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toasterwarrior posted:[snip] But supply crawler *is* the good stuff.  Really, supply crawler and specialized improvements is one of the reason I feel the majority of Civ games post-SMAC are a step backward, terraforming-wise, (until the district idea of Civ 6, but even then it's not really the same). With crawler, you can take city specialization to a whole next level: you can crawled tons of energy to one city and build all energy buildings to turn it into an energy production powerhouse, crawled tons of food into one and turn it into colony pod builders and/or talent city, and of course the classic production city with tons of mineral via crawlers. Personally, I considered ICS to be an exploit, but not the usage of supply crawler: because while you can make immense gain with supply crawler, it still has massive, in game, drawbacks that you need to be aware/prepared against: war, mind worms, and pollution (which generate mind worms). A supply crawler heavy economy is *very* easy and *very* vulnerable to disrupt with just one or two wandering mind worms, let alone during war, especially once air power come into the game. That food-crawled mega city with 20+ pops of your is very impressive, but even AIs can reduced it to tiny 6 pops city in a couple of turns with just a couple of planes if you're not careful. But if you want to stick to the basic stuffs, then my basic rule of thumb is to always build improvement that matches the bonus resource on the tile. So farm for food bonus and mine for mineral bonus (energy is a bit trickier). toasterwarrior posted:[snip] Yes, but personally, I'd put a farm on that tile because, early game food is very important for growing pop and building colony pods for that all important early land grab. And later, you can turn your early game city with high food resources into a talent city: which is very powerful and can generate lots of energy and research if build right. As for the rest: farm + solar + road for rolling (rainy) plain, forest on arid plain, and mines on some rocky tiles. Also, the style that you want to play is very suited for the Gaia. They are the faction that can avoid supply crawlers and boreholes and still become economic power house. This is due to later researches that increase forest tiles yield to ridiculous level, so much so that at that point you'll want to replace farm and solar on "normal" tiles with forest, except ones with resource bonus. Also, forest reduce pollution, which is nice for everyone because, unlike on our Earth, when you polluted too much on the planet, the planet send killer psychic worms to eat your brain alive (also this is another weakness of the crawler-heavy economy; an ill-time mind worms attack can and will cripple your economy). Anyway, that my 2 cents. Sorry that my reply is so long, but it's been a long time I get a chance to talk about SMAC/X, my beloved game. Also, feel free to correct my mistake or suggest better strategy. I'm hardly the expert. lispy-goon fucked around with this message at 13:29 on Mar 21, 2024 |
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Mar 21, 2024 13:21
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forest on a food tile means you are treading water, fine if you hit that temp cap but not a good idea for the first five tiles, better farm it and come back later
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Mar 21, 2024 13:53
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That all sounds pretty much like how I play. I usually dedicate 2 cities to colony pod production. For these I want 1 tile with a food improved food bonus tile and 1 2+ mineral tile so that you get enough pop growth and minerals to make enough colony pods. Everywhere else gets forests on their food bonus tiles. Also, especially on larger maps, every colony should make at least one colony pod so you can keep growing. A few other rules that are not obvious. - Energy has very low value early game, solar collectors are often the last tile improvement I build. - A high mineral city can transfer 1-3 supply crawlers to a high food colony pod city. As long as the supply crawler is parked on a 2+ mineral tile, it is a net benefit and can speed colony pod production a lot -supply crawlers can be used inside your city border -Forests expand over time. If they expand into a fungus tile, it replaces the fungus for free. -River tiles provide a bonus 1 energy, making rivers very valuable
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Mar 21, 2024 13:53
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Telsa Cola posted:Oh I'm talking more in regards to the faction customization. I played a couple games and ultimately felt like I had basically done/seen everything which is not great. The AoW4 customization? I had a similar sort of problem where at release I felt kinda creatively stifled in the faction design screen by a lack of options, but I went back for the latest patch/DLC and it honestly feels a lot better.
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Mar 21, 2024 13:57
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Thanks all for the comments, I guess I'll keep following my ruleset since it does seem to be best practices. That said, I did find a place for a forest + food bonus combo...that is, the food bonus was on a flat arid shithole and so was p much the perfect fit for the forest, lol
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Mar 21, 2024 15:18
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I just realized, Morgan Industries is incentivized by his drawback to build fewer farms, and instead to use a colonizing invasive species to replace native flora. And with pure irony it's Forest.
