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dead gay comedy forums posted:How does stand up Age of Wonders 3 these days? I have it on my steam backlog and couldn't manage to get into it back then, but been playing some HoMMIII recently and I remembered it AoW3 has had so many expansions that the campaign difficulty balances are all out of whack. Some missions are laughably easy. Some are almost impossibly hard. If you just want to mess around in sandbox, it's still fun, but for all practical purposes there's no single player campaign.
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Dec 26, 2020 17:11
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Meridian posted:It only has two? That's true. I'm surprised they never went back and rebalanced the campaigns then. I got through the first few levels when I played it but when I started having trouble everyone in the thread for it told me not to continue with the campaigns because they'd gotten broken by balance changes. I pushed through another level or two but then ran into a wall I couldn't even got close to overcoming.
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Feb 9, 2021 00:01
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Lawman 0 posted:Let's have a debate: What 4X strategy had the best/most enjoyable AI opponents? The military AI in EU4 was very bad, but I enjoyed the diplomatic AI. It at least made sense for why it hated/liked someone. Alpha Centauri AI was not good and very cheaty. The phenomenal writing makes it still fun to play despite the AI limitations.
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Mar 15, 2021 21:44
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Omi no Kami posted:How is Endless Space 2? I'm tempted to grab it on sale, but reviews say that the AI is apparently pretty bad, and that seems like a dealbreaker in a big huge 4x game. Fair warning, it imposes pretty hefty penalties for building wide. It definitely wants you to build tall.
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Jun 25, 2021 15:33
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PerniciousKnid posted:Has any 4x game been improved by the inclusion of a list of buildings you have to build on planets? Just give my some sliders I can use to allocate production priorities, and a copy-paste key on the colony list. Yes. Buildings are fun. Buildings tell a story. See Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (bases, not planets, but the idea still applies). Sliders are efficient but boring.
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Jul 5, 2021 14:55
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Jack Trades posted:Here's a question. Is there a 4X out there with an AI that can pose a challenge without cheating? https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2891609&pagenumber=1
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Aug 10, 2021 13:55
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Jack Trades posted:Can someone give me a rundown on what Shadow Empire is? If you decide to get it, make sure to read a guide first. When I tried it blind, I managed to waste all my starting resources and lock myself out of any practical way to get my industry running.
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Aug 20, 2021 04:34
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Danaru posted:I know Wizards and Warlords is gonna be like Shadow Empire where I keep bouncing off of it until it suddenly clicks and its all I play for a month, but God drat I can never seem to get enough units made before an opponent beeline across the map to sit on my tower and choke me to bankruptcy Take one of the summoning magics. It defaulted me to Elementalist and the lvl 1 summons from air and earth carried me all the way through midgame without needing any other soldiers. There's not a lot you can do with magic compared to how much you get, and your first 10+ summons fit into your free summons upkeep budget. The summons do seem to be a little weaker than most military units, but you can afford so many more, the quality difference doesn't matter much. I want to like Wizards and Warlords, but the more I play it, the more I want to play Master of Magic again. A lot of the Wizards and Warlords mechanics are opaque. I don't feel like I have any idea which followers/buildings/map improvements are better than the others. Speaking of MoM, are either of the DLC's on Steam worth getting?
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Nov 8, 2021 02:58
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I just tried the Caster of Magic "DLC" for Master of Magic for the first time. That is a wildly different game from the original. It is much, much faster paced. Enemy wizards sound out armies to attack you every four turns. You start with 2 settlers (and settling a city spawns a new unit). The enemy AI seems to be very focused on the player. I've only played one game so far, but all the AI wizards sent settlers to the edges of my territory in the first 30 turns. I was on a tiny island, so they had to waterwalk or get flying on their settlers first too. Plus, there was no room for more settlements on my tiny island, so they did the super annoying AI thing of settling so their cities overlapped the territory of mine.
