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Joe Chill posted:So what were they needing exactly? Food might have been an issue, units need to eat iirc and in a lot of starts your food situation can struggle to support your starting city, let alone the army.
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Apr 3, 2024 20:21
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Promontory posted:I remember getting a dilemma in Shadow Empire where one of my leaders had angered the nation by a summary execution. One of my options was to "reverse the decision of the leader". Seemed a bit ambitious... That's actually what I absolutely adore about the game too, its just absolutely awful at telling you how all that works. For me its usually "I need a tank...okay let me build a mine. What the gently caress do I do next". In theory what you described is my perfect 4X title, but in reality its just too obtuse to be enjoyable for my personal taste. Maybe im a dummy at this stuff but I have bashed my head against the game quite a bit and it just desperately needs to nudge the player in the right direction once in a while or offer a better tutorial/guide.
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Apr 3, 2024 20:37
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It might be easier to start with advanced start option. With the default start you have almost no tech researched (including basic stuff like solar power), no department formed (so no department to even design your tank, or to operationalize it in a formation). Your starting industrial capacity is small, and have limited access to material, like machine parts, hell, sometimes even water and food.
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Apr 3, 2024 20:51
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Crosspost:my dad posted:Talked to the friend, he stopped playing the original game on turn 200 when he entered rocket age, at which point he started planning the experiment game.
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Apr 3, 2024 20:55
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pedro0930 posted:It might be easier to start with advanced start option. With the default start you have almost no tech researched (including basic stuff like solar power), no department formed (so no department to even design your tank, or to operationalize it in a formation). Your starting industrial capacity is small, and have limited access to material, like machine parts, hell, sometimes even water and food. Im gonna give that a try thank you!! I think I had assumed "Oh less tech/no departments formed/etc will be less overwhelming and teach me how it all works" but it sounds like its the complete opposite lol
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Apr 3, 2024 20:56
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Goa Tse-tung posted:Shadow Empire is 4 years old and has zero mods, always a bad sign There are totally mods... but they are either tied up in the game's official forum or the discord. I hear Pymous's balance mod is popular for getting rid of ICBMs? Seems silly to take the top off the tech tree, if you want the game to keep going just go for shield generators and bunkers. Of course that mod was started before bunkers were implemented. And yeah, Shadow Empire is a wargame first and a 4x second. Don't turn on Nemesis or Guaranteed alien life on a planet that already has life for your first game! Tech 3 City State start will make sure you aren't overwhelmed... but its the "hitting rocks together" tech level. If you go with this one take the supreme council only option. You'll need everything but start with buying out your salvagers, followed by scraping together enough metal for a factory. Get more power/food when you start to run a negative balance, not when you run out! If you have any neighbors that aren't farmers go with the model council first. Profile wise I'd go with Democracy/Commerce/Fist. Democracy lets you solve unrest problems with money. Commerce makes people happy, gets you more money, and lets you benefit more from private farms. Fist boosts your militia, to the point where you can cheap out on an actual army for longer and keep militia going afterwards. A better choice is Tech 4, with a whole province. You start with the basics, so you aren't going to accidentally lock yourself out of power generation... Most importantly you are guaranteed a metal mine and a water mine with this start. The 4 council option will start you with the most important councils, and also diplomacy. Profile wise I'd start with Democracy/Government/Mind. Democracy lets you solve unrest problems with money. Government boosts your BP production and factory output, good stuff. Mind boosts your research even more and has solid postures. Long term if you don't want a leader get rid of them! That keeps them from making your factions mad when you tell them they didn't get the job. The help tab has a stratagem encyclopedia entry. This tells you what each council gets you, and what cards your factions will give you for your profile.
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Apr 3, 2024 21:16
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Shadow Empire is good, but it has this grog game problem where enormous amounts of attention were put into systems that are pointless because of balance and design decisions. Ultimately it has a lot of wasted potential. The tech tree just being WW2 with lasers slapped on the end is a case in point. Still fun though and got my moneys worth TheDeadlyShoe fucked around with this message at 21:43 on Apr 3, 2024 |
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Apr 3, 2024 21:29
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TheDeadlyShoe posted:Shadow Empire is good, but it has this grog game problem where enormous amounts of attention were put into systems that are pointless because of balance and design decisions. Ultimately it has a lot of wasted potential. The tech tree just being WW2 with lasers slapped on the end is a case in point. I'll say that the steady advancement of body armor is the bigger Sci-Fi deviation from the WWII equivalents. Eventually you aren't building bigger tanks to fight other big tanks. You are building them to overpower powered armor. E: VVV Just means its time to play against human beings!  Just be sure to agree ahead of time that wars should happen before the 100 turn mark, not to name any names.
habituallyred fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Apr 3, 2024 |
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Apr 3, 2024 21:48
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I just kept feeling like I ran out of poo poo to do. I'm not the best 4x player but It was pretty easy for me to punch through the AI lines and then steam roll and then due to map sizes it was just turn after turn after turn of painting the map and I just kinda grew bored.