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Mar 21, 2024 15:28
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Well yeah, you've got to grow the trees first before you can burn them in the factories.
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Mar 22, 2024 12:08
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I looked for a Millenia video from Dastactic but there weren't any. Given the hype for the game I would have thought Paradox would send him a key? That makes me quite nervous about the release tomorrow as Dastactic is generally pretty up front about the games he plays.
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Mar 25, 2024 18:24
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Mayveena posted:I looked for a Millenia video from Dastactic but there weren't any. Given the hype for the game I would have thought Paradox would send him a key? That makes me quite nervous about the release tomorrow as Dastactic is generally pretty up front about the games he plays. He had an early look out about a week ago https://twitch.tv/videos/2093564299 so it's on his radar, but no idea why he hasn't done anything more to date. I know press copies are going out, Quill18 did a showcase of space race gameplay a little while ago. It does seem like he's streaming a little less than usual lately, so maybe he's just busy with other stuff.
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Mar 25, 2024 18:34
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Is there a good Idiots Guide for Against The Storm anywhere? I've been playing it a bit and I've been having trouble wrapping my head around what I'm doing and why I'm winning/losing maps.
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Mar 25, 2024 18:38
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Tornhelm posted:Is there a good Idiots Guide for Against The Storm anywhere? I've been playing it a bit and I've been having trouble wrapping my head around what I'm doing and why I'm winning/losing maps. Against the Storm is a Management game, not really a 4x. That said, here's the Against the Storm thread where you can get help https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4022203 For more Management games to look at, I'm the OP of the Management game megathread, found here https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3954084 I have mostly given up on 4x games (I used to love them, was a playtester for SMAC and Age of Empires) and gotten my strategy kick from Management games.
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Mar 25, 2024 18:41
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Mayveena posted:I looked for a Millenia video from Dastactic but there weren't any. Given the hype for the game I would have thought Paradox would send him a key? That makes me quite nervous about the release tomorrow as Dastactic is generally pretty up front about the games he plays. Many A True Nerd just wrapped up an entire series on it.
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Mar 25, 2024 18:45
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Fellow Dominions 6 beta tester DasTactic.
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Mar 25, 2024 18:52
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John F Bennett posted:Many A True Nerd just wrapped up an entire series on it. Yeah I'm subbed to him, but he's a lot to take in!!  I love his FTL videos they are the best!!
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Mar 25, 2024 19:05
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if i really like Stellaris Nexus is regular Stellaris worth getting into? Or are they very different?
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Mar 25, 2024 19:19
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Kvlt! posted:if i really like Stellaris Nexus is regular Stellaris worth getting into? Or are they very different? They are quite different. Stellaris Nexus is much more focused on doing objectives to secure victory points. There's not much customization, factions and leaders are all preset. No ship designer though, so that's good.
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Mar 25, 2024 19:30
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Honestly i've just been enjoying Terraformers for a while. It's an interesting little thing.
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Mar 25, 2024 19:38
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pedro0930 posted:They are quite different. Stellaris Nexus is much more focused on doing objectives to secure victory points. There's not much customization, factions and leaders are all preset. No ship designer though, so that's good. Thank you for the response! I think you may have misunderstood: Ive only played Nexus and wanted to try regular Stellaris. Is it like a more complex/customizable Nexus? A ship designer sounds fun, why do you say its bad?
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Mar 25, 2024 19:43
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I watched a few Millennia videos and it seems interesting. I am so starved for a good 4X after the disppointment of Humankind…
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Mar 25, 2024 19:44
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Antigravitas posted:I watched a few Millennia videos and it seems interesting. I am so starved for a good 4X after the disppointment of Humankind… We've got a thread on it here, though it's mostly based on the demo and a bit of stuff put together from pre-release material and kind of outdated now that the embargo is ended. My impression boils down to the game being heavy on interesting new mechanics (and borrowing some more ideas from Call to Power and Alpha Centauri that modern 4xs seem to have forgotten about), but kind of lacking on polish and graphics.