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Nov 12, 2021 01:17
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Jack Trades posted:That brings up an interesting topic. Alpha Centauri from a few decades ago. Endless Legend has good distinct factions and seasons so the world remains active. It has other issues so it’s been a long time since I played it, but I don’t remember feeling like I am just victory lapping the way I do in their latest effort, Humankind.
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Dec 6, 2021 01:01
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KOGAHAZAN!! posted:
Not gonna lie, that's pretty rad.
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Dec 7, 2021 01:20
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Squiggle posted:Er, that's weird - I'm watching one of DasTactic's video on DW2, and his seems correct and pretty straightforward: (Revenue - corruption losses) * tax rate - support costs = final net Now that you point it out, I can see how it works, but I'd never have guessed it myself. It'd help if the naming scheme for Revenue and Taxes was the same either Gross Revenue Corruption Losses Net Revenue Gross Tax Support Costs Net Tax or Revenue Corruption Losses Base Revenue Tax Support Costs Base Tax would be better. Honestly, something like Colony GDP Corruption Losses Net Colony GDP Tax Rate Gross Tax Support Costs Player Revenue Would be worlds clearer. The final number the player cares about should be a different color or highlighted or something to make it clear it's the one you care about. I uh, spend too much time making UIs at work. Beefeater1980 posted:I’m enjoying it so far. I have maybe 8 hours in the original, which I could never really get into because I found the UI too cluttered.
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Mar 11, 2022 05:35
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NoNotTheMindProbe posted:Shadows of Forbidden Gods is in a pretty good state for Early Access. It's an anti-4X game where you play as a dark god and send out agents to ruin the AI's kingdoms. Pretty sure it's goon made as well. There's a demo too. Rad.
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Mar 13, 2022 18:35
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Has anyone figured out how to tell how far apart two things are? The ships have range values in the designer, but I've no idea how much range I need to get to the next nearest star, etc. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess my escort's probably don't need 50% more range than my survey ships though.
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Mar 15, 2022 00:29
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Oh neat. I didn't have enough spacebux to purchase the ghost fleet when they showed, so choosing that option sent my cash on hand 15k into the red. Then a month later, my cash went positive again. Edit: The ghost fleet showed in December, so maybe I got a large infusion of bonus income at the end of the year? LLSix fucked around with this message at 02:50 on Mar 15, 2022 |
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Mar 15, 2022 02:48
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Has anyone successfully fought off the pirates in Distant Worlds? I was doing a good job when everything was in one system, and even doubled by fleet strength by capturing pirate ships. But when I started building mining stations in other systems things went downhill fast. With one planet, I can't afford to field enough fleets that were strong enough to fight off the new, stronger pirate ships that started showing up everywhere. Anywhere I fielded my main fleet was completely safe, but they could only be in one system at a time. At the same time, "bonus income" has wildly inflated my cash on hand so that even one unlucky raid costs me 6k at a time, far more than it would have cost to just pay the pirates off. And I lose a raid that badly once or twice a year. Dastactic says in his videos that paying the pirates off will bankrupt you, but really, it seems much cheaper than any of the alternatives. It isn't helping that even after scouting three systems around me I only found one of the pirate bases, and when I captured it, it didn't destroy that pirate faction. The latest generation of pirate ships is fast enough to effectively kite my ships even though they've only got a speed advantage of ~100. So I can't force engagements anymore unless they do something stupid like commit to a raid on a station I'm close enough to jump a fleet to. That should mean it's possible to build player fleets around long range and high speed to kite stronger AI fleets too, but my military tech is still a generation behind the pirates so that's not an option for me yet.
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Mar 17, 2022 04:14
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I finally got an independent colony to invite me to colonize them. All it took was being nice to them, and sending them the largest possible gift to bootstrap up to the next tier of trading agreement every chance I got. Kind of weird I still need to send a colony ship instead of them just joining up. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens when my colony ship arrives. On the topic of fleets, is there a way to automate fleets except for picking their home base? I wiped out all the pirates on side of my sector, so I'm only being attacked by pirates on the other side. Despite that, the fleet I have stationed on the dangerous side of the sector keeps changing it's home base back to my home world which is on the safe side and leaving the mining and research bases in the dangerous sector undefended.
