.
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Aug 4, 2019 06:12
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Don't see a point in touching that game till "overhaul the AI" is in the patch notes.
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Aug 13, 2019 20:56
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No 4X ever had require me so little time to win trivially on max difficulty. Don't talk as if ES2 is the same as other games in this genre. Well maybe I was misleading with talk about AI specifically, it's not the only way to make the game more difficult. Let's call it "balanced difficulty".
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Aug 13, 2019 21:34
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I haven't played Civ6 much but I've played CIv5 far more. Even on Emperor I had to consider what I'm doing, never won on max difficulty. ES2 on max difficulty is a relaxing game where I can fool around and decide which victory do I want to get this time. Paradox games allow for some hard starts and I have never felt I have fully mastered any of their games apart from Victoria 2. And I never moved from default difficulty. Plus they don't have any real definition of victory. EU4 is easy if you consider your goal to don't feel threatened by anything in the world and don't start as endangered countries. It's miles harder if you're going for any decent achievement or world conquest or start as Mzab or Tver or dozens of other countries.
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Aug 13, 2019 22:19
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I'd even say that the depth in ES2 is there. Plenty of interesting mechanics, a lot of moving parts giving you interesting choices. But there's no reason to bother. In my only game with the latest expansion I didn't really optimized hacking, barely used Behemoths, only had a few heroes, didn't bother with Academy quests. I'd be happy if the difficulty was cranked up so that I'd need to understand all of this. Civ5 is boring, more inferior game, but you need to understand everything that happens on any decent difficulty. Its mechanics don't go to waste.
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Aug 14, 2019 06:26
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prometheusbound2 posted:As far as a 4x game--well I love the games in the series so far. But I think my dream game would be Mass Effect or Dragon Age style game in either the Endless Space or Endless Legend universe. But you've said yourself they've already made a visual novel in that universe! On a more serious note, gameplay-wise Dungeon of the Endless is pretty rad and playable in coop. I don't think it manages to be that infinitely replayable roguelike on par with FTL it tries to be, but it's fun for awhile. And it has a ragtag bunch of larger than life characters. No fancy graphics and voice acting a la BioWare but still rather immersive and solid, and it has its own soundtrack by FlyByNo.
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Aug 19, 2019 08:30
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We haven't had a proper whole history game since Call to Power 20 years ago. And Rise of Nations a little later, if you can count it. Amplitude is the developer I trust to pull it off.
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Aug 20, 2019 06:29
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My hope is that they're making tactical combat so that all the people who think 4X games need tactical combat were satisfied, but really they'll do with something simple or straightforward. Recent Field of Glory Empires is perfect in that regard (especially with an option to play combat as 1.5 hour battle in a separate game if you think you deserve this). Resolving the battle takes half a minute and demonstrates you the influence of generals, troop types, quality of troops, geography etc. I'll be slightly disappointed if combat is as complex as EL. Still I doubt you'll have that system of unit equipment, it's hard to imagine they shoehorn something more complex than bronze weapons/iron weapons/steel weapons, I guess?.. As for civilization choice my only concern is that it will all become hard to process and there's no personality. The hope is that you'll still see every nation as Napoleon/Caesar/Shaka with their own personality, and you'll know that Lenin is not just Russian (which is probably a choice around of Renessaince) but Hittite, Khmer, and Aztec.
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Aug 20, 2019 08:28
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Of course AI guys are a thing, that's written in my diploma.
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Aug 20, 2019 14:29
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Really wonder if a stronger tactical element is just a marketing term. Maybe they mean that strategic element of the battle - deciding on your troop and heroes equipment, heroes skills, getting buffs from various sources - will be weaker compared to role of right decisions in combat itself. It doesn't sound so good to me, cause it always leaves a bad taste in my mouth when efforts of a huge empire that existed for millennia are moot because some general made a dumb move. It's bad both thematically and gameplay-wise, and it often leads to a game being "solvable". Still, Amplitude didn't get in that trap yet so maybe it's not what it seems. I certainly hope that the war will always be a grind, and tactics won't allow you to win hopeless battles with no losses like tactics-heavy grand strategy games often allow.
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Aug 22, 2019 08:58
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It's telling that the most renown Roman military defeat happened when they were in their golden age, hundreds of years before they perished.
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Aug 22, 2019 13:33
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I'm talking about the fact that military tactics are often remembered as something important but it's often more of a symbolic thing. Like 300 Spartans didn't really achieve anything from the military point of view, and that Teutoburg forest didn't decide the fate of Rome or Germany. Maybe tactics decide something when everything else is in balance, like Battle of Gaugamela. But games that rely heavily on the tactical side of the whole picture are often bad both from gamedesign point of view and historical feeling. They really go for Hollywood history feel, when everything leads to a single glorious battle. And it's the way new players tend to play strategy games, preparing for a decisive battle that may never come. Games like XCOM or maybe even Age of Wonders or Total War can do this cause they know they're about tactics. But when you're talking about grand empires through the centuries it's a little repulsive when they're decided by a lowly troop commander.