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Apr 3, 2024 21:54
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one little tidbit I find really charming about it is that it's a pretty straightforward extension of the military in the future, it's all hardcore military instead of a more fantastical Star Wars sci fi, but the dev(s?) (i think it's made by one guy if I'm correct?) included that one unit of lil techno wizards. I love looking at all the tanks and soldiers and then there's a little wizard unit.
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Apr 3, 2024 22:05
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Goa Tse-tung posted:Shadow Empire is 4 years old and has zero mods, always a bad sign Lmao ive been playing it with mods since it first came out.
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Apr 3, 2024 22:36
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Joe Chill posted:So what were they needing exactly?  It's been like a year. I might still have the save.
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Apr 3, 2024 23:02
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habituallyred posted:There are totally mods... but they are either tied up in the game's official forum or the discord. I hear Pymous's balance mod is popular for getting rid of ICBMs? Seems silly to take the top off the tech tree, if you want the game to keep going just go for shield generators and bunkers. I really hate "the documentation and mods are in the discord" and I won't stop hating, I will in fact hate it some more after discord closes shop and archives of decades of arcane knowledge get instantaneously wiped out.
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Apr 3, 2024 23:07
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Thanks for all the answers on that. Seems like I may as well save myself the $20 and actually learn to play EU4 or Stellaris or something.
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Apr 3, 2024 23:10
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doctorfrog posted:My play with Shadow Empires so far has been to generate cool planets and kinda think about what gameplay might evolve on them, then panic-quit on turn one. Most fun I've had with a 4x in years. 4x strategy games: Just one turn
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Apr 3, 2024 23:31
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Cugel the Clever posted:The ambiguity on this is why I set the game aside. Nothing was directly surfaced to inform me of the source of the attrition and I went back a couple saves to play around with it to no avail. I don't know if you knew this but clicking on the barrel icon in the unit info window would show what the unit is requesting and receiving. Stuff like replacements, ammo, food etc. Xlorp posted:Hugs from the Commissar That's a great idea for a stratagem mod.
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Apr 3, 2024 23:31
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doctorfrog posted:My play with Shadow Empires so far has been to generate cool planets and kinda think about what gameplay might evolve on them, then panic-quit on turn one. Most fun I've had with a 4x in years. you may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like
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Apr 4, 2024 00:53
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Theotus posted:Thanks for all the answers on that. Seems like I may as well save myself the $20 and actually learn to play EU4 or Stellaris or something. Terra Invicta is on gamepass now, which is absolutely scratching my overly complex paradox itch.
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Apr 4, 2024 06:35
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V for Vegas posted:Lmao ive been playing it with mods since it first came out. sure, and the casual observer will not
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Apr 4, 2024 06:57
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Shadow Empire is pretty good as a strategy game, but the nation/leader management part is just the worst kind of awful opaque poo poo. I like the card system, I don't like that you roll a succession of likely very poo poo leaders you need to spend another card and resources to dismiss. The RNG heavy nature of every system also waters it all down because you can't really take your nation in a direction through policies, it's all just leader events that give a few points in whatever direction. If you do a normal start you get the option of starting the game with all the ministries that then can't do anything because you don't have the BP's, or you start with 1 (2?) and by the time you get a full admin online you probably own half the planet. I like the logistics though.
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Apr 4, 2024 06:58
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Moonshine Rhyme posted:Terra Invicta is on gamepass now, which is absolutely scratching my overly complex paradox itch. That one is on my radar for sure, the theme seems rad. I haven't really checked in on it since it first hit early access. At that time it seemed to be a lot of "click and wait" and hope that your % chance to have a thing happen fired off. If not, you just do it again and again and again and again.
