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Hannibal Rex posted:I haven't played any of the Age of Wonders games, but I hear they're spiritual sequels to the Warlords series. Can someone break them down for me? Is one of them in particular considered the best of the series? Mix of the strategic layer of the Warlords games, spells and city building like Heroes of Might and Magic, and the tactical battles in Master of Magic. The games are very good but the higher difficulties can be brutal if you are not always conquering cities and rushing for level 3/4 units.
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Jul 7, 2020 11:53
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grate deceiver posted:It's me, I'm the guy who remembers Stars! It owned, best excel spreadsheet I ever played. There was one called Fading Suns: Noble Armada, but it got stuck in development hell some two decades ago and ended up buggy as heck and never released anything beyond a demo. I hear that it is *still* in development today: https://www.facebook.com/NobleArmada/ Entorwellian fucked around with this message at 00:03 on Oct 31, 2020 |
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Oct 30, 2020 23:59
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Danaru posted:Are there any recent 4Xs that let you really gently caress around with the map itself, like terraforming in SMAC or being able to open/close warp points and blow up planets for the delicious asteroids in SEV? Nope!
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Oct 31, 2020 18:20
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I'm still wondering if there is ever going to be a Sins of a Solar Empire sequel. It's been almost 10 years since Rebellion and the company that made it, Ironclad Games, is still in business.
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Aug 15, 2021 01:39
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I've been playing Wizards and Warlords and the game is bloody difficult. I tried playing an Archmage and it took me quite a while before I was able to get an economy going to support an army with a mix of summons and recruits. By the time I conquered my second province, the next door necromancer had about 5x the amount of undead units roaming about the map and wrecking my poo poo. It kind of reminds of Eador: Masters of the Broken World but way more complex. Things need to be documented way better though. I have no idea what the unit's statistics are in relation to the game mechanic in question. Is a melee rating of "6" good? No clue! Entorwellian fucked around with this message at 10:36 on Aug 23, 2021 |
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Aug 23, 2021 10:29
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victrix posted:
I'd say its half Dominions and half Eador. I hated Eador too but the combat is better in Wizards and Warlords. My second game is going much better with my Archmage build and the game has been starting to grow on me. I've been running around binding to magic sites, sealing them with circle of protections, and going crazy with non stop greater magic missiles in combat. Entorwellian fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Aug 23, 2021 |
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Aug 23, 2021 16:57
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:So it was on sale for a fiver so I got Distant Worlds Universe. But it wont launch. like I get the little splash screen popup thing and then nada. I know my laptop while not the best in the world has even more than the recommended specs, let alone required. In your Distant Worlds install folder there is a 'startup.ini' file. Change 'playmovie 1' to 'playmovie 0'.
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Dec 6, 2021 01:22
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chaosapiant posted:Let’s talk soundtracks. Especially space games, what kinds of custom sound tracks do y’all like to use? Right now I’ve got a custom mix of instrumental Samael, Lorn, and the MechWarrior 2 Soundtrack. Ascendancy's soundtrack from 1995 is my favourite, even if it is in a low bit and sample rate. I can't believe that the company that made that game still exists and they've only released two games. What the gently caress have they been doing this entire time?
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Feb 22, 2022 18:24
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Gotta say that automating everything in DW and turning off all messages makes for a really cool screensaver.
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Mar 15, 2022 14:56
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Dreamsicle posted:Sorry if this isn't the right topic. Master of Magic is currently on my backlog. When I do get around to playing it, should I play with Caster of Magic or is a patched version of the original better? A few pages back but definitely play the original. There's a community fix that's included in the gog version that fixes a lot of things that were broken or missing in the original. It's really fun and I still have it installed on my laptop to go through a game with one of the premade wizards. Caster of Magic is a heavily modded version of Master of Magic that is balls hard and caters to people who find Master of Magic too easy. I don't recommend playing it at all until you understand Master of Magic inside and out. If you want an idea of how much planning and micromanagement is involved just to meet toe-to-toe with the A.I. players and monster lairs, you can watch Hadriex's youtube channel where he usually struggles against average and above-average level AI opponents.