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Aug 22, 2019 16:52
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KPC_Mammon posted:It sounds more like you really hate the tactical layer and are coming up with "historical" justifications for why it is bad. You don't have to, its fine to just hate Civ's combat. I've said that I don't like it from game design perspective and answered (probably imagined) point of view that it makes sense thematically or historically. Any feature that hijacks the game is bad. If, say, filling museums with stuff becomes much more complex and much more important in Civ I'll hate that too.
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Aug 22, 2019 19:19
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There's also a new playable faction they haven't talked about. Anyway, the game doesn't need new features but the reason to engage with the old ones besides multiplayer. Meanwhile, I'm playing Civ6 and find its AI opponents relatively competent and entertaining. I find it sad and confusing.
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Sep 4, 2019 09:46
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No, Broken Lords have appeared after the Endless Civil War. They don't probably even use similar tech cause they have to consume dust all the time and they're still tied to physical bodies. They probably just watched too much Full Metal Alchemist. With the timeline it's important to realize that Endless Civil War happened long before every game. Chronologically Dungeon of the Endless comes first. Mezari are progenitors of the United Empire, they are humans but like Star Wars humans, so no connection to Earth or our reality. Their prison ship broke over Auriga and escape pod with characters you control has fallen deep into Endless research facility. People on this ship gave birth to Vaulters you see in Endless Legend. EL happens shortly before Endless Space, it ends with Auriga dying and some people escaping. During ES2 Endless might sort of return or not or whatever. Opbot DV8 from Mezari ship is the character who travels through all games.
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Sep 8, 2019 08:10
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Tulip posted:I mean, the part where they need to consume dust all the time and have physical-ish bodies is what made me think "huh, this is a prototype of the eventual good tech." Missing features and glitchy, but conceptually similar. In general Endless 4X games are weird in that they sorta have you discover secrets of the universe and transform into omniscient planetary/galactic empire... And on the other hand your faction is very much locked into stasis. I can understand cultural limits like Roving Clans not being into war, or biological like those winter dudes transforming in winter. But Broken Lords being able to transfer their bodies into armor before they know how to build a market is strange, even stranger is that they can't do anything with their main schtick even when they get to space travel. Or every faction being locked into 3 units they have. So it's not clear whether this is a story about civilization transformation or is it a narrative about a single generation (as quests do suggest). It's much less organic than, say, Alpha Centauri.
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Sep 8, 2019 16:39
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http://www.sullla.com/GC3/retrospective.html Oldie but seems still relevant.
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Sep 10, 2019 19:22
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Serephina posted:But if you're playing nice, the tension's definitely there. In EL, that is. Sadly EL is one of those games where playing efficient is irritating. Several expansion features are focused on exploration (does it count as a pun?). You get winter pearls and twilight temple repeating visits. And another expansion made seas full of stuff too. So to play effectively you have to store dudes in every town and send them harvesting stuff each winter or twilight. When you explore land you look for good regions to settle, enemies to attack, you interact with villages and geography in general. With seas, you just sail them and look for temples. Those bonuses aren't that great. But those expansion features commit a sin that the base game (and other expansion features) didn't have: they're too effective to ignore. Other features make you adjust your playstyle to exploiting them. Not spying, not chasing most of age achievements, not using Giants or Giants 2.0 is a valid choice. However with those exploration features building a single unit is all you need for a great profit in exploration bonuses. Those are features that cost almost nothing in game currency but require a lot of your attention for menial tasks. Curiously, ES2 has nothing like that. Nothing at all. That makes me hopeful for Humankind.
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Sep 10, 2019 19:31
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Serephina posted:I agree that pearls in particular are a lot of busy-work (I've not bought the more recent DLCs), but skipping them is totally fine. Or rather, just gathering the bare minimum as you walk past. There's only a few pearl buildings, they're relatively cheap for a tall-ish empire, and you won't miss them if you skip them. There are also towers and equipment you can sink pearls into. Of course those aren't must-have, but the point is if you try to optimize your play that a bunch of cheap scouts are extremely cost effective: you spend one turn in several cities to build them and each winter/twilight they bring pearls/dust, and this complements any playstyle. It would be a more valid choice if you'd have to spend research or dust or something else to unlock pearl building tears beyond the first one. Then not using them would be a valid choice, as if right now not engaging into a pearl/twilight temple busy work is almost always bad choice.