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Apr 4, 2024 11:28
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I agree that the RNG in Shadow Empire can be frustrating. I find it especially annoying with the order of battle generation, where for some reason you can't really give directions on what you want ("an armoured division with recon attached, for fighting in vast deserts"). Instead you'll get tons of unnecessary formations. Even good leaders will suggest things like "72 000 guys on foot, but each with a rocket launcher". Some cards are also really good and can trivialize internal tensions when you've learned the game and know what to prioritize. Cabinet retreats for everybody!
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Apr 4, 2024 14:21
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There is a demo available for ZEPHON, a new game from the devs of WH40K Gladius. Looks pretty Gladius-y from what I've seen of it, but uses their own IP. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1481170/ZEPHON/
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Apr 4, 2024 15:21
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Going back to ES2, it has a number of things that are really funny, like the game being unable to decide if Dust is a physical substance or something that can be generated by finance spreadsheets, the implications by buildings that all internal economies including the vampire ghost nuns, the clans of everything-survivors and the people eating slavers are free market economies, and the fact that some pretty hard pseudoscience shows up in tech descriptions, like micro expressions and also micro loans have been shown to be Not That Great. It made me have a chuckle or two in a way I really hadn't since the heady days of TW Shogun 2 which had the motto of the SS as one of the perfectly orientalist tech descriptions.
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Apr 4, 2024 15:48
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IIRC Dust is a physical crypto currency that can mine itself.
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Apr 4, 2024 17:03
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I think it's some sort of self replicating psychic magical nanomachines but making those replicate harder would need a facility dedicated to it. Anyway, no sucking in air through teeth like TWS2 did.
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Apr 4, 2024 17:21
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SIGSEGV posted:I think it's some sort of self replicating psychic magical nanomachines but making those replicate harder would need a facility dedicated to it. This is more correct-ish, although its also correct that it is definitely on the vague side, and is magical by dint of "any sufficiently advanced tech". They are self-replicating and self-repairing nanomachines/elements that can network and act in concordance at scale. The universe is covered in it from the time of the Endless before they wiped each other out, and the scaling of it via tech and extraction is supposed to represent both being able to find/extract more of it from the places it has accreted since the end of the Endless, the ability to actually interact with and manage it, and things that actually utilize it at a fundamental level to their functioning (which is where heroes and fleet costs come in on it). Lorewise, the Endless used Dust so much that their structures were often directly made out of it, or at least had it interwoven to a deep level. It is, however, quite weird that a lot of the collection of it does come from the "finance" side, which in game I suspect is supposed to be part of its representation as a universal currency. Much meta, such value, yada yada. If the above doesn't really make sense, that's because it doesn't, but whatever, cool universe, hope game 3 is a cool game.
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Apr 5, 2024 00:17
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Speaking of Shadow Empire. One of the game's feature that I love and so few 4x or strategy games have is the simulation of a private/civilian sector. In Shadow Empire, if you look after your cities well enough, the civilians in them will start building various buildings and improvements on their own, using their saved up money. These civilian buildings/improvements, IIRC, will then provide more bonuses to the civilian sector in your cities, which will result in an increased resources yield, and thanks to how the game handles buildings/improvements, these civilian buildings don't interfere with your owns. And the neat thing is, you could spend some resources to "appropriate" these civilian buildings, dictator/Soviet-style! It is essentially a simulating of a government taking over private industries by force. Doing this will net you a buildings/improvements for free, in exchange for taking resources from the private sector. When I played the game and saw all these happened for the first time, I was so surprised and delighted!
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Apr 5, 2024 09:38
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I'm not sure if it counts as a 4X so I hope this is the right thread. I recently picked up Distant Worlds 2, because I often get burned out reading manuals/tutorials on complex games so by the time I understand them I don't really want to play them. So DW2's concept of being able to automate everything really appealed to me because (in theory at least), I can automate everything and just take manual control over things individually until I learn the ropes of them. Is this a good strategy, and if so any recs on which things to start manually doing first?
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Apr 5, 2024 12:52
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How convenient, I'm also on a DW2 kick lately (and also they're putting out another major patch Tuesday, hopefully my save from the beta will be compatible) That was essentially how I learned Distant Worlds 1 back in the day, so as an approach I'd certainly recommend it - though maybe leave the stuff you can on at least "Suggest" or"Suggest and Execute" in order to give some visibility to what the automation is doing. (the difference is that Suggest tells you what it'll do but only does it if you opt in, Suggest and Execute tells you what it'll do and does it unless you opt out in a short window). I think that "what to enable manual control first" really depends on what you find engaging and fun to do yourself though? For general "low number of clicks for a high impact on how your game turns out" suggestions, I'd go with diplomatic treaties/starting and ending wars/fleet posture and home base control, for a start.