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Mar 19, 2022 14:53
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I just had an NPC (Teekan Monarchy) Empire offer me a Migration treaty. Anyone know what that means? I've got Human and Mortalen's in my empire right now, and have been micro-managing colony population settings to avoid increased maintenance costs from having citizens living on worlds that aren't suited for them. HerpicleOmnicron5 posted:Distant Worlds 2 meanwhile, is a peculiar experience. I have no clue if I’m doing it right. I think I’m doing it better than the other space empires. I’m in the red but my money is going up. I don’t know when my fleet will get anywhere. I have random ships stranded - will the fleet’s tankers rescue it automatically? If you have enough fuel tankers, they will, eventually, rescue the stranded ships. As long as the ships have energy collectors on them (all the AI designs do) the ships will eventually limp to their destination as well. No clue on the nebula. Das Tactic's videos are very helpful for learning the game, but he plays dreadfully slow. Quill 18's videos are almost the complete opposite. Quill always plays on 4x speed, but, like me, he's got no clue what's going on. LLSix fucked around with this message at 03:59 on Mar 21, 2022 |
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Mar 21, 2022 03:54
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Edit: Forgot to ask my question. In DW2, how do you get research out of ruined/captured ships/bases? I've got a whole graveyard of capital ships. The first few are handy as flagships, but I'd really rather get better tech out of the others. I also captured a pirate starbase instead of destroying it. If I could scrap it for some of their advanced tech, that'd be aces. Clarste posted:Just started a game of DW2 as the fish people. They start with a ruined spaceport around their home planet, and I started repairing it but for some reason it got stuck at 100% and has been sitting there "under construction" for years without making any progress. Any idea what this means? Your problem is probably that it's event driven. Azhais posted:The progress bars seem to have no bearing on reality. Repairing is like that, new construction is like that, I just ignore it and hope it'll be fixed eventually. In DW2, the progress bar reaches 100% after completing the ship frame. After that you still need to install all the individual components, including armor and shields. So it sits at 100% for a long time. LLSix fucked around with this message at 22:24 on Mar 21, 2022 |
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Mar 21, 2022 22:19
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DW2, ships are slow enough that I feel like I need at least 1 fleet for every "side" or "sector" of my territory. Annoyingly, whenever I set a fleet to automate as a "defense" fleet, the AI changes it's homebase to my homeworld, and moves it halfway across my territory, instead of defending the sector and Caslon mining station I have set as its home base. I really wish there was a way to get it to stop doing that. My homeworld does not need more defenders. I've got an entire mini-fleet circling it in addition to the cloud of ships waiting to get into the rather heavily armed starbase.
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Mar 22, 2022 04:10
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I think I may take a break from DW2. I'm only up to 3 colonies after 26 hours and the game has gotten very crash happy. It crashes at least once an hour, usually while zooming in. I'm comfortably above the recommended specs, so it's not like I'm trying to run it on a potato. It's a real shame, I got into a war over poor first contact and was just organizing the logistics to have a fleet of tankers meet my combat and troop ships halfway to enemy territory because the military ships don't have enough range to fly all the way there on their own. Be warned - it takes much longer to build infantry units than it does to build troop ships. If you think you want to go conquering, start building up a ground force as soon as your economy can support it. Darkrenown posted:Also this pirate base I was given is screwing up my construction - half my poo poo builds there now, but the ships don't have the range to get to my home system afterwards. I could scrap it I suppose, but it's my only base outside my home system so far. If you click on your home planet or starbase around your home planet, both allow you to build ships manually at that location. There are a few other ways to specify where to build. You can watch DasTactics videos for details, they're hard to explain.
