Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[E. Albright]

Enh. I have yet to see rideable fauna that's nastier than tanks - and my current game's big raider nation that flipped spewed out probably 5 "mechanized raider battalions" that were slightly-outdated infantry with my current light tanks, trucks, bikes, and artillery - mostly b/c I intentionally bottlenecked my research while trying desperately to get power plant or solar power, so my troops had stagnated for a goodly long while. That still gave me a whole lot of troops that en masse could materially impact battles with the two majors fighting each other and me right north of them...

[EuchreJack]

So, my map spawned with Trampler Sheep.

17 meters long (or is it tall), metallic skin, shoot laser beams, aggressive to humans, and 30% of not dying to otherwise lethal damage.

I'm calling them Sheep Tanks.  The only thing they're missing is turrets.

Oh, and there are 1900 of them.

Those things are nastier than tanks due to sheer numbers.  Dunno, could be rideable?

[E. Albright]

Those would be worse than tanks, certainly. But. As near as I can tell, none of the really unpleasant stuff is rideable. All I've ever seen are generic biped cavalry.

[gomez]

I am playing most recent beta and I noticed a couple of oddities. I was the protector of a minor state and a major state declared war on them, which gave me the whole minor state and their troops for nothing so I peaced out the major state straight away and kept the minor states la d and troops.

Secondly the minor states that have no cities, you normally  have to kill them all to wipe them out, but one of them wandered in to a city I had just build and left unattended. So I declared war on them and took the city back next turn, thus winning the war and keeping all their land.

[EuchreJack]

Well, that first point where a minor state joins a major state they like in order to avoid being taken over by a major state they hate, and that deal remaining done when the two majors just restore their relations, that is totally and completely realistic.  It's been a while since Nations have been doing it, but corporations and businesses do it all the time.

You don't get your business back that you sell to one company because you're afraid another company will put you out of business.  And its generally understood that these much larger companies are going to be relatively stable in regards to one another.

....now that second point may very well be Shadow Empire's Exploit of the Year.  Does it work if one of those Non-Aligned factions that owns like 40% of the map takes over a new mine that I declared a city then yanked the troops from, then swiftly recapturing it to now own 40% more of the map? What if I "lose" a forward base to a Slaver faction, then reclaim it along with dominion over their slaver armies?

Which ironically is also historically accurate.  The best way to conquer a nomadic tribe is to first convince them to put all their women and children in a city, then quickly assume dominion over the city. How well it simulates what happens when your troops leave the city, I can't say.

[Knave]

Think I'm going to have some time over the holidays to jump back in on this.

What are your favourite starting settings? I think my original play-throughs were always tech 3/no councils. But maybe that's too masochistic? Am I right in assuming tech 4 leads to a bit more fun of the bat?

[E. Albright]

It depends. I kinda like the raw start, and have had good starts like that, but I've also done well with 4 and even full councils - more councils can lead to sociopolitical challenges like e.g. being forced to plot for years about how to get safely rid of that wretched seniority 100 SHQ commander with capability I and war 18 w/o totally alienating 12 or 15 other people who know and love them. I've found if you don't want to risk being bottlenecked by not getting an energy tech, tech 3 is safer (or tech 5 and totally eliminate the risk), but I wouldn't recommend T3 if you're on a world with really hostile humans.

[E. Albright]

I see, Im on stable, good to know this has already been fixed 

Unification definitely needs some sort of change...

-Unification and Annexation Stratagems are a bit more difficult in general now, but also a bit more variable in difficulty (based on the aggression of the target culture) *

[Mkok]

I feel that tech 4.0 start is easier then tech 3.0 simply because in tech 4.0 you already have all the basic infrastructure in place and do not need to set it up while defending from minors/unaligneds.

In my new game I started in a level 4 irradiated zone, and it didnt feel to actually do anything, does radiation actually do anything?

Also, is there any reason why to care about running out of credits other than not having money to invest? I ran few turns in deficit while being at 0 and did not notice a single penalty...

