4X strategy games: i have no complaints but the genocide is too complicated

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > 4X strategy games: i have no complaints but the genocide is too complicated

mfcrocker: Jan 31, 2004; Hot Rope Guy

Lawman 0 posted:

Gonna start with my personal favorite the space empires series where in V (the last game in the series) the AI was genuinely incredibly stupid and would fall for tricks again and again.

I'm glad to not be the only person holding a candle for Space Empires! SE4 was probably my favourite and we dumped massive hours into it as kids

# ¿ Sep 4, 2020 10:44

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 00:20

mfcrocker: Jan 31, 2004; Hot Rope Guy

Bug Squash posted:

The amount of astounding bullshit you could get up to in that game was egregious. Rearrange every wormhole to your advantage? Stealthed regenerating planet destroyer? Trinary Dyson sphere systems? Capture an enemy colony ship to get colonists that breath a different atmosphere to get better use out of your planets? Espionage subvert an enemy psychic ship with mind control powers, leading to a cascade of them mind controlling more and more ships?

Wish more of it came early enough in the tech tree to actually matter in a game.

Yeah some of the optional tech trees in particular were absolute comedy. Space 4Xs sometimes forget that being a colossal dick can be a joy; I'm glad Stellaris eventually remembered that and gave more options for utterly wrecking people's poo poo

# ¿ Sep 4, 2020 11:53

mfcrocker: Jan 31, 2004; Hot Rope Guy

teokarp posted:

How is the AI? Does it use some of the schemes you described?

The AI is loving dreadful

# ¿ Sep 4, 2020 12:46

mfcrocker: Jan 31, 2004; Hot Rope Guy

Always happy when it turns out something I enjoyed was goon-made, love hearing how those guys are getting on

# ¿ Oct 31, 2020 13:44

mfcrocker: Jan 31, 2004; Hot Rope Guy

Stellaris got a Humble Bundle

# ¿ Mar 12, 2021 13:07

mfcrocker: Jan 31, 2004; Hot Rope Guy

ate poo poo on live tv posted:

The biggest problem with 4x games imo is the lack of macro-tools. It's super important to have a handful of planets/cities/colonies/whatever that you will carefully manage and will be pumping out the majority of your ships/science whatever. While your other planets are important to control/deny from your opponent, they will drastically slow down the pace for each additional planet you get. So you end up with the most important early turns taking a <10 seconds, whereas the less important later turns are taking minutes at a time.

Given this scaling problem, the game should be designed to either help the player easily manage all their planets with bulk-orders/build queues or AI Governors, or something that reduces the busy work for the player as they are conquering the limitless worlds the universe has to offer. It's a hard problem to solve and other then star ruler I haven't seen a game handle it well.

As an aside star ruler is really good.

This is the biggest problem with Stellaris for me

# ¿ Jul 5, 2021 10:05

mfcrocker: Jan 31, 2004; Hot Rope Guy

Poil posted:

Best thing on that list is that the Warcraft 3 screenshot is from the old and actually good version.

And they point out that the new version is poo poo

# ¿ Jul 20, 2021 23:28

mfcrocker: Jan 31, 2004; Hot Rope Guy

PerniciousKnid posted:

MOO1 and Space Empires were the only games I played where it felt like the ship design actually mattered. MOO2 felt like you just load up your biggest ship with the biggest guns and fire away.

I think MOO was really helped by the chess-sized field that made choices obvious and impactful, and limits that forced you to make choices about trade-offs between power and efficiency. The lack of refits and limited design slots made each design feel important, not just an exercise to plod through every time a new tech appeared.

God SE4 was too easy but I love that game

# ¿ Aug 10, 2021 10:14

mfcrocker: Jan 31, 2004; Hot Rope Guy

Mayveena posted:

Thoughts on Humankind? Getting ready to do a long play through. I'll post with impressions later today.

I just didn't like the beta as much as Civ 6 in any way

# ¿ Aug 18, 2021 00:15

mfcrocker: Jan 31, 2004; Hot Rope Guy

Worth mentioning even though everyone in this thread probably already has it: Stellaris is free on Prime Gaming this month via GoG

# ¿ Feb 2, 2022 12:08

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 00:20

mfcrocker: Jan 31, 2004; Hot Rope Guy

Lawman 0 posted:

Space Empires V is objectively an extremely bad game that's only sorts redeemed by the mods and PBEM functionality.
There is a reason it's a dead series.

It's a shame cause I absolutely adored SEIV

# ¿ Apr 18, 2022 17:54

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > 4X strategy games: i have no complaints but the genocide is too complicated