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So you ride yourselves over the fields and you make all your animal deals and your wise men don't know how it feels to be thick as a brick. -
Yes, but I have a fairly old system (3.2GHz P4HT with 3GB RAM and lousy slow single HD). I think most of the crapulence is either loading gfx from disk, but it could be the 1x PCI-e slot (I have a new 5750 card ready for my next machine, but it's currently running at 1x). But yes, I was surprised how sluggish it is for a TBS game.
The addiction didn't last: the automated governor code is still nowhere near intelligent enough to optimise production, so even when I got the wonder-building right I still quit after reaching half a dozen cities because my OCD can't cope with the requirement to micromanage the resources manually. It's a shame because it's a really nice evolution of the genre.
So I got Sacred 2 for some hack'n'slash joy - not sure how long that will last either: I played D2 for years but TQ for only months."Been away so long I hardly knew the place, gee it's good to be back home" - The BeatlesComment
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Me and my friends always enjoyed a game of Stars! It is a - really old - 4X space strategy game, very similar to Moo2. The company that sold it is long gone, but you can still find the shareware version at starsautohost. I think there are serial numbers sold at the forum to get a full version. Be warned though, the graphical interface is minimalistic. ;-)
You can play it against AI or on your own, but the most fun you'll get out of hotseat (yes, it's possible!) or PBEM. If you're interested I could think about hosting a game, though I know it always eats a lot of my time.
When I played my last game (about 2 years ago) I was working at a hospital and one of my office walls was a huge starmap with small needles and flags. You can imagine how many questions from colleagues and patients I had to answer. Well, two of my colleagues play it since then, too. ;-)
Cheers,
fabComment
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You're right, micromanagement is a large part, especially in a large game with many planets and fleets to command. You can however automate a big part of it, though it tends to be not as perfect as doing everything by yourself.
I have to admit that you'll probably won't like Stars! if you don't like fumbling with numbers, calculating growths percentage and such things. On the other hand, it depends on your enemies if this is really required to win. The game rewards micromanagement (optimizing population count, mineral distribution, starship construction) because there are only a few random things that can happen - and you can turn even those off when starting a game.
Stars! rewards knowledge (that means of the game mechanics and much more important: of your enemy). When you know an enemy's fleet strength and the ship design you can easily check if you're fleet stands a chance or not - so you can decide to fight or run. The real fun begins when you and you're allies plan longer operations together, which makes communication an important part of the game.
This leads to a somewhat slow-paced game in most cases. My last games had a new turn generated once a week, so most of us who had to work had still enough time to do their turns.
Ah, while writing this I begin to remember why I like this game so much. Maybe I should give it another try? Mhm. Last game lasted for over a year....
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Just a random plug for Star Legacy - a new 4X game that I'm involved in developing! Not much to show yet - the game's still in early-mid stages of development - but there is a forum over at Shrapnel Games which could use some vitality!
Sorry there's not more to show (the game's been in development for about a year now, you'd expect more) - we're just working on this in our spare time so there's not as much as you'd expect, and it doesn't seem to make sense to show any screenshots of what we have so far, seeing as everything's in such a state of flux!You read the scroll labeled NOBIMUS UPSCOTI...
You are surrounded by a stasis field!
The tengu tries to teleport, but fails!Comment
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Heh, good point
You read the scroll labeled NOBIMUS UPSCOTI...
You are surrounded by a stasis field!
The tengu tries to teleport, but fails!Comment
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Good luck with that! Having joined a couple (failed) 4X development projects, I know it can certainly be a challenge
I think 4X games are deceptively difficult to execute. It's very tempting to get bogged down with the details (i.e. combat mechanics), but the success of such a game is almost 100% execution. You need a great, clean UI with intuitive controls. You need an amazingly simple way for new players to join multiplayer games with their friends. You need a decent AI which can provide a compelling single-player experience, since there are tons of players who will never venture past the single-player game (especially if it sucks).
Space 4X games are a bit different as they've historically catered to a slightly more tech-savvy player. But it's still all about execution. That, IMO, is why Space Empires V - with its incredibly deep mechanics and wonderful modding capabilities - does not end up appealing to a large audience, and is ultimately left without a sustainable player base. The execution was mediocre (no offense to Aaron, it's just not a one-man job!): The UI was OK but not great, and out-of-box AI was terrible, and there was no official channel for joining multiplayer games (i.e. only community-run sites offered multiplayer, and "transfering turn files manually" just doesn't fly in this modern gaming era).Comment
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If this is a necro of this topic then so be it, I just had to put my two cents in on A.I War being, IMO, the best 4x space game known to man. No, I don't work for Arcen Games, (the developer). I do not at all mind repping a developer who puts out high quality content at a fraction of the price of mainstream games.
It seems indie games are what's hot now. I hope people wake up and see that they are getting ripped by their beloved mainstream developers. I'm extremely jaded with those mainstream sheisters They just put out bare-bones garbage, charge top-dollar, then usually ON THE SAME DAY AS RELEASE OF THE GAME have downloadable content that should of JUST BEEN IN THE 60 DOLLAR GAME. WTF!
*end rant*Comment
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Interesting. After a brief flirtation with Civ V I ended up going for Sins of a Solar Empire - it's a space 4X, but it's real-time. I was very nervous at first 'cos I much prefer turn-based gaming, but it's superb and has really hooked me. Stardock don't seem to suffer from the "peddle crap then patch it" mentality of so many other publishers.
I did download the trial of AI War though, so I will give that a whirl over xmas and see if it's worth the full monty."Been away so long I hardly knew the place, gee it's good to be back home" - The BeatlesComment
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