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Mar 22, 2022 23:14
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Orange Devil posted:On the other hand I will build a mining station at every single caslon source because it's never bad to have more refueling stations. Even if a single place could supply your whole empire, it's handy to keep those logistics lines short you know? The game won't even let you make fuel tankers without the mining module. Which is extra weird because I've never seen the automation AI set the fuel tankers to mining fuel. Even when the system they're in has a caslon planet.
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Mar 24, 2022 17:20
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Caconym posted:Yeah, I'm gonna need them to patch the pathfinding algorithm... (Or give us back the manual order queue! Oof. The developer replied to my steam bug report saying he thought he'd fixed the crashes I was seeing and I was just about to give it another try to.
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Mar 24, 2022 23:33
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esquilax posted:The AI also can't figure out how to keep a fleet together instead of trickling in one by one, and is pretty ridiculous at pathfinding. I "solved" the trickle problem by targeting a rendezvous point in the same system as where I really want to go. On anything less than interstellar distances, fleets arrive relatively intact.
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Mar 25, 2022 02:18
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DaysBefore posted:Is Distant Worlds 2 worth picking up at full price? Had my eye on it for a while but the response seems pretty mixed so far It'll be better later. I only bought it because there wasn't anything I preferred to be playing, and even so, crashes became so frequent that I decided to give it a break for a while before trying again.
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Mar 26, 2022 20:30
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Are there any good tutorials or LPs for Songs of Syx? All the youtubers I've found so far are pretty bad at the game. I was hoping to learn how to make a woodcutter work from watching youtube videos since I couldn't figure it out on my own.
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Mar 26, 2022 21:45
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pedro0930 posted:To make a woodcutter, mark a forest area you want, but also some empty space so you can place the storage item and auxiliary item to boost efficiency. Larger area increase the number of worker you can employ, but also needs more auxiliary items to reach 100% efficiency. Thank you. PerniciousKnid posted:There's a forums LP I haven't read yet. Thank you. This one? https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3953919
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Mar 27, 2022 01:34
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Jinnigan posted:DW2: Holy poo poo the Teekan start is godawful, you get a 10k cr upkeep terraforming device dumped on you in the first system, well before you can do anything approaching the level of sustainment required I didn't realize that could even spawn in your first system. The games I've seen it in, that's ended up being a great, high quality, colony world at least.
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Mar 29, 2022 03:22
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Early game trick for DW2 - you can steal tech from the pirates. It seems like they all have all the tier 0 and most if not all of the tier 1 techs, as well as a few more advanced ones.
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Mar 30, 2022 16:33
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Grevlek posted:Is it dumb in DW 2 to just keep your research on the first drive system, and then just queue up the second drive system after it? It really feels like you don't want to spend a ton of time trapped in your starting star system. Probably from there just tech civilian ships and engine/warp coils until you run into hostiles? No, it is not dumb. It's one of the recommended opening strategies. The second drive system is needed to leave your system as a practical matter. So yeah, it makes sense to beeline it. In order to effectively defend more than one system per fleet, you need the third, or better, the fourth warp drive tech. After the second drive tech, you'll probably want to branch out to get the stuff to allow you to build resort bases (they provide a lot of money). There are some other economy techs that are important (better civilian ships means the civilian economy needs fewer of them, which means they are less likely to bottleneck on docking with your spaceports, ditto the improved docking line.) etc. etc. etc. You can beeline the hyperdrive techs for a long time without it being a bad idea. Personally, I try to keep my warpdrive tech 1 tier ahead, because moving my fleets around takes too long otherwise.
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Mar 30, 2022 19:53
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Fairly early in the tech tree are a whole set of colonization techs that reduce the suitability threshold for the planet type(s) they target by 5. So I've been settling the first 15+ suitability colony I see. After that I can be pickier. I feel like you really need to get your first colony started ASAP. Your homeworld cannot finance two fleets, and you need multiple fleets to defend a multi-system empire (unless you're paying off pirates which is way cheaper than the maintenance costs of enough ships to fight the pirates).