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Sep 11, 2019 06:54
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Mizaq posted:Also, lol at Sulla's take on GC3. I laugh because the gameplay style he said they were moving away from (small maps) turns out to be the way they were moving (they hosed huge map gameplay). I enjoyed GC3 at release, but it had a huge issue with the game crashing late game because of pathing and/or memory issues. NOTHING is worse in a 4x than spending 10+ hours on a map only to have it crash with no explanation and repeatedly crash whenever you load a save game and play through a 20+ minute turn only to keep crashing for reasons you can't prevent or correct or even simply understand. It doesn't mean Sullla is wrong, they could move away from small maps and still screw up big maps. Brad is very proud of their x64 engine and always talks about how it allows for huge maps so it's easy to believe he likes big maps and he cannot lie. Last time I've tried GalCiv3 was last month. I was simultaneously overwhelmed and bored. The biggest difference between release and the current version I've noticed is that planet development is really unique now with a lot of non-generic tiles and planet-unique buildings. But the very essence felt flawed. On a not huge map, every decent planet is a giant asset so you might lose the game in first 30 turns if you send your ships to a wrong dead system and can't get your place under the sun in time. A lot of game mechanics were changed and tooltips do not reflect it: in an earlier version, you had to bring constructor to a space station to upgrade it. Now it's something else. I can't tell you how you upgrade the station, cause when I hover over the "Upgrade" button it's just disabled and it doesn't tell me why. The whole citizen system is also poorly explained in-game.
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Sep 13, 2019 08:33
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Yeah, I came to think that their models isn't suited for DLCs that well. Same happened with Endless Legend. First expansion was just about interesting mechanics and tweaks, it feels organic. Then you have espionage and pillage. Those are integrated surprisingly well for a modular addition (Paradox does the same thing but their DLC additions are always out of place, usually those buttons are shoehorned into an existing UI). And they're added in such a way that ignoring them is a valid choice. You either use heroes for governing or fighting, now they can also spy on the enemy. But then every expansion adds a mechanic that every player should use, ignoring them is objectively wrong. When pearls come you should micromanage lone dudes to gather them, it costs almost nothing and gives decent benefits. With new sea stuff you should send scouts there exploring twice as much stuff (and getting twice as many quests probably) as you did previously. Then an eclipse hits and now you should move a lot of scouts to gather bonuses. A game with a perfect balance of macro and micro turned into a game where I have to spend more time with lone units than in Starcraft. I haven't played the last expansion of ES2 but I think only hacking felt like unnecessary boring mechanics you have to engage with. The problem with ES2 is still that you don't have to actually use any of those mechanics to utterly destroy any opposition on max difficulty. The only difficulty would be meeting Cravers early, yeah, those guys can destroy you with AI bonuses.
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Nov 1, 2019 08:59
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EL devs certainly do see the problem. That's why all of the pearl stuff is in a separate "tech tree", same for those Giants But Gianter things. Espionage is just a few techs, and most of them are a clear commitment to a specific playstyle (I don't think you even have any espionage techs, just stealth/pillage ones) so it works more or less. But sea techs are problematic, there's a lot of them and they do compete for your attention. They're not quite optional but not quite necessary so they stretch the game, and not in a nice way. Another thing they did was expanding hero talent trees. Pearl gathering, espionage, seafaring - it all appears there making hero development more complex too.
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Nov 1, 2019 13:16
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The disadvantage of DotE is that it lacks Amplitude's sleek style. It's an 8-bit pixel art thing.
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Nov 1, 2019 18:04
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Serephina posted:I disagree with Shadow being 'bad', if only that you can play with it enabled and not really care. The AI totally ignores espionage, and is quite bad as the Forgotten faction itself (so you can ignore them or just force them not to spawn). I occasionally use espionage around mid/end game to fun effect, and I appreciate what it could theoretically do in multiplayer (that I don't play). Totally agree, as I've said previously a few replies above: quote:But then every expansion adds a mechanic that every player should use, ignoring them is objectively wrong. When pearls come you should micromanage lone dudes to gather them, it costs almost nothing and gives decent benefits. With new sea stuff you should send scouts there exploring twice as much stuff (and getting twice as many quests probably) as you did previously. Then an eclipse hits and now you should move a lot of scouts to gather bonuses. A game with a perfect balance of macro and micro turned into a game where I have to spend more time with lone units than in Starcraft. Serephina posted:No comment on the ES2 DLC as I've found I've gotten all I want out of the game and new factions/mechanics won't change that. But I appreciate Amplitude's design ethos in it, the DLCs feel like proper expansion packs rather than... paying for single player portraits. I'm looking at you, Paradox. Behemots/Aztec Bird Samurai expansion was fine cause behemots were an option even if they're very strong. And AI could use it too, I saw people complain about enemy Behemoth shooting their system into dust. Then you had Pirates/Vaulters expansion. Everyone had to engage with pirates so it changed a balance a little: you can't ignore military anymore, and it seems that after this expansion AI became forever crippled cause it just can't handle pirates. You arise from an early game with an experienced admiral and powerful fleet while AI barely manages to fight off those pests. Hacking/Ghost spies expansion seems to be disliked by everyone. I didn't get that hacking mechanic at all but neither does AI so it balances out. The problem with it is that like Pearls/Eclipses/Sea in EL you're constantly reminded of all that hacking for very dubious gains. The last expansion I haven't played.
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Jan 31, 2020 09:38
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