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Mar 25, 2024 19:53
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Kvlt! posted:Thank you for the response! I think you may have misunderstood: Ive only played Nexus and wanted to try regular Stellaris. Is it like a more complex/customizable Nexus? A ship designer sounds fun, why do you say its bad? Ah sorry, I often see the question the other way around. Stellaris itself is more freeform. There is a lot more focus on customization, RP, and emergent storytelling. You design your race's ethics and traits, and this will change how you interact with other races and the world. The different factions you encountered will be at different stages of development and will have different personality. Xenophile alien will likely trade and form pacts, while it will only be a matter of time until fanatic exterminator turn on you. It has wayyyyy more systems going for like it population control, different ways of ascension, whole bunch of tech for ship customization to give your ship different computer, different engine, different armor, etc. Instead of everyone going for the same victory conditions, there really isn't a win condition in Stellaris except survival, though the game does have some crisis events to make things more interesting. It's a lot slower to play. Often you are just waiting for tech to unlock or diplomatic cooldown instead of needing to carefully think about the limited action you can take per turn in Nexus. Ship designer is just a space 4X joke. Most space 4X game has to include it because Master of Orion has it, but it often ended up being overly fiddly but shallow. pedro0930 fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Mar 26, 2024 |
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Mar 25, 2024 20:14
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Wait is stellaris nexus an actual game? I assumed it was just another lovely clash of clans clone with no real gameplay
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Mar 25, 2024 22:56
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A ship designer is basically the definition of "sounds cool but results in bad gameplay". Either the AI understands it and makes perfectly good designs, in which case it's a complicated system that doesn't really add much to the game. Or the AI understands it and makes perfectly good designs, but the player isn't allowed to use that and has to make all their designs manually, in which case it's tedious busywork. Or the AI doesn't really understand it and the player can get a huge edge over them by doing a bunch of tedious busywork. Master of Orion's ship designer was bad too, but it largely gets a pass because it's from an era where nearly every game had some tedious bad gameplay somewhere in it.
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Mar 25, 2024 23:26
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Jabor posted:it's from an era where nearly every game had some tedious bad gameplay somewhere in it This week?!?
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Mar 25, 2024 23:27
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Jabor posted:A ship designer is basically the definition of "sounds cool but results in bad gameplay". I was gonna respond with Starsector, then I remembered that it's not really a 4x and the AI runs from a bunch of menu options that have already been generated and then also understands combat to a level most AIs don't come close to. So this comment had no point other than play Starsector I guess
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Mar 25, 2024 23:53
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Starsector is pretty cool, so it's not a bad recommendation. Still, I feel annoyed every time I rediscover that the combat AI in Starsector manages to pilot small ships more competently than I can…
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Mar 25, 2024 23:56
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On paper, ship designers are meant to be a fluid rock-paper-scissors type system, where you can tailor make your own fleet to counteract the very specific challenges that your glorious space armada is likely to face, and having to change your design plans to something new could be the thing that ultimately spells your doom. In practice, this has never once actually happened.
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Mar 26, 2024 00:17
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Even in games where that does happen to some extent, the problem with most ship designers is that the number of meaningful decisions you need to make is very low compared to the total number of decisions you're forced to make. Constructing improvements has a similar problem - the macro-scale decisions you're making are "how much of my output should I reinvest in getting more output" and occasionally "what should I focus on getting more of" - but to accomplish that you need to make a bunch of not-very-meaningful decisions about "what improvement do I build next". There's a reason people want to automate that poo poo in the late-game, and then get frustrated by how the automation doesn't do as good a job as they would of aligning it with their strategic goals.
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Mar 26, 2024 00:32
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It's incredibly funny to me that SotS had a ship designer and Stellaris crowbarred that out without understanding why the ship designer was good to have. (It had tactical combat, I still think a preset doctrine or Dominions style task groups with preset missions and a reactive doctrine set could have worked perfectly but I didn't design Stellaris, I'm not sure anyone actually did. One day I'm gonna have to make a 4X to exorcise that game's damage from my skull.) E: Constructing improvements half the time is an APM sink to make the player not realize they aren't enjoying themselves, the other half is designers not having anything else to put there and not even imagining not putting anything there, once in a blue moon they are actual decisions work making, like in Shadow Empire, somehow those games generally don't make those choice exclusive and instead just have the opportunity cost of not having all the things at once. SIGSEGV fucked around with this message at 00:36 on Mar 26, 2024 |
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Mar 26, 2024 00:34
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Ship designers were cool in master of Orion since it had tactical combat but baffling in every other space 4x that just has auto resolving stack combat
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Mar 26, 2024 01:11
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<x> designers are bugs (like inventory is a bug) they're design tools that accidentally got left in a production build the only way they work (much like inventory) is if that's the entire game otherwise they exist so someone in marketing can crow about 477436537e37 possible builds, and more casual players can get excited about slapping fantabulon mkVI blasters on their legally distinct spacecraft, a dramatic improvement from the zigmar mkVs they were using ten turns ago
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Mar 26, 2024 02:29
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Ship designers are cool
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Mar 26, 2024 02:40
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Yeah, they just need to be implemented in a context that can make them have a purpose, Most 4Xs don't have that and don't even attempt it, even in purely async games, a unit designer in Dominions would be something special. (Even if everyone would instantly create a default set of medium armor spear and shield guys before going on onto special flavor stuff, that's just the rules.)