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Apr 5, 2024 13:52
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Kvlt! posted:I'm not sure if it counts as a 4X so I hope this is the right thread. Absolutely, and it is a great thing for that. First things I would consider doing manually are probably making some kind of fleet a task force for hunting space monstrosities. Basically having a fleet you control to put out fires. The cool thing is, if you let the game play fully automated, it still asks you whether to do things first. It won't be too long before you just naturally say, "I think I want to take that tourism hub now," or "I want to put more emphasis into diplomacy with these guys, so I can put military pressure on those guys." It kind of comes naturally.
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Apr 5, 2024 14:07
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Kvlt! posted:I'm not sure if it counts as a 4X so I hope this is the right thread. You can automate everything and turn it into a huge, elaborate screensaver if you want. I think the best way to start out is put automation on "suggest" so the A.I. is recommending actions instead and you are making yes and no decisions. That way you can still have the computer make decisions but you can jump in and overrule it if its doing something you think is a bad idea. Personally, I like to play the game like a Paradox game and have everything except fleet movement and diplomacy on the "suggest" setting. I think the only thing I fully automate is the ship design.
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Apr 5, 2024 14:13
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Thank you everyone! Really excited to dive in, seems like the space 4X ive always dreamed of. Anyone play it on a Steam Deck? I'm assuming its pretty bad on there but just wanted to check bc some games I thought would be unplayable are surprisingly good
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Apr 5, 2024 14:22
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Kvlt! posted:Thank you everyone! Really excited to dive in, seems like the space 4X ive always dreamed of. That's a really good question. I'd like to know too. Oh. If your game isn't starting when you try and load it up, you might have a problem with the intro movie not being able to play (it's encoded with some sort of long-lost format.) If this happens, go into startup.ini in the game folder and change "movie_playback" to 0.
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Apr 5, 2024 14:49
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Megazver posted:There is a demo available for ZEPHON, a new game from the devs of WH40K Gladius. Looks pretty Gladius-y from what I've seen of it, but uses their own IP. Seems kind of interesting - sort of a 4X set in a SCP post apocalypse.
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Apr 5, 2024 15:07
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SlyFrog posted:It won't be too long before you just naturally say, "I think I want to take that tourism hub now," or "I want to put more emphasis into diplomacy with these guys, so I can put military pressure on those guys." Definitely agreed, and in this vein, a really cool thing about the diplomacy automation is the per-faction stances like Befriend, Neutral, Defend Against, Conquer (which can, themselves, be set automatically or manually overridden) that guide what your diplomatic automation will suggest/do in terms of gifts or treaties, and also what intelligence missions your spymaster automation will suggest and against whom, and (I think?) where the fleet basing automation will base your fleets. IDK if this is new, I haven't really touched DW2 since it came out two years ago, but they've been beavering away at it and so far it feels like it's in a really good state, I'm impressed. Bonus points to them for going back and revisiting the launch factions to add extra gimmicks to them similar to those in the DLC factions (even if the ones I play haven't yet gotten the treatment as of the upcoming patch).
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Apr 5, 2024 15:10
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Megazver posted:There is a demo available for ZEPHON, a new game from the devs of WH40K Gladius. Looks pretty Gladius-y from what I've seen of it, but uses their own IP. Nifty demo, not quite sure its for me, but I do like a lot of what is there. Do note the AI diplomacy is in a...state, and does some pretty weird stuff. Lot to be ironed out here, but if you liked Gladius, you'll like this. Very aggressive 4x that is far more focused on eXplore and eXterminate rather than the other Xs.
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Apr 7, 2024 16:36
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Kvlt! posted:Thank you everyone! Really excited to dive in, seems like the space 4X ive always dreamed of. It sounds like you need to do some fiddling in desktop mode, but people have it working relatively well: https://www.protondb.com/app/1531540?device=steamDeck
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Apr 8, 2024 01:03
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We just released a big update for Distant Worlds 2. If you haven't tried it in a while please take a look and let me know how it goes! https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1531540/view/4193487660197795680
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Apr 10, 2024 01:16
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They put the patch notes into a loving .docx you have to download lmao.
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Apr 10, 2024 07:03
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