And for chemical troops... are they completely useless on lifeless planets without breathable atmosphere?

P.S. so I just had a raider minor steamroll 10 tiles into my territory to capture a city in a single turn... interesting

[EuchreJack]

Radiation kills over time, represented by maluses on units.  Buildings are usually fine.

Running out of credits does limit the options on decisions, so you might have to make sub-optimal choices if you can't sell enough resources to make your preferred decision.  But you can select that decision after selling your surplus.

Doesn't running in the negative trigger unrest penalties over time, representing workers not getting paid and such?  Or maybe it affects worker happiness?  I thought there was something like that, but could be mistaken.

I think you're generally right about chemical troops.  They're more a breathable atmosphere weapon.
Note that in the research screen, what appears to be chemical weapons are instead weapons that need chemicals to operate, AKA rockets and other explody things.  So that tech line is very useful.

Assuming the manual is right, this might also prove problematic:

5.3.12.4. Losing Workers
Workers can leave your employment whenever they desire so. They will do this
to some measure when Worker Happiness is lower than Population Happiness.
They will leave in droves if you do not feed them (due to Food shortages) or
fail to pay them their promised Salaries.

So your workers leave, then your buildings stop functioning because they don't have workers.  Suddenly your resources are depleted, so you can't trade for more credits or buy replacement resources.  More of a long term thing, if working as intended.

[E. Albright]

Also note re: the Chem weapons card, it's utterly useless against almost all humans b/c everyone but the very lowest level of troops will have envirosuits. That bit right there feels annoying - there really should be variable protections with tradeoffs in terms of mobility for infantry up until you get Battle Dress.

[Mkok]

I think chem. weapons would be nice if they cost only 1 FP and were to appear only on worlds with either breathable atmosphere or alien fauna. Would serve as a damage boot in early game, like docile AI.

I dont know about unpaid workers leaving, but at the very least running out of money does not affect their happiness, and they still get happiness bonus for getting paid. I wonder what would happen if I maxed out all salaries and whenever I need cash just sold some rare metals 

Yeah, it also feels a bit strange that on earth-like worlds you want your infantry to also wear envirosuits cause it gives better armor...
And it feels a bit weird that on planets with toxic atmosphere it is not easier to kill someone in envirosuit... you know, a minor wound would be so much more dangerous there... Overall this game really does not feel like being on some alien uninhabitable planet, personally I think of it more like being on earth that has been devastated by war, makes it a lot better...

[Majestic7]

I really think enviroment should increase casualties. So hostile atmosphere or no atmosphere or aggressive alien microbiology would increase casualties among both infantry and vehicles. Hmm, not sure about vehicles though - if vehicles represent literal vehicles, then maybe vacuum breach would just kill the crew but leave the vehicle usable.

[forsaken1111]

I really think enviroment should increase casualties. So hostile atmosphere or no atmosphere or aggressive alien microbiology would increase casualties among both infantry and vehicles. Hmm, not sure about vehicles though - if vehicles represent literal vehicles, then maybe vacuum breach would just kill the crew but leave the vehicle usable.

On the flip side, some environments would be absolute hell on vehicle systems. Corrosive atmospheres, or driving through salty bogs and ankle deep brine, etc. I could see it going both ways

[Majestic7]

I really think enviroment should increase casualties. So hostile atmosphere or no atmosphere or aggressive alien microbiology would increase casualties among both infantry and vehicles. Hmm, not sure about vehicles though - if vehicles represent literal vehicles, then maybe vacuum breach would just kill the crew but leave the vehicle usable.

On the flip side, some environments would be absolute hell on vehicle systems. Corrosive atmospheres, or driving through salty bogs and ankle deep brine, etc. I could see it going both ways
[/quote]

Yeah, you are correct, especially when the game kind of rides on "you can play Dune on this", isn't that exactly what the Arrakis sand did to most vehicles?