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Mar 26, 2024 03:03
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IMO, there are 4x games with fun and good ship(or unit) designers like MoO2, AoW:PF, SotS, SMAC, and also 4x games with unfun and bad ship designers like Stellaris and others. Then there are a lot that are somewhere between the two. I don't think it's an accident that some of the most beloved 4X games of all time have had unit designers, they're just fun*. *(fun subject to overall quality of game design). victrix posted:<x> designers are bugs (like inventory is a bug) I would say those two things are the mark of a bad, unfun unit designer. The first is incremental upgrades rather than parts that have entirely different properties. The second is having a very open system with a very large number of possibilities. The games with the most fun unit designers tend to have relatively closed systems with "just enough" possibilities. Also, I've personally never seen a 4X game with a unit designer marketed in terms of the number of possible builds, have you? Could you share what game/advertisement?
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Mar 26, 2024 04:04
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Lowen posted:IMO, there are 4x games with fun and good ship(or unit) designers like MoO2, AoW:PF, SotS, SMAC, and also 4x games with unfun and bad ship designers like Stellaris and others. Alpha Centauri's designer is, IMO, a case of rose-colored glasses; it adds very little to the overall experience and nothing of significant value to the game would be lost if it was cut. Haven't played MOO, don't really remember SotS, so I won't comment on those. Planetfall, though, I think is a clear point in favor of the OP claim that "the only way they work is if they're the entire game". Planetfall is a tactical warfighting game masquerading as a 4x, and the unit modification system is a core component of how everything works on a mechanical level. Literally half the techs in the game are tied to the unit mod system, and battles with said modded units are about half the total time you spend within the game as well. And, notably, even at that level of impact the unit designer is more properly described as a unit modifier because you ultimately cannot change the core concept of a given unit, and for all the care given to the unit mods the "base" units were given even more care to ensure they started out as unique and powerful in their own right without needing the player's design to become useful.
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Mar 26, 2024 04:23
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Lowen posted:IMO, there are 4x games with fun and good ship(or unit) designers like [...]SMAC, Lowen posted:I would say those two things are the mark of a bad, unfun unit designer.
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Mar 26, 2024 04:28
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the smac unit designer is pretty bad. in other civ games researching new units changes how your army functions, in smac that happens only a handful of times in the game (mostly because of finding a new chassis) and otherwise it's just identical army comp with higher numbers stellaris is the worst ship designer though, because it's all of the usual problems but also the connection between design choices and outcomes is obscured by the typical paradox pseudo-simulationist bullshit
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Mar 26, 2024 05:11
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Jeb Bush 2012 posted:stellaris is the worst ship designer though, because it's all of the usual problems but also the connection between design choices and outcomes is obscured by the typical paradox pseudo-simulationist bullshit I thought it was just there to decide what pretty lights come from your pretty ships when you're crushing every fleet you run into because you've snapped the game economy over your back by turn 50 or so, and are just going "brrr" through tech superiority vs dealing with their obtuse system?
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Mar 26, 2024 05:34
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Civilization already fixed the problem of "unit designers" ages ago. They're called Promotions. In ideal balance, promotions should provide all of the tactical utility of a dedicated unit designer with none of the tedious micromanagement.
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Mar 26, 2024 06:40
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Super Jay Mann posted:Civilization already fixed the problem of "unit designers" ages ago. They're called Promotions. In ideal balance, promotions should provide all of the tactical utility of a dedicated unit designer with none of the tedious micromanagement. not coincidentally why the mod system in Planetfall is v cool
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Mar 26, 2024 06:46
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