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Sep 25, 2022 00:43
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chaosapiant posted:Any solid guides or cheesy tactics for Age of Wonders 1? Even on the easiest difficulty on the first map the game sends full stack to your towns inside of like 10 turns. I kinda just want to cruise around and blow poo poo up and don’t want to have a massive tug-of-war-of-attrition just getting thru the campaign. I play aow1 multiplayer with people that have been playing it for 20 years straight. Here's what I've learned. - Go through all of the events each turn in the bottom right. Sometimes you can see enemy movement and actions that you would otherwise be oblivious to. - take your time each turn and make sure to move all your units when you can while using them effectively as possible. Since the only way to make larger armies is with more gold income, the game encourages attacking and capturing as fast as possible as you can while taking as little damage as you can manage. Turtling only makes the enemy stronger. - Oddly enough, the bulk of the game revolves around two things: 1. Walls and 2. Heroes. Walls prevent a lot of units from invading your towns, so much of the game will involve the interplay between creating units that have wall crushing/tunneling/flying and prioritizing targetting the enemies with the same abilities. - keep your stacks of units on the map close together. Combat is initiated in the hex being attacked and the six hexes around it. make sure your stacks are included in those outer hexes.when attacking or defending. It is easy to screw this up. - The strongest start build you can make is a cold strike, archery/hurl stones/poison darts, the highest marksmanship you can take, and spellcasting 2. If you have the option to get a firearm in the game, even better. In fast combat, the high marksmanship means you can destroy early game enemies really quick in both combat modes, get the first shot off, stun enemies and cast combat spells. On the strategic map, use your spells to boost your stats up and use your skill points to bring the other stats up that don't have spells for to get them all as high as possible. Skills to absolutely grab in the level ups include: extra strike, spellcasting V and wall climbing. The expert players in MP often have a build worked out from start to finish and have mapped out what spells they need with what abilities. - defense points both dodge combat spells and physical hits. Resistance dodges status effects cause by spells or unit abilities. It's important to know the difference between the two. If you are dying too fast to physical attacks and combat spells, increase defense. If you are succumbing too easily to poison, burning, ice, fear, etc..., boost resistance. - use a battering ram to explore dungeons. It will retreat from combat and you can see what units are inside. - dont be afraid to raze tier 1 towns if you feel you can't hold them or can't wait around to migrate the race. Often it pays off (literally) to destroy them and they can be rebuilt with a builder's hall. - When using fast combat, It helps to think of it as an rts, where archers are the shock troops, swordsmen are your grunts and calvary are your tanks. late game, tier 4 units will dominate everything and your hero will be able to almost solo everything at the end of the campaign. - there is a seemingly useless spell in the game called "cosmagic transformation' you can get only at wizards towers. If you cast this on the enemy hero, you can track their movements anywhere on the map by going to the magic distribution menu and focusing on on the unit via the spell maintenance list. For the early game: Fast combat both has ranged units being given a free turn to attack, and the archers prioritize whatever unit has the most hit points, followed by targeting the other archers . So often I'll have a slew of tier one archers for wearing down the bigger units, a mix of swordsmen + the races unique tier 1 do the bulk of the damage and take most of the damage, and the cavalry 'tanks' are there to distract the enemy archers and do damage to weaker units, and a healer unit to keep healing post-combat. Tactical combat: press f5 to turn on the grid so you can count distance units. Again, range is the name of the game. With the grid on you can count the range of abilities a lot easier and plan for maximum distance. Don't use auto mode on tactical combat ever. You will have worse outcomes of you do. If you want a link to our discord, feel free to pm me. Entorwellian fucked around with this message at 07:25 on Nov 4, 2022 |
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Nov 3, 2022 05:34
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I'm really enjoying the master of magic remake. It's not perfect, by any means, but I had rose tinted glasses on with the original and I'm appreciating things like no memory leaks or spells that crash the game like in the DOS one. The only flaws in it are no multiplayer, the animation feeling floaty, and visual feedback being off-time in combat. The games can be ridiculously long so I'm mostly playing on tiny maps. It suffers from the usual 4x games with the late game being a slog, but The Spell of Mastery kicks in at about the right time to fix that. All the crazy spells from the original still work like they did in the original, like using cracks call to kill the enemy heroes in the first turn of combat. The micromanagement, however, feels perfect to me with how simple and enjoyable it is. The artwork and new soundtrack has grown on me and I'm starting to appreciate it more for having a mature feel to it... With one exception: the spinning portal animation loading screen for combat looks cheap. They should rework it so it doesn't look like a flat rotating disc. I've also realized now that I've been spoiled by Caster of Magic's game customization options and having a plethora of cpu wizard's instead of five. I really hope that comes down the dlc pipeline. Heck I wouldn't mind them going crazy with dlc and trying out new things. Entorwellian fucked around with this message at 11:30 on Jan 2, 2023 |
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Jan 2, 2023 09:02
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I got Distant Stars 2 and the first thing I automated was ship design. gently caress that noise.