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Mar 31, 2022 13:44
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I've got a weird maybe bug in Distant Worlds 2. I just built a new colony ship and it decided to try to pick up colonists from my homeworld, instead of the world I built it one like I want it to. When I hold right click on the world I built it on, there's no option to load colonists, just move to and stop. The world has ~100m Naxxilians who like the planet and ~100 million Ackdarians who hate it there despite having moved themselves there somehow. Any ideas on what I should try changing to get the game to let me rescue the dumb idiot otters who decided to live on an ice ball instead of one of my several ocean worlds?
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Apr 14, 2022 03:02
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Does stacking mining modules on mining stations help? e.g. If I add 4 small mining station modules to my mining station design, can I double the mining rate? Shortly after becoming a multi-system nation, I start running into serious fuel problems despite building mining stations on every caslon spot I find. I'm already running the fuel-efficient hyperdrives, power-plants, and engines, so I'm looking for new ways to improve my fuel situation. As far as I can tell, adding mining modules to research stations and starports doesn't do anything. Dirk the Average posted:So I think the way colony ships work, you can't actually load colonists until you have some minimum pop threshold. Thanks, I guess I'll just wait for the pop on that planet to go up enough to let me "rescue" the unhappy pops.
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Apr 17, 2022 13:17
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SIGSEGV posted:That seems entirely reasonable actually. Unless the game is a remake of Emperor Of The Fading Suns or something, then ground combat is less important than space combat. Unless the game is a Dune 4X or similar in which case there should be more focus on Dune than on the rest of the entire universe. A Dune game should be something like Crusader Kings. A bunch of feuding nobles stabbing each other in the back while the Empire crumbles and some incompetent snot-nosed brat inherits control of the one world with 10 time the wealth generation of the next closest would be incredibly on point.
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Apr 26, 2022 04:09
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Thom12255 posted:IGN gave Gal Civ 4 a 5/10. Other outlets have been a bit kinder but it does seem like the game design missed the mark. Wow, really? The CEO who goes out of his way to abuse his employees runs a company that released a bad game. Boy, I wonder how that happened. Although I do admit I'm a bit curious about what changed between GC2 and 3 since that's when it started going downhill.
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Apr 27, 2022 02:55
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Ghislaine of YOSPOS posted:ok I don't know if dune is actually all that great. i voted for myself as governor and won while I let the game run at 2x speed while I was completely ignoring it. The Smugglers could have given me a run for my money maybe but they never seemed interested in doing so. Yeah, AI in most 4x is disappointing at best. If you want good AI, that's AI War's whole thing. Maybe give it a try?
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Apr 28, 2022 21:45
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Impermanent posted:that's a good idea in abstract but it ignores that a lot of 4x's are theoretically also designed for multiplayer, and have tools and abiltiies designed at sabotaging player facing elements like research and production. If you can't use those in singleplayer against AIs then for a lot of players they may as well not exist. Maybe that's more of an issue of 'why are all of these games designed for multiplayer if that is so rare" though All those tools are usually left unused against the AI because the AI cheats so massively.
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Apr 30, 2022 03:20
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I just tried the Pegasus Expedition demo. I was hoping for something like Imperium Galactica. I feel like I got something a lot closer to Stellar Monarch. I don't enjoy the goofy and seemingly deliberately bad attack strategies you are forced to choose from. Anyone feel like it did anything well?
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Jun 19, 2022 21:37
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Demiurge4 posted:I hope Victoria 3 ends up a huge success because I want them to apply a lot of the lessons from that game to a new Stellaris game. Or even better, limit the scope to just the Sol system, like an Aurora game without jump points, FTL can be the win state. Good news, the scope will definitely be limited to just the Sol system. The Victoria series has never included space flight. It takes it's name from when Queen Victoria ruled and covers 1836–1936. So not even up to WW2. I hope Vicky3 is good, but after Stellaris I'm not wildly optimistic.
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Jul 8, 2022 18:34
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Any tips for learning, or rather re-learning, Civ4? I must have played a ton of it back when it first came out, but when I loaded it up recently nothing looked familiar.
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Sep 10, 2022 03:51
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