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Mar 20, 2023 09:13
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Node posted:My biggest concern with 4Xs is noted in the title of this thread: the AI. I just loaded it up and got my rear end handed to me on Prince difficulty. It's my usual go-to difficulty for Civ V and VI lol.
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Mar 26, 2023 10:40
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Chas McGill posted:What's the verdict on Songs of Conquest? It's 40% off at the moment and I like the look of it, but it's early access and the recent reviews are kinda middling. It's alright but it does not veer too far from Heroes of Might and Magic III.
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Apr 3, 2023 18:40
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GlyphGryph posted:I really like when 4x give you the options to attack supply lines and engage in proper deepish espionage and make good use of who knows and doesn't know what, but it all seems rare in 4x games, and generally very poorly implemented when they exist at all. The only game I have played that had any sort of good espionage was Crusader Kings 2/3, and that is probably not the type of espionage you had in mind.
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Apr 13, 2023 06:58
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I've been playing Ozymandias and man it's HARD. It took me probably 6-7 tries just to finish the final tutorial level.
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May 11, 2023 10:02
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FuzzySlippers posted:How's the Master of Magic remake these days? I remember it launched with some problems, but I know they were working on patches. It's good but it's really slow and city-spammy. I think a lot of modern conveniences in gaming have spoiled me because I feel that there are some things that Master of Magic that they could have overhauled somewhat. If it wasn't for the Spell of Mastery component, I would have probably quit in the late-game stage out of boredom of how much of a slog the micromanagement becomes.
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Jul 2, 2023 13:27
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I've been kind of disappointed in how Sins of a Solar Empire 2 has been developing. It doesn't look much different from Sins: Rebellion except for some minor engine tweaks and a new UI.
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Jul 2, 2023 13:29
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I tried ozymandias but the game is brutal. You really have to understand the mechanics and play a lot of games before it clicks. It's one of the very few games I've played where I failed the tutorial multiple times.
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Sep 3, 2023 03:25
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So I had enough Epic Store credit and tried out the Sins of a Solar Empire 2 beta. I was wrong and it's actually turning out really good. It *is* basically a remake of the original game, including all of the expansions and dlc, into a 64-bit engine. However, they heavily tweaked and polished what mechanics worked in the original Sins and trimmed out the parts that didn't work in relation to things like pirates, minor factions, diplomacy, and research. I'll list a few of the major changes between 1 and 2 that I noticed. - All of the missiles, fighters, and turrets are modelled and function independently. Not only does it make huge space battles really drat beautiful to watch, but those anti-air ships from the first game can now be used to shoot down missiles, which fixes a big problem the first game had with people spamming missile ships until they won. I can't overstate how beautiful the huge battles when you watch two equal-sized fleets fight in the gravity wells. - There are now special resources (kind of like Stellaris) that are rare to find at the start in order to make capital ships, starbases, gear (more on this later) and some lines of research. It's an interesting mechanic at the beginning of the game because you can choose if you want to use your income to gamble for rare mineral searches on planets, or rush for planets that have them visible. These can also be traded by players and are lost if the ship or starbase is destroyed. Down the research path, refineries can be used to make rare resources too but its limited to how many refineries you build on the map. - The planets and asteroids now all move around the suns and the phase lanes change overtime. This can be turned off in the map settings and there is a UI option to look into the future trajectories of the planets and where the new phase lanes will change. I really, really like this. There's a custom map where planets are slowly moving in both directions and you will have planets from one empire eventually will pass through another, resulting in some great strategic play. - Since its a remake of the entire Sins 1 game, the game has undergone some chronological changes to how each of the races will play. The TEC of both factions play very much identically to their Sins 1 counterparts in terms of starting positions and progression. The Vasari, on the other hand, are completely reworked and start the game from outside the map. You have to first find a ferrous planet and settle it before you can build anything. This gives them a much slower start, but this is made up for in two ways: First, they don't use credits, only metal and crystal. You can sell resources for a small amount of credits to use for diplomacy and dealing with both pirates and minor factions. Second, they start out with a very generous amount of both. The Advent aren't in the beta as of yet, but I'm interested to see what they do with them. - Capital Ships can now be customized through purchasing gear for them, much like an RPG. There are limited use abilities, like self-repair and radiation warheads, but also permanent abilities and buffs that fall into three categories: offensive, defensive and utility. You can also find gear on planets, research it, or buy some off the pirates or minor factions. The repair-bay will install them without penalty, but you will incur a huge construction speed penalty normally and construction will stop completely if you are attacking. - The UI is the big change. It took me a game or two to get used to but it's a really good evolution of the first game. It streamlines managing fleets and planets much better when your focus is on the galactic map. - The A.I. is a lot more competent overall. It's not a giant leap, but it makes better decisions and puts up a good fight now. Now for some of the negatives I've noticed: - If you didn't like the original Sins of a Solar Empire, you will not like this game. It still has an awful late-game like every other 4x where everything is a slow slog and the enemy won't surrender. There are custom options to alleviate this, like having "kill the enemy's homeworld" as a win condition, but it still is a pain in the rear end and the least fun part of the game. - Lots of asset re-use. This to me is the main reason why there is little interest in the game. I really can't fault people for looking at it and going "its the same game again." I think a more proper label for it would be "Sins of a Solar Empire - Second Edition" than a traditional sequel. I'm guessing that they are really hurting for funding, given that its only available on the Epic Store as an exclusive. - No campaign  Come. The. gently caress. On. The game is *begging* for a single-player campaign.
Entorwellian fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Oct 1, 2023 |
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Sep 30, 2023 22:02
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Theotus posted:Any chance the assets being reused are just place holder? It's entirely possible. There are some new ship models in it but a fair amount of them look like they were taken from the first game. Also goes for voice overs and a chunk of the music tracks. Entorwellian fucked around with this message at 09:06 on Oct 5, 2023 |
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Oct 4, 2023 23:45
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Murgos posted:All I remember about GalCiv was that Brad Wardell was some kind of massive rear end in a top hat or borderline criminal. Don’t remember the specifics but I remember making the decision to never give him money. The former. He's a libertarian who would put bees on his staff as a joke and I think he said some bad stuff during the gamergate fiasco.
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Oct 24, 2023 01:54
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Lum_ posted:I'm not sure whether it was either GalCiv 2 or 3 that had the completely broken economy because Wardell decided to make higher tax rates give you less money because lol libertarianism. It was all of them, but particularly 1 was the worst for it. The guy who had to write the manual couldn't figure out how the economy worked and had to make a best guess at it.
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Oct 31, 2023 10:58
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FrancisFukyomama posted:Didn’t master of magic get a straight remake pretty recently? I remember the main complaints bc the game was too slow paced and needed fast animations It got a couple new DLC too. It's a good game and the animation stuff has been fixed, but it holds onto a lot of outdated game mechanics (sprawl as many cities as you can, late game is absolutely awful, and only two winning conditions: domination & research.) There's also something about the visuals too that feel off: The original master of magic was very colourful game, and the remake has a very dull and sparse palette. It's not the artwork, per se, but more the low-saturation art direction that they chose with Thea doesn't translate well with Master of Magic.
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Feb 11, 2024 09:59